A Nation Unraveled
Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era
Book •
Sarah Jones Weicksel's 'A Nation Unraveled' examines how clothing—what people made, wore, mended, lost, and stole—shaped Civil War experiences across battlefields and home fronts.
The book argues garments functioned as instruments of political expression, social control, and emotional life, revealing how war reconfigured identities, hierarchies, and federal power.
Drawing on archival sources and surviving textiles, Weicksel explores topics from uniform production and looting to enslaved people's sartorial practices and relief efforts after emancipation.
Her material-culture approach foregrounds intimate, visceral encounters with cloth to show how the war permeated daily living.
The work contributes to scholarship on the Civil War by centering objects to illuminate broader cultural and political transformations of the 1860s.
The book argues garments functioned as instruments of political expression, social control, and emotional life, revealing how war reconfigured identities, hierarchies, and federal power.
Drawing on archival sources and surviving textiles, Weicksel explores topics from uniform production and looting to enslaved people's sartorial practices and relief efforts after emancipation.
Her material-culture approach foregrounds intimate, visceral encounters with cloth to show how the war permeated daily living.
The work contributes to scholarship on the Civil War by centering objects to illuminate broader cultural and political transformations of the 1860s.
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Mentioned by 
Miranda Melcher
Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)
Mentioned by 
Miranda Melcher
Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)
