Redemptive California? Re-thinking the post-Civil War

Abstract

‘Redemptive California?’ asks about the role that California and the wider West played in post-Civil War America. Given that questions over the territorial expansion of slavery into the West hastened the coming of the Civil War, how did the wounded nation—and legions of wounded soldiers—look to the West after the war for convalescence, healing, even redemption? This essay suggests that historians have unaccountably ignored the impact of the Civil War on the West, c.1865 – 1910, and it poses one organizing theme—western convalescence—by which to begin to correct this scholarly blind spot.