Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai's "Northern Character"

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai is Assistant Professor of history at Angelo State University. He is co-editor (with Lorien Foote) of So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War–Era North.

He Wongsrichanalai dreamcasts an adaptation of his new book, Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era:

There’s certainly a good deal of drama in Northern Character as young men wrestled with decisions about how to behave consistent with an ideal that they’ve internalized. The fights between young men who felt compelled to volunteer in the Union Army and their parents could be quite emotional. Not to mention the horrific scenes of the battlefield where many of these elites felt compelled to test themselves in the heat of combat.

Some of the individuals mentioned in Northern Character have already been portrayed in several films. Matthew Broderick played Robert Gould Shaw in Glory and Jeff Daniels portrayed Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in both Gettysburg and Gods & Generals. Both actors did a superb job.

For Northern Character, I would add several key figures. Charles Martin Smith could play Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson and great-grandson of U.S. presidents, and William O’Leary could portray Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder of the Hampton Institute. Both Adams and Armstrong led African-American troops during the war.

Learn more about Northern Character at the Fordham University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Northern Character.

--Marshal Zeringue

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