- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Children and the Sectional Conflict
- 1 “Waked Up to Feel”
- 2 “Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go”
- 3 “What Is a Person Worth at Such a Time”
- Part II Children of War
- 4 A “Rebel to [His] Govt. and to His Parents”
- 5 Thrills for Children
- 6 “Good Children Die Happy”
- 7 Children of the March
- 8 Love in Battle
- Part III Aftermaths
- 9 Caught in the Crossfire
- 10 “Free Ourselves, but Deprived of Our Children”
- 11 Reconstructing Social Obligation
- 12 Orphans and Indians
- Part IV Epilogue
- 13 Preparing the Next Generation for Massive Resistance
- Documents: Through the Eyes of Civil War Children
- “I Hope by My Next Birthday We Will Have Peace in Our Land”: Carrie Berry Endures the Fall of Atlanta
- “A Strenuous and Tragic Affair”: Life on the Northern Home Front
- “The Threshold of a New Year”: High School Journalists Weigh In on the Civil War
- “Sports in the Days of the Sixties”: War and Play
- “De drums wus beatin’”: Caroline Richardson Meets the Yankees
- “A Momentous and Eventful Day”: Freedom Comes to Booker T. Washington
- “Born in the First Smoke of the Great Conflict”: Hamlin Garland’s Father Comes Home
- Questions for Consideration
- Suggested Readings
- About the Contributors
- Index
Thrills for Children
Thrills for Children
The Youth’s Companion, the Civil War, and the Commercialization of American Youth
- Chapter:
- (p.77) 5 Thrills for Children
- Source:
- Children and Youth during the Civil War Era
- Author(s):
Paul B. Ringel
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
This chapter examines the proliferation of periodicals and books for children during and immediately after the Civil War, with special attention to the success of Boston children's weekly the Youth's Companion. During the course of the war, the Companion moved from ignoring the conflict to using it as an instrument to inspire moral introspection, and finally to presenting it as a moralistic drama suitable for both the instruction and entertainment of its young audience. By the 1870s, the paper reached a national audience of more than 100,000 mostly middle-class subscribers, and by the 1890s it had become one of the best-selling periodicals of any genre in the country, with a weekly circulation that allegedly reached over half a million.
Keywords: Youth's Companion, Civil War, children, youth, children's periodicals
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Children and the Sectional Conflict
- 1 “Waked Up to Feel”
- 2 “Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go”
- 3 “What Is a Person Worth at Such a Time”
- Part II Children of War
- 4 A “Rebel to [His] Govt. and to His Parents”
- 5 Thrills for Children
- 6 “Good Children Die Happy”
- 7 Children of the March
- 8 Love in Battle
- Part III Aftermaths
- 9 Caught in the Crossfire
- 10 “Free Ourselves, but Deprived of Our Children”
- 11 Reconstructing Social Obligation
- 12 Orphans and Indians
- Part IV Epilogue
- 13 Preparing the Next Generation for Massive Resistance
- Documents: Through the Eyes of Civil War Children
- “I Hope by My Next Birthday We Will Have Peace in Our Land”: Carrie Berry Endures the Fall of Atlanta
- “A Strenuous and Tragic Affair”: Life on the Northern Home Front
- “The Threshold of a New Year”: High School Journalists Weigh In on the Civil War
- “Sports in the Days of the Sixties”: War and Play
- “De drums wus beatin’”: Caroline Richardson Meets the Yankees
- “A Momentous and Eventful Day”: Freedom Comes to Booker T. Washington
- “Born in the First Smoke of the Great Conflict”: Hamlin Garland’s Father Comes Home
- Questions for Consideration
- Suggested Readings
- About the Contributors
- Index
