This collection of original essays brings fresh perspectives to how the Civil War influenced and altered life in the northern states. The authors illustrate the ways the war intruded into almost every aspect of northern consciousness and civilian society, from family life to scientific discourse even as it shaped political culture and party ideology. They show that the home front was no more quarantined from the battlefield and camp experiences of Union soldiers than the soldiers’ wartime experiences were isolated from their own home life. Workers and employers, blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats, men and women, felt the impact of the war. Northerners were most obviously aware of the war when they sent their men folk off to battle, for enlistment not only changed the lives of those men who served in the military, but also intimately altered the lives of those individuals who shared their fortunes. Men off to war abandoned peacetime business and left school, family, and fair civil prospects to serve in the army and the navy, placing their families in uncertain circumstances. In the end, if the war falled to work long-lasting changes throughout northern society or only accelerated changes already placed in motion by antebellum forces, on an intimate human level it affected soldiers and their families during and after the crisis in countless ways. These essays, however, show that the consequences of fighting secession meant more than just an empty chair by the hearth. The experiences of thousands of other northern men not only touched their families, but also rippled through their communities, altering the ways in which society functioned and defined itself. Even those men and women who wished to insulate themselves from the realities of the time could hardly escape them. Northerners who read newspapers and novels, listened to sermons, spent and invested, engaged in the political process, or simply tried to cope with minor inconveniences could not help but be reminded that all was not as it once had been. It was, indeed, an uncommon time when few people at home escaped at least thinking about the various and diverse changes wrought by the war. In pointing to the many and sometimes divergent interests and experiences that made up the North’s Civil War, the essays also remind us what Lincoln so well understood about war and society - namely, that in saving the Union, the war was also remaking it.