The third biennial David B. Warren Symposium, held in 2011, commemorated the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War. A cadre of distinguished scholars gathered to examine the material culture of the Civil War era. This volume presents four insightful essays that explore this topic in relation to trade along the Mississippi Valley, the visual history of the plantation, the movement of precious objects through wartime looting, and the role of cotton as a fundamental textile within and beyond the US South. The book opens by setting the stage for the Civil War with an essay by Jason T. Busch that explores ways in which the Mississippi River was transformed in the 1850s from a line of travel to a route of cultural and artistic exchange. John Michael Vlach, Dana Byrd, Katie Knowles, and William Hosley focus on the subtheme of changes in material culture in the South and Texas driven by the Civil War.