Introduction: the idea of the thing / Joan E. Cashin -- 1. John Brown's Pikes: assembling the future in antebellum America / Jason Phillips -- 2. Relics from two wars: Revolutionary artifacts in the Civil War era / Joan E. Cashin -- 3. Nature as material culture: Antietam National Battlefield / Lisa M. Brady and Timothy Silver -- 4. Saved by a testament: books as shields among Union and Confederate soldiers / Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray -- 5. The material culture of weapons in the Civil War / Earl J. Hess -- 6. Scabrous matters: spurious vaccinations in the Confederacy / Robert D. Hicks -- 7. Fitted up for freedom: the material culture of refugee relief / Sarah Jones Weicksel -- 8. There's no place like home: gender, family, and the Confederate Alabama household / Victoria E. Ott -- 9. The trophies of victory and the relics of defeat: returning home in the spring of 1865 / Peter S. Carmichael -- 10. The stuff of defeat: material culture and the downfall of Jefferson Davis / Yael A. Sternhell
