During his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln expressed hope that the "better angels of our nature" would prevail as war loomed. He was wrong. The better angels did not, but for many Americans, the evil ones did. War Is All Hell peers into the world of devils, demons, Satan, and hell during the era of the American Civil War. It charts how African Americans and abolitionists compared slavery to hell, how Unionists rendered Confederate secession illegal by linking it to Satan, and how many Civil War soldiers came to understand themselves as living in hellish circumstances. War Is All Hell also examines how many Americans used evil to advance their own agendas. Sometimes literally, oftentimes figuratively, the agents of hell and hell itself became central means for many Americans to understand themselves and those around them, to legitimate their viewpoints and actions, and to challenge those of others. Many who opposed emancipation did so by casting Abraham Lincoln as the devil incarnate. Those who wished to pursue harsher war measures encouraged their soldiers to "fight like devils." And finally, after the war, when white men desired to stop genuine justice, they terrorized African Americans by dressing up as demons. A combination of religious, political, cultural, and military history, War Is All Hell illuminates why, after the war, one of its leading generals described it as "all hell."

In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.

Although much is known about the political stance of the military at large during the Civil War, the political party affiliations of individual soldiers have received little attention. Drawing on archival sources from twenty-five generals and 250 volunteer officers and enlisted men, John Matsui offers the first major study to examine the ways in which individual politics were as important as military considerations to battlefield outcomes and how the experience of war could alter soldiers’ political views. The conservative war aims pursued by Abraham Lincoln’s generals (and to some extent, the president himself) in the first year of the American Civil War focused on the preservation of the Union and the restoration of the antebellum status quo. This approach was particularly evident in the prevailing policies and attitudes toward Confederacy-supporting Southern civilians and slavery. But this changed in Virginia during the summer of 1862 with the formation of the Army of Virginia. If the Army of the Potomac (the major Union force in Virginia) was dominated by generals who concurred with the ideology of the Democratic Party, the Army of Virginia (though likewise a Union force) was its political opposite, from its senior generals to the common soldiers. The majority of officers and soldiers in the Army of Virginia saw slavery and pro-Confederate civilians as crucial components of the rebel war effort and blamed them for prolonging the war. The frustrating occupation experiences of the Army of Virginia radicalized them further, making them a vanguard against Southern rebellion and slavery within the Union army as a whole and paving the way for Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Post-irradiation examinations of several ceramic nuclear fuels are summarized, emphasizing the identification and characterization of fission induced defects. The lattice parameter and electrical resistivity were significantly altered with fission damage in all fuels. A remarkable reduction, however, was found in the irradiation induced changes of both physical properties in uranium dioxide (UO2), uranium nitrite (UN), and uranium sesquicarbide (U2C3) at high fission doses, probably because of a preferential annihilation of extended defects in the damage process. An effect of the extended defects in irradiated single crystalline UC was a greater increased resistivity at low temperature, indicating a contribution of interstitial-type defects. The irradiation induced physical properties, on the other hand, were annealed out, within a few recovery steps in all the fuels, exhibiting some dependence on the extent of the fission damage. It was of great interest that a drastic change was observed in the magnetic property changes in some magnetic substances, such as uranium monosulfide (US) and UN. All the magnetic parameters changed with fission damage and recovered to the original values in successive annealing processes.

Microstructural observation was performed on an Fe-0.3wt.%Cu alloy using a cross-sectional method. The specimens were solution treated and aged at 893K for 22.5h, followed by proton irradiation up to a fluence of 3x1021H+/m2(0.2 dpa at a peak position) at 353K. A band of structure, 0.8?m wide, was observed in a region 6.5 ?m beneath the irradiated surface. The band consisted of a high density of black spot damage, which average size and number density at the center of the band was determined to be 2.3nm and 2.2x1026/m3, respectively. Besides the black spot damage, a number of small structures (3nm) were observed in the defect band at strong two beam condition, while precipitates having F.C.C structure with a lattice constant of 10.16A and large precipitates (6nm) causing halo rings corresponding to F.C.C. copper were observed at the region in and around both sides of the band. Taking in account results of micro vickers hardness and positron life-time measurements in Fe-Cu alloys, radiation hardening observed in Fe-0.3wt.%Cu alloy is attributed mainly to the radiation damage structures, such as dislocation loops and microvoids. However, It is pointed out that interaction between copper and carbon plays an important role on the microstructural evolution under irradiation and the resultant hardening in Fe-C-Cu alloys.

Hardness measurements and microstructure examinations of Fe(-C)-Cu-Ni model alloys were performed following 1 MeV proton irradiation below 80°C. Microstructural examinations by transmission electron microscope (TEM) were carried out by means of a cross section method. A band of damage structures, parallel to the irradiated surface, was observed at a depth of 6.5 ? m in agreement with calculation based on the TRIM code. TEM observation revealed that the band consisted of high density of small black spots, which were considered to be interstitial-type dislocation loops. The amount of irradiation hardening increased with increase in copper concentration. An addition of 0.6wt%Ni to Fe-Cu alloys further increased the hardening, although the effect was reduced with increasing copper concentration. Irradiation hardening of pure iron was also significantly increased by the addition of nickel. The size and number density of the spot-like structures in Fe-Cu alloys decreased and increased, respectively, with addition of nickel. Three recovery stages were found in Fe-Cu-Ni alloys during post-irradiation isochronal annealing to 675°C: the stages are at around 150°C, 400°C and 600°C. The first stage was only observed in nickel-containing alloys, while the third stage was only observed in copper-containing alloys. After annealing to 375°C, the density of spot-like structures decreased in Fe-Cu-Ni alloy but increased in Fe-Cu alloy, while for both the size of spots increased.

The materials used were Ti-50.0, 50.5 and 51.0at%Ni alloys which were cold rolled and aged at 400°C for 1 hr. Neutron irradiation was performed in the Japan Materials Test Reactor (JMTR) up to a dose of 1.2 x 1024n/m2 at cooling water temperature (about 60°C), which meant the specimens were irradiated in the parent phase (B2). After the irradiation, micro-Vickers hardness measurements, microstructure observations by transmission electron microscope (TEM) and positron annihilation spectrometry (PAS) measurements were carried out. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements were taken at temperatures between -120°C and 120°C. After the irradiation, all the alloys show extremely high irradiation hardening: the estimated increase in the yield stress of Ti-50Ni alloy is almost 1GPa. Although the hardness of the Ti-Ni alloys depends on the alloy composition in the unirradiated condition, all the alloys reach the same hardness value after the irradiation. DSC measurements revealed that the martensitic transformation was completely suppressed by the irradiation in all the alloys. PAS study revealed that no structural vacancies existed in the alloys before the irradiation, and that vacancies were formed after the irradiation. Microstructural observations indicate that disordered regions, which were considered to be amorphous, were homogeneously distributed in the irradiated parent ordered phase, accompanied by an appearance of the halo ring on the diffraction pattern. The irradiation effects disappeared following a post-irradiation anneal at 250°C for 1 hr. The recovery of the martensitic transformation by post-irradiation annealing is attributed to the migration of vacancies that causes the reordering. It is expected that Ti-Ni alloys are potential self-restorative materials for the irradiation above 250°C where vacancies are mobile.