In this Virginia History Blog, we look at recent journal reviews concerning the Civil War Era. The commander featured is Robert E. Lee in “The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee”. Combat is represented in “The First Republican Army” about the western Virginia politically motivated Federal army, and “The Guerrilla Hunters” treating the Confederate Ranger and irregulars along with the Union efforts to suppress them.
“Confederate Political Economy” examines those state-business partnerships during the war as proto-corporatist. Lastly, two titles are reviewed about Reconstruction, “Interpreting American History: Reconstruction” and historians, and “Remembering Reconstruction” by individuals and in the common culture.
The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee
David Cox wrote The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee in 2017. Reviewed in the Journal of American History. It is available from Eerdman’s Publishers, on Kindle, audiobook and online new and used.
“Robert E. Lee, the Christian soldier” has long defined the Virginian and Confederate soldier of Civil War history. In this book, Cox is both sympathetic and critical of his subject. Lee was a practical Christian, an Episcopalian of his time, a sometime congregant of Christ Church, Alexandria and habitual church-goer throughout his life.
On his deployment west for the Mexican War, Lee provided for the manumission of his slaves. His letters reflected a growing knowledge of and attachment to both the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. At the Civil War, Lee saw the conflict as God’s punishment for national sin, and he had faith that the outcome would prove the will of a divine providence. That religious conviction sustained him in reconciling to the Confederate defeat, the end of slavery and the reunification of the United States.
To buy “The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee” on Amazon, click here.
The First Republican Army
John H. Matsui wrote The First Republican Army: The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War in 2016. Reviewed in the Journal of American History. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
In the west of Virginia during the Civil War, the army led by General John Pope, the “Army of Virginia” was different from the main eastern theater Union “Army of the Potomac” led by General McClellan. McClellan favored warfare conciliatory to slave-holders so as to ease a peaceable reconstruction. Pope and his officer corps pursued a “hard” war, confiscating civilian property and welcoming runaway slaves to freedom.
Pope’s army was primarily abolitionist, made up of men mainly from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. It had more westerners and German Americans than McClellan’s. While officers were more radical in their Republican partisanship than the enlisted, and antislavery sentiment did not always subdue anti-black prejudice, political ideals demonstrably effected war-making policy on the ground.
To buy “The First Republican Army” on Amazon, click here.
The Guerrilla Hunters
Brian D. McKnight and Barton A. Myers edited The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War in 2017. Reviewed in the Journal of American History, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and the Journal of the Civil War Era. It is available from the LSU Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This is a collection of fifteen essays. It considers both Union and Confederate irregulars in Eastern, Western and Trans-Mississippi Theaters of war. Regardless of their influence on the battlefield, guerrilla activities profoundly shaped the lived experience of multiple home fronts.
Confederate guerrillas tolerated by Richmond could work at odds with professed goals, sometimes targeting Confederate civilian populations. The Rangers were abolished after two years with only two units allowed to continue. Irregular bushwhackers persisted, including a “warlord” in Georgia, challenging the idea of a united white South during the Civil War.
Union policy was erratic, sometimes fomenting more resistance, sometimes quelling guerrilla violence. Different Union commanders developed different methods in dealing with both guerrillas and civilian populations within their area of operations. Guerilla small-scale massacres were answered with reprisals. Guerrillas effected the logistical train of supply to the armies and also the lives of civilians they operated among. Along with Union counter-measures, they fostered one of the legacies of the conflict.
To buy “The Guerrilla Hunters” on Amazon, click here.
Confederate Political Economy
Michael Brem Bonner wrote Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporate Nation in 2016. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. It is available from LSU Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
The economy of the Confederacy was an early example of a corporatist political economy, one where central state coordination was linked with significant input and influence from business interests. Production was achieved by a combination of state-owned industries and private concerns enjoying preferential treatment.
Planning was done haphazardly under the duress of continuing war, and despite a shifting array of occupational exemptions among trades and bureaucratic placeholders, the Confederacy failed to coordinate labor policy in any meaningful way. Confederate government policies and subsidies were particularly apparent among crucial industries in railroads, gunpowder and munitions. Those left to themselves suffered comparatively amidst inflationary speculation in agriculture and textiles.
To buy “Confederate Political Economy” on Amazon, click here.
Interpreting American History: Reconstruction
John David Smith edited Interpreting American History: Reconstruction in 2016. Reviewed in the Journal of the Civil War Era. It is available from the Kent State University Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This is a collection of essays that treat Reconstruction in three ways. It can be interpreted as a particular historical moment following the Civil War, as a kind of political and social referendum on emancipation, and as a realignment of citizen privileges and state powers in a democracy. Essays take up Reconstruction politics as well as aspects of race, gender and intellectual history.
There have been major shifts in the historiography of the period. The early Dunning school saw Reconstruction as an era of ignorant officials and federal and local misrule. Then emerged celebratory interpretations emphasizing the extent of quality and growth of democracy. Following the Vietnam War came disillusionment with force as an agent of sustainable democratic change. Finally a sort of consensus emerges with an examination of African American agency along with an account of the era’s shortcomings.
To buy “Interpreting American History: Reconstruction” on Amazon, click here.
Remembering Reconstruction
Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker edited Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era in 2017. Reviewed in the Journal of the Civil War Era. It is available from the LSU Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This collection of essays surveys an array of interpretations from multiple sources over time. In the Jim Crow era, white supremacist accounts for white supremacists arguing for northerners to leave race affairs to southern white control whether at the ballot box or the hanging tree. African Americans offered direct personal experiences illuminating Republican radicalism and the extent of Democratic racial terrorism, as well as moderated accounts seeking reconciliation across the color line.
Recollections and reinterpretations of Reconstruction informed not only domestic politics concerning “the Negro question”, but school textbooks influenced by the KKK, American colonial policy in the Caribbean and Pacific, and international visions of world order in Wilson’s efforts at peacemaking and decolonization following World War I.
To buy “Remembering Reconstruction” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1820-1883. Titles are organized by topics, political and economic Virginia, social history, gender, religious, African American, and Wars in Virginia 1750-1824.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.