In this Virginia History Blog, we examine titles related to the Civil War in Virginia.
Confederate Army in Virginia. “The American Civil War” is a military history of the conflict, “The View From the Ground” relates the soldier experience, and “Why Confederates Fought” explores family and nation in Civil War Virginia.
Virginia and Virginians. The “Civil War in Virginia” for the years 1863 and 1864 is related in the series by William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, Jr. The third ranking Virginian commander is treated in “John Bankhead Magruder” and the social, political and military issues in the Army of Virginia are related in “The Bravest of the Brave”.
Union Army in Virginia. The American Civil War from the Lincoln perspective is related in “Lincoln’s Darkest Year” of 1862, and “The Age of Lincoln” describing his political milieu. “What This Cruel War Was Over” describes the transformation of the American Civil War from a war of Union to a war of emancipation in the minds of Union soldiers.
Confederate Army in Civil War Virginia
The American Civil War
John Keegan wrote The American Civil War: A Military History in 2009. It is available from the Alfred A. Knopf Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The American Civil War” on Amazon here.
While the author concedes that the American Civil War was “the most important ideological war in history”, British military historian John Keegan posits that, to an “extraordinary degree”, the Civil War was shaped by the outcomes of battles. Following an introductory narrative establishing the distinctions between the two cultures that had arisen North and South that went far beyond rational ideology, the book focuses on army level maneuver and engagements, balancing the Eastern and Western theaters of war.
Beginning with a comparative strategic analysis of the North and the South, Keegan successfully sets each battle in its geographic and grand-strategic context. He has stand-alone chapters on tactics and technology, weapons and combat, but he also integrates the elements of each contest into a narrative showing the “face of battle” experience unique to each one.
Buy “The American Civil War” on Amazon here. See also James M. McPherson Battle Cry of Freedom (2003),William C. Davis Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged (2015), Aaron Sheehan-Dean Struggle for a vast future: The American Civil War (2016), and his Concise Historical Atlas of the U.S. Civil War (2008). A companion to Edward Ayers In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 (2004).
The View From the Ground
Aaron Sheehan-Dean wrote The View From the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers in 2007. Available from the University Press of Kentucky, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The View From the Ground” on Amazon here.
This anthology of essays emphasize that the American soldiers on both sides of the conflict had a variety of interpretation of their common experiences, war events and national issues. While they were each independent actors, shaping the war as much as they were shaped by it, they also had commonalities defining themselves as Christians, as men, and racially.
The book includes an historiographic essay, followed by treatment of how Union soldiers changed their views about slavery and how Johnny Rebs thought about their foes. Three essays look at the conflict in military and civilian values, two explore religion in the armies, and one traces memories of the Battle of the Crater.
Buy “The View From the Ground” on Amazon here. Also by this author, The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War (2018). See also Bell IrvinWiley The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (1943, 2008), Wiley The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (1952, 2008), Gerald Linderman Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (1989), and William C. Davis A Taste For War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray (2003).
Why Confederates Fought (Virginia)
Aaron Sheehan-Dean wrote Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia in 2007. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, Kindle and online new and used. A TVH top 300 Virginia history. Buy “Why Confederates Fought” on Amazon here.
The Confederate Virginia among whites was remarkably mobilized for wartime service, perhaps 89 percent of eligible men, and after 1862 it suffered relatively low levels of desertion until the final months of 1865. Commitment to the Cause was manifested in a “die-hardism”, so there was a distinction between initial and sustaining motivation. Sheehan-Dean posits that in Virginia the “War of Northern Aggression” was lost because the weight of Union arms destroyed it, just as Robert E. Lee had explained in his fair well to the Army of Northern Virginia.
Throughout there was a racial preoccupation which saw military service as a means of protecting families, and that was extended during Reconstruction in a first massive resistance to the first race-based civil rights movement. The barely demobilized Confederate Army in Virginia continued to march together in politics as a continuation of war by other means to preserve Virginia as a white man’s country. In a way it was an obverse phenomenon of the “Bloody Shirt” and “Vote as You Shot” in the North.
Buy “Why Confederates Fought” on Amazon here. Also by this author, first in a series of four, The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It (2011). See also Joseph Glatthaar General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (2008), Kent T. Dollar Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on Their Faith (2005), and Jason Phillips Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (2010).
Virginia and Virginians in Civil War Virginia
Virginia at War, 1863
William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, Jr. wrote Virginia at War, 1863 in 2008. Available from the University Press of Kentucky, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Virginia at War, 1863” on Amazon here.
In 1863, there were fewer battles on Virginia soil than the previous year, but war was affecting “virtually everything in average the Virginian’s daily life”. An introductory essay looks at military campaigning, noting the Gettysburg campaign losses were suffered at the same time as Northern manpower increased. But again in this series, the authors intend to “stay off the battlefield” to describe political and economic, social and sometimes psychological aspects of life in Virginia during the Civil War.
Chapters report on the life of children nearby battlefields and delinquency in cities containing hundreds of soldiers. Throughout Virginia there was a general drop in the nationalist enthusiasm of church pulpits and preachers refocused on individual salvation, yet families kept scrapbooks of events otherwise lost to historians. Union missionary teachers in occupied Tidewater spread literacy and slaves exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation sought freedom. And in the western counties, family feud and vendetta bush-whacking broke out in Appalachia.
The book closes with another installment from the diary of diehard Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, displaced by Union occupation from Alexandria where her husband had taught at the Virginia (Episcopal) Theological Seminary. Buy “Virginia at War, 1863” on Amazon here.
Also by William C. Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), and The Lost Cause: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (2017). Also by James I. Robertson, Jr., editor, Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War (2013). See also Steven M. Stowe Keep the Days: Reading the Civil War Diaries of Southern Women (2018).
See also Mark Grimsley The Hard Hand of War (1997), Stephen W. Sears Chancellorsville (2014), and Bradford A. Wineman The Chancellorsville Campaign, January-May 1863 (2015).
Virginia at War, 1864
William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, Jr. edited Virginia at War, 1864 in 2009. It is available from the University Press of Kentucky, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Virginia at War, 1864” on Amazon here.
In this fourth of a five part series, the authors take the opportunity to survey several topics throughout the war and to explore some post-war themes. Militarily, General Lee was able to prolong the war by defending Richmond from the encircling Union offensives while Grant held the initiative. But the weight of prosecuting a war with half of the Confederacy’s population now Union-occupied, conscripting unwilling citizens, widespread slave opposition, and civilian rioting tested the functioning democracy in Virginia. Meanwhile Union General Benjamin F. Butler experimented with Reconstruction in Virginia’s occupied southeast Tidewater.
Virginia’s 120 newspapers had shrunk to seventeen, and those few were filled with bad war news while reporting increasing Congressional disputes. Editors reflected conflicted political and personal views on prosecution of the war and its progress. Besides Edward A. Pollard’s history and the continuing Southern Literary Messenger, little of note was published. The functioning 1,800 miles of railroad track were compromised by insufficient maintenance and government-shareholder conflicts over proposals to unify the system with uniform gauges, the turnpike system failed and the canals fell into disuse. The Valley of Virginia, the “breadbasket” of the Confederacy, was disrupted and shortages could no longer be made up by now “foreign” Midwestern supplies. Another installment of the diary of Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, daughter of a Virginia Supreme Court Justice, is featured.
Buy “Virginia at War, 1864” on Amazon here. Also by William C. Davis, the photo album book, Image of War 1861-1865 in four volumes (1981). Also by James I. Robertson, Jr., editor, of Judith B. McGuire’s Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War (2013). See also Steven M. Stowe Keep the Days: Reading the Civil War Diaries of Southern Women (2018).
See also John E. Stealey III West Virginia’s Civil War Era Constitution: Loyal Revolution, Confederate Counter-Revolution, and the Convention of 1871 (2013).
John Bankhead Magruder
Thomas M. Settles wrote John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal in 2009. Available from the Louisiana State University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “John Bankhead Magruder” on Amazon here. See also contradicting Paul D. Casdorph, Prince John Magruder: His Life and Campaigns (1996).
The Virginian West Pointer “Prince John” Magruder had a distinguished career in the both the Seminole War and the Mexican American War. In 1862, he won the Confederacy’s first victory at Big Bethel on Virginia’s Lower Peninsula disrupting Union landing forces at Newport News, then he closely supervised the defensive line of fortifications that successfully discouraged McClellan’s advance on Richmond. Before the outcome of the Peninsular Campaign, Magruder accepted a posting to Western Theater Texas, but before he left Virginia, his performance in the Battle of the Seven Day’s came under question by Lee, Davis and Cooper. Subsequent biographers have portrayed him as having failed.
In the Trans-Mississipi, Magruder re-captured the port city of Galveston, Texas, and anticipated later Union initiatives to meet them in a timely manner. Settles demonstrates that many criticisms of Magruder in post war memoirs about both his Eastern and Western Theater performance were motivated by a desire to deflect their own responsibility in Confederate reverses.
Buy “John Bankhead Magruder” on Amazon here. See also Darrel L. Collins The Army of Northern Virginia: Organization, Strength, Casualties 1861-1865 (2013).
The Bravest of the Brave
George G. Kundahl wrote The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur in 2010. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The Bravest of the Brave” on Amazon here. Companion to Gary W. Gallagher Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee’s Gallant General (1985).
Ramseur was a brilliant young commander in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia who died in the 1864 Valley Campaign at age twenty-seven as a Major General. A Piedmont North Carolinian West Pointer, though he had been personally opposed to the slave trade and the domestic institution of slavery, by his graduation he became disillusioned by Yankee arrogance.
Kundahl’s account relates Ramseur’s political views, professional ambitions and personal feelings as a twenty-something evangelical. In Confederate service, Ramseur acquitted himself well as an accomplished training officer, tactful with fellow officers, and effective as a combat leader at Malvern Hill, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and The Wilderness Campaign. As a division commander is record was mixed, bring criticism in the Confederate press. His romance with a cousin, Ellen “Nellie” Richmond, led to a year-long marriage and daughter before his death.
Buy “The Bravest of the Brave” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Confederate Engineer: The Training & Campaigning John Morris Wampler (2000) in the Army of Northern Virginia, and Alexandria Goes to War: Beyond Robert E. Lee (2004).
Union Army in Civil War Virginia
Lincoln’s Darkest Year
William Marvel wrote Lincoln’s Darkest Year: The War in 1862 in 2008. It is available from the Houghton Mifflin Company, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Lincoln’s Darkest Year” on Amazon here. See also contradicting Mark Grimsley The Hard Hand of War (1997).
In this second volume of William Marvel’s series on the North’s Civil War, Marvel pursues a contrarian view that stresses the failings of the Lincoln Administration’s pursuit of the war in its second year. The Northern populace was tiring of a conflict it never wanted to begin with. Union armies made up of the unemployed and the under-employed during the northern recession of 1860-61 had joined for bounties.
In the Eastern Theater, troops were disgruntled at late pay and Confederate capture of important supply dumps that created provisioning shortages. These undisciplined “mercenaries” pillaged southern citizens, and their disorderly conduct was compounded by a Union general officer corps appointed as political favors. Secretary of War “irrepressible conflict” Edwin Stanton blundered along appeasing the Radical Republican majority in the rump Congress by shifting from a policy of conciliation with the South to “hard war”, and Abraham Lincoln ineptly interfered with military field operations.
Buy “Lincoln’s Darkest Year” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (2006), The Great Task Remaining: The Third Year of Lincoln’s War (2010), Tarnished Victory: Finishing Lincoln’s War (2011). See also Stephen W. Sears To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (2014).
The Age of Lincoln
Orville Vernon Burton wrote The Age of Lincoln: A History in 2007. Available from the Ill and Wang Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The Age of Lincoln” on Amazon here.
Widely held millennialist views in Lincoln’s America defined its nineteenth century views about freedom for mankind, justice under the rule of law, and American national purpose. The common good in a Christian America was the goal found in widespread antebellum religiosity in the United States, an belief in America’s exceptional democracy and Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom”. Lincoln was grounded in a unionism of the Upper or Border South and lower Midwest. He prized the Declaration of Independence, and he moved from doubts about African American citizenship to a policy of racial equality in law.
The promise of Reconstruction was lost to southern violence, white supremacy and sectional reconciliation. A national culture of consumption, international industrial capitalism, and imperial acquisition of resources, all combined to displace the small world of antebellum small farm church-goers.
Buy “The Age of Lincoln” on Amazon here. See also Randall M. Miller Religion and the Civil War (1998), and Judith Giesberg Women and the American Civil War: North-South Counterpoints (2018), James McPhereson Battle Cry of Freedom (1988, 2003).
See also Edward J. Blum Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2015), and Alice Fahs The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861-1865 (2001).
What This Cruel War Was Over
Chandra Manning wrote What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War in 2007. Available from the Alfred A. Knopf Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “What This Cruel War Was Over” on Amazon here.
In this book Chandra Manning studies how soldiers, Union and Confederate, black and white, envisioned the purpose of the Civil War and how they changed their views on slavery and race over the course of their campaigning.
Initially, Confederates were led to enlist for a patriotism of self interest to protect their families and property, while Union soldiers held a patriotism based on the principles of “liberty, equality and self-government”. Confederates emphasized the importance of social order, and believed that even in the face of defeats, God was on their side, sanctioning the perpetuation of slavery. Yankees focused on the preservation of republican forms of government with majority rule. With the Emancipation Proclamation, the “revolution of 1862-1863” accelerated the Union soldiers’ acceptance of emancipation as a war aim.
For Confederates, slavery acted as a uniting force based on domestic safety, personal dignity and racial identity. While black Union troops always saw the war as ending slavery, it took white Union troops to see the practice firsthand before they came to the conclusion that the institution should be abolished — not only required to save the Union but also “necessary to make the Union worth saving”. Union troops evolved in their thinking during the war to believe in political if not social progress for African Americans in 1863, but they wavered during period of Northern defeats in 1864.
Buy “What This Cruel War Was Over” on Amazon here. See also Amy Murrell Taylor discussion political breakups in The Divided Family in Civil War America (2009), and Jason Phillips Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (2007).
TVH Era Webpage for Civil War Virginia
The TVH webpage for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Eras, 1824-1883, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years.
The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1824-1883 into (a) Antebellum Virginia Policy 1820-1850, (b) Antebellum Virginia Economics 1820-1850, (c) Sectionalism and Civil War 1850-1865, and Reconstruction Virginia Policy 1865-1883. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, and Religious Virginia.
African American Virginia, 1820-1883 is divided into (a) Plantation Slavery 1820-1865, (b) Free Blacks, Artisans and Slave Hires 1820-1850, and (c) Reconstruction African Americans 1863-1883. Finally, wars are featured under (1) Mexican War, (2) Civil War Combat and (3) CivilWar Home Front.
See Also
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.