We begin our first of three blogs on the Civil War in Virginia with reviews on five books in print and listing seven out of print books available online. Additional reviews on books about the Civil War are available at Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction under the subheading “Wars in Virginia, 1820-1883”.
“Battle Cry of Freedom” is a Pulitzer Prize winning overview of the Civil War. “In the Presence of Mine Enemies” is a Bancroft Prize winning account of the residents and soldiers of Augusta County Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania from Manassas to Gettysburg. Two important histories of the Confederacy are found in “The Confederate Nation” and “Look Away!” Lastly, “South v. South” studies the slave holding states that did not join the Confederacy.
These books are all used in bibliographies found in peer-reviewed surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit currently used in Virginia university history departments. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
For book reviews at The Virginia Historian.com in this historical period addressing other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. 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.
Battle Cry of Freedom
James M. McPherson wrote Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War in 1988. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. James McPherson won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. The author captures the spirit of the times, beginning with the tides of sectional feeling in state capitol and county courthouse for the first third of the book.
He then develops a narrative of military and political events, including social and industrial aspects of the Civil War. McPherson features descriptions of major campaigns, with treatment of both strategy and tactics on both sides. Though there are numerous contingent moments where victory or defeat hung in the balance, the North gradually developed both military and industrial superiority.
A detailed bibliography and notes contributes to the usefulness of this volume as an introduction to the Civil War. Learn more to buy “Battle Cry of Freedom” here or your bookshelf.
*Russell F. Weigley wrote A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 in 2000. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “A Great Civil War” here for your bookshelf.
*William C. Davis wrote The Battle of New Market in 1975. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Battle of New Market” here for your bookshelf.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Edward L. Ayers wrote In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 in 2003. It is now available in paperback, a winner of the Bancroft prize. It is at once a local history of Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia and Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and also a chronicle of the Civil War as Ayers traces the movements of local units in battles from Manassas to Gettysburg.
Instead of history top-bottom or bottom-top, this is a whole history, written to convey the contingency of daily life in a conflict that participants had no idea about how it would finally resolve. For residents of these two counties, Ayers takes the opportunity to merge the participant stories of both home front and battlefront.
Learn more to buy “In the Presence” here for your bookshelf.
*Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown edited Virginia’s Civil War in 2005. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Virginia’s Civil War” here http://amzn.to/2G6irgA for your bookshelf.
*James I. Robertson, Jr. wrote Civil War Virginia: Battleground for a Nation in 1991. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Civil War Virginia” here for your bookshelf.
*Brian D. McKnight wrote Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia in 2006. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Contested Borderland” here for your bookshelf.
The Confederate Nation
Emory M. Thomas wrote The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 in 1979. It is now available on Kindle and in paperback. The Southern society that chose to separate from the Union was agrarian based on racial slavery. To secure their nation’s autonomy initiated to protect slavery, the traditional localism and state autonomy began to be overridden by national centralization and government intervention in the exercise of personal liberties. While engaged in a revolution against the United States, the Confederacy underwent and internal revolution.
Still states’ rights over slave labor remained strong, weakening the new country trying to built a nation and fight it at the same time from scratch. The supreme act of nationalism to effect a political and social revolution would have been to arm and emancipate slaves as soldiers, but the initiative was too little, too late. Learn more to buy “Confederate Nation” here for your bookshelf.
Look Away
*William C. Davis wrote Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America in 2002. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. Once launched as a nation to preserve slavery, the Confederacy fell into a feuding cauldron of arrogant, egotistical politicians who resented Jefferson Davis’ ascendency to the state of national government. The elite representatives of the state-based oligarchies oversaw restriction of the suffrage, popular disaffection with government and growing opposition to continuing the war.
Look Away! considers the Confederacy’s constitutional and legal structure, race relations, the role of women, and various disputes between Richmond and state authorities. The pretended secessionist unity of a courageous and dedicated populace unraveled under the stresses of petty disputes and a war economy. Learn more to buy “Look Away” here for your bookshelf.
*Gary W. Gallagher wrote The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat in 1997. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “The Confederate War” here for your bookshelf.
South v. South
William W. Freehling wrote The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War in 2001. It is now available in paperback. In Freehling’s view, all fifteen slave-holding states should be accounted for in considering why the Confederacy failed. Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Delaware might have sent hundreds of thousands into grey uniform, added to food stores and vastly increased industrial capacity with Baltimore, Louisville and St. Louis. Lincoln’s Union-first strategy in the border states denied the Confederacy their assets, augmented the Union’s access to them and shortened the war.
Not only did African Americans both free and runaway slave add to Union laborers, teamsters and soldiers. Had slaves chosen violent servile insurrection instead of non-violent escape in self-liberation, the southern whites of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Delaware might have either turned against emancipation or joined the Confederate effort. Learn more to buy “South v. South” here for your bookshelf.
*Richard Orr Curry wrote A House Divided: Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia in 1953, reprinted in 1964. It is out of print, but available online. Learn more to buy “A House Divided: State Politics” here for your bookshelf.