Righting History

Reviewed by: With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War by Nathan P. Kalmoe Adam I. P. Smith (bio) With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War. By Nathan P. Kalmoe. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 260. Cloth, 99.99; paper, $29.99.) For a few decades, in the middle of the twentieth century, the United States had both strong two-party competition and a widespread acceptance by both parties of the legitimacy of the other. Before and after that brief interlude, the country has been an outlier among long-standing democracies in lacking public tolerance of partisan competition as valid. It was at the high point of party legitimacy, post–World War II, that Richard Hofstadter wrote The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (1969), which presents the early republic as one in which Americans threw off the immature fear of faction and embraced the healthy interchange between party rivals, without violence or (much) resentment. The indisputable premise of With Ballots and Bullets, in contrast, is that partisan competition can be violently consequential. As Nathan P. Kalmoe, a political scientist, writes, when a party loses power, especially in a fraught, highly polarized nation, "the losing party's leaders determine a country's fate." Such leaders "decide whether a democracy and its citizens will live or die based on what they say about the legitimacy of the outcome and how their followers should respond" (xxiii). If that is painfully true today, it was perhaps even more so after Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election. Kalmoe's core claim is that what followed was "ultimately a partisan civil war" (xxiv). He argues that "Democratic partisanship guided the rebellion and reduced willingness to defend the nation, even as Republican partisanship fueled democratic resolve to fight in battlefields and at the ballot box" (9). Kalmoe raises important questions about what partisanship really is. As he rightly argues, partisanship often hides its face; indeed, the strategic use of "antiparty" rhetoric by partisans was especially characteristic of this period precisely because the legitimacy of a party system had not been properly established (contrary to Hofstadter's argument). A republican ideal of nonpartisanship retained enormous ideological power, which was why the Confederacy saw its apparent lack of a party system as a strength. [End Page 576] Kalmoe is surely right that partisanship framed and drove sectional conflict—or at least that sectional interests were channeled through parties. No one would dispute that the Civil War left a powerful legacy of partisan division in the North. Although his data showing the correlation between the Republican vote in the Gilded Age and the number of Grand Army of the Republic posts will not surprise most historians, it is valuable to see the evidence laid out so clearly. The heart of Kalmoe's argument concerns the wartime North, which he sees as bifurcated between a Republican Party that supported the war and a Democratic Party that—like its southern wing—did not. Using statistical studies of election results and content analysis of a sample of newspapers, he traces the dynamic but resilient partisanship during the war years, showing how Democrats moved toward an ever more hard-line opposition to the war, driven by fanatical hatred of conscription, the suspension of habeas corpus, and, of course, emancipation. Kalmoe does not dwell on the multiplicity of party labels and the frequency with which intraparty factional candidates competed in wartime elections, but in broad outline the notion that the war consolidated the Democratic and the anti-Democratic vote is convincing. That does not indicate a complete lack of fluidity in the electorate; in my view, the lengths that Republicans had to go to remake and rebrand their party (Lincoln ran in 1864 as a candidate of the "National Union" Party) tell us something important about how they viewed politics in wartime. But Kalmoe's argument that the Republican coalition of 1860 essentially held together, with some additions, in 1864, is surely right. Nonetheless, I think he overstates the extent to which the northern Democratic electorate was en masse opposed to the war. "The...

Reviewed by: A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War by James P. Byrd, and: Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares: The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict by John H. Matsui C. David Dalton A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. By James P. Byrd. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. [x], 376. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-19-090279-7.) Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares: The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict. By John H. Matsui. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. x, 295. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7482-1.) Over the past several decades religion, specifically evangelical Protestantism, has become a focal point of Civil War–era scholarship. The denominational schisms, the influence of clerical sermons, and the interactions between religion, slavery, and politics have been extensively examined in studies by historians from C. C. Goen, David B. Chesebrough, and Richard J. Carwardine to Steven E. Woodworth, Mark A. Noll, Timothy L. Wesley, and George C. Rable. Two recent works by James P. Byrd and John H. Matsui make significant contributions to this area of study. Byrd, an associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, previously authored Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (New York, 2013). He carries his work into the mid-nineteenth century with A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. Byrd argues that most Americans had a copy of the King James Bible, and that many looked to the book for guidance during the nation’s bloodiest conflict. Chaplains told soldiers to place their faith in God, whose divine guidance could be most easily discerned through a close reading of scripture. Both armies viewed victories on the battlefield as God’s will and defeats as tests of devotion—calls to rededication rather than signs of the Almighty’s eventual judgment. After all, the Bible revealed that God’s people had disobeyed His Word and had been punished in many ways, from being enslaved in Egypt to wandering in the wilderness for years. With its exhaustive analysis of references from thousands of sources, including sermons, diaries, letters, and newspapers, Byrd’s work is the most in-depth examination of the Bible’s presence and importance during the Civil War. The appendix includes a ranking of the most cited verses across these sources, revealing striking differences between how Confederates and Federals viewed the Bible. Northerners cited the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans— in which he condemns those who rebel against their rulers (Romans 13)—to defend the Union and its government, describing the United States as “God’s chosen nation” (p. 13). Abolitionists frequently invoked Acts 17:26, where Paul declares that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” to justify [End Page 363] their call for freedom and equality for slaves (p. 190). Confederate clergy countered with the Genesis story of the curse of Ham, asserting that even if God had created all people from one blood, the Almighty also had favored some races and cursed others. And as battlefield casualties mounted, and eventual defeat began to seem inevitable, Confederates continued to turn to the Bible for solace, comparing their plight to the trials of Job and reminding themselves that their ultimate reward was not of this earth. Byrd chronicles the pronouncements of both well-known and relatively obscure clergy, detailing their views on slavery, secession, and war. The author includes enough political and military detail, interspersed with biographical stories, writings, and sermons, to make for a smooth-flowing narrative. Some of these men of God were anything but blessed peacemakers, advocating for war while believing that God was on their side. They encouraged both their congregations at home and the companies they served on the battlefield to trust in the Lord, just as their revolutionary predecessors had done in 1776. But the slaughter often stirred mixed emotions among lay soldiers, especially those who put great emphasis on Christ’s injunction, from the Sermon on the Mount...

Reviewed by: The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict by Andre Fleche Christopher Childers The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict. Andre Fleche. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8078-3523-4, 224 pp., cloth, $39.95. Andre Fleche has written a book that truly delivers on its promise to enhance our understanding of the Civil War in an international context of revolution, nationalism, and nationhood. He compares America's second revolution—a concept Charles and Mary Beard first posited—to the revolutions of Europe, illustrating how northerners and southerners drew inspiration from the legacy of 1848. As Fleche points out, with the massive influx of European immigrants arriving on American shores in the 1850s came the ideas that had driven the cause of Old World democratic revolution. Historians have recognized how the North and South drew legitimacy for their respective causes from the contested meanings of the American Revolution. The United States and the Confederate States found inspiration in the War for Independence, but they applied different lessons from that conflict thanks to competing notions of nationalism. Fleche adds to this body of scholarship by tracing the development and manifestation of American nationalism—in its northern and southern versions—alongside the European impetus for self-government. According to Fleche, the Confederacy located its right to revolution and the rationale for a new union in the European nationalist legacy. The Union, however, drew a far different lesson from the revolutions of 1848; they portrayed the Confederates as aristocratic slaveholders seeking to halt human moral progress, much like the aristocratic rulers who crushed the spirit of progressive revolution in Europe. The northerners' Civil War drew from the wellspring of European [End Page 390] resistance to privilege and overweening power to repel the specter of the slave power. Accordingly, German and Irish immigrants, among others, faced a choice in 1861: support the Confederacy's struggle to "affirm the rights of self-determination for all peoples" or oppose a "slaveholding aristocracy dangerous to the civil liberties of all mankind" (38). Fleche persuasively argues that northerners and southerners developed competing notions of nationalism in an international context. Though he does not explicitly state as much, questions of nationalism and states' rights that had lingered in Americans' minds since the Confederation era, and that the Constitution had left unanswered, remained and led to discord by the eve of the Civil War. Long before 1861, northern intellectuals had looked toward creating a consolidated nationalist state, whereas southerners looked at consolidation as a Yankee leviathan that would consume the genius of American politics—state sovereignty. Fleche adds immeasurably to our understanding of the nationalist debate by explaining how both sides found legitimacy for their beliefs in the history of European revolution. Northerners believed that without consolidation the United States would descend into a confederation of petty states. Southerners, however, embraced the confederation model as a safeguard for their peculiar institution, which had facilitated the rise of King Cotton and by the 1850s had become tightly woven into the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the South itself. Whereas northern consolidationists saw confederation as a weak and outmoded form of American nationalism, southern states' rights proponents saw consolidation as an attack on liberty, racial unity, and class harmony. Fleche makes perhaps his greatest contribution to a deeper understanding of Civil War causation and nationalism by showing how North and South legitimized their opinions in the context of European consolidation versus decentralization. Fleche's most tenuous link between American and European revolutionary thought rests in his discussion of race. He takes care to note that unionists who called for an end to slavery rarely championed civil rights for African Americans. Unionists may well have "believed that the defeat of the 'slave-holding aristocracy' would enable the world's free workers to prosper as small landholders," but would African Americans join the proletariat's westward march? (5). Fleche notes throughout his book that northerners—whether recent immigrants or multi-generational Americans—sought the defeat of an elite white adversary rather than black equality, but the question of where African Americans as...

Reviewed by: Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States by Paul D. Escott Wayne H. Bowen Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States. Paul D. Escott. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. ISBN 978-0-8130-4941-0, 256 pp., hardback, $74.95. The task Paul Escott has undertaken at first seems problematic: to craft a comparative history of civil war memory in two nations, with conflicts that did not share century, political ideology, continent, or language. The American Civil War, 1861–65, and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39, however, prove sufficiently malleable to the author’s approach to make this book an engaging success on the theme of war and memory. After a brief introduction and a background chapter, the book is divided into four thematic chapters, examining the major subjects of “Ideology and Memory,” “The Past and Political Evolution,” “Reconciliation,” and “Economic Change and the Transformation of Cultural Landscapes.” Escott skillfully draws parallels between the conservative forces in both countries—southern pro-slavery elites, and Catholic, military, and other right-wing leaders in Spain—that resisted what they saw as dangerous innovations from central governments. In the case of the United States, southerners feared economic modernization, leading to northern financial dominance, but even [End Page 469] more the movement for abolitionism. In Spain, the –isms—secularism, socialism, communism, anarchism, and anti-clericalism—provoked the uprising that would become the Spanish Civil War in 1936. While there are some analogies between right-wing Spain and what would become the Confederacy, the respective aftermaths of these two civil wars were starkly different. In Spain, a civil war won by the Nationalists became the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco, in which former Republicans faced decades of persecution, restrictions on their opportunities, or even imprisonment. In the American South, after a brief period of Union occupation and Reconstruction, the same white men who had led the rebellion against the North resumed their political influence. Just over a decade after the final Union victories, segregation, intimidation, and economic repression had recreated the race-based social order of the pre–Civil War period. There were more similarities in the nurturing of respective memories after both conflicts, with the losers in each creating a more coherent and enduring vision of civil war. Spanish Republicans in exile spent decades crafting explanations for their defeat, influencing historians in other nations to take up the Republican cause. Even as the late Franco era of the 1960s and 1970s deemphasized the glorious Nationalist movement that had won the Civil War, on the Left the memory of these events remained vibrant, even if during the transition to democracy in the decade after Franco there was a conscious effort to put aside the war in the interest of civic peace. While less consistently, southern historians and popular writers created nostalgic accounts of the lost antebellum era, before the destruction wrought by vengeful industrial armies of the Yankees. Indeed, instead of a collective vision of these two conflicts, the regional and ideological divisions that had seen the actual civil wars were perpetuated by the generations that followed. Only in recent decades has anything close to a national consensus emerged in both Spain and the United States to explain these wars. Rather than the victory of a vision by winning or losing sides, in both countries a more balanced account is now replacing the rivalry of partisan memories. Complexity now seems more widespread than one-sided assigning of blame. While there continue to be political arguments over physical monuments—Confederate statues in the American South and Spanish streets named for Francoist leaders—these are no longer violent, nor of more than symbolic impact. Each civil war, especially those of the remarkable violence seen in both the American and Spanish conflicts, features its own peculiarities amid what are, after all, national circumstances and origins. At times, the author draws parallels that are too close, obscuring their historical uniqueness. For example, the gulf between Spanish landowners of the twentieth century and southern plantation owners of the nineteenth was quite significant, but both groups are described similarly, as rural elites. However, Escott has shown that...

Abstract: This essay introduces the special forum on transpacific connections in the Civil War era. The forum investigates how US interaction with Asia and the Pacific shaped race relations, gender ideology, diplomacy, and legal rights in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. By examining the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States, the experience of Black migrants in Japan, Chinese women's habeas corpus litigations, and the naturalized citizenship of Chinese Americans, the forum integrates Asia and the Pacific into Civil War–era scholarship. Conceptually, the forum is informed by three strands of historiography: the international history of the Civil War era, the American West during the Civil War era, and the history of the Pacific World.

Reviewed by: Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era by Nicholas Keefauver Roland Christopher Menking (bio) Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era. By Nicholas Keefauver Roland. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. Pp. 288. Cloth, $45.00.) For many Americans, Texans included, the Texas Hill Country remains a unique and little-known region. In Violence in the Hill Country, Nicholas Keefauver Roland delves into the violence that engulfed the Hill Country in the Civil War era and investigates possible causes for the spike in deaths during this period. His analysis covers the years roughly spanning 1850 to 1880 and addresses twelve Texas counties that experienced an increase in wartime violence. Roland argues that the uptick in violence during these years was a result of the struggle for power between Confederates and Unionists. He uses David Kilcullen’s model, originally created to explain urban insurgencies, to provide a theoretical framework in which to place the competing interests in the region. While the model provides a useful tool to help understand the increased violence, other factors beyond a high-level struggle for power came into play in a region like the Hill Country. Before the Civil War, the Hill Country existed on the western frontier of settled land in Texas. The prewar experience of limited governmental oversight and low taxation created among the settlers a unique mix of staunch independence and self-reliance in defending their homesteads from Native American raids. Their reaction to the Confederate government’s new imposition of taxes and draft of Hill Country residents may have contributed to the hostilities. The author weaves a detailed and well-researched narrative of the years before, during, and after the Civil War, providing the reader with a vivid image of Hill Country life during this time. The use of primary sources, including government records, memoirs, letters, and newspapers, provides a depth to the narrative. Roland, however, makes limited use of important secondary sources written over the past few decades that would have provided additional historical context. He does an excellent job of placing events within a larger historical narrative, one of the book’s primary historical contributions, but by neglecting some of these secondary sources, he misses important explorations of the timing of the violence. For example, works related to the Great Hanging at Gainesville, a mass killing of Unionists in North Texas, would have enriched Roland’s discussion of the loss of life in the Hill Country. Also, sources relating to the guerrilla and partisan violence in Missouri and Kentucky should have been included, particularly because Roland mentions these similar cases without accompanying citations. The author’s highly readable prose brings such events as the Nueces Massacre to life. The massacre is little known or discussed outside of the Hill Country, even in Texas. Roland’s book provides the first major effort to [End Page 571] place the massacre within the context of the larger historical narrative of the Civil War era, and also to offer an explanation as to why it, and general violence, gripped the region. This important contribution to the historiography begins to fill in a long-standing gap in Texas and Civil War history. Readers interested in the American Civil War, Texas history, or the Texas Hill Country will all benefit from this book. Roland makes a diligent effort to create a framework for using the Hill Country in the Civil War era as a template to analyze similar regions that experienced waves of violence and partisan warfare. The author discusses several factors that contributed to the rise in wartime violence: poverty, which resulted from a lack of marketable resources and a wartime drought; the withdrawal of the U.S. Army and the income it provided; geographic isolation; and cultural aspects, such as a sense of racial superiority, hypermasculinity, and a tradition of vigilantism. Considering that vigilantism, race-based lynching, and more conventional violent reprisals persisted into the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Roland’s narrative begins to offer origins for the violence that continued in the region. Overall, Roland has created a well-written work that greatly enhances the historiography related to...

1. Race and Landscape in the United States 2. Historical Geographies of Race in a New Orleans Afro-Creole Landscape 3. The White-Pillared Past: Landscapes of Memory and Race in the American South 4. Seeing Hampton Plantation: Race and Gender in a South Carolina Heritage Landscape 5. Poetic Landscapes of Exclusion: Chinese Immigration at Angel Island, San Francisco 6. The Picture Postcard Mexican Housescape: Visual Culture and Domestic Identity 7. Race, Class, and Privacy in the Ordinary Postwar House, 1945-60 8. Aesthetics, Abjection and White Privilege in Suburban New York 9. The Cultural Landscape of a Latino Community 10. Richmond, Virginia's Witting Autobiography: Arthur Ashe, the Civil War, and Monument Avenue's Racialized Landscape 11. Naming Streets for Martin Luther King, Jr.: No Easy Road 12. Puptowns and Wiggly Fields - Chicago and the Racialization of Pet-Love in the Twenty First Century

Secession and Federalism in the United States: Tools for Managing Regional Conflict in a Pluralistic Society

The role of pharmacists and the process of military drug supply in the American Civil War are described. Most raw drugs used in the United States in the mid-1800s were imported. During the Civil War, imports into the North continued, but the Union blockade forced the Confederacy to obtain medicines through means such as smuggling, capture of enemy supplies, and processing of indigenous medicinal plants. Medical supplies for Civil War troops were typically purchased by military physicians called medical purveyors and sometimes by pharmacists serving as acting medical purveyors. In the latter half of the war, U.S. Army medical laboratories, in which many pharmacists were employed, inspected purchases, repackaged supplies bought in bulk, and manufactured medicines from raw materials. The Confederacy also had medical laboratories, which were primarily responsible for manufacturing medicines from indigenous plant material but also inspected drugs that had been smuggled into the South. At a few large Union medical depots, pharmacists called medical storekeepers assumed many of the responsibilities of medical purveyors by receiving, storing, issuing, and accounting for supplies. Noncommissioned officers called hospital stewards assumed diverse duties that included dispensing drugs prescribed by military physicians. Although many hospital stewards were pharmacists or physicians, others had no previous pharmaceutical experience. Civilian pharmacists were employed in the medical laboratories and in military general hospitals. Pharmacists participated in nearly every aspect of military drug supply during the Civil War.

BOOK REVIEWS81 to support the soldiers. Although the war had a leveling effect on the citizenry, the privüeged few were recipients of special favors, and managed to obtain many luxuries as well as most necessities. Mr. Coleman also discusses the problems and changes in industry, business, banking and agriculture; yet he largely ignores the effect of state legislation on economic matters although Georgia enacted more such legislation than did most southern states. Included also is the war's impact on education , religion and social activities. In most cases the clever chapter headings accurately explain the contents, but "Gayer than Richmond" is a misleading description of social life in Athens. Mr. Coleman has relied primarily on local newspapers and manuscripts but has used few monographs on Confederate history, scores of which would have afforded him excellent background material for comparisons and explanations. As it is, he has placed Athens in a vacuum. One omission from the bibliography is especiaUy difficult to explain—College Life in the Old South by E. Merton Coulter, which contains interesting information on Franklin CoUege in wartime and a humorous account of the home guard. Confederate Athens, a heavüy documented study, is factual rather than interpretive . It does not read as smoothly as Mr. Coleman's previous works, nor does he seem to be on as famüiar ground as when writing of the American Revolution. This reviewer believes that more human interest and humor should have been brought into the account. However, this study is a scholarly one and Athens was (and is) an interesting community. A valuable inclusion in the book is a table of local commodity prices for the years 1860-1865 in which can be seen inflation at work. Mary Elizabeth Massey Winthrop CoUege The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War. By Serge Gavronsky. (New York: Humanities Press, 1969. Pp. 304. $6.50.) Professor Gavronsky's study is the product of diligent and exhaustive research. He has worked in French and American archives, and the number and variety of his sources are most impressive. Yet, his is a disappointing book. It certainly does not, as claimed in the blurb on the jacket, "establish with utmost precision the influence which the affairs of the United States had on French domestic and foreign policies: on Napoleon IH's administration as weU as on the liberals in an out of government ." During the 1860's the domestic and foreign policies of the Second Empire were shaped by a host of complex factors which the author does not take into consideration . He seems to have lost sight of the forest for his own particular species of trees. There is little in this work to retain the attention of the Civü War or diplomatic historian. This is in no way meant as a criticism, since one of the primary points of the author's investigation was "the role that the United States played in French domestic policy." (11). Indeed, the chief merit of his study is to provide the specialist in French history with a handy compendium of the reactions of the Imperial Government and the Liberal opposition to the nature, issues, and developments of the American Civü War. As might be expected, both the newspapers of the Liberal opposition and the organs of the semi-official press viewed the issues and interpreted each turn of events in a manner designed to improve their respective positions on the home front. Professor Gavronsky shows conclusively that the crisis of American democracy generated a considerable amount of interest, speculation and debate in France. But what did it aU amount to? To what extent did the American Civü War affect policy making in France? To what extent did it influence or hasten the transition from the Authoritarian to the Liberal Empire? The authors offers no new answers to these admittedly difficult and debatable questions. The candor of his concluding para- 82CIVIL WAR HISTORY graph is refreshing: "The United States was not indispensable to the formulation of French political demands. But the chance paraUel between the test of democracy in the United States, and the rise of the French liberals to a position presaging greater activity in the...

PurposeOn the frequency of glasses in the American Civil War. Design and MethodsEvaluation of all available portrait photos of generals of the United States (US) and the Confederate States of America (CSA). Search for references to glasses in more than 100 group photos of soldiers (approx. 1000 Persons). Look for mention of glasses in several biographies and war reports. ResultsOnly seven of 531 US generals and none of 353 CSA generals were photographed wearing glasses. No glasses could be found in the more than 100 group photos evaluated. There were no references to glasses in various biographies. ConclusionAmetropia and especially myopia were less common at the time of the American Civil War than they are today, and the absence of glasses in the photos does not necessarily mean that glasses were not worn. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that quite a few soldiers took part in the war without necessary correction and therefore with reduced visual acuity. The low, though slightly higher prevalence of glasses among US generals in the photos can best be explained by the better availability in the industrial north and the significantly better opportunities of import.

Introduction. The Civil War in the United States (1861–1865) has been of considerable interest to historians, lawyers, economists, and political scientists for more than 150 years. The internal political struggle that broke out in the middle of the 19th century between the two regions of the young democratic state seems to be a valuable object of research. However, scientific approaches to the study of the causes of the “inevitable conflict”, their transformation and rebirth depending on the historical period and the political situation are of even greater interest. This article attempts to summarize the main trends in the historiography of the causes of the Civil War in the United States, mainly in foreign historiography. Methods of research and materials. The methodological basis of the study was made up of general scientific and private scientific methods. The historical-legal, comparative method, as well as sociological, concrete-historical and systemic methods are used. The theoretical basis of the study was the work of mainly foreign historians, lawyers, political scientists and state historians. Analysis. Without denying the centrality of slavery among the causes of the Civil War, researchers identify religious, economic, political and social factors as the key determinants of the separatist movement in the South. A special place in American studies is occupied by the consideration of the role of African Americans in inciting conflict, the personality factor of A. Lincoln, as well as the influence of the abolitionist movement and journalists on the growing confrontation between the North and the South. At the same time, all directions, one way or another, boil down to the fact that it was slavery that was the fundamental cause of the Civil War. The peculiarities of the formation of each of the scientific directions were determined by the socio-economic and political conditions that took place in a particular historical period. Results. The periodization of scientific approaches to the study of the causes of the Civil War in the United States in the historical and legal literature can be carried out by dividing the research into three main periods: the “confrontational” (second half of the 19th century); the “socio-economic” (beginning – middle of the 20th century); the “industrial” (middle of the 20th century – the beginning of the 21st century). In the period from the beginning of the 21st century to the present, there is an obvious consensus on the central role of slavery among the determinants of war, but approaches to this problem in recent years have been characterized by interdisciplinarity, complexity, taking into account completely different sides of the conflict. Each of these areas has contributed to the formation of a holistic view of the causes of the Civil War, allowing us to realize the complex, multifaceted nature of the causes of the conflict and to reject two-dimensional approaches to their understanding. Key words: American Civil War, causes of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, slavery in the United States, the Missouri Compromise, abolitionists, history of the USA.

This article reviews the five volume series, published by Cambridge University Press, on the history of total war from the American Civil War and Wars of German Unification to World War II. The discussion focuses on two questions: how to define total war; and is total war a useful conceptual tool for understanding warfare during this period? Although the editors were unable to come up with a definition of total war, they did identify elements or tendencies that together contributed to the growing totalization of war during the nineteenth and especially twentieth centuries. Regarding the second question, the editors suggest that total war is best thought of as an ideal type, one to which reality can approach but never reach. If this use of total war facilitates comparison between wars (and different aspects of one war) by providing a common standard, it leaves open the question of how to undertake such a comparison.

Reviewed by: Freedom For Themselves: North Carolina's Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era Leonne M. Hudson Freedom For Themselves: North Carolina's Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era. By Richard M. Reid. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8078-3174-8. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 440. $40.00. There has been a surge in the publication of studies on black soldiers in the Civil War in recent years. This renewed interest in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) has broadened our understanding of their place in America's most devastating war. Richard M. Reid's book Freedom for Themselves is informative, well-written, and has enriched the historical literature on African American men in the ranks of the Union army. This monograph is a detailed account of the war-time experiences of North Carolina's four African American regiments. The author provides a thorough discussion of the recruitment, organization, training, and combat service of those units. He follows the soldiers on a journey that was filled with pain and disappointment, bravery and cowardice, and victory and defeat. Reid notes that General Edward A. Wild, a staunch abolitionist from Massachusetts was the most prolific recruiter of black soldiers in North Carolina. The first, second, and third North Carolina Colored Volunteers were designated by the War Department as the 35th, 36th, and 37th USCT respectively, in early 1864. The fourth regiment raised in the state was the Fourteenth United States Colored Heavy Artillery. Several thousand slaves left North Carolina farms and plantations to join the Northern army. Liberation for their enslaved race was a powerful motivation for them to enlist. Reid maintains that the enlistment of black men almost always coincided with financial adversity for their families on the home front. [End Page 277] Against the backdrop of the last half of the nineteenth century, Reid makes it clear that whites believed that blacks were inferior to them in American life and the military. While all USCT had to contend with racial bias, southern black soldiers had the added burden of regional prejudice. Both white and black soldiers in the federal army discounted the military contributions of their black comrades from the slave states. Although racism was pervasive, Reid points out that "the army treated" black men "with a greater degree of equality than they could hope to experience in civilian society" (p. 15). The North Carolina regiments had to deal with many of the same problems that beset white units, such as desertion, internal dissension, and factionalism. The black army was also bedeviled by insufficient training, disease, excessive fatigue duty, and inadequate equipment. Reid presents a complete portrait of the military performance of the African Brigade. He does not hesitate to praise the regiments enthusiastically for heroism or exceptional valor when guided by the evidence. It should also be mentioned that he treats the poor performance or incompetence of black troops with the same vigor. The author succeeds brilliantly in telling the whole military story of the black North Carolinians by following them into small battles such as those at Honey Hill and Wilson's Wharf as well as their participation in major engagements and campaigns. The postwar years found black veterans struggling to affirm their freedom, to take care of their families, to earn a living, and to secure the benefits that their military service had earned them. They would, however, long remember their service in the army of liberation that brought freedom to millions of slaves who had languished in bondage for generations. This meticulously researched volume is illustrated with several photographs and maps. The biographical vignettes, combined with a substantial amount of anecdotal material, give this work a human quality. Reid concludes that African American soldiers from the southern states "through their actions and achievements, created images, symbols, and memories of black courage and commitment to the nation that could not easily be ignored" (p. 328). The Civil War was a transformative event in the lives of black American soldiers. This monograph reveals that the men of the four black regiments from North Carolina cherished their service to the United States during a difficult time in the...

In June, 1864, an unnamed French Canadian Catholic stationed in a Union trench outside Richmond, Virginia, penned a letter to a loved one back home in Quebec. 1 The letter, itself among the few extra-official, extra-journalistic primary sources available to scholars interested in French Canadian involvement in and attitudes toward the American Civil War, was not meant for public consumption but rather to provide family and friends with news. It was a "friend of the journal," as the editor of the newspaper that published the letter wrote in his preface, who decided to make it public. He undoubtedly did so because the letter tells the tale of a lonely, weary French Canadian who, probably contrary to the wishes of his parents, loved ones, and parish priest, had enlisted in the Union army. "We finally have a little respite," the soldier wrote, "and I've decided to take advantage of it and write a few lines." This letter was one of many reminders offered to young French Canadians in the 1860's that those who went to the American war would face hard times. 2 [End Page 55]