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The fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and George
McClellan is well known, so much so that many scholars rarely
question the standard narrative casting the two as foils, with the
Great Emancipator inevitably coming out on top over his supposedly
feckless commander. In Conflict of Command, acclaimed Civil War
historian George C. Rable rethinks that stance, providing a new
understanding of the interaction between the president and his
leading wartime general by reinterpreting the political aspects of
their partnership. Rable pays considerable attention to Lincoln's
cabinet, Congress, and newspaper editorials, revealing the role
each played in shaping the dealings between the two men. While he
surveys McClellan's military campaigns as commander of the Army of
the Potomac, Rable focuses on the political fallout of the fighting
rather than the tactical details. This broadly conceived approach
highlights the army officers and enlisted men who emerged as
citizen-soldiers and political actors. Most accounts of the
Lincoln-McClellan feud solely examine one of the two individuals,
and the vast majority adopt a steadfast pro-Lincoln position.
Taking a more neutral view, Rable deftly shows how the relationship
between the two developed in a political context and ultimately
failed spectacularly, profoundly altering the course of the Civil
War itself.
A panoramic collection of essays written by both established and
emerging scholars, American Discord examines critical aspects of
the Civil War era, including rhetoric and nationalism, politics and
violence, gender, race, and religion. Beginning with an overview of
the political culture of the 1860s, the collection reveals that
most Americans entered the decade opposed to political compromise.
Essays from Megan L. Bever, Glenn David Brasher, Lawrence A.
Kreiser Jr., and Christian McWhirter discuss the rancorous
political climate of the day and the sense of racial superiority
woven into the political fabric of the era. Shifting focus to the
actual war, Rachel K. Deale, Lindsay Rae Privette, Adam H. Petty,
and A. Wilson Greene contribute essays on internal conflict, lack
of compromise, and commitment to white supremacy. Here,
contributors adopt a broad understanding of ""battle,"" considering
environmental effects and the impact of the war after the battles
were over. Essays by Laura Mammina and Charity Rakestraw and
Kristopher A. Teters reveal that while the war blurred the
boundaries, it ultimately prompted Americans to grasp for the
familiar established hierarchies of gender and race. Examinations
of chaos and internal division suggest that the political culture
of Reconstruction was every bit as contentious as the war itself.
Former Confederates decried the barbarity of their Yankee
conquerors, while Republicans portrayed Democrats as backward rubes
in need of civilizing. Essays by Kevin L. Hughes, Daniel J. Burge,
T. Robert Hart, John F. Marszalek, and T. Michael Parrish highlight
Americans' continued reliance on hyperbolic rhetoric. American
Discord embraces a multifaceted view of the Civil War and its
aftermath, attempting to capture the complicated human experiences
of the men and women caught in the conflict. These essays
acknowledge that ordinary people and their experiences matter, and
the dynamics among family members, friends, and enemies have
far-reaching consequences.
Finalist for the Lincoln Prize! Traditional histories of the Civil
War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth
W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between
the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe
retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways
in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and
campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and
droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers'
food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government's efforts
to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment
and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to
cope successfully with the South's extreme conditions and,
ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the
war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La
Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted
weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these
meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of
battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to
reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies
that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the
Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians
dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in
1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational
causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes
disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home
front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first
comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil
War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape
the field of Civil War studies.
Civil War Writing is a collection of new essays that focus on the
most significant writing about the American Civil War by
participants who lived through it, whether as civilians or
combatants, southerners or northerners, women or men, blacks or
whites. Collectively, as contributors show, these writings have
sustained their influence over generations and include histories,
memoirs, journals, novels, and one literary falsehood posing as an
autobiographical narrative. Several of the works, such as William
Tecumseh Sherman's memoirs or Mary Chesnut's diary, are familiar to
scholars, but other accounts, including Charlotte Forten's diary
and Loreta Velasquez's memoir, offer new material to even the most
omnivorous Civil War reader. In all cases, a deeper look at these
writings reveals why they continue to resonate with audiences more
than 150 years after the end of the conflict. As supporting
evidence for historical and biographical narratives and as
deliberately designed communications, the writings discussed in
this collection demonstrate considerable value. Whether exploring
the differences among drafts and editions, listening closely to
fluctuations in tone or voice, or tracing responses in private
correspondence or published reviews, the essayists examine how
authors wrote to different audiences and out of different motives,
creating a complex literary record that offers rich potential for
continuing evaluation of the country's greatest national trauma.
Overall, the essays in Civil War Writing underscore how
participants employed various literary forms to record, describe,
and explain aspects and episodes of a conflict that assumed
proportions none of them imagined possible at the outset.
Using widely scattered and previously unknown primary sources,
Parrish's biography of Confederate general Richard Taylor presents
him as one of the Civil War's most brilliant generals, eliciting
strong performances from his troops in the face of manifold
obstacles in three theaters of action.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, federal officials
captured, imprisoned, and indicted Jefferson Davis for treason. If
found guilty, the former Confederate president faced execution for
his role in levying war against the United States. Although the
federal government pursued the charges for over four years, the
case never went to trial. In this comprehensive analysis of the
saga, Treason on Trial, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez suggests that
while national politics played a role in the trial's direction, the
actions of lesser-known individuals ultimately resulted in the
failure to convict Davis. Early on, two primary factions argued
against trying the case. Influential northerners dreaded the
prospect of a public trial, fearing it would reopen the wounds of
the war and make a martyr of Davis. Conversely, white southerners
pointed to the treatment and prosecution of Davis as vindictive on
the part of the federal government. Moreover, they maintained, the
right to secede from the Union remained within the bounds of the
law, effectively linking the treason charge against Davis with the
constitutionality of secession. While Icenhauer-Ramirez agrees that
politics played a role in the case, he suggests that focusing
exclusively on that aspect obscures the importance of the
participants. In the United States of America v. Jefferson Davis,
preeminent lawyers represented both parties. According to
Icenhauer-Ramirez, Lucius H. Chandler, the local prosecuting
attorney, lacked the skill and temperament necessary to put the
case on a footing that would lead to trial. In addition, Supreme
Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had little desire to preside
over the divisive case and intentionally stymied the prosecution's
efforts. The deft analysis in Treason on Trial illustrates how
complications caused by Chandler and Chase led to a three-year
delay and, eventually, to the dismissal of the case in 1868, when
President Andrew Johnson granted blanket amnesty to those who
participated in the armed rebellion.
Alabamians in Blue offers an in-depth scholarly examination of
Alabama's black and white Union soldiers and their contributions to
the eventual success of the Union army in the western theater.
Christopher M. Rein contends that the state's anti-Confederate
residents tendered an important service to the North, primarily by
collecting intelligence and protecting logistical infrastructure.
He highlights an underappreciated period of biracial cooperation,
underwritten by massive support from the federal government.
Providing a broad synthesis, Rein's study demonstrates that
southern dissenters were not passive victims but rather active
participants in their own liberation. Ecological factors, including
agricultural collapse under levies from both armies, may have
provided the initial impetus for Union enlistment. Federal
pillaging inflicted further heavy destruction on plantation
agriculture. The breakdown in basic subsistence that ensued pushed
Alabama's freedmen and Unionists into federal camps in garrison
cities in search of relief and the opportunity for revenge. Once in
uniform, Alabama's Union soldiers served alongside northern
regiments and frustrated Confederate General Nathan Bedford
Forrest's attempts to interrupt the Union supply efforts in the
1864 Atlanta campaign, which led to the collapse of Confederate
arms in the western theater and the eventual Union victory. Rein
describes a ""hybrid warfare"" of simultaneous conventional and
guerilla battles, where each significantly influenced the other. He
concludes that the conventional conflict both prompted and
eventually ended the internecine warfare that largely marked the
state's experience of the war. A comprehensive analysis of
military, social, and environmental history, Alabamians in Blue
uncovers a past of biracial cooperation in the American South, and
in Alabama in particular, that postwar adherents to the ""Myth of
the Lost Cause"" have successfully suppressed until now.
This work presents an engaging account of a young Union soldier. In
1884, when Albert O. Marshall published ""Army Life"", a memoir of
his service as a private in the Thirty-Third Illinois Regiment,
twenty years had passed since his 1861 discharge. At publication,
Marshall left the journal untouched, and today it is a journal that
is rare in what it is not. This memoir is not a complete story of
the Thirty-Third (known as the 'Normal Regiment' because many of
its soldiers were from Illinois State Normal University), nor is it
a complete roster of regiment members, nor a list of killed and
wounded. ""Army Life"" is not, even, a purely military account
written from an officer's point of view. It is the story of a
twenty-year-old private whose engaging writing belies his age but
also allows his youth to shine through. Marshall tells of the
battles he fought and the games he played, of his friends, fellow
soldiers, and officers, and of the regiment's activities in
Missouri and Arkansas, at Vicksburg, and in Louisiana and on the
Texas Gulf Coast. Enhanced with careful editing and thorough
annotations, this journal Marshall carried faithfully to every
mustering out is a rich and important Civil War memoir.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, after serving breakfast and
turning his attention to laundry services aboard the USS West
Virginia, Ship's Cook Third Class Doris "Dorie" Miller heard the
alarm calling sailors to battle stations. The first of several
torpedoes dropped from Japanese aircraft had struck the American
battleship. Miller hastily made his way to a central point and was
soon called to the bridge by Lt. Com. Doir C. Johnson to assist the
mortally wounded ship's captain, Mervyn Bennion. Miller then joined
two others in loading and firing an unmanned anti-aircraft machine
gun-a weapon that, as an African American in a segregated military,
Miller had not been trained to operate. But he did, firing the
weapon on attacking Japanese aircraft until the .50-caliber gun ran
out of ammunition. For these actions, Miller was later awarded the
Navy Cross, the third-highest naval award for combat gallantry.
Historians Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish have not only
painstakingly reconstructed Miller's inspiring actions on December
7. They also offer for the first time a full biography of Miller
placed in the larger context of African American service in the
United States military and the beginnings of the civil rights
movement. Like so many sailors and soldiers in World War II, Doris
Miller's life was cut short. Just two years after the attack on
Pearl Harbor, Miller was aboard the USS Liscome Bay when it was
sunk by a Japanese submarine. But the name-and symbolic image-of
Dorie Miller lived on. As Cutrer and Parrish conclude, "Dorie
Miller's actions at Pearl Harbor, and the legend that they
engendered, were directly responsible for helping to roll back the
navy's then-to-fore unrelenting policy of racial segregation and
prejudice, and, in the chain of events, helped to launch the civil
rights movement of the 1960s that brought an end to the worst of
America's racial intolerance."
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