Title: This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath
Abstract: This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. By Michael Fellman, Lesley J. Gordon, and Daniel Sutherland. (New York: Longman Publishers, 2002. Pp. xvi, 496. Preface, prologue, maps, illustrations, epilogue, bibliography, index. $53.27, cloth; $39.95, paper.) The inspiration for this volume was authors' growing dissatisfaction with existing textbooks on Civil War and Reconstruction. Among their complaints were that those books failed to address issues they thought were important, advanced interpretations with which they disagreed, or focused too heavily on famous battles and leaders at expense of common soldiers and home front. To compound matters, their students often found books to be overly detailed and boring. Eventually, authors decided to write their own book. The result is a readable, compelling alternative history of this critical period. This Terrible War begins with a prologue about John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, event that climaxed a decade of increasing sectional tensions. It then backtracks for a brief examination of American society in middle of nineteenth century and a discussion of events between 1848 and 1860 that brought country to brink of war. The heart of volume (seven of book's twelve chapters) deals with war years, while three concluding chapters examine war's aftermath. Aftermath is appropriate term, for unlike most accounts of Reconstruction, this volume ends not with removal of last federal troops from South in 1877 but with Supreme Court's 1896 ruling in landmark case ofPlessy v. Ferguson, which gave official sanction to racial segregation. This extension of standard postwar time frame is designed to accomplish one of book's main goals-to relate war to long-term national issues. From outset, authors challenge many of standard interpretations of war and its impact on American society. Their take on origins of conflict has much in common with themes advanced by revisionist historians like James G. Randall and Avery Craven in late 1930s and early 1940s (though they do not share those historians' views on benign nature of institution of slavery). For Fellman, Gordon, and Sutherland (as for Randall and Craven), factors that and South shared in common outweighed their differences. They reject notion of two separate and distinct cultures, a neofeudal South and industrialized or 'modernizing' North (p. xiv), and they contend that war was not inevitable. They see slavery as casting increasingly dark cloud over nation at a time when rapid and unsettling changes threatened old social and economic orders. But they contend that war came about only when political fight over expansion of slavery became an issue of moral justice, of right versus wrong and when exaggeration of political rhetoric reduced chances for compromise (p. xiv). Some of authors' conclusions about war itself also run counter to standard accounts. For example, they argue that events in western theater were more important than those in eastern theater in determining outcome of war. And while they contend that Union's victory came primarily as a result of North's superiority in men and resources (echoing Robert E. Lee's conclusion in 1865), they are quick to add that the Confederate States did as much to lose war as did to win it (p. …
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot