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Louisiana State University

Civil War Book Review

2009

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Military Education And The Emerging Middle Class, Adam Pratt Dec 2009

Military Education And The Emerging Middle Class, Adam Pratt

Civil War Book Review

Martial Education in the Antebellum South

Many historians of the American South characterize the region as one more prone to violence than the rest of the United States. In her new work, Jennifer Green studies public military schools—institutions, one would think, that would only enabl....


Shades Of Gray: A Novel Of The Civil War In Virginia, Jack Trammell Dec 2009

Shades Of Gray: A Novel Of The Civil War In Virginia, Jack Trammell

Civil War Book Review

A Civil War Love Story

The American Civil War is easily one of the nation’s most dramatic and complicated stages upon which writers of fiction can aspire to perform. Author Jessica James takes up the literary challenge in a sweeping novel, Shades of Gray, which is ultimately a c....


Sherman's March In Myth And Memory, Glenn Robins Dec 2009

Sherman's March In Myth And Memory, Glenn Robins

Civil War Book Review

Analyzing Sherman’s March

In Sherman’s March in Myth and Memory, Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown explore the myriad ways in which journalists, historians, fiction writers, and filmmakers have understood and assigned meaning to one of the most controversial episodes of the Civil W....


Slavery On Trial: Race, Class, And Criminal Justice In Antebellum Richmond, Virginia, David Silkenat Dec 2009

Slavery On Trial: Race, Class, And Criminal Justice In Antebellum Richmond, Virginia, David Silkenat

Civil War Book Review

The Law and Slavery in Richmond

In Slavery on Trial, James Campbell explores how race, class, gender, and above all, status were contested in the criminal justice system in Richmond, Virginia. Campbell, a lecturer in American history at the University of Leicester, argues agains....


The Rifle Musket In Civil War Combat: Reality And Myth, Terry Beckenbaugh Dec 2009

The Rifle Musket In Civil War Combat: Reality And Myth, Terry Beckenbaugh

Civil War Book Review

Weaponry and Innovation in the Civil War

Earl J. Hess has demonstrated in recent years that he is one of the top military historians of the American Civil War. His series on fortifications in the Civil War—Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861....


Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln And The Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861, Harold Holzer Dec 2009

Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln And The Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861, Harold Holzer

Civil War Book Review

Interview with Harold Holzer

Interviewed by Christopher Childers

Civil War Book Review (CWBR): What drew you to study Abraham Lincoln, especially because you've written so much on him? Harold Holzer (HH): I wish it was a more dramatic story to....


The H.L. Hunley: The Secret Hope Of The Confederacy, Steven Ramold Dec 2009

The H.L. Hunley: The Secret Hope Of The Confederacy, Steven Ramold

Civil War Book Review

The Confederacy and Innovation in Naval Warfare

In August 2000, the recovery of the Confederate vessel H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy vessel in combat, revived interest in the innovative craft. Of the numerous books to appear in recent years, Tom ....


The Origins Of Proslavery Christianity: White And Black Evangelicals In Colonial And Antebellum Virginia, Eva Sheppard Wolf Dec 2009

The Origins Of Proslavery Christianity: White And Black Evangelicals In Colonial And Antebellum Virginia, Eva Sheppard Wolf

Civil War Book Review

Christianity and the Defense of Slavery

The Origins of Proslavery Christianity begins by posing a compelling question: why did the majority of Southern Christians fail to hear the moral call of their religion to reject slavery? But this is not solely a book about white Southern e....


Saving Savannah: The City In The Civil War, Mary A. Decredico Dec 2009

Saving Savannah: The City In The Civil War, Mary A. Decredico

Civil War Book Review

The City of Savannah and the Hard War

Scholars are paying increased attention to the role of cities in the antebellum, wartime, and postbellum South. This historiographical trend is refreshing, to say the least, and bids fair to finally overturn the stereotype of a region dominated by ....


Southern Storm: Sherman's March To The Sea, Brian Melton Dec 2009

Southern Storm: Sherman's March To The Sea, Brian Melton

Civil War Book Review

Narrating Sherman’s March

In Southern Storm, Noah Andre Trudeau has given students of the Civil War the most meticulous and comprehensive treatment of the famous March to the Sea to date. In doing so, he brings to life a whole new level of interesting and revealing detail of She....


A Southern Moderate In Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808-1892, Robert Tinkler Dec 2009

A Southern Moderate In Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808-1892, Robert Tinkler

Civil War Book Review

An Alabamian’s Life During the Civil War and Reconstruction

As an Alabama slaveholding politician who opposed secession and later encouraged abolition in Brazil, Henry Washington Hilliard combined seemingly conflicting impulses in a remarkable life and career. David Durham, curator of ....


Commemorating The Life Of Lincoln, Christopher Childers Dec 2009

Commemorating The Life Of Lincoln, Christopher Childers

Civil War Book Review

Two hundred years ago this month, our nation's sixteenth president was born in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. As so many Americans learned in grade school and have read in numerous books, Lincoln rose from those humble beginnings to become president of a nation in the midst of its....


Race, War, And Remembrance In The Appalachian South, Shannon Wilson Dec 2009

Race, War, And Remembrance In The Appalachian South, Shannon Wilson

Civil War Book Review

Southern Appalachia’s Civil War

The Southern Appalachian region and its role in the American Civil War have long been the breeding ground of myths and misunderstanding. Berea College President William Goodell Frost characterized the inhabitants of the region as those who owned land bu....


Annotations, Cwbr_Editor Dec 2009

Annotations, Cwbr_Editor

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.


Rediscovering Civil War Classics:Rediscovering Lincoln The Writer, David Madden Dec 2009

Rediscovering Civil War Classics:Rediscovering Lincoln The Writer, David Madden

Civil War Book Review

Abraham Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer By Fred Kaplan New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Among the many titles and sub-titles of biographies of Lincoln, Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, serves to remind us that Lincoln was a writer. In my column this time, I am not redi....


Civil War Treasures: Lincolniana In The Lsu Libraries: Special Collections Houses A Variety Of Materials, Leah W. Jewett Dec 2009

Civil War Treasures: Lincolniana In The Lsu Libraries: Special Collections Houses A Variety Of Materials, Leah W. Jewett

Civil War Book Review

LSU Libraries’ Special Collections houses items in several collections pertaining directly, and indirectly, to Abraham Lincoln. The sources listed in this column represent a sampling of the library’s holdings. Researchers can find a complete listing of materials – both manuscript items and publicati....


Congress And The Emergence Of Sectionalism: From The Missouri Compromise To The Age Of Jackson, Nicole Etcheson Dec 2009

Congress And The Emergence Of Sectionalism: From The Missouri Compromise To The Age Of Jackson, Nicole Etcheson

Civil War Book Review

The Long View of Sectionalism

The essays in this collection arose out of conferences sponsored by the United States Capitol Historical Society. It is frequently the case that such published versions of conference papers are uneven. In the case of this collection, it is not a question of....


More Than A Contest Between Armies: Essays On The Civil War Era, Scott L. Stabler Dec 2009

More Than A Contest Between Armies: Essays On The Civil War Era, Scott L. Stabler

Civil War Book Review

Scholarly Viewpoints on the Civil War Era

This work forms a compilation of annual lectures made at Marquette University in honor of the university’s late historian, Frank L. Klement. Klement, a longtime department member and expert on dissent in the Union during the Civil War, wrote se....


Guardian Of Savannah: Fort Mcallister, Georgia, In The Civil War And Beyond, Mark A. Smith Dec 2009

Guardian Of Savannah: Fort Mcallister, Georgia, In The Civil War And Beyond, Mark A. Smith

Civil War Book Review

Fort McAllister’s Role in the Civil War

Roger S. Durham has examined several aspects of the Civil War along the Georgia coast in his earlier works. In A Confederate Yankee: The Journal of Edward William Drummond, a Confederate Soldier from Maine (2004), he chronicled the experi....


Artisans In The Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia 1820-1865, Frank J. Byrne Dec 2009

Artisans In The Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia 1820-1865, Frank J. Byrne

Civil War Book Review

Labor History and the Upper South

Artisans in the Upper South is a fine work of labor history which makes contributions that at the same turn probes critical issues in the fields of slavery, family history, urban studies, and gender as well. L. Diane Barnes’s study offers a compr....


Seeding Civil War: Kansas In The National News, 1854-1858, John R. Wunder Dec 2009

Seeding Civil War: Kansas In The National News, 1854-1858, John R. Wunder

Civil War Book Review

Bleeding Kansas in the Newspapers

The state of “state" history today is a sorry one except for a few. Too many history departments at major universities have decided that state history is not a particular specialty they wish to continue with faculty investment. They have forgotten tha....


The Slaves' War: The Civil War In The Words Of Former Slaves, Larry E. Hudson Jr. Dec 2009

The Slaves' War: The Civil War In The Words Of Former Slaves, Larry E. Hudson Jr.

Civil War Book Review

The Voices of Slaves Speak on the Civil War

Of late Civil War historians have succeeded in balancing the attention they give to battle front and home front: it has become common fare not only to examine the relationship between civilians at home and the rank and file on the battlefield.....


The Lincolns: Portrait Of A Marriage, Virginia Laas Dec 2009

The Lincolns: Portrait Of A Marriage, Virginia Laas

Civil War Book Review

The Lincolns’ Troubled Marriage?

Would that this volume had been a novel. Daniel Mark Epstein, a poet who has also written biographies of such disparate figures as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Aimee Semple McPherson and Nat King Cole, has produced a beautifully written book about the marri....


A Government Out Of Sight: The Mystery Of National Authority In Nineteenth-Century America, William L. Barney Sep 2009

A Government Out Of Sight: The Mystery Of National Authority In Nineteenth-Century America, William L. Barney

Civil War Book Review

An Ideological Examination of National Power in the Antebellum America

Brian Balogh, an historian, political commentator, and co-host of the radio show, Backstory with the American History Guys, has blended political theory with the policy inputs of the federal government to reca....


John Brown's War Against Slavery, Grady Atwater Sep 2009

John Brown's War Against Slavery, Grady Atwater

Civil War Book Review

A Fresh Reflection on John Brown’s Ideological Origins

John Brown’s militant abolitionist crusade changed American history. His actions during the guerilla war in Kansas Territory from 1855 to 1858 sparked both violence in Kansas Territory and Missouri and philosophical debate across th....


Freedom For Themselves: North Carolina's Black Soldiers In The Civil War Era, David C. Dennard Sep 2009

Freedom For Themselves: North Carolina's Black Soldiers In The Civil War Era, David C. Dennard

Civil War Book Review

Fighting for Freedom

While many excellent books recount the broad story of African American soldiers who served in the Union army during the American Civil War, Richard M. Reid’s, Freedom for Themselves, is the first such account that focuses exclusively on the experience of bla....


General Sherman's Christmas: Savannah, 1864, Chandra Manning Sep 2009

General Sherman's Christmas: Savannah, 1864, Chandra Manning

Civil War Book Review

General Sherman’s Georgia Campaign

Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night about World War I and 11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 has made Christmas-at-war books into something of a sub-genre, the general theme of which is, war is bad. Savannah for C....


The Revenue Imperative, John Majewski Sep 2009

The Revenue Imperative, John Majewski

Civil War Book Review

Examining the Federal Financial Policy

When I teach my Civil War course, I devote a full lecture to the topic of Union finance. Reflecting conventional wisdom, I tell my students that the nationalistic ideology of the Republican Party helped shape key financial measures, including the ....


Civil War Treasures: Hearth And Home, Leah W. Jewett Sep 2009

Civil War Treasures: Hearth And Home, Leah W. Jewett

Civil War Book Review

Hearth and Home

The holidays and the close of a year bring both joy and sorrow, conjuring up memories of family and friends, those loved and those lost. The pangs of separation--metaphorical or physical, temporary or permanent--grow stronger and more painful at times when people tradit....


A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role Of Guerrillas In The American Civil War, Jeremy Neely Sep 2009

A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role Of Guerrillas In The American Civil War, Jeremy Neely

Civil War Book Review

Civil War Guerrillas

Most of the history that has been written about the American Civil War concerns the great armies, Union and Confederate, which waged that terrible conflict. Daniel E. Sutherland suggests that this longstanding emphasis on famous generals and battlefields, however ....