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Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants And Racial Ideology In Nineteenth-Century America, Matthew Hernando

Civil War Book Review

A Divided Coalition: The Politics of German Missouri Missouri has long been a state whose diversity is all-too-often unrecognized or misunderstood by outsiders. There East merges with West and North overlaps with South; it is part Rust Belt, part Farm Belt, and part Ozark hill country. Over the pas....

Cwbr Author Interview: Aiming For Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves On The Atlantic And Southern Frontiers, Matthew J. Clavin

Civil War Book Review

Interview with Matthew J. Clavin, author of Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers Interviewed by Tom Barber Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today the Civil War Book Review is happy to speak with Matthew J. Clavin, associate professor of history at the U....

The Broad Reach Of The Civil War Era, Zach Isenhower

Civil War Book Review

Though the temperatures outside fail to reflect it, summer is winding down and another academic year is upon us. It has been a tremendously productive summer for yours truly, having had the privilege of attending multiple conferences and making strides on my own research in the archives. One of th....

The Legacy Of St. George Tucker: College Professors In Virginia Confront Slavery And Rights Of States, 1771-1897, Brent Tarter

Civil War Book Review

Legal Legacies: How Virginia’s Law Professors Defended Slavery and States’ Rights

Law professors were among the most influential people in the southern United States during the century and a quarter this volume treats. It is unfortunate that as a discreet population they have not received ....

Fighting The Civil War In The Classroom: High School Outreach At Lsu, Zevi Gutfreund

Civil War Book Review

“High School Outreach at LSU"

Undergraduates’ attitudes about learning history have been shaped long before they matriculate to university. Many students do not like the rote memorization that some high school history courses still require. Many others have a fascination with the past but ....

A Scientific Way Of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, And The Origins Of American Military Thought, Charles R. Bowery

Civil War Book Review

By Scientific Means: A Fresh Perspective on the Origins of American Military Thought

The historiography of the American Civil War tends to hold the conflict apart from the wider military history of the nineteenth-century world, perhaps because of the mass citizen armies that fought the war....

Custer's Trials: A Life On The Frontier Of A New America, Adam R. Hodge

Civil War Book Review

Custer in Context: An Insightful Look at a Controversial Figure

When one produces a book about such a well-covered topic as the life of George Armstrong Custer, he or she must face the daunting challenge of explaining why the world needs yet another book about that subject. That question, ....

Invisible Sovereign: Imagining Public Opinion From The Revolution To Reconstruction, Robert Shimp

Civil War Book Review

The Evolving Role of Public Opinion in America

While the general public’s thoughts are ubiquitous in our age of constant poll results and social media, Prof. Mark G. Schmeller argues that public opinion also held a central role in early American culture and politics. However, the process t....

Riding For The Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry And The Texas Way Of War, 1822-1865, Alex Mendoza

Civil War Book Review

Combat on the Frontier: Texas Cavalry from the Colonial Period to the Civil War Era

Nathan A. Jennings has done an admirable service to historians of Texas and the Western Frontier. He has written a comprehensive study of Texas cavalry operations in the Lone Star from the colonial period t....

Unequal Freedoms: Ethnicity, Race, And White Supremacy In Civil War-Era Charleston, Watson Jennison

Civil War Book Review

Ethnicity Complicated White Supremacy in Civil War Era Charleston

In Unequal Freedoms: Ethnicity, Race, and White Supremacy in Civil War-Era Charleston, historian Jeff Strickland complicates the traditional racial portrait of the antebellum South by exploring the differences among t....

White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies And The Making Of The Ku Klux Klan, Thomas R. Pegram

Civil War Book Review

The Celluloid Klavern

Historians are familiar with the linkage between the 1915 release of D. W. Griffith’s epic film, The Birth of a Nation, and the formation that same year of a revived Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta, Georgia. Tom Rice’s fascinating book, White Robes, Silver Screens<....

Lincoln's Final Hours: Conspiracy, Terror, And The Assassination Of America's Greatest President, Bernard Von Bothmer

Civil War Book Review

A Vivid Look at Lincoln’s Final Hours

Lincoln's death produced perhaps the saddest days in American history. The fact that Lincoln's assassination came just days after the end of a nearly four-year Civil War added a level of emotional anguish unprecedented in American history. Writing in b....

Marital Cruelty In Antebellum America, Lindsay A. Silver

Civil War Book Review

DUTY OVER LOVE: CHARGES OF CRUELTY IN ANTEBELLUM DIVORCE In Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, Robin C. Sager looks at over 1500 divorce cases from Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin from 1840 to 1860 and argues that antebellum Americans understood and valued their marriages in terms of gend....

The American Slave Coast: A History Of The Slave-Breeding Industry, Jack Trammell

Civil War Book Review

Beyond the Coast: A Comprehensive Look at the Slave-Breeding Industry The scholarship and narrative exploration of the American slave trade continues to be one of American History's most compelling areas of inquiry. No doubt this is fueled by the larger issues related to race that continue to pla....

Another Year Finds Me In Texas: The Civil War Diary Of Lucy Pier Stevens, Jeffrey Marshall

Civil War Book Review

Reflections in Isolation: Lucy Pier Steven's Texas Diaries In Another Year Finds Me in Texas, Vicki Adams Tongate brings to light a remarkable diary illuminating home-front life in Civil War Texas. The diarist, Lucy Pier Stevens, was a young woman from Ohio who became stranded while visitin....

The Confederacy At Flood Tide: The Political And Military Ascension, June To December 1862, James L. Owens

Civil War Book Review

Flood Tide: A Decisive Moment Philip Leigh's book, The Confederacy at Flood Tide, begins with the Peninsula Campaign, the beginning of the flood tide, and ends with the Emancipation Proclamation, "the most decisive event of the flood-tide period" (204). The author lays out his theses in the....

In His Own Words: Houston Hartsfield Holloway\'S Slavery, Emancipation, And Ministry In Georgia, David Dennard

Civil War Book Review

The Life and Times of Houston Holloway Recovered This work adds another important volume to the corpus of historical literature that offer first-hand accounts of African Americans both during and after slavery in the American South. With the meticulous research and editorial care of David E. Pate....

Editorial: Wider Worlds And Historical Legacies, Tom Barber

Civil War Book Review

It is a great honor for me to be able to formally introduce myself to our readers. I have been lucky to take over the Civil War Book Review with the support of the staff at LSU Special Collections, and with the journal having been handed off to me in such excellent shape by our previous edito....

Look At Lincoln: Diverse Scholarship On Lincoln's Life, And His Death, Frank J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

A Close Look at America’s Most Infamous Assassin

Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth by Terry Alford Publisher: Oxford University Press Retail Price: $29.95 ISBN:9780195054125 Of the 16,000 books and pamphlets written about Ab....

The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price's Missouri Expedition Of 1864, Aaron Astor

Civil War Book Review

Last Chance for a Confederate Missouri: Sterling Price’s 1864 Campaign

In the summer and fall of 1864 Confederate forces launched a final three-pronged invasion of Union held territory. In the East Jubal Early even reached the District of Columbia, attacking Fort Stevens on July 12, befor....

Hoedowns, Reels, And Frolics: Roots And Branches Of Southern Appalachian Dance, Richard Straw

Civil War Book Review

Cultures Intersect in Appalachian Traditions

With the publication of Phil Jamison’s Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics coming on the heels of Susan Spalding’s Appalachian Dance, (2014), the University of Illinois Press has filled a significant gap in our understanding of southern m....

Gender And The Jubilee: Black Freedom And The Reconstruction Of Citizenship In Civil War Missouri, Christopher Bonner

Civil War Book Review

From Slavery to Citizenship

In May 1864, Jane Ciss walked into a provost marshal’s office in St. Louis hoping that she could be officially recognized as contraband of war. Ciss and two soldiers of the USCT testified before Union Captain Charles Hills that Ciss’s owner was “most of the time....

The Civil War And Reconstruction In Indian Territory, Richard W. Etulain

Civil War Book Review

Looking West: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory

This collection of eight essays and the editor’s “Introduction" aims at what few books on the Civil War attempt: it deals with the Civil War west of the Mississippi. In addition, the slim volume focuses o....

Californio Lancers: The 1st Battalion Of Native Cavalry In The Far West, 1863-1866, Andrew Johnson

Civil War Book Review

Finding Citizenship in the American West: California’s “Native Cavalry"

Who maintained control of the far West for the Union during the Civil War, as the bulk of the Union Army clashed with the Confederacy in the East? In Californio Lancers, Tom Prezelski seeks to answer this questi....

Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies Of Slavery And The Quest For Black Freedom, Bryan M. Jack

Civil War Book Review

Reconstruction Reconsidered How did American slavery end, and what meanings can be derived from its demise? What did emancipation mean both to emancipated, and to the country as a whole? How was emancipation both threatened and defended during the Reconstruction Era? In what ways is the historical....

The Second Coming Of The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan Of The 1920s, Michael Brooks

Civil War Book Review

Invisible Empire's Visible Reach in Georgia The Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist group with its origins in the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, reemerged as a wildly popular organization in the 1920s. The Klan's ability to enroll millions of dues-paying Americans in its ranks owed much to the sophi....

Fighting The Civil War In The Classroom: Reconstruction, Sheila Sundar

Civil War Book Review

The Necessary Complexity of Reconstruction I. Ashley Cowart was the type of student for whom teachers, particularly the unexperienced Teach For America set that descended upon New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in his elementary years, had little capacity and energy. In 4th grade ....

Look At Lincoln: Original Intent: A Candid Look At The Other Thirteenth Amendment, Frank J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

Lincoln & The Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union By Daniel W. Crofts Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Retail Price: $35.00 ISBN: 9781469627311 On March 2, 1861, the thirty-sixth Congress of the United ....

The Slave's Cause: A History Of Abolition, Corey M. Brooks

Civil War Book Review

The New Essential History of American Abolitionism

Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause is ambitious in size, scope, and argument. Covering the entirety of American abolitionist history from the colonial era through the Civil War, Sinha, Professor of Afro-American Studies at the Univer....

Finding Charity's Folk: Enslaved And Free Black Women In Maryland, Tamika Nunley

Civil War Book Review

Redefining Opportunity: Charity Folk’s Life in Slavery and Freedom

The life of a woman named Charity Folks, who survived slavery and charted a path to freedom, anchors Jessica Millward’s study of African American women’s experiences in early national Maryland. The author applies biographi....