The Civil War

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, June 2011; written by Lisa Pearson.

As fractious as the national mood seems to be these days, tensions were running significantly higher 150 years ago. By the beginning of July, 1861, the eleven-member Confederate States of America had seceded from the Union and the Civil War had begun: a war which would result in the deaths of 618,000 Americans. In this sesquicentennial year, historians have been busy publishing new works analyzing the causes, battles and effects of the Civil War. On our New Book shelves we have added titles to meet all interest levels: pictorial histories for casual browsing, narrative overviews for readers whose last exposure to the Civil War was in history class, and in-depth analyses for military and political history buffs.

Our two coffee-table books come from respected sources. With a glossy format, “The Civil War: a visual history” is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Museum and DK Publishers. Lots of photographs, color paintings, timelines and graphics make this book very appealing to younger readers (12 and up) who are new to the subject. “Discovering the Civil War”, published by the Foundation for the National Archives, is also a pictorial history, but because it focuses more on actual documents and records from the archives, it’s a little wordier (and drier) than the Smithsonian book.

Books on the Civil War are usually quite lengthy, but if you don’t have the stomach for 990 pages of military strategy (“The Longest Night: a military history of the Civil War” by David Eicher), you can breeze through “The Dogs of War: 1861” by Emory Thomas. Thomas examines the misconceptions and unfounded expectations that misled both North and South into thinking this would be a brief struggle. “This Great Struggle: America’s Civil War”, by Steven E. Woodworth, provides readers with an overview of the entire war. Woodworth’s account is concise; it covers the causes, all the major battles and campaigns, and Reconstruction in less than 400 pages. Jeffrey Wert has a narrower time frame in his book “A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee’s triumph, 1862-1863”. When the Confederate commander Gen. Joseph E. Johnston is wounded during the attack at Seven Pines, Jefferson Davis appoints his military advisor – Gen. Robert E. Lee – to take command of the army. The succession of Confederate victories that Lee racked up in the next 13 months cemented his reputation as a great general. Jeffrey Wert details how it all came about.

If you’ve already read all our older books about the Civil War, and you’re looking for some new perspectives and in-depth analysis, try “The Civil War: the first year told by those who lived it” edited by Brooks D. Simpson et al. This collection of primary sources ranges from letters home from Union soldiers and diary entries of Confederate women to newspaper editorials and remarks made in the U.S. Senate. “The Union War”, by Gary Gallagher, examines what led the North into the war and – more importantly – what inspired the citizen-soldiers to keep fighting to preserve their ideal of the Union. David Goldfield also looks at the philosophies and motivations of North and South, and how those preconceived ideas influenced the outcome of the conflict. “America Aflame: how the Civil War created a nation” presents the idea that a rising tide of evangelical Christianity drove Americans to view everything through a rigid moral framework that offered no room for differences.

So, regardless of your familiarity with the causes and events of the Civil War, we have a book that will let you experience those tense, troubled times and give you a deeper appreciation of how much influence this conflict has had on our identity as a nation.

The library will be closed on Monday, July 4th in observance of Independence Day, but be sure to come down on Friday, July 8th at 6:30 pm to hear local author Terry Herda Gucker discuss her new book “Wild By Nature”.