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"This collection of original essays reveals the richness and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Civil War era. Inspired by the lines of inquiry that animated the writings of the influential historian Gary W. Gallagher, this volume includes nine essays by leading scholars in the field who explore a broad range of themes and participants in the nation's greatest conflict, from Indigenous communities navigating the dangerous shoals of the secession winter to Confederate guerrillas caught in the legal snares of the Union's hard war to African Americans pursuing landownership in the postwar years. Essayists also explore how people contested and shaped the memory of the conflict, from outright silences and evasions to the use of formal historical writing. Other contributors use comparative and transnational history to rethink key aspects of the conflict. The result is a thorough examination of Gallagher's scholarly legacy and an assessment of the present and future of the Civil War history field. Contributors are William A. Blair, Peter S. Carmichael, Andre M. Fleche, Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, Caroline E. Janney, Peter C. Luebke, Cynthia Nicoletti, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, and Kathryn J. Shively"--

One of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century American history, Thaddeus Stevens is best remembered for his role as congressional leader of the radical Republicans and as a chief architect of Reconstruction. Long painted by historians as a vindictive 'dictator of Congress,' out to punish the South at the behest of big business and his own ego, Stevens receives a more balanced treatment in Hans L. Trefousse's biography, which portrays him as an impassioned orator and a leader in the struggle against slavery. Trefousse traces Stevens's career through its major phases: from his days in the Pennsylvania state legislature, when he antagonized Freemasons, slaveholders, and Jacksonian Democrats, to his political involvement during Reconstruction, when he helped author the Fourteenth Amendment and spurred on the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Throughout, Trefousse explores the motivations for Stevens's lifelong commitment to racial equality, thus furnishing a fuller portrait of the man whose fervent opposition to slavery helped move his more moderate congressional colleagues toward the implementation of egalitarian policies.

Provides the first comprehensive study of Civil War surrender, focusing on the conflicting social, political, and cultural meanings of the action. The experience of surrender sheds valuable light on the culture of honour, the experience of combat, and the laws of war.

Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Remembered most often for his uncompromising administration of the Federal occupation of New Orleans during the war, Butler reemerges in this lively narrative as a man whose journey took him from childhood destitution to wealth and profound influence in state and national halls of power. Prize-winning biographer Elizabeth D. Leonard chronicles Butler's successful career in the law defending the rights of the Lowell Mill girls and other workers, his achievements as one of Abraham Lincoln's premier civilian generals, and his role in developing wartime policy in support of slavery's fugitives as the nation advanced toward emancipation. Leonard also highlights Butler's personal and political evolution, revealing how his limited understanding of racism and the horrors of slavery transformed over time, leading him into a postwar role as one of the nation's foremost advocates for Black freedom and civil rights, and one of its notable opponents of white supremacy and neo-Confederate resurgence.Butler himself claimed he was "e;always with the underdog in the fight."e; Leonard's nuanced portrait will help readers assess such claims, peeling away generations of previous assumptions and characterizations to provide a definitive life of a consequential man.

Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter (1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in the war with Mexico. Already a well-respected officer at the outset of the Civil War, as a general in the Union army he became a favorite of George B. McClellan, who chose him to command the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Porter and his troops fought heroically and well at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill. His devotion to the Union cause seemed unquestionable until fellow Union generals John Pope and Irvin McDowell blamed him for their own battlefield failures at Second Bull Run. As a confidant of the Democrat and limited-war proponent McClellan, Porter found himself targeted by Radical Republicans intent on turning the conflict to the cause of emancipation. He made the perfect scapegoat, and a court-martial packed with compliant officers dismissed him for disobedience of orders and misconduct before the enemy. Porter tenaciously pursued vindication after the war, and in 1879 an army commission finally reviewed his case, completely exonerating him. Obstinately partisan resistance from old Republican enemies still denied him even nominal reinstatement for six more years. This revealing new biography by William Marvel cuts through received wisdom to show Fitz John Porter as he was: a respected commander whose distinguished career was ruined by political machinations within Lincoln's administration. Marvel lifts the cloud that shadowed Porter over the last four decades of his life, exposing the spiteful Radical Republicans who refused to restore his rank long after his exoneration and never restored his benefits. Reexamining the relevant primary evidence from the full arc of Porter's life and career, Marvel offers significant insights into the intersections of politics, war, and memory.

Between 1861 and 1865, approximately 200,000 women were widowed by the deaths of Civil War soldiers. They recorded their experiences in diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and pension applications. In Love and Duty, Angela Esco Elder draws on these materials to explore white Confederate widows' stories.

Renowned military historian Jeffry Wert draws on the personal narratives of Union and Confederate troops to offer a gripping story of Civil War combat at its most difficult. Wert's harrowing tale reminds us that the war's story, often told through its commanders and campaigns, truly belonged to the common soldier.

By 1863 and the final Emancipation Proclamation, the Union army had transformed into the key force for instituting emancipation in the American West. However, Kristopher Teters argues that the guiding principles behind this development in attitudes and policy were a result of military necessity and pragmatic strategies, rather than an effort to enact racial equality.

Many accounts of the secession crisis overlook the sharp political conflict that took place in the Border South states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Michael D. Robinson expands the scope of this crisis to show how the fate of the Border South, and with it the Union, desperately hung in the balance during the fateful months surrounding the clash at Fort Sumter.

Known today as "the other speaker at Gettysburg", Edward Everett had a distinguished and illustrative career at every level of American politics from the 1820s through the Civil War. In this new biography, Matthew Mason argues that Everett's extraordinarily well-documented career reveals a complex man whose shifting political opinions illuminate the nuances of Northern Unionism.

In this fascinating work, Jill Ogline Titus uses centennial events in Gettysburg to examine the history of political, social, and community change in 1960s America. She shows how the era's deep divisions thrust Gettysburg into the national spotlight and ensured that white and Black Americans would define its meaning in dramatically different ways.

In this insightful book, Stephen Cushman considers Civil War generals' memoirs as both historical and literary works, revealing how they remain vital to understanding the interaction of memory, imagination, and the writing of American history.

Examines the Freedmen's Bureau 's attempt to document and deploy hard information about the reality of the violence that Black communities endured in the wake of Emancipation. William Blair uses the accounts of far-flung Freedmen's Bureau agents to ask questions about the early days of Reconstruction.

Military historian Earl Hess reveals how a combination of rugged terrain, poor coordination, and low battlefield morale among Union troops influenced the result of the largest attack mounted by Grant's Army of the Tennessee.

Weaving together biography and political history, Michael Woods restores Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas's fatefully entwined lives and careers to the centre of the Civil War era. Operating on personal, partisan, and national levels, Woods traces the deep roots of Democrats' internal strife.

Combines military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the American Civil War's significance and impact. As the authors reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape; and sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world.

The Army of the Potomac was a hotbed of political activity during the Civil War. In this comprehensive reassessment of the army's politics, Zachery Fry argues that the war was an intense political education for its common soldiers.

Shows that in the process of winning the US Civil War, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class.

Based on research from over 1200 wartime letters and diaries written by more than 400 Confederate officers and enlisted men, this text offers a social history of Robert E Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during its final year, from May 1864 to April 1865.

In 1861, as part of a last-ditch effort to preserve the Union and prevent war, Abraham Lincoln offered to accept a constitutional amendment that barred Congress from interfering with slavery in the slave states. Daniel Crofts unearths the hidden history and political manoeuvring behind the stillborn attempt to enact this amendment.

Commentators often dismiss Union general George G. Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Offering new and definitive interpretations of the battle of Peach Tree Creek's place within the Atlanta campaign, Earl J. Hess describes how several Confederate regiments and brigades made a pretense of advancing but then stopped partway to the objective and then took cover. Hess shows that morale played an unusually important role in determining the outcome at Peach Tree Creek.

The only full biography of Don Carlos Buell, the talented Union general who led the Army of Ohio in 1861-62. A pro-slavery Democrat, Buell was removed from command in 1862 because of his failure to pursue Union objectives.