|
Product Description
Even one hundred and fifty years later, we are haunted by the Civil War―by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.
In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union. Devotion to the Union bonded nineteenth-century Americans in the North and West against a slaveholding aristocracy in the South and a Europe that seemed destined for oligarchy. Northerners believed they were fighting to save the republic, and with it the world’s best hope for democracy.
Once we understand the centrality of union, we can in turn appreciate the force that made northern victory possible: the citizen-soldier. Gallagher reveals how the massive volunteer army of the North fought to confirm American exceptionalism by salvaging the Union. Contemporary concerns have distorted the reality of nineteenth-century Americans, who embraced emancipation primarily to punish secessionists and remove slavery as a future threat to union―goals that emerged in the process of war. As Gallagher recovers why and how the Civil War was fought, we gain a more honest understanding of why and how it was won.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War
- The American War: A History of the Civil War Era
- The Confederate War
- Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
- Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War
- Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
- Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
- Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
- The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War
- The Causes of the Civil War (Debating American History Series)
*If this is not the "The Union War" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 6, 2024 03:46 +08.