What This Cruel War Was Over

Starred review from January 8, 2007
For this impressively researched Civil War social history, Georgetown assistant history professor Manning visited more than two dozen states to comb though archives and libraries for primary source material, mostly diaries and letters of men who fought on both sides in the Civil War, along with more than 100 regimental newspapers. The result is an engagingly written, convincingly argued social history with a point—that those who did the fighting in the Union and Confederate armies "plainly identified slavery as the root of the Civil War." Manning backs up her contention with hundreds of first-person testimonies written at the time, rather than often-unreliable after-the-fact memoirs. While most Civil War narratives lean heavily on officers, Easterners and men who fought in Virginia, Manning casts a much broader net. She includes immigrants, African-Americans and western fighters, in order, she says, "to approximate cross sections of the actual Union and Confederate ranks." Based on the author's dissertation, the book is free of academese and appeals to a general audience, though Manning's harsh condemnation of white Southerners' feelings about slavery and her unstinting praise of Union soldiers' "commitment to emancipation" take a step beyond scholarly objectivity. Photos.

March 15, 2007
Showing a familiarity with and enthusiasm for her subject that gives her book a pleasingly personal tone, Manning (history, Georgetown Univ.) examines how both Union and Confederate soldiers viewed slavery and how they perceived its impact on the war. Her extensive research in primary sources (letters, newspapers, etc.) is evident in the text, where the perspectives of the soldiers are projected largely in their own words. Emancipation, equality, and the future of race relations in this country are discussed with the openness of frontline participants who have an investment in the outcome. Southerners reflect on why slavery matters even to non-slaveholders, African American Union soldiers fight for equal rights on the battlefield and within the ranks, Northerners who have never encountered African Americans are humbled when they see the ravages of slavery in the South. While the nobler thoughts of the soldiers are compelling, the most powerful selections are the disconcerting racist opinions from both armies, which come across the years with a shock. Instead of the generalized opinions of a population, these are personal statements with force and feeling. Unfortunately, though Manning is careful to reveal the positive as well as negative attitudes of the soldiers, the chronological narrative bogs down in the repetitiveness of too many voices. While this may supplement large Civil War collections, it is not a necessary purchase. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/06.]Elizabeth Morris, Barrington Area Lib., IL

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