Themes of the American Civil War

the Tennessee is Steven E. Woodworth, Nothing but Victory The Army of
the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), while he also considers the Confederacy’s difficulties in the West in Jefferson Davis and his
Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas, On Civil War soldiers, the two volumes by Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life
of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1943), and The Life of Billy Yank The Common Soldier of the
Union (Indianapolis, IN Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), are the best places to start,
although a single-volume study by James I. Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray
(Columbia, SC University of South Carolina Press, 1988), utilizes more up- to-date source material. The growing interest in the lives, experiences, and opinions of the rank and file of the Union and Confederate armies, as opposed to studies of their leaders, together with the widespread use by Civil War historians of soldiers letters from the front, has resulted in an upsurge of scholarship in this area. Thomas P. Lowry, The Story the Soldiers
wouldn’t Tell Sex in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA Stackpole Books, generally gets short shrift from historians, but, despite the provocative title, this is a fairly gruesome—in parts—exploration of one aspect of the medical history of the Civil War, namely venereal disease, that hints at a yet-to-be-written literature on the broader social and medical impact of the
Civil War on its soldiery. On the purely military experiences of Civil War troops, useful studies of individual armies include Gerald J. Prokopowicz,
All for the Regiment The Army of the Ohio, 1861–1862 (Chapel Hill, NC,
and London University of North Carolina Press, 2001), which is far more useful to a Civil War scholar than the apparent brevity of the period covered suggests Larry J. Daniel, Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee A Portrait of
Life in a Confederate Army (Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina
Press, 1991), and on the training that this particular army received—the clue’s in the title as to how effective the author believes its to have been
—Andrew Haughton’s fine study Training, Tactics and Leadership in the
Confederate Army of Tennessee Seeds of Failure (London: Frank Cass, Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves have provided the best single- volume of the difficulties facing a volunteer army in “Seeing the Elephant”:
Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh (Westport, CT Greenwood Press, while Tracy J. Power’s Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia
from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Chapel Hill, NC University of North
Carolina Press, 1998), traces, again as its title makes clear, the traumatic final days of the Confederacy’s most famous army.
Soldiers’ opinions on the war, to the experience of battle as well its social, religious, racial and political dimensions, have formed the bedrock of a series of studies emerging, in part, as a result of what is termed the new military history This gives greater weight to the wider social and cultural
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Guide to Further Reading

contexts of the war and has produced studies that relate back to the subjects of sectionalism and nationalism in their focus on what motivated Civil War troops to join up in the first place, and on how Union and Confederate morale was maintained—or not—for the duration of the conflict. Leading—
and informing—the field in this respect are the two studies by James M.
McPherson, What they Fought for, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana
State University Press, 1994), which was a shorter preliminary study for the later and more substantial volume, For Cause and Comrades Why Men fought
in the Civil War (New York and Oxford Oxford University Press, McPherson looks at both sides, as does Reid Mitchell in Civil War Soldiers:
Their Expectations and their Experiences (New York Simon & Schuster, but specific studies that concentrate either exclusively or at least more on Union soldiers include Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle Enduring
the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence, KS University Press of Kansas, 1997), Reid
Mitchell, The Vacant Chair The Northern Soldier leaves Home (New York and Oxford Oxford University Press, 1993), Joseph Allan Frank, With Ballot
and Bayonet The Political Socialization of American Civil War Soldiers
(Athens, GA University of Georgia Press, 1998), and Gerald Linderman,
Embattled Courage The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New
York: Macmillan, Soldiers understanding of the significance of slavery to the outbreak of the war is explored in an excellent study by Chandra Manning, What this
Cruel War was Over Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York Random
House, 2007). The specific experiences of those troops for whom this issue was particularly pertinent, the African-American regiments, are explored in a number of studies in some regimental and individual histories and some very good collections of primary material, as well in rather gung-ho sweeping treatments that sometimes fail to convey the complexities of the African-
American Civil War. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle The Civil War
Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York Meridian, provides a useful introduction to many of the issues. An older study by
Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm Negro Troops in the Union Army,
1861–1865 (1956), reissued as The Sable Arm Black Troops in the Union Army
(Lawrence, KS University Press of Kansas, 1987), provides comprehensive coverage of the engagements that the black regiments took part in, and is worth reading alongside the more recent study by Hondon B. Hargrove,
Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC McFarland, 1988). Noah
Andre Trudeau’s Like Men of War Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865
(Boston, MA Little Brown, 1998) is a more popular study, but rigorously researched and ideal for general readers and students alike.
Specific regimental histories of the African-American regiments include
James G. Hollandsworth, Jr, The Louisiana Native Guards The Black Military
Experience during the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana University
Guide to Further Reading
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Press, 1995), Edward A. Miller, The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois The
Story of the Twenty-ninth US. Colored Infantry (Columbia, SC University of South Carolina Press, 1998), and Russell Duncan, Where Death and Glory
Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry
(Athens, GA University of Georgia Press, 1999). The writings of African-
American troops themselves, however, are perhaps the best route into this aspect of the war Edwin S. Redkey has edited a useful selection in A Grand
Army of Black Men Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union
Army, 1861–1865 (New York and Cambridge Cambridge University Press, while the letter of Corporal James Henry Gooding of the famous
Massachusetts 54th regimented. Virginia M. Adams, are available in On
the Altar of Freedom A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letter from the Front
(Amherst, MA University of Massachusetts Press, 1991). Finally, the most comprehensive selection of firsthand accounts by African-American soldiers is discussed in Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds.,
Freedom’s Soldiers The Black Military Experience in the Civil War (New York and Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1998) and available in Ira
Berlin, et al., eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation,
1861–1867, Series II, The Black Military Experience (New York Cambridge
University Press, 1982).
WWW
There is a variety of firsthand accounts by Civil War soldiers available in print and online. Again, the University of Virginia is a useful place to start:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/American-Civil-War.html.
On African-American troops, the Library of Congress provides a guide to its holdings at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit.

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