Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
How the North Nearly Lost
By James M. McPherson
Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History
by Richard M. McMurry
University of North Carolina Press, 204 pp., $19.95
Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier
by John Bowers
Morrow, 367 pp., $19.95
The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865
edited by Stephen W. Sears
Ticknor & Fields, 651 pp., $35.00
Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander
edited by Gary W. Gallagher
University of North Carolina Press, 664 pp., $34.95
The American Civil War has evoked more historical writing than any other event in our past. That is scarcely surprising, for nearly as many American soldiers died in the Civil War as in all the other wars this country has fought put together. More than twice as many soldiers were killed in one day, at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, than fell in combat in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War combined. Southern defeat in the Civil War uprooted and transformed the social basis of half the country. Northern victory preserved the United States from dismemberment and, by destroying slavery, gave the nation its 'new birth of freedom' called forth by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. The war shaped America's future in numerous and profound ways; if the conflict had not occurred, or had not turned out as it did, the United States and perhaps the world would be today a radically different place.
Review, 4383 words
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