Pennsylvania's Civil War: Making and Remaking [Hardcover]

William Blair (Author, Editor), William Pencak (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0271020792 | ISBN-13: 978-0271020792 | Publication Date: January 1, 2001 | Edition: First Edition

For many people, Pennsylvania's contribution to the Civil War goes little beyond the battle of Gettysburg. The North in general has received for less attention than the Confederacy in the historiography of the Civil War - a weakness in the literature that this book will help to address. The essays in this volume suggest ways to reconsider the impact of the Civil War on Pennsylvania and the way its memory remains alive even today. Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War contains a wealth of new information about Pennsylvania during the war years. For instance, as many as 2,000 Pennsylvanians defected to the Confederacy to fight for the Southern cause. And during the advance of Lee's army in 1863, residents of the Gettysburg area gained a reputation throughout North and South as a stingy people who wanted to make money from the war rather than sacrifice for the Union. But the state also displayed loyalty and commitment to the cause of freedom. Pittsburgh served as the site for one of the first public monuments in the country dedicated to African Americans, Women of the Commonwealth also contributed mightly through organizing sanitary fairs or helping in ways that belied their roles as keepers of the domestic world. And readers will learn from an African American soldier's letters how blacks helped win their own liberation. The ten essays contained in Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War cover events on the battlefield but also reflect the current trends to understand the motivations of soldiers and the impact of war on civilians, rather than focusing solely on battles or leadership. The essays also employ interdisciplinary techniques, as well as raise gender and racial questions. They incorporate a more expansive time frame than the four years of the conflict by looking not only at the making of the war but also at its remaking - or how a public revisits the past to suit contemporary needs.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A valuable contribution to the literature on the American Civil War. I know of no volume that contains as many key insights into Pennsylvania s role in the war. --J. Matthew Gallman, Gettysburg College

This work fills a void in the historiography of the state of Pennsylvania in the Civil War. The essays are superbly researched and nicely written. Many very nicely reproduced illustrations add to the attractiveness of the book. You don t have to be a Pennsylvanian to find this book of interest. I can highly recommend this work to fill a void in the history of the country s greatest conflict. --Michael A. Cavanaugh, Civil War News

About the Author

William A. Blair is Director of the Civil War Era Center and Associate Professor of History at Penn State and Editor of Civil War History. His previous books are Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 (Oxford, 1998) and A Politician Goes to War: The Civil War Letter sof John White Geary (Penn State, 1995).
William A. Pencak is Professor History at Penn State and Editor of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies and Explorations in Early American Culture: An Annual Supplement to Pennsylvania History published for the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt); First Edition edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271020792
• ISBN-13: 978-0271020792
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,892,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get it from the library..., August 15, 2002

By 

Dennis Brandt (Red Lion, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pennsylvania's Civil War: Making and Remaking (Hardcover)

... and then, it will be worth the read. (Sorry, Amazon.) Another Amazon reviewer gave this work five stars, which means he would have to give Bud Robertson's biography of Stonewall Jackson FIFTY stars.

While these essays are well prepared and documented the way only real historians can do, political correctness motivates some of the subject material, and other topics are ho-hum. (A well known historian I respect has told me that "ho-hum" is fine for historical writing. Groan!) Contrary to that other reviewer's opinion, Christian B. Keller's "Keystone Confederates" essay does NOT prove that 2,000 Pennsylvanians "defected" to the South, only that 2,000 Confederate soldiers were BORN in Pennsylvania, of itself, meaningless. (Where were they RAISED? Is that unique to Pennsylvania? Where were they living when they enlisted? etc.) Elizabeth Milroy's "Avenue of Dreams" essay on the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair started fine but slid into an overlong blow-by-blow account of the fair's details, but some may like that sort of thing. (My wife, for example.) The letters of black soldier John C. Brock were welcome because of their uniqueness, although I would have preferred that editor Eric Smith had not told me before each one what I was about to read. In "The World Will Little Note Nor Long Remember," Christina Ericson wrote that Jennie (actually "Ginnie") Wade's so-called fiancée "had been killed shortly before the battle" [of Gettysburg]. In fact, Cpl. Johnston Hastings Skelly, Co. F, 87th Pennsylvania Infantry, died ten days AFTER Miss Wade, and there has never been one concrete piece of evidence to prove they were engaged. The rest of Ericson's article is largely a rehash of well known facts about Gettysburg women colored with twenty-first century crayons, although I detect a good historian at work. Of William Blair's "The Brother's War," I can only conclude that he likes blood-and-guts films (he sure didn't like "Gettysburg") and put this essay in the pointless category. Mark Thistlethwaite's saga of the Peter Rothermel Pickett's Charge painting is the best of the bunch.

In general, the writing is typically academic, i.e., grammatically perfect and unengaging. As a group, these essays too often view the 19th century through contemporary eyes. They may have meant what they wrote, or they may have been playing the "Phd game." I cannot say. I readily admit that it's possible you may like this book. As we seek new topics about the overexposed Civil War, more of its type are inevitable. They get good students' and faculty's essays into print and are cheaper for a university press to publish. But are they worth the death of so many trees? Wouldn't it be better to publish them on the Internet?

ADDENDUM: OK, maybe I was a little harsh and maybe I would bump it up to three stars, but Amazon won't let me. I basically stand by what I said originally.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The motivations of the soldiers and the impact of the war, October 10, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pennsylvania's Civil War: Making and Remaking (Hardcover)

Making And Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War is a welcome compendium of new information about Pennsylvania during the Civil War including such noteworthy facts as their being as many as two thousand Pennsylvanians who defected to the Confederacy to fight for the Southern cause. The focus of the ten essays compiled in this excellent history are on our current understanding regarding the motivations of the soldiers and the impact of the war on civilians, rather than on the Civil War battles or military leadership. Making And Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War is a highly recommended and informative addition to the growing body of Civil War scholarship.