Customer Reviews

Rally 'Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War

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As a lifelong Chicagoan, I could never view Chicago within the context of the Civil War until reading Karamanski's "Rally Round the Flag." From the great Republican convention of 1860 in the "Wigwam," to the dismal life of Confederate prisoners in Camp Douglas on the South Side of Chicago, Karamanski paints a vivid picture of the midwest-city as bieng vigorously involved in the national conflict. Highlighted personalities include Lincoln, Douglas, Seward, Greeley and many Chicagoans including Mary Livermore, Reverand Dwight Moody, Colonel James Mulligan, and Elmer Ellsworth. My favorite areas of "Rally Round the Flag" include: The Republican Convention of 1860 in Chicago (Karamanski does a great job of showing how Chicago influenced Lincoln's nomination); the daring siezure of arms held in the St. Louis Armory by musket-hungry Illinois regiments; and the influence Chicagoan Elmer Ellsworth's prize-winning Zouves had on northern militia units before the war, and his subsequent martyrdom in bieng the first Union officer killed in the war while taking down a rebel flag in Alexandria, Va.

"Rally 'Round The Flag: Chicago And The Civil War" by Theodore Karamanski (Professor of History, Loyola University of Chicago) is an impressive, informative, and scholarly history of Chicago history during the years of the American Civil War. Professor Karamanski draws from diaries, letters, and newspapers to reveal how Chicago's public opinions on the war evolved from a romantic and patriotic naivete to a clarion recognition of the brutality of the conflict. Because Chicago was far from battle lines, war fields and killing grounds, yet accessible to them through railroad and waterway systems of transport, its war-time economy boomed, attracting a huge increase in population that strained Chicago's pre-war social fabric. From the Republic convention of 1860 to the dismal conditions of the Confederate POWs in Camp Douglas on the South Side of Chicago, readers are provided with a vividly accurate historical account of Chicago's conditions during the bloody conflict that threatened to tear apart the American nation. Highly recommended for non-specialist general readers, "Rally 'Round The Flag" is a seminal and strongly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library American History and Civil War Studies reference collections and reading lists.