The Union War [Hardcover]

Gary W. Gallagher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2011

Even one hundred and fifty years later, we are haunted by the Civil War—by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union. Devotion to the Union bonded nineteenth-century Americans in the North and West against a slaveholding aristocracy in the South and a Europe that seemed destined for oligarchy. Northerners believed they were fighting to save the republic, and with it the world’s best hope for democracy.

Once we understand the centrality of union, we can in turn appreciate the force that made northern victory possible: the citizen-soldier. Gallagher reveals how the massive volunteer army of the North fought to confirm American exceptionalism by salvaging the Union. Contemporary concerns have distorted the reality of nineteenth-century Americans, who embraced emancipation primarily to punish secessionists and remove slavery as a future threat to union—goals that emerged in the process of war. As Gallagher recovers why and how the Civil War was fought, we gain a more honest understanding of why and how it was won.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Gary Gallagher, more carefully and precisely than anyone else, enables the reader to understand why so many citizen soldiers were willing to peril their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve the United States as one nation, indivisible and, in Lincoln's words at Gettysburg, to give the "new nation" brought forth in 1776 a "new birth of freedom" in 1863.
--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

The Union Warreaffirms Gary Gallagher's reputation as one of the most astute and provocative writers on the American Civil War. This work places the Union at the heart of the war but also argues for the central role of armies and soldiers in understanding how the goals of reunion and emancipation were finally realized. With clarity and verve, Gallagher deals with large questions in an unfailingly profound way.
--George C. Rable, author of God's Almost Chosen Peoples

Gary Gallagher has written another gem in The Union War. A companion to his brilliant and controversial The Confederate War, this slender volume is sure to generate wide readership and debate.
--Joseph T. Glatthaar, author of General Lee's Army: From Victory to Defeat

A rare volume that forces us to reconsider how we think about the Civil War. Examining historic actors in the context of their own time and place, Gallagher reminds of the centrality of "Union" as the motivating force driving the Northern cause, and the significance of those citizen-soldiers who joined the Union Army in determining the results.
--Matthew Gallman, author of Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front

Brimming with insights, eloquent in argument, and filled with new evidence from the men who fought for the Union, this revisionist history will cause readers to rethink many of the now-standard Civil War interpretations. An essential work.
--Randall M. Miller (Library Journal (starred review) 20110301)

This exceptionally fine book is in effect a companion piece to its author's The Confederate War, published in 1997... Now, in The Union War, Gallagher is back to take issue with what has become the new conventional wisdom, that the North fought the war in order to achieve the emancipation of the slaves. While welcoming the post-civil-rights-era emphasis on "slavery, emancipation, and the actions of black people, unfairly marginalized for decades in writings about the conflict," Gallagher makes a very strong case--in my view a virtually irrefutable one--that the overriding motive in the North was preservation of the Union...Gallagher, who holds a distinguished professorship in history at the University of Virginia, is far more interested in pursuing historical truth than in massaging whatever praiseworthy sentiments he may harbor on race, gender, class or anything else. He knows that for the historian the central obligation is to understand and interpret the past, not to judge it. This is what he has done, to exemplary effect, in The Union War. I suspect that one of his motives in writing it may have been to remind us of what a precious thing our Union is, a Union that we have come to take for granted. Fighting for its preservation was a noble thing, in and of itself.
--Jonathan Yardley (Washington Post 20110415)

Gary Gallagher, a Civil War historian at the University of Virginia, aims to recover an antebellum understanding of the Civil War. In his new book, The Union War, Gallagher argues that Northerners actually went to war to support the abstract idea of "Union"--a political idea, he writes, whose "meaning has been almost completely effaced" from our modern political consciousness.
--Josh Rothman (Boston Globe blog 20110419)

In The Union War, Gallagher offers not so much a history of wartime patriotism as a series of meditations on the meaning of the Union to Northerners, the role of slavery in the conflict and how historians have interpreted (and in his view misinterpreted) these matters...At a time when only half the population bothers to vote and many Americans hold their elected representatives in contempt, Gallagher offers a salutary reminder of the power of democratic ideals not simply to Northerners in the era of the Civil War, but also to people in other nations, who celebrated the Union victory as a harbinger of greater rights for themselves. Imaginatively invoking sources neglected by other scholars--wartime songs, patriotic images on mailing envelopes and in illustrated publications, and regimental histories written during and immediately after the conflict--Gallagher gives a dramatic portrait of the power of wartime nationalism.
--Eric Foner (New York Times Book Review 20110501)

While mindful of slavery's complex and deleterious role in fomenting disunion, Gallagher emphasizes the centrality of Northerners' devotion to the idea of the Union of their grandparents and their parents...Historians who stress emancipation over Union, Gallagher insists, miss the realities of antebellum inequalities based on class, gender and race...Gallagher's great contribution lies in contextualizing and underscoring the broad meaning of the Union, and later emancipation, to Northerners.
--John David Smith (News & Observer 20110522)

Gallagher, one of the nation's preeminent Civil War scholars and a professor at the University of Virginia, deals in his latest book of the question of why did the North fight? His answer is in the volume's first sentence: The loyal American citizenry fought a war for Union that also killed slavery. This fast-paced review of the controversies that civil war historians have been arguing about is opinionated, well-informed, provocative and just the thing any American history buff needs to read this spring as our country gears up for the sesquicentennial of the conflict that made the United States begin to live up to the Declaration's words that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."
--Karl Rove (Rove.com 20110519)

Gallagher recaptures the meaning of Union to the generation that fought for it. He rescues the "Cause" for which they fought from modern historians who maintain that the abolition of slavery was the only achievement of the Civil War that justified all that death and destruction...He makes his point with force and clarity.
--James M. McPherson (New York Review of Books 20110714)

Bold, fast-paced, and provocative...The Union War offers a searing critique of what Gallagher terms anachronistic scholarship that privileges emancipation and the agency of African-Americans during the war over loyal citizens' commitment to the concept of a perpetual Union. Accusing historians of allowing "modern sensibilities" to skew their "view of how participants of a distant era understood the war," Gallagher finds, not surprisingly, that their scholarship exposes "the many ways in which wartime Northerners fell short of later standards of acceptable thought and behavior."...Gallagher reminds us of the centrality and importance of the Union to the war that forever ended serious threats of secession and racial slavery.
--John David Smith (Chronicle of Higher Education 20110619)

[An] important work.
--Lawton Posey (Charleston Gazette 20110618)

This slender volume offers a convincing demonstration of what motivated most white U.S. citizens during the Civil War. Theirs was not a quest to end slavery, although emancipation became a vital tactic in the epic conflict...Gallagher shows that participants fought to save a political arrangement they considered sacred, and begrudgingly supported emancipation as the best way to bring the secessionist serpent to heel.
--E. R. Crowther (Choice 20111201)

About the Author

Gary W. Gallagher is John L. Nau III Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (April 25, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674045629
• ISBN-13: 978-0674045620
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Why they fought... June 19, 2011

By Jill Meyer TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

not why it started. Gary Gallagher, professor at the University of Virginia and Penn State and noted Civil War historian, has written a short book on "why" the northern soldiers fought their southern brethren. Conventional wisdom aside - that it was the question of slavery and the righteousness of the practice - Gallagher says the real reason was the idea of "union".

Many of the soldiers and lawmakers had fathers and grandfathers who had fought the British for Independence and the sense of "Union" of the "United States of America". To these men, "preserving" the Union was as important as their forefathers having attained it in the first place. Look at the word "union" and the phrase "the Union". Both mean virtually the same thing but only one applies to a specific entity. And these men were willing to die for that "union".

But what about slavery and the idea of the North fighting to emancipate the slaves? The South may have begun with war with the yell of "states' rights" but the idea of fighting to keep those rights - including the practice of slavery - was a southern ideal. Gallagher states that while slavery was not well regarded in the north, he didn't feel it was the reason the north fought. He quotes Abraham Lincoln - on page 50 - of the three practicalities he had in freeing the slaves in the context of fighting and winning the war.

Gallagher also writes about those thousands of immigrants who joined native-born Americans in the northern armies. What were they fighting for? Again, "union" and the idea of a country that was seen in Europe as a "bright spot" among nations. Many countries - France, the German States, the Austria/Hungary - had weathered uprisings in 1848 by citizens protesting traditional rule. Many of these people emigrated to the US and saw this country - this "union" - as something worth fighting for and preserving.

Gary Gallagher is an elegant writer of history. He doesn't try to "pad" his text to make the book longer; he presents his ideas and supports them. Very good book.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely history and a much needed corrective! May 11, 2011

By Mark R. Jorgensen

Format:Hardcover

I have been reading Professor Gallagher's books and articles on the Civil War since the 1980s. Today he is one of two dozen or so of our best living historians of that era and this book does not disappoint in any respect. We have the benefit of his lifetime of study, writing and discussion on most aspects of the Civil War.

The other reviewer, "dcreader," has it exactly write when (s)he writes "An often neglected topic of Civil War literature is the role preserving the Union played in motivating the North. Even when the importance of preservation of the Union is acknowledged, it's often relegated to second tier status in favor of emancipation."

So many people, even some historians, want to give primacy to slavery out of ignorance or political agendas of some sort. I believe it was Shelby Foote when asked about slavery as the cause said that is was part of the "warp and the woof of the history of the period", or his polite way of saying "no" -- and your question is wrong-headed. For those of you who don't understand, let me clarify -- without slavery there would have been no Civil War -- but if the issue had been solely over slavery there would have been no Civil War either!! History is not usually reducible to simple or simplistic "causes."

Therefore, this well-written book is a much needed corrective for those of you who might be educated on these points. Professor Gallagher does an excellent job correcting those intellectual preconceptions.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Why they fought - Northern edition May 3, 2011

By dcreader VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

An often neglected topic of Civil War literature is the role preserving the Union played in motivating the North. Even when the importance of preservation of the Union is acknowledged, it's often relegated to second tier status in favor of emancipation.

University of Virginia professor Gary Gallagher's latest work replaces preservation of the Union as the primary goal for which the North fought, helping 21st century Americans understand why it was so beloved by those willing to die for it. He differentiates this Northern GOAL from the war's CAUSE, which was "beyond dispute...controversies related to slavery." The Union War provides insight into subjective Union views on topics related to the war's aims, although it does not offer an objective assessment of their accuracy (e.g., whether the Union really afford its citizens, particularly those in urban slums and factories the economic opportunities often claimed). At the same time, it disputes the thesis that emancipation emerged as a goal equal to or greater than Union by the war's conclusion. To the vast majority of the North, emancipation remained a necessary tool to prosecute the war, and restoring the status quo ante was unthinkable given how slavery had nearly destroyed their beloved Union.

In a day when we debate concepts such as "American exceptionalism" there was little doubt that it was exceptional in 1861 in terms of popular government, or self-rule by the common (white) man. As flawed as American republicanism was in the middle of the 19th century, it still stood out as the most progressive form of government (if practiced imperfectly), especially when compared to the aristocratic and even more repressive forms of government found in Europe, which had fought, successfully, against republican inspired uprisings only a few years earlier. Fighting for the Union meant, in their view, fighting for the survival of self government and the rule of law in the world (recall Lincoln's "last best hope" rhetoric). To Union soldiers it also meant preserving the legacy of the founding generation, and protecting the inheritance of future generations of Americans.

Gallagher reviews recent scholarship on the Civil War that denigrates the concept of Union as a worthy war aim, explaining why the Union was so important to Northerners. Another interesting theme is Union soldiers' hatred of slaveholders and oligarchs who threatened "liberty," but primarily the Union soldiers' own through their non-free labor economy. He discusses the link that Northerners placed between the Union and economic liberty, something Lincoln and others continually stressed, although, again, he does not evaluate its accuracy (he does, interestingly, cite Karl Marx for the view that Union victory would preserve the most progressive form of government heretofore existent and provide many oppressed Europeans with the potential for a small degree of economic autonomy in the form of western lands).

Overall, Gallagher's work is a "most read" for students of American history. It stands as a reminder that ideas have consequences, and provides us with exactly what good history does: a window into a time period as seen through the eyes of those who lived it, rather than through the distorting lens of time that has led some to condescending, ahistorical conclusions about those who fought and died to preserve the Union.