35 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Civil War Soldiers, April 9, 2007
This review is from: What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Hardcover)
What this Cruel War is Over, is Chandra Manning's first book. The book is about what ordinary soldiers thought about the relationship between slavery and the Civil War. Manning's book picks up where historians like Bell Wiley, Reid Mitchell, and James McPherson left off. The main idea of the book is that both the Union and Confederate soldiers understood that the "only" cause of the Civil War was slavery. Manning argues that the way each side responded to that fact shaped the outcome of the war. Union soldiers broad definition of Republican government as a great global experiment, and understanding of liberty as something moral and universal, created a less selfish soldier who was able to put the Union and emancipation first. Manning also argues that northern soldiers had clearer war goals that were more in line with the war aims of the government, and were less likely to be disillusioned than their southern counterparts. Manning makes the case that southern soldiers were more focused on individual and personal concerns rather than on central war aims outlined by a centralized Confederate government that was often unable to take care of its soldiers and citizens. The one universally accepted given by southerners was that slavery was better than anything the Union had to offer, and that emancipating the slave meant enslaving the white man. The book is a very good start for Manning, and is sure to be studied by historians and students of history hoping to gain a more complete understanding of the common Civil War soldier's experience.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EXCELLENT ANALYSIS OF 'WHY THEY FOUGHT' THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR!, October 6, 2009
This review is from: What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Hardcover)
As a Southerner (from Kentucky) and descendent of slave-owners, Confederates, and Yankees as well, I have to state that this book thoroughly clears up the erroneous facts concerning why both Northern and Southern men fought in the American Civil War.
Living in the South especially, and currently living in Georgia, I've seen the general public inundated with such propaganda that the American Civil War was over "states' rights" and/or "Northern economic interests", etc...
But this book clears up the rhetoric and explains why both sides fought, using extensive research on original soldiers' letters and diaries.
Of special note is that the book is extremely well written, with excellent usage of the English language throughout, as well as focused and logical arguments to support the author's facts.
In summary, this is one of the top 5 books I've read on the American Civil War.
(just a lagniappe...the author - Chandra Manning, a professor at Georgetown University - is originally from Ireland.)
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How she did her research and what she found, March 12, 2011
It is my opinion that this book is the beginning of the end for the claim that the predominant cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Slavery was the primary single issue and it was the issue that energized most of the other issues that contributed to the war. Having stated that, I intend simply to summarize how she did her research and some of her conclusions.
Manning's book is the beginning of the end for other causal explanations because she relies on the testimonies that should bear the most weight, i.e., the wartime letters home of the men in blue and gray who fought at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Shiloh and all the other horrific battles of the war.
Her research is pretty amazing and should first be assessed by looking at her list of Primary Sources in the back of the book which is organized by state. She traveled to every state that was involved in the Civil War and roamed through 45 local libraries and historical societies. She went through larger collections like those of Military History Institute of the U.S. Army and the Library of Congress. She read published collections of Civil War letters and innumerable state documents relating to the War.
Her focus was on the enlisted man and on letters actually written during the war rather than memoirs that were written in the postwar years. She gathered biographical data of the various correspondents whose letters she collected and noted their place of origin, their occupation, educational attainments, etc. She then selected 477 Confederate soldiers and 657 Union soldiers to focus on because their collected backgrounds were representative of the armies as a whole.
She also uncovered some 100+ regimental papers (largely published by enlisted men) and used them as well. She then organized this body of material by date. Not surprisingly, she found that opinions shifted with the fortunes of the war.
Finally, for any one opinion to be considered dominant, it had to be expressed by at least a three to one ratio (p.11). By the way, all this is explained in the first twenty pages, so any reviewer who claims she used a different research strategy or that she can't back up any of her claims with "facts" hasn't read the book.
Her presentation of what she learned is very well written and easy to follow. She largely organized her presentation around the timeline of the war. She then covers what was being discussed in the letters of the Confederate Army and the Union Army both white and black.
I think she has three hermeneutics that she deploys on the material. First is the vast ornate interplay of slavery and racism within American culture at the time. Manning is very clear about the racist attitudes of many of the Union soldiers throughout the war and is clear about the way the black soldiers were mistreated, especially initially, by the higher command of that Army. But she believes that their letters show that during the course of the War, that enlisted white Union soldiers went through several shifts in their attitudes toward slavery and toward black Americans. Those shifts she sees as largely progressive and in advance of the chain of command and Northern public opinion as a whole. The War radicalized the soldiers. Most of them had never seen Southern slave society at work and they didn't much cotton to it. Their own racism took longer to be impacted. But for many Union soldiers, watching black Americans in battle was a revelation and a catalyst to personal change. There was backsliding during changes in the momentum of the War, there was frustration by the white soldiers at how much they were sacrificing and some of the soldiers left their service as racist as they entered it. But Manning is clear that there was a enormous change in the opinion of the white enlisted man as a whole and in the higher command. At the end of the war, the black Union soldier received equal pay and could become an officer. This was unthinkable four years earlier.
Manning's other two hermeneutics are more controversial and are probably the source of most of the resistance to her reading of the evidence. Manning feels that she can discern differences in the patriotism of the Confederate soldier and that of the Union soldier. It is her claim that the average Southerner regarded government as justifiable only to the extent it served his needs and that of his family. To the extent that that government began to impinge on his paternal control of his own life and his family was to the extent that the Southerner rejected government. By the way, she sees a related dynamic in the ways that the North and the South responded to the Second Great Awakening and its aftermath in antebellum America. That religious movement created organized reform movements in the North that focused on societal issues (among others, abolition). In the South, the emphasis was on the personal reform of the individual.
When the Southern states succeeded, they created a new national government to which the white Southern man had few if any attachments. As the War went on, the Confederate government had to behave in ways that didn't fit in with Southern ideas on government. To that extent, the Confederate soldier felt less loyalty to that government. The difference with the Northern white soldier should be clear. Billy Yank had a history with his government. He regarded that government as part of his larger society that provided services and to which he owed allegiance.
This difference cuts across her third hermeneutic which deals with the nature of Southern versus Northern manhood. Manning feels that for the enlisted white Confederate, slavery created a social structure which gave him the space to express that paternalistic manhood. His service on slave patrols, his ability to discipline slaves who were not respectful and other rights that the poor white non-slaveholding man had compared with a slave gave him a sense of equality with the upper Southern masters. Obviously, this is the most controversial portion of Manning's reading of the Southern men's letters but she uses it to explain a lot.
Another aspect of Manning's version of Southern manhood was rooted in fear and violence. The South had been traumatized by actual and possible slave rebellions. In some parts of the South, the slaves outnumbered the whites. Race war seemed a real possibility if the slaves were ever to be successfully armed and encouraged. The War and the Union Army did just that. The Southern soldier believed that he was fighting for the physical safety of his own family and for his own farm. Manning feels he fought to preserve the world he knew and wherein he had his place.
This reading is how Manning confronts one of the common arguments against slavery being the main cause of the war. The fact is that the vast majority of Southern white men did not own slaves. Why would all these men choose to fight and die over something they had no stake in? Manning's answer is that the Southern man fought for the world he knew and loved and wanted to leave to his children. The Confederate soldier knew that world was built on slave labor.
As I implied earlier, I found Manning's book to be utterly convincing. I would offer one more reason for reading her book. She uses an enormous amount of quotes. I detest the way the way we men talk about violence among ourselves- the fight stories, the "then I said" type stories that are told to maintain whatever it is they maintain. But I find the letters that are written home by American soldiers in war to be a unique and compelling literary genre. They are often poorly spelled and grammar is frequently taken to the woodshed but they are frequently funny and have a bedrock humanity which is enormously appealing. Reading some of Manning's quotes will make you wish you knew the men writing and could converse with them. Just another reason to read this very strong contribution to American history.
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