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Reviews in American History 32.3 (2004) 388-391



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North and South in Miniature:

The Civil War in Two Counties

Edward L. Ayers. In The Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. xxi + 471 pp. Illustrations and index. $27.95.

Edward Ayers's In the Presence of Mine Enemies offers an approach that might be called the historical equivalent of an anthropological "thick description." With fascinating detail and extraordinary grace, he explores how the residents of two counties reacted to the momentous struggles of the Civil War. Augusta County, Virginia, offers the author rich archival and newspaper resources. The county seat, Staunton, was a booming market town set amidst the fruitful terrain of the Shenandoah Valley. But Ayers wisely decided that a comparative element would enrich his account. He chose Franklin County, Pennsylvania. This district hugs the Mason-Dixon Line at the upper end of the Blue Ridge mountain range, which stretches down to Augusta County and a little beyond.

Ayers's introduction presents an intriguing objective: to demonstrate how a wealthy, progressive, modernizing, and Unionist county in Virginia turned so quickly into a sturdy Confederate stronghold. At the same time, he sketches those elements that gave the two agricultural communities areas of consensus, though one was slaveowning and the other free. In Ayers's study, Virginians and Pennsylvanians seem more politically and culturally alike than we had supposed. Fidelity of the Augusta County folk to the Union, Ayers explains, held firm until hostilities broke out. Nor was Franklin County a hotbed of abolitionist zealotry—neither before nor after combat commenced. While these agrarian counties followed their respective flags thereafter, Virginians proved more cohesive than the Pennsylvanians. From early on Republicans dominated local Franklin County politics. As Ayers maintains, however, a noisy proslavery democracy delighted in the setbacks that Rebel battlefield victories too often delivered to the Unionist cause.

Moving deftly between the two arenas, Ayers dramatizes the unfolding events of both military and home-front activities. Further enlivening the account are the vignettes provided about such individuals as state senator [End Page 388] Alexander H. H. Stuart of Virginia, a Unionist turned loyal Confederate, and Alexander K. McClure, attorney, Republican politician, and newspaper publisher of Franklin County. We become fully engaged with these and others from various social ranks. Especially moving are the letters of young men over the course of secession and conflict. We follow their anguish about the prospect of war, their relief when the suspense lifted with its outbreak, and the vow, upon entering the armed forces, to undergo the trials of battle rather than surrender to irresolution and disgrace.

A southerner himself, Ayers obviously finds Augusta County more space-worthy than Franklin County. Yet he ably shows why Abraham Lincoln's task was so much harder than Jefferson Davis's. Fighting for hearth and home had its obvious rationale. Warring for flag, Union, and later—no less abstractly—for slave emancipation was a much tougher assignment in a more complex and ethnically diverse region. Lincoln, however, was up to the task. He even risked his political future when issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation after the victory at Antietam. Yet, as Ayers observes, the new southern nation lasted much longer than either Lincoln or the foreign powers "foresaw in September 1862" (p. 320).

Ayers follows the two counties' soldiers into battle after battle with precision and persuasive disclosure. Needless to say, Stonewall Jackson and his men figure centrally in his story. Since an Augusta County combatant at Chancellorsville witnessed the famous deathbed scene, readers will feel as if they were there, too. By and large, generals, however, figure far less prominently than the ordinary foot soldier, sergeant, and junior officer. The author finds little difference in the behavior, age, occupations, or birth order between Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. "The Civil War," he concludes, "was disproportionately a poor man's fight," although Augusta yeomen were substantially better off than Franklin's landless laborers and smallholders (p. 291). A...

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