"A People's Contest": The Union and Civil War, 1861-1865 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS169 the aggressive" (277). In both books, Alexander denies that James Longstreet received dawn attack orders for July 2, but criticizes the slowness of Longstreet's operations and Lee's acquiescence to that slowness . Both accounts state that Lee should have directed his July 3 assault force (popularly known as "Pickett's Charge") against the western slopes of Cemetery Hill rather than Cemetery Ridge. In Fighting for the Confederacy, he argues forcefully that if the brigades of Anderson and Wilcox had been ordered forward promptly, their additional weight might have carried the day. He credits Longstreet with ordering such a movement in Military Memoirs, but does not fault him for not ordering it sooner. Alexander's private memoirs include a number of anecdotes concerning Lee's humor, temper, and humanity. He discusses both positive and negative aspects of Jackson's personality as well as Stuart's in ways not found in Military Memoirs. But Fighting for the Confederacy contains few intimate details concerning Longstreet, although Alexander was more intimate with him than with any other of his superiors. Fightingfor the Confederacy is a pleasure to read, thanks to Gallagher's superb editing. However, the placement of explanatory notes at the back of the book rather than at the foot of the page (a format usually dictated by the publisher) will irritate scholars and may prevent readers from appreciating Gallagher's meticulous preparation of Alexander's manuscript for publication. Thanks to his labor, Fighting for the Confederacy will join the list of essential readings for students of the Civil War. William Garrett Piston Southwest Missouri State University "A People's Contest": The Union and Civil War, 1861-1865. By Phillip Shaw Paludan. (New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Pp. 486. $29.95.) Under the able editorship of Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, volumes in the New American Nation Series have been appearing for over thirty years. Individual titles have given leading historians opportunities to analyze their special periods for both a general and a professional audience. Their peers have used these books to organize their own research around the central issues discussed, to cull useful factual information for their lectures, and to keep up to date with historiographical developments within their fields. Often brilliantly conceived , like Arthur Link's mature judgements on Woodrow Wilson and William F. Leuchtenberg's original thesis on the New Deal, the majority are useful, workmanlike studies. Only a few have been unable to withstand the test of time. A People's Contest, which in almost every respect satisfies the criteria of excellence for which this venerable series is known, should have a long and happy scholarly life. 170erra WAR HISTORY This first synthetic analysis of Northern wartime society in over eighty years is both a moving narrative of people under pressure and a judicious survey of major topics. With great feeling, Paludan tells how leaders and ordinary people alike found the means to fight the war and to hold their communities together. He divides the major events into three complementary sections: learning to harness the values and energies of a people for war; finding ways to exploit tools of modern warfare; and, the meaning of that long and horrible war for the Northern people. Paludan's theme is that of a society of communities largely determined to preserve law and order in the face of great surges of industrial growth, which at once brought on the fighting and allowed the victory. The theme unfolds through separate chapters on the economy, the political system, the military achievements, the many facets of Northern society, and popular cultural values and ideas. He defers to current historiography and to the great books and essays on which these modern studies rely. Paludan appropriately begins his study with a survey of recent scholarship on the early stages of industrialization in order to concentrate on the impact of economic change on the North's many diverse communities. He forges a narrative account of a society disrupted by those developments , yet able to harness factories, finances, and business expertise to the war effort. Through use of econometric models and the brilliant business institutions studies of Alfred D. Chandler and his students...