War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War by Lisa M. Brady (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 92 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY War upon the Land Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War Lisa M. Brady As the first book-length environmental history of the Civil War, War Upon the Land makes a significant contribution to nineteenth century American history, and for that reason alone scholars should read this volume. Lisa M. Brady, associate professor of American history at Boise State University, examines a range of manuscript sources, including personal correspondence, diaries, memoirs, and journalists’ accounts, and draws on the scholarship of Joan Cashin, Jack Temple Kirby, Timothy Silver, and Mart Stewart, among others. Her clear and vigorous prose complements the book’s compelling ideas. Brady begins by describing nature as an “active force in human affairs” (3). She posits that most antebellum Americans nevertheless took it for granted that humans had the right to subdue nature, and that soldiers carried this attitude with them after 1861. Wherever they went, they tried to harness natural resources, whether water, earth, food, or timber, to win the war. The author focuses on three Union army campaigns: Ulysses S. Grant’s siege of Vicksburg in 1862-1863, Philip Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley campaign in 1864, and William T. Sherman’s Georgia and Carolinas campaign, including his famous March to the Sea, in the winter of 1864-1865. She explores in detail what might be called environmental decisionmaking in each campaign, as officers exploited or overcame nature to achieve their objectives. All of these commanders, in Brady’s view, contributed in different ways to the North’s victory. Brady fills each of the chapters with thoughtful insights about the major military figures. She describes Grant’s ability to learn from his mistakes as he sought to harness the Mississippi River’s power, thus undermining the persistent stereotype of Grant as not particularly intelligent . She points out that Sheridan’s troops did not literally ruin the land in the Shenandoah Valley as some historians have claimed, but she notes that soldiers destroyed so many buildings and so much livestock that agricultural productivity dropped sharply for some time after 1864. Brady brings a new perspective to Sherman’s much-debated campaign, pointing out that the worst of his destruction occurred Lisa M. Brady. War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2012. 208 pp. ISBN: 9780820342498 (paper), $24.95. BOOK REVIEWS FALL 2014 93 in the Carolinas, not Georgia, and the watery lowcountry proved his greatest opponent in the winter of 1865. Readers might hope for some treatment of the southern army, since Confederates also grappled with the natural environment. Did Confederate officers replicate Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman’s efforts? And did they fail? Such questions arise throughout the book, but the author does not discuss them. But this does not detract from the book’s abundant merits. Practitioners of southern environmental history will be delighted by this monograph. Scholars from other fields, including the history of riverine ecology, wildlife biology, medicine, and agriculture , will learn from Brady’s work. Perhaps most important, military historians will benefit from this original interpretation of the bloody conflict that broke out in 1861. Joan E. Cashin Ohio State University States of Union Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order. Mark E. Brandon With proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage across the United States currently battling over the meaning of the marital union, Mark Brandon’s States of Union is a timely book. Opponents utilize a variety of arguments in their defense of “traditional ” marriage, but most invoke, in some way, the idea that the monogamous, heterosexual , nuclear family form is trans-historical . Brandon dismisses this notion, insisting that family life has adapted to, and prompted, any number of legal, economic, political, geographic and technological transformations. Brandon suggests that debates over the family and its relation to the larger society and constitutional order are not simply products of twentieth-century jurisprudence, but have persisted throughout history. Offering “discrete glimpses into American familial households ” from the colonial era to the present, including recent arguments over gay marriage , Brandon illuminates a multiplicity of domestic experiences...