The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front (review)

276CIVIL WAR HISTORY The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front. By J. Matthew Gallman. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994. Pp. xi, 21 1. $22.50.) Although there is little new in this book for professional historians, it is a first-rate account of life in the North during the Civil War. It is well written and would make excellent supplementary reading for a survey course in U.S. history. Designed as a synthesis, it is based on a wide range of historical articles and monographs. The work is divided into three sections. The first, 'To Arms," comprises two chapters detailing events from secession to the First Battle of Bull Run and providing a brief overview of the two warring societies. The next, much longer, section, "How a Free People Conduct a Long War," deals with the many adjustments Northern citizens had to make to wartime changes in politics, recruitment, and economic development. A chapter discussing emotional and intellectual adjustments is especially insightful, though the author fails to mention the important growth of interest in spiritualism during and after the war. In discussing economic adjustments, Gallman emphasizes the role of the marketplace and confirms a slowdown of economic growth during the conflict. The chapter on race provides examples of a lessening of prejudice among some Northerners, a change that led to limited progress in civil rights, especially in the area of public accommodations. The last section, 'The Road to Victory," continues the discussion of political and economic development and the status of race relations at the time of the Union victory. While the work is primarily a narrative of events and developments, its unifying theme is that the changes brought by the war were relatively minor and short-lived, with continuity a more appropriate characteristic of the era. Although in several places Gallman qualifies that assertion, his emphasis on continuity provides a corrective to a sometimes overstated case for change. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Civil War was a political and constitutional watershed in U.S. history. Although the Civil War draft was primarily an inducement to volunteering, the arbitrary arrests and first use of national conscription established important precedents. The minority of women whose consciousness was raised during the war later engaged in the struggle for suffrage. Economically, power shifted heavily toward the industrialized North. Moreover, at war's end the concept of state sovereignty had little meaning. As Professor William B. Hesseltine said many years later, it was a "war against the states, both north and south." Within a half-century after Appomattox, the federal government began to regulate certain businesses and introduced a graduated income tax. These innovations would have been inconceivable prior to i860. There are enough qualifying statements in this book to accommodate all these arguments, yet the larger picture is of a United States little changed by the war. Some postwar developments had started before the conflict, and others, book reviews277 such as deep loyalty to local communities, survived it. Whether or not Professor Gallman's thesis convinces his readers, this is a good, compact discussion of its topic. Larry Gara Wilmington College Andersonville: The Southern Perspective. Edited by J. H. Segars. (Atlanta: Southern Heritage Press, 1995. Pp. 191. $15.00.) Andersonville. Screenplay by David W. Rintels, with an introduction by James M. McPherson. (Baton Rouge: Gideon Books, 1996. Pp. xix, 202. $14.95.) These two books are virtually mirror images. The first challenges the "Federal orthodoxy" about Andersonville and counters with the "Southern Perspective" (3, 10). The second, despite historian James McPherson's claim of "absolute integrity," is theater. Andersonville: The Southern Perspective is a collection of ten "past" and "contemporary" essays and an "Epilogue" that were selected to offer "historical truth." While "historical truth" may not emerge, the "Southern Perspective" does. The lead article by Dr. R. Randolph Stevenson, Camp Sumter's chief surgeon , sets the tone: "When the web of falsehood, concealment and perjury called the 'Wirz trial' shall be rent, and the truth known, it will be seen that the real responsibility [for the suffering at Andersonville] lies with the men who sacrificed these poor wretches [the prisoners] to their own ambition" (28). Unfortunately, the essays repetitively claim...