Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front (review)

Over the past two decades, Matthew Gallman has established himself as one of the premier and most prolific Civil War historians. Northerners at War collects eleven essays produced over the course of his career. While all of the essays in this volume have been previously published, many of them have appeared in volumes that Civil War historians would be unlikely to examine. Here the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. While the individual essays are generally of high quality, their having been collected in this volume, enables one to observe the intellectual development of one significant scholar and by extension the development of the field in recent decades. While the early essays emphasize social history, more recent essays pay more attention to gender and cultural issues.

The essays in this volume can be divided into three categories. The first half dozen grew out of Gallman’s work on the Philadelphia home front, the subject of his dissertation and his first monograph. One of the more interesting essays from this early period, one co-authored with Stanley Engerman, examines whether the Civil War was a total war with respect to its effect on the economy, arguing that the conflict had a greater impact on the agricultural southern economy than on the more industrialized northern economy. Four essays examine different aspects of the life of orator Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, about whom Gallman wrote a well-received biography in 2006. These essays emphasize Gallman’s (and that of the field more broadly) growing interest in the relationship between the Civil War and gender. The final essay (whose topic seems at variance with the volume’s title) examines the differing experiences of three African American regiments in the battle of Olustee.

Arguably the most interesting elements of this volume are the brief introductions Gallman provides for each essay. The introductions situate the essays not only historiographically but also personally, as Gallman explains the origins of each essay. He notes, for instance, in his introduction to an essay on Anna Dickinson’s participation in the 1872 presidential election that the essay grew out of a conference held at the Huntington Library, organized by Joan Waugh. Dickinson’s inflammatory criticisms of President Grant during that campaign, Gallman observes, were sure to rankle Waugh, Grant’s biographer.

While this volume does not add much to those familiar with Gallman’s major monographs, it does provide an interesting window into the life and intellectual development of an important Civil War historian. It provides a valuable introduction to the work of an important scholar and should be read by those interested in making sense of how the field of the Civil War home front has developed in recent years.