Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War (review)

Wars within a War is best described as a sampling of recent scholarship on the Civil War and its memory from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. Although editors Joan Waugh and Gary Gallagher frame the collection around the issue of "dissent," the chapters in the collection are diverse in both tone and subject-matter. The introduction of the collection delineates five broad categories of entries: the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art, and considerations of heroes and villains of the war in American memory. Each of these categories is balanced with essays concerning the North and the South.

For the first category, the home front, Stephanie McCurry contributes a selection on Southern soldiers' wives that discusses the way in which their responses to the hardships of war illuminate not only gender issues but also broader ideologies about the relationship of the citizen to the state. William Blair's essay on politics in the North reconceptualizes the traditional view of the Second Confiscation Act as a radical measure that defined participation in the rebellion as treason, painting it instead as a conservative act by focusing on the legal difficulties that were involved in actually proving and punishing acts of treason.

The selections on military matters include essays by some of the war's most prominent military historians: James McPherson, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and J. Matthew Gallman. McPherson's essay on George B. McClellan and Glatthaar's essay on Robert E. Lee are useful expositions on the role these leaders played in the course of the war. Moving from the soldiers at the top to those at the bottom, Gallman's essay on African-American soldiers expands our view of African-American participation beyond the famous 54th Massachusetts black regiment depicted in the film Glory (1989) by examining the varied motives and experience levels of three black regiments that fought in the battle of Olustee in Florida in 1864.

The most innovative essays are perhaps those that concern the treatment of soldiers, living and dead, in the war's aftermath. Drew Gilpin Faust includes an essay on the difficulties involved in burying the dead after the war that gives readers a taste of the scholarship that is presented in more depth in her recent work, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). James Marten discusses the important subject of the treatment of veterans in the aftermath of the war by examining conflicts concerning veterans' pensions and views of veterans who inhabited soldier's homes in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The collection also contains essays on artistic renderings of the war. Harold Holzer's piece on the depictions of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in caricature reveals changing views of each of the leaders through the course of the war. Stephen Cushman includes a meditation on Walt Whitman's depictions of the war that shows how some of his strategies prefigure current scholarly approaches to the war's history.

Finally, no collection of recent Civil War scholarship is complete without considering the topic of the war in public memory. Gary Gallagher includes a selection on Hollywood's treatment of "Lost Cause" themes in the war that, like Faust's entry, whets ones appetite the more detailed consideration of his subject matter presented in his Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular ArtShape What We Know about the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). Carol Reardon also includes a revealing essay that complicates our view of how Georgians have used the memory of William T. Sherman over time, and Joan Waugh discusses the politics concerning the upkeep of Grant's Tomb in New York City and...