The Black Experience in the Civil War South, and: The Confederacy: The Slaveholders’ Failed Venture, and: Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War, and: Weary of War: Life on the Confederate Home Front, and: True Sons of the Republic: European Immigrants in the Union Army, and: The Civil War at Sea, and: Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West (review)

In his foreword to Praeger’s Reflections on the Civil War Era series, John David Smith promises “concise, informed, readable syntheses—fresh looks at familiar topics with new source material and original arguments.” Although its first seven volumes deliver better on compelling syntheses than on original arguments, they nonetheless make welcome additions to Civil War scholarship.

In Politics and America in Crisis, Michael Green provides a sprightly narrative of political schism from the Wilmot Proviso to secession. Green adeptly explains both well-known and lesser-known events, such as the California duel between David Broderick and David Terry, and he carefully eschews reading events backward—that is, with the knowledge that they ultimately led to war. His book would have benefited, however, from a clearer historiographical stance and a more sustained interweaving of social with political history.

Paul Escott’s The Confederacy: The Slaveholders’ Failed Venture displays such qualities in abundance. Escott positions himself within existing debates over how civilian factors contributed to the Confederacy’s military defeat when he argues that even as the Confederacy’s internal cohesion foundered with wartime stresses and strains, white southerners’ antipathy toward the Union increased, reinforcing, at least temporarily, their resolve to fight. Thus even if Confederate nationalism was fleeting, the Confederacy could retain the will to fight well into the war. Escott chronicles the flows and ebbs of the Confederacy’s fortunes and morale while foreshadowing the postwar era. By 1865, Escott argues, “white Southerners were hostile to their government and weary of war. They allowed defeat to come, even as they continued to hate the victor” (114).

Joe Mobley’s Weary of War likewise addresses why the Confederacy lost. Yet he gives less prominence to military developments, and whereas Escott organizes his book chronologically, Mobley’s chapters are topical. As a result, Weary of War offers a simpler explanation of the war’s outcome: by 1865, the Confederacy’s civilians had grown weary. En route to that conclusion, Mobley vividly describes the challenges facing the wartorn southern population—white and black, free and enslaved, male and female, native-born and immigrant.

In his slender The Black Experience in the Civil War South, Stephen Ash provides an eloquent, wide-ranging discussion of African Americans’ wartime attitudes and experiences—frequently reminding readers that although the Civil War is often remembered as a bondage-to-freedom narrative, most African Americans remained enslaved throughout the war. Even as Ash emphasizes slaves’ role in securing their own freedom, he stresses that such freedom depended on Union victory, which was far from assured for much of the war. Drawing on fresh source material, Ash brings to life individual experiences, with all their complexities and uncertainties, without losing sight of broader developments. Despite the book’s unfortunate title, which belies the diversity of experiences within the South’s African...