Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States ed. by Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill (review)

The Civil War and its aftermath is the most examined event of American history. Missing is an understanding of the history and meaning of the war for those living west of the Mississippi. Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States does much to fill this void. The book, edited by Professors Adam Arenson, of Manhattan College and Andrew R. Graybill, of Southern Methodist University, consists of twelve essays by award-winning scholars. All of the essays are well written and documented; each deals with subjects that are not part of mainstream Civil War studies, and highlights of each are worth mentioning.

The 1859 shooting of a pig came close to starting a territorial war between Great Britain and America over part of what is now the state of Washington. During the war, the area would remain troubled, as southern expatriates living nearby in Canada plotted to destroy U.S. shipping along the Pacific coast.

Manifest Destiny and the conquest of the West were as much southern concepts as northern. Jefferson Davis’s desire to expand the Confederacy west of Texas would lead to the ill-fated invasion of New Mexico. The Union fight in New Mexico continued, with Kit Carson being sent to pacify, with force, the native population.

Federal authorities would order the forced eviction of all civilians in four Missouri counties along the border of that state and Kansas. This southern-leaning area was occupied by Union troops under Gen. Thomas Ewing. In 1863, Ewing issued an order forcing the removal of the civilian population and the destruction of many of the homes and farms in the area. The eviction was considered one of worst actions by military authorities against a civilian population and was a precursor to what would happen in the South in the last years of the war.

Little is known of Republican plans to establish colonies of freed slaves in Texas and Mexico. These schemes continued through and a year after the Civil War. In the author’s words, this suggested that the “logic of black belonging was far from obvious to many Republican leaders” (97).

Texas was the last Confederate state to be restored to the Union, and there were reasons for that. The plight of individuals is not overlooked. Writer Ambrose Bierce and surgeon Jonathan Letterman, who developed the Union army’s ambulance corps, were two of many veterans who went west. Both were wounded physically and perhaps emotionally as well. Both went west seeking a solace neither would find.

A simple Alexander Gardner photograph shows six members of an 1868 peace commission and a young Indian girl. The lives of all seven were intertwined with the struggle to bring former Confederates states, freedpeople, and Native Americans into citizenship. This challenge is best described by the book’s subtitle, Testing the Limits of the United States.

It was the West that influenced the development of the landmark legislation passed after the Civil War. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Naturalization Act of 1870, and as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were worded so as to appease western politicians. Unfortunately, each had to be written in a manner that would deny the law’s protection to Native Americans and Chinese immigrants. Despite the prejudices of westerners, in 1869, the legislature of the Wyoming Territory would be the first governing body in America to grant female suffrage.

Emancipation would have an unexpected meaning for the Choctaw Nation. In 1860, 14 percent of the tribe’s population were slaves, and for the tribe emancipation would present many of the same problems found in the South. The last essay illustrates how the clothing of the Native Americans was a badge of acceptance into the mainstream.

Many of the authors present their subjects not just as isolated incidents but as events...