Friendly Enemies: Soldier Fraternization throughout the American Civil War by Lauren K. Thompson (review)

In one of Edwin Forbes’s famous sketches, a group of relaxed Union and Confederate soldiers are gathered together, talking to one another, and trading goods. Scholars have mostly discussed this wartime phenomenon anecdotally or portrayed it as postwar nostalgia. Popular culture has nonetheless often featured scenes of soldier fraternization to romanticize the Civil War. Taken together, misunderstanding and memory have largely shaped our collective understanding of informal interactions between enemy troops during the American Civil War. In Friendly Enemies, Lauren K. Thompson documents hundreds of cases of wartime fraternization among Confederate and United States soldiers that occurred in every theater of the conflict. By so doing, she dismantles the idea that fraternization was a postwar construction and broadens explanations of how citizen-soldiers navigated the vicissitudes of civil war. Through assiduous research, Thompson finds that the rank and file informally met for a variety of personal reasons but ultimately did so to ameliorate the “identity crisis” created by “the military hierarchy and the harsh realities of warfare” (2).

Much has been written about the Civil War’s common soldier. Thompson thoughtfully engages this historiography, drawing particular inspiration from recent works by Peter S. Carmichael, Lorien Foote, and Jason Phillips. This scholarship has considered not just why men fought but how soldiers thought about and survived war. Examinations of the soldier experience, in particular, have resulted in a series of nuanced studies that demonstrate the ways in which the rank and file endured combat, created internal motivations, and shaped the war’s course and outcome. Thompson’s work is a nice addition to this historiography. Because of the book’s original subject matter, historians will now have a fuller sense of the varied physical and human landscapes of war, the continual tensions between enlisted men and officers, and the powerful sway of self-preservation. For those scholars who have addressed fraternization, Thompson departs from current interpretations, arguing that interactions “prompted feelings of empathy and actually broke down stereotypes” (10). The depth of these convictions is debatable, as soldiers continued to willingly kill each other. These comments notwithstanding, Thompson cogently demonstrates how stories of fraternization—conducted exclusively among white soldiers—played a key role in sectional reconciliation and bolstered white supremacy. Other major claims within the work both confirm and augment prevailing views. Fraternization served, in Thompson’s estimation, “as a subtle form of dissent” that helped nineteenth-century Americans survive the day-to-day life of soldiering on their own terms (11). It also demonstrated men’s adaptability and pragmatism. Although these insights will be familiar to scholars, Thompson works within the heretofore underexamined “third space” between armies and recovers soldiers’ individuality in unexplored ways.

Composed of six chapters, with an extended introduction and brief conclusion, Friendly Enemies maintains a brisk pace and will draw broad appeal. Each chapter is organized around a unifying theme that guides chronology and neatly organizes the book. Subjects include banter between men, the trade of goods and information, and orchestrated ceasefires. As Thompson explains, men were compelled by an internal compass to take action, often behaving out of self-preservation. Yet conditions had to align in order for soldiers to peacefully meet. The armies needed to be in close proximity and guarded by picket lines; a permeable boundary for gathering had to exist; and a clear understanding of the enemy, signaled by uniforms and insignia, was required. Shared racial, ethnic, and cultural self-identities cemented the bonds of temporary friendship between combatants. Interestingly, Thompson finds that the outcomes of battle had little to do with the frequency or likelihood of soldier meetings, thereby reinforcing her central claim that men acted because of personal choice.

Friendly Enemies is primarily in conversation with studies of soldiers as citizens, which informs Thompson’s methodology. With this approach, antebellum culture, social values, and gender self-identities become key markers in understanding how citizens served as soldiers. Thompson is particularly...