More Than a Contest Between Armies: Essays on the Civil War Era
edited by James Marten and A. Kristen Foster, Kent State University Press
In the past 25 years, Civil War historiography has expanded greatly from its primary focus on battles and leaders into social and cultural history, including studies of region, gender, literature, memory and the role of African Americans in the second American Revolution. Those topics always interested Frank R. Klement, a longtime professor at Marquette University. Since 1992 the university has honored him by sponsoring the “Frank L. Klement Lectures: Alter native Views of the Sectional Conflict.” Although Klement lived to hear only a few of them, his spirit animates presentations by some of the nation’s leading authorities.
James Marten and A. Kristen Foster have brought 12 of these lectures together in book form, reproducing them largely as they were originally given. One can only admire the variety of topics, consistent rigor of the arguments and quality of the writing to be found here. Of course, coming from historians such as Edward L. Ayers, William Blair, David Blight, Gary Gallagher, Mark Neely Jr. and Joan Waugh, we should expect nothing less.
No lecture could be more in keeping with the theme of evolutionary historiography than Ayers’ 1997 talk on the role of computer technology in the highly creative “Valley of the Shadow” project, which traces the coming of the war in two communities, one in northern Virginia and another in southern Pennsylvania. Thanks to thousands of digitized documents, scholars and buffs alike can now readily examine the similarities and differences that drove two typical communities toward the irrepressible conflict.
Neely and Blair focus on legal issues. Neely argues that the suspension of habeas corpus by Jefferson Davis made the Confederate citizen “in some ways less free than his northern counterpart.” Blair tries to answer the question of why the North didn’t hang some of the Rebels, investigating the public’s aversion to military tribunals. “Ultimately,” he says, “trying rebels as traitors in civil court proved far more dangerous than letting the criminals go unpunished.”
Memory studies are covered in what are perhaps three of the volume’s best essays. Blight examines how Frederick Doug lass used his relationship with Abraham Lincoln to keep the flame of emancipation and civil rights alive following the war’s conclusion. Waugh concludes that Ulysses S. Grant must have known his memoir would influence how the war would be remembered by future generations. Gary Gallagher vividly portrays Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early as one of the founders of the Lost Cause movement, a leader “who understood the power of the printed word to influence perceptions of historical events.”
Each of the essays included in More Than a Contest Between Armies is an original contribution to overall understanding of the conflict, and they all bring innovative approaches to traditional topics. The Klement lectures make it abundantly clear why America’s Civil War will continue to challenge historians for generations.
Originally published in the February 2009 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
