The Civil War in 50 Objects
Harold Holzer and the New-York Historical Society Penguin 2013, $36
The Civil War in 50 Objects with an item conveying the significance of antebellum slavery begins and Abraham Lincoln’s response to it (a pair of slave shackles) and ends with a piece illuminating Lincoln’s role in shaping legal emancipation (a copy of the 13th Amendment). This should not surprise anyone who knows Harold Holzer’s previous works, or those paying attention to the last 15 years of Civil War scholarship. This framing device reveals two major themes of The Civil War in 50 Objects: The Civil War redefined the American presidency, and it was, from the beginning, a war about slavery.
Another theme of the book is the act of collecting itself. These objects mattered to the Americans living through the most convulsive event in the nation’s history. We know this because they saved them, and handed them down to their children and grandchildren, who then gave or sold them to the New-York Historical Society.
Holzer argues in the preface that the Society’s objects “offer a novel way to tell the national, state, city, and intensely personal stories of the war,” and this is certainly true. After Eric Foner’s introduction (a brief overview of the war’s causes and developments), each short chapter presents a single object (depicted in color plates), its dimensions and materials, production and ownership history, and wartime context. The objects appear mostly in chronological order. This approach means that the book is “browsable”; you can pick it up and read a couple of chapters at a time, and never feel like you’ve lost your place.
The 50 objects take many forms, including daguerreotypes, paintings, sculptures, flags, proclamations, broadsides and clothing. Holzer deftly conveys each object’s significance and cultural milieu, although sometimes these contextual discussions veer away from the object and stay away too long. Readers searching for objects embodying the Confederate experience will be disappointed more often than not. This is an inventive vision of the wartime experience but it is also predominantly a Northern one.
Ultimately, The Civil War in 50 Objects is an engaging read and an edifying introduction to—and sampling of—the Civil War collections of the New-York Historical Society. It is also a convincing argument for attention to the war’s tangible histories, which are often presented in museums but rarely conveyed in books.
Originally published in the September 2013 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
