Blood Brothers: A Short History of the Civil War (Volume 26) (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series) - Softcover

Vandiver, Frank E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0890965242 ISBN 13: 9780890965245

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Brothers by blood before the war; brothers in blood after. The blood mingled in the Civil Was became the symbol and perverse source of indissoluble union between two sections, two ways of life, two visions of the future, and even two revolutions.

In riveting detail, veteran Civil War historian Frank E. Vandiver recounts the campaigns and major battles of the first war of the Industrial Revolution, with its machinery, firepower, and engineering beyond imagination. With provocative insight, he traces a picture of the war as rooted in the character and vision of its two leaders and their two sectional revolutions.

In the North, Abraham Lincoln built a massive war effort by expanding executive authority, sometimes in ways beyond the Constitution. Not only emancipation, but also new monetary policies, new forms of commercial organization and production, and new ways of raising and commanding armies made a different United States, shaped for world power.

In the service of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, a states’ righter, became a Confederate nationalist. Keeping up the fight forced him and many Southerners to accept both a centralization and an industrialization they hated. When the dream was lost and the country gone, vestiges of this revolution would make the Southern system compatible with the new economic, social, and political system that had emerged in the North. The South might look back fondly, but it was readier than it knew for what would come: a new union, one and finally indivisible.

About this title

About the Author:

FRANK E. VANDIVER has published many books on military history and especially the Civil War. Among them are Their Tattered Flags and Mighty Stonewall, both available from Texas A&M University Press. A former president of Texas A&M University and administrator and professor of history at that and other universities, he is now director of the Mosher Institute for Defense Studies at Texas A&M.

From Publishers Weekly:

Although this fast-paced history of the American Civil War offers no new facts or insights, it is a first-rate synopsis of the conflict. Vandiver's ( Black Jack ) discussion of the different tasks facing Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (national preservation vs. nation-building) and the two presidents' different leadership styles is interesting and well done. Likewise his brief but evocative depiction of the tragic Battle of Antietam and of how Lincoln used the ``threadbare promise'' of this Pyrrhic victory to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This volume doesn't convey the enormity of the Civil War, and isn't rich in the details that buffs enjoy. Yet Vandiver uses his broad-brush approach to suggest the epic sweep of events. He has a genuine gift for condensing complex issues and acts into a few pages, and his analysis of how the war for the Union evolved into a glorious crusade to end slavery is admirable. In the end he manages to substantiate his chief claim: that the Civil War changed the United States forever in incalculable ways, economic, political and social. Photos.

Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0890965242
• ISBN 13: 9780890965245
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224