The Civil War: A Concise History - Hardcover

Masur, Louis P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199740488 ISBN 13: 9780199740482

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

One hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination, and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's social and political landscape.
Louis P. Masur's The Civil War: A Concise History offers a masterful and eminently readable overview of the war's multiple causes and catastrophic effects. Masur begins by examining the complex origins of the war, focusing on the pulsating tensions over states rights and slavery. The book then proceeds to cover, year by year, the major political, social, and military events, highlighting two important themes: how the war shifted from a limited conflict to restore the Union to an all out war that would fundamentally transform Southern society, and the process by which the war ultimately became a battle to abolish slavery. Masur explains how the war turned what had been a loose collection of fiercely independent states into a nation, remaking its political, cultural, and social institutions. But he also focuses on the soldiers themselves, both Union and Confederate, whose stories constitute nothing less than America's Iliad. In the final chapter Masur considers the aftermath of the South's surrender at Appomattox and the clash over the policies of reconstruction that continued to divide President and Congress, conservatives and radicals, Southerners and Northerners for years to come.
In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley wrote that the war had "wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." From the vantage of the war's sesquicentennial, this concise history of the entire Civil War era offers an invaluable introduction to the dramatic events whose effects are still felt today.

About this title

About the Author

Louis P. Masur is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. His many books include Lincoln's Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion (OUP, 2015), Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union, and "the real war will never get in the books": Selections from Writers during the Civil War (OUP, 1993).

Reviews

*Starred Review* As the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War approaches, foresighted librarians will need to be prepared for their own Fort Sumter siege by patrons with either new or renewed interest in that terrible conflict’s causes and course of events. For the reader uneasy with any study more than general-interest, this book is the first one that the anticipating librarian should place in such a person’s hands. It is an immaculate overview that quickly gets to the heart of the matter, precisely surveying, with keen insight, the slippery slope to war’s outbreak, which was paved with increasingly bitter opposing views on slavery and states’ rights and territorial expansion; along the way, the concept of nullification added its own coat of slipperiness. By the 1850s, “clearly, the political system was breaking down, unable to contain sectional rivalry and violence.” Moving year by year but not ploddingly, as that mode might suggest, Masur charts the ebb and flow of Union and Confederate successes. In wrapping up, the author’s clear view of Reconstruction brings the process of settlement well into the latter part of the century. --Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199740488
• ISBN 13: 9780199740482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 118