Civil War (Era 5)
The following bibliography contains some of the most significant and controversial books in Civil War era historiography. These volumes offer a glimpse into: the causes of the Civil War, northern and southern society on the eve of the war, the road to secession, the Union and Confederate governments at war, the northern and southern homefronts, emancipation and the black experience, the military conflict, and the outcome and meaning of the war.
Overview:
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. (1984).
Ash, Stephen V. When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865. (1995).
Ash, Stephen V. A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865. (2002).
Ayers, Edward L. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863. (2003).
Beard, Charles A., and Mary R. Beard. The Rise of American Civilization. (2 vols., 1927): vol. 2, chaps. 17-18.
Belz, Herman. Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War. (1969).
Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Stll, Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War.(1986).
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The National Experience. (1965).
Channing, Steven A. Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina. (1970).
Cooper, William J, Jr. The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856. (1978).
Cooper, William J, Jr. Jefferson Davis: American. (2000).
Craven, Avery O, The Coming of the Civil War. (1942).
Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. (1989).
Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America: Non-Military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. (1968).
Daly, John Patrick. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War. (2002).
Davis, William C. Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America. (2002).
Donald, David Herbert. Why the North Won the Civil War. (1960).
Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. (1970).
Ford, Lacy K., Jr. Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860. (1988).
Frederickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. (1965).
Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. (2001)
Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War. (1997).
Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South. (1965).
Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856. (1987).
Harris, William C. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union. (1997).
Holt, Michael. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. (1978).
Huston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. (2003).
Inscoe, John C. Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. (1989).
Lawson, Melinda. Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North. (2002).
Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. (1994).
McPherson, James M. Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War. (1996).
McPherson, James M. and William J. Cooper Jr., eds. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand. (1998).
Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America. (1993).
Neely, Mark E., Jr. Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism. (1999).
Owsley, Frank L. Plain Folk of the Old South. (1949).
Paludan, Philip Shaw. The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. (1994).
Pessen, Edward. "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South?" American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1119-1149.
Potter, David M. Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis. (1942).
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. (1976).
Pressly, Thomas J. American Interpret Their Civil War. (1962).
Rable, George C. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics. (1994)
Randall, James G. "The Blundering Generation," Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 27 (1940): 3-28.
Rawley, James A. Turning Points of the Civil War. (1967).
Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States form the Compromise of 1850. (7 vols., 1880-1913): vol. 2 and vol. 3, chaps. 13-14.
Richards, Leonard L. The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860. (2000).
Rose, Anne C. Victorian America and the Civil War. (1992).
Rosenberg, John S. "Toward a New Civil War Revisionism." American Scholar 38 (1969): 250-59.
Schultz, Jane E. Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America. (2004).
Stampp, Kenneth M. And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861. (1950).
Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. (1990).
Summers, Mark W. The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-1861. (1987).
Tap, Bruce. Over Lincoln's Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War. (1998).
Venet, Wendy Hammand. Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War. (1991).
Woodworth, Steven E., ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. (1996)
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. (1982).