The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis by Gary W. Gallagher

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis by Gary W. Gallagher Wilson Greene (bio) The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis. By Gary W. Gallagher. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. 274. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $24.95.) The divide between academic and public history, though in some ways diminishing, retains full expression in studies of the Civil War era. Gary W. Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus at the University of Virginia, stands tall among those in academia who have planted their feet firmly in both camps. The Enduring Civil War is an expression of this focus. Gallagher has reprinted, with some modifications, seventy-three short essays, most of which originally appeared in Civil War Times, the most widely circulated of the several topical periodicals aimed at a lay audience. Many of these brief pieces, measuring two or three pages of printed text, reflect themes that Gallagher more fully addresses in book-length studies. Readers conversant with Gallagher's The Confederate War (1997), Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (2008), and The Union War (2011) will find much that is familiar. Gallagher divides the essays into six distinct sections. Several overarching themes emerge throughout his work, irrespective of the specific subject being addressed. Gallagher often acknowledges the tension between history and memory, reminding us of the disparity between what actually happened and how subsequent generations interpret events. In so doing, Gallagher warns against the presentism that infects some historical inquiry. He suggests that good scholarship in the field must blend social, political, and economic history with the military, decrying the tendency by many in each of these disciplines to ignore the larger context. The essays illuminate Gallagher's belief that "narrative, chronology, and biography are essential to forging a true understanding" of the Civil War (9). The essays express Gallagher's fundamental beliefs that slavery-related issues brought on a war, decided by conventional armies that ended in the summer of 1865, resolved the constitutionality of secession, and ended slavery, but left unresolved the question of the equal role of African Americans in society. Gallagher's encyclopedic command of sources provides value to professionals and history buffs alike. Although Gallagher devotes an entire section to "historians and books," many of his most important historiographical contributions are embedded in the essays and their associated notes. His pieces on George Gordon Meade and Henry Hopkins Sibley's New Mexico campaign, among many others, include valuable bibliographies. Some [End Page 132] readers may quibble with the sources Gallagher highlights as essential reads, but few will disagree that Gallagher's command of the era's literature is deficient. Some of the articles navigate historical minefields, propose controversial conclusions, and criticize scholarship the author finds ill-reasoned. Recent studies that position events in the Far West as central to the war fall under Gallagher's disapproving gaze. He assails the "shallowness of the virulently anti-Grant literature," pronouncing one biography "virtually worthless in quality of research and soundness of argument" (57). Defenders of George B. McClellan "match his own soaring flights of self-congratulatory rhetoric untethered to any reasonable assessment of historical evidence" (73). Among Gallagher's more debatable propositions are his belief in the exaggerated significance of the Vicksburg and Gettysburg campaigns, that Jubal Early's 1864 performance in the Shenandoah Valley compared favorably with that of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson two years earlier, and that Robert E. Lee's operational preference for the bloody offensive was justified by the expectations of the southern populace. I found his argument that the Seven Days battles formed the true turning point of the war unpersuasive. His essay entitled "The War Was Won in the East" is not only controversial, but also reflective of Gallagher's unapologetic focus on the eastern portion of the conflict. The vast majority of his literary references are to sources focused on the Virginia theater to the exclusion of the many important titles pertaining to the armies in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. His section entitled "Testimony from Participants" omits articulate...