Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments

Abstract

In an essay written over a decade ago, Maris A. Vinovskis posed the question, “Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War?” (introduction, Toward a Social History of the American Civil Wa r , 1990). With few exceptions, including Reid Mitchell, Gerald Linderman, and James McPherson, the answer so far is that they have. Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front is welcome evidence that, while social historians may not yet be winning the war, they have at least found it. The common goal of these essays is to view the Civil War as it affected the lives of Northerners other than the elite white male political and military leaders on whom historians have traditionally focused. The first section, “Filling the Ranks,” consists of primarily demographic studies that show who enlisted in, supported, or opposed the war in various communities. Carol Reardon's look at the po-liticization of the 148th Pennsylvania regiment provides a clear example of divisions within the North over the purpose and conduct of the war. Russell Johnson finds a degree of class bias in recruitment in Dubuque, Iowa, but argues that the old debate over whether the Civil War was “a rich man's war but a poor man's fight” is obsolete (p. 30) and that the real significance of working-class participation in the war lies in its relationship to late-nineteenth-century “urbanization, industrialization, and proletarianization” (p. 67).