Major Civil Wars Research Articles

Assessing tradeoffs between current and desired vegetation condition in a National Park using historical maps and high‐resolution lidar data

In the United States, National Park Service Civil War battlefield units are managed for both historical accuracy (i.e. to represent landscape conditions at the time of the conflict for historical interpretation), and for natural resource protection. However, managing for both goals can create conflicts as many battlefields were largely open or in second growth forests historically, but now harbor significant forest resources after more than 100 years of preservation. Managing for historical accuracy therefore may require maintenance of the landscape in a successional stage out of phase with the current landscape. We use historical landscape maps and current high‐resolution forest structure data derived from lidar to examine tradeoffs in returning the landscape of a major Civil War battlefield (Wilderness Battlefield) to conditions present at the time of the battle. We demonstrate that National Park battlefield units can harbor significant forest resources in contrast to the surrounding landscape, especially in areas of intense commercial, urban, and suburban development. Managing for or restoring landscapes to historical conditions could have important ecological implications.

Escalate or Negotiate? Constraint and Rebel Strategic Choices Towards Rivals in the Syrian Civil War

ABSTRACT Theories of interaction among rebel groups in civil wars, like other works in the armed conflict literature, continue to see force as foundational to the trajectory and outcome of conflict. But evidence from inter-rebel conflicts in the Syrian war, which has been one of the major civil wars of our times, shows that military force is not always the preferred tool even in situations where violence is presumably cheap: in conflicts between dominant rebel groups and weaker rivals. Rather than using force, Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the strongest groups in the Syrian conflict, frequently chose to negotiate with rivals. Existing theories of inter-rebel conflict fail to explain such variation in responses. As an explanation of this puzzle of non-force, I argue that the constraint emanating from the conflict with the main enemy determines rebels’ strategies towards rivals. To investigate this argument, the paper draws on the triangulation of original data on inter-rebel conflicts in Syria, encompassing written agreements between Jabhat al-Nusra and other rebel groups, a database of important military operations in the Syrian civil war since 2011, and interviews with civil and military participants in the insurgency. The findings have important implications not only for our understanding of inter-rebel dynamics in the Syrian conflict but also for other complex civil wars concerning the relationship between inter-rebel negotiation, cooperation, success, and war duration.

Ethnic Violence in Africa: Destructive Legacies of Pre-Colonial States

AbstractWhat explains differential rates of ethnic violence in postcolonial Africa? I argue that ethnic groups organized as a precolonial state (PCS) exacerbated interethnic tensions in their postcolonial country. Insecure leaders in these countries traded off between inclusive coalitions that risked insider coups and excluding other ethnic groups at the possible expense of outsider rebellions. My main hypotheses posit that PCS groups should associate with coups because their historically rooted advantages often enabled accessing power at the center, whereas other ethnic groups in their countries—given strategic incentives for ethnopolitical exclusion—should fight civil wars more frequently than ethnic groups in countries without a PCS group. Analyzing originally compiled data on precolonial African states provides statistical evidence for these implications about civil wars and coups between independence and 2013 across various model specifications. Strikingly, through 1989, thirty of thirty-two ethnic group-level major civil war onsets occurred in countries with a PCS group.

Are Major Events Capable of Affecting Country Rankings? Validating Composite Indexes of Human Progress and Environmental Performance

A desired characteristic of composite indicators is sensitivity to major adverse events. This paper explores how major civil wars and the 2004 tsunami have influenced Human Development Index (HDI) and Environmental Performance Index (EPI) index values of the affected countries, respectively. The analysis shows that HDI and EPI scores have barely changed, being almost exclusively due to variations in GNI/capita for HDI and air quality for EPI. This casts doubt on the composite indexes’ usefulness and their ability to reflect major environmental and societal changes in the affected countries, or shows which dimensions are truly resilient to these events and can constitute a sustainable base for postwar/post-disaster recovery. Human progress and ecological indicators may need an overhaul, in order to account for the changes that actually happen at a point in time, in order to capture substantial changes in the socio-economic and ecological fabric of a country.

The Civil War in Photographs: New Perspectives From the Robin Stanford Collection by Anne Peterson (review)

Reviewed by: The Civil War in Photographs: New Perspectives From the Robin Stanford Collection by Anne Peterson Bob Cavendish The Civil War in Photographs: New Perspectives From the Robin Stanford Collection. By Anne Peterson. (Dallas: DeGloyer Library, 2013. Pp 104. Color, sepia, and black and white illustrations, works cited.) “If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door yards . . .” the New York Times said of Matthew Brady’s photographs of Antietam’s casualties, “he has done something very like it.” Photography matured during the U.S. Civil War, expanding beyond the key and the commonplace participants. Nineteenth- century Americans who would not typically travel more than ten miles from their “door yards” and neighborhoods saw a broader, war-ravaged America of battlefield sites, hospitals, camp grounds, and villages through a camera lens; photographs became the basis of newspaper sketches accompanying war dispatches published in the Times and Harpers Weekly. Photographers like Brady, Alexander Gardner, G. H. Houghton, Samuel Cooley, and dozens of others amassed extensive inventories of glass plate images, which ultimately became so commonplace that all too many wound up as windowpanes in postwar greenhouses if not lost altogether. Yet hundreds of others survived in the National Archives and in private collections of limited access. Fortunately for scholars and Civil War aficionados, Robin Stanford of Houston, Texas, spent forty years building a collection of primarily stereoscopic images based on well-known and also less familiar photographs. The Stanford Collection, the subject of this brief volume, completed its appearance in March 2013 at the DeGolyer Library on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas. Visitors saw antebellum and wartime images by less famous southern photographers, images of daily military life, slave life, and battle-site photographs from locales in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Exhibit curator Anne Peterson’s Civil War in Photographs (CWP) is an introduction to the Stanford collection. In eighteen sections, she includes various stereoscope images, sepia-toned and some hand tinted. Included in CWP are rarely (if ever) seen before views of Brownsville, Texas, during occupation and poignant images of the country in mourning following Lincoln’s murder in 1865. Captions explain the background and subject matter for most of the sample images but there are occasional errors. A Winfield Hancock photograph caption scrambles the order of those in the picture and misidentifies Union general Francis C. Barlow (a future prosecutor of New York’s Tweed Ring) as Seth M. Barton, a Confederate general unlikely to appear in the same picture alongside Hancock in 1864. Peterson’s narration throughout CWP moves quickly. The raison d’être, however, is the corpus of photographs behind the glimpses afforded in these ninety-plus pages, a sample of images compiled by a less well-known body of men whose images we did not often see. This is not a major Civil War work but it does not purport to be. For the casual reader, CWP is an interesting commentary on our most devastating war. For the scholar, CWP is a treasure that escaped the fate of its greenhouse windowpane counterparts and made available thanks to the teamwork of the DeGolyer staff and Anne Peterson and the generosity of Robin Stanford. [End Page 441] Bob Cavendish Austin, Texas Copyright © 2014 The Texas State Historical Association

Conflict, Crime, and Violence in Colombia

"Even by Latin American standards, Colombia is a violent country. It is also an exceptional laboratory for researchers interested in crime, conflict and more generally, in violence. Violence in Colombia is not a recent phenomenon: The country experienced six major civil wars during the course of the 19th century. A period of relative calm followed the bloodiest of these confrontations: “The War of the Thousand Days,” that lasted literally 1000 days (1899–1902), and resulted in the deaths of a large fraction of the population. In the late 1940s after the assassination of a liberal presidential candidate, partisan grievances flourished and a new civil war (know as “La Violencia”) began. It was ended by a power-sharing deal between the liberals and the conservatives in the late 1950s. By most accounts, the current conflict began in the mid 1960s, when two guerrilla organizations – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) – (both are still active today) were formed. The largest of them, FARC, emerged from communist guerrillas dissatisfied by the exclusion of the left from the power-sharing deal, and from the remnants of liberal guerrillas that did not laid down their arms when the deal was brokered."

Financing the American Civil War: Developing new tax sources

The American Civil War was expected to be short and financed through additional borrowing. As Northern military setbacks mounted, it became obvious that the war would be long, bloody, and expensive. Annual federal budgets called for increased taxes to partially finance the rising costs. The Revenue Act of 1862 created innovative new tax sources and increased revenues dramatically. Tax innovations included the first federal income and inheritance taxes, the creation of the Office of Internal Revenue, and the use of adhesive revenue stamps. This article describes the political strategies and financial battles of the Civil War and post-war period, with particular focus on the Office of Internal Revenue and the introduction of new tax sources at the federal level. The major Civil War era innovation was the introduction of the federal income tax, including how to calculate taxable income and how tax collections were operationalized. The political and financial history of the income tax is a major focus of this article.

Fragmentation of Medicine in the United States

During the 19th century, the United States of America radically and tumultuously transformed from an experiment in democratic governance by a fledgling group of settlers populating the eastern portion of North America to a robust, free, and powerful nation encompassing a greater portion of the continent of North America and dominating technological innovation for the world. The event that served as the major dividing point in this period of development was the American Civil War of the 1860s. Wartimes trigger great social, scientific, and technologic upheavals and the American Civil War was no exception. By the 1860s, science and technology were finally beginning to be incorporated into medical diagnosis and treatment in Europe, which at the time held leadership in this field, whereas in the United States, medical care still often produced more harm than good (eg, accepted therapy for injuries with internal bleeding was bloodletting). Prior to the American Civil War, medical education was wildly variable. Additionally, numerous health care theories and disciplines (some pure charlatanism and quackery) appeared that generally had the important single benefit of being much less injurious (and equally effective or ineffective) than the established ‘‘orthodox’’ medical treatments. Despite the scientific revolution in biomedicine that flowered during the 20th century in the United States, the residua of that that earlier era still plagues health care delivery in the 21st century. Thus, it is critical now to understand history in order to build the bridges across disciplines and between providers to optimize the health and well-being of all patients. To that end, the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine (JEBCAM) has been able to obtain permission to reproduce material detailing the state of medical training in the United States prior to the American Civil War. This material originally appeared in 4 parts in issues of the award-winning journal Surgeon’s Call, which is published by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine started as an idea of Gordon E. Dammann, DDS, whose collection of medical artifacts from the American Civil War forms the core holdings. The Museum was incorporated in 1990, and in August 1993 the board chose to locate in Frederick, Maryland, which is within a 30-minute drive to 5 major Civil War battlefields: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Harpers Ferry, West Virginia; Antietam, Maryland; South Mountain, Maryland; and Monocacy, Maryland. The Carty Building on East Patrick Street, a cityowned building in the heart of Frederick’s historic district, was chosen as the site. The Museum began publishing its originally quarterly newsletter, Surgeon’s Call, and on June 15, 1996, the first exhibits were opened to the public. The exhibits included dioramas, cases, and informational panels on recruiting, camp life, medical evacuation, field hospitals, pavilion hospitals, and the home-front. The displays were highlighted by a Confederate ambulance on loan from the Lincoln Memorial University, a 19th-century holding coffin, stretchers, amputation kits, uniforms of medical personnel, and numerous other medical and surgical items. In 1997, plans were developed to renovate the building with the goal of the design process to tell the story of Civil War medicine in much the same order as it would have been experienced by soldiers themselves: the first gallery establishes the context for the Museum by discussing the state of medicine and medical education at the beginning of the war, while the remaining galleries follow the soldiers through recruitment, camp life, the evacuation of the wounded, field dressing stations, field hospitals, and pavilion hospitals. The last gallery highlights specific subjects such as indigenous plants used by the surgeons, dentistry, naval medicine, and the Civil War hospitals in Frederick. On October 21, 2000, the newly renovated Museum opened its doors to the public. In addition to the exhibit galleries, the Museum has a secure, climate-controlled collections room and a research center. Since the reopening, additional exhibits have been added that study the embalming of the dead, apothecary wagons, and nursing practices during the Civil War. The author of this 4-part article is Dr Robert G. Slawson, a 1962 graduate of the University of Iowa School of Medicine, who spent 8 years in the US Army training in radiology

Regime type and civil war – a re-evaluation of the inverted U-relationship

Previous studies nearly unanimously agree that civil conflicts are more likely to occur in semi-democracies than in either autocracies or democracies. Through multinomial regression analysis, this article re-evaluates this claim by testing the relationship between regime type and civil conflict for the post-Cold War period. Controlling for the material wealth of a country, the heterogeneity of the population, income inequalities and the size of the state, this research finds that the occurrence of minor intrastate wars (25 to 1000 deaths) and major civil wars (more than 1000 deaths) does not differ between hybrid regimes and autocracies. Only democracies have a significantly lower probability of experiencing intrastate fighting and warfare.

Conflict Research and the ‘Decline’ of Civil War

In recent years a number of scholars have suggested that there has been a decline in the absolute numbers of civil wars since the early 1990s, and this claim is purportedly supported by empirical evidence. This paper explores the methodological challenges which confront the study of conflict trends and identifies a number of problems with prevailing approaches. It argues that a differentiated approach to the concept of civil war is necessary before it is possible to make claims about trends in numbers of conflicts, because even the most sophisticated methodological processes have problems related to the manner in which they define and codify armed conflict. Nevertheless, the paper accepts that there has been a decline in the number of major civil wars, and it proposes – and evaluates – a number of explanations for the decline in such wars. These are: the decline of potent ideology since the end of the Cold War, which had hitherto ignited and/or exacerbated armed violence; the decline in intervention by third parties in civil war, a key feature of ‘proxy’ conflicts during the Cold War; the increasing tendency for secession – or hard partition – to be recognised by the international community, which has defused some ongoing conflicts; the increasingly interventionist nature of peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities by international organisations; the growing tendency for powerful states to view civil war and state failure as a potential security threat, resulting in a more substantial effort to resolve conflict which might have hitherto been regarded as ‘merely’ a humanitarian issue or even completely ignored; and the growing number of consolidated democracies.

Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (review)

Reviewed by: Mr. Lincoln Goes to War Rodney O. Davis Mr. Lincoln Goes to War. By William Marvel. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Pp. 367. Cloth, $30.00.) This book is rather a mixed bag. In large part it consists of detailed accounts of the three major Civil War battles (and Union losses) of 1861: Manassas, Wilson's Creek, and Ball's Bluff. It also contains a retelling of the undeniably outrageous injustice done to Union general Charles P. Stone, who was made the scapegoat for the defeat at Ball's Bluff and the death there of Abraham Lincoln's great friend Edward Dickinson Baker. But the author's major intention is to indict President Lincoln for underestimating the consequences of refusing to allow the peaceful secession of seven Southern states and of risking war at Fort Sumter instead. According to Marvel, Lincoln thus prepared the way for the unprecedented but precedent-setting and unconstitutional invasions of the civil liberties of Americans that occurred during that first year of the resulting conflict and the bloodshed and misery that followed. In Marvel's words, "In his zeal to preserve the Union [Lincoln] abandoned statecraft, exploiting the delicate issue of Fort Sumter and committing the nation to a bloodbath far worse than he or any of his advisors ever envisioned" (282). Such second-guessing is hard to contend with. Marvel is no doubt right on the above counts. Of course Lincoln was horrified and deeply remorseful at the Civil War's great cost. When blame for the cost of the war is handed out, Lincoln would be the first to admit that he deserves some of it. However, Marvel in turn understates some of the strongly felt convictions that governed Lincoln's behavior during the weeks after his inauguration, convictions contributing to what Marvel considers a blundering intransigence. A couple of examples may suffice. One of these is Lincoln's own conviction, as affirmed in his first inaugural message, that the Union is perpetual and older than the Federal Constitution. To say that Lincoln took seriously his solemn oath to [End Page 299] protect the Constitution is hopefully to state what should therefore be obvious: that he did not consider himself to have been elected to preside over the immediate dissolution of the Union. Indeed he would have felt his obligation to preserve the Union with particular force at the beginning of his term. Marvel also understates Lincoln's disbelief in the possibility of an amicable separation of the Northern and Southern states, a disbelief also stated in the First Inaugural. Such issues as the return of fugitive slaves or the suppression of the foreign slave trade would be even worse irritants after separation than before. Issues that led to separation could not be quieted by separation; they would remain critical, and they would be even more poisonous after acquiring an unhealthy international character. Doubtless it is useful to be reminded of the alternative courses that the new president might have pursued as he pondered the worst crisis in American history. "Deliberation on [Lincoln's] performance remains incomplete . . . without recognizing that other courses remained open to him," Marvel writes (286). The research that Marvel has done in making this case is massive, and his prose is positively lapidary. To his credit, Marvel makes no bones about the fact that it is indeed a case that he is arguing, against Lincoln. Readers should address his book with this understanding at the outset. Rodney O. Davis Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College Copyright © 2007 The Kent State University Press

El manto liberal: Los poderes de emergencia en México, 1821–1876

The early national period in Mexico has often been characterized as tumultuous and unstable. Despite the great hopes harbored on the eve of independence in 1821, the following decades witnessed countless pronunciamientos, at least three major civil wars (1832, 1854–55, 1858–61), and four foreign interventions (1829, 1837– 38, 1846– 48, 1862–67). Mexico lost half of its territory to the United States and was occupied by a French expeditionary force that placed a Habsburg prince on its throne. The idealism of its more enlightened politicians was, as a result, understandably eroded, as their attempts to forge a lasting liberal constitutional framework failed time and again. The moderate politician Manuel Gómez Pedraza came to the conclusion that constitutions were nothing but pieces of paper written to be subsequently trampled and thrown away. The disenchantment of conservative ideologue and historian Lucas Alamán was expressed along similar lines when he came to the conclusion that Mexico’s constitutions did not last because they simply did not conform to Mexico’s customs and traditions. In the words of Santanista thinker José María Tornel, they were “exotic plants” that could not survive in the Mexican political climate. As became the view of the once–hombre de progreso José María Gutiérrez Estrada, Mexicans did not know how to govern themselves. They had tried every possible form a republic could take—it did not matter. All of their constitutions failed despite the good intentions of the liberal political class.Aguilar Rivera’s study is a welcome and provocative interpretation of this history of constitutional failure. In his mind, the failure must be attributed to the absence of emergency powers in the constitutions of 1812, 1824, 1836, and 1843. By not including a constitutional clause that could have enabled congress to grant the executive extraordinary powers in a time of crisis, the authors of Mexico’s first constitutions tied the hands of government and forced it to adopt extraconstitutional (even anticonstitutional) authoritarian measures to survive. In so doing, the governments of the 1820s through the 1840s seriously undermined the prestige of their respective constitutions, showed them up to be impractical and unworkable, and, in turn, inspired their opponents to overthrow them via extraconstitutional means. Aguilar Rivera develops this interpretation by systematically analyzing the arguments that were used by the different liberal constituent congresses to prevent the inclusion of emergency powers in their charters. He then proves how inadequate such resolutions were in the light of the many crises that surfaced and the manner in which these were handled. As final proof, he attributes the success and appeal of the 1857 constitution to its inclusion of emergency powers. Benito Juárez may have presided over Mexico (whether on the run or from Mexico City) arbitrarily and with a certain degree of authoritarianism, but he did so constitutionally. According to Aguilar Rivera, this meant that people were more prepared to fight for this constitution than others, because it worked—because Juárez was able to lead the country without recurring to extraconstitutional measures.Aguilar Rivera is indeed persuasive in his subtle and paradoxical interpretation. There is no doubt either that this book will inspire a lively discussion in years to come over the extent to which the inclusion of emergency powers could have stabilized the early republican political system. While I cannot but help empathizing with all those nineteenth-century liberals who refused to include emergency powers in their constitutions because they feared (probably rightly) abuse, Aguilar Rivera’s argument is difficult to ignore and must be read by anybody concerned with the constitutional history of Mexico and the Hispanic world.

Banners to the Breeze: The Kentucky Campaign, Corinth, and Stones River

Banners to the breeze analyses three major Civil War campaigns that were conducted following a series of devastating Confederate defeats at the hands of Ulysses S. Grant in the spring of 1862. After the recapture of Tennessee, Confederate armies under Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith conducted a brilliant advance into the deeply divided state of Kentucky. Meanwhile, other Confederate forces under Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn attempted to recapture the town of Corinth, Mississippi. As the year drew to a close, Bragg's army was involved in a tactical draw at the battle of Stones River. Earl J. Hess mixes dramatic narrative and new analysis as he brings these campaigns together in a coherent whole. Previously unpublished historic photographs of the battlefields are included. Earl J. Hess is an associate professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee. He is the author of The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat and other works.

Local peace zones as institutionalized conflict

In developing the theme of local “zones of peace” for this issue of Peace Review, we began with a rather narrow conception. We knew about at least two types of peace zones. First, there were those that had been created by local, often grass roots, efforts in the midst of major civil wars in places such as Guatemala, the Philippines, and El Salvador. These were clearly peace zones constructed “from the bottom up.” Second, and even more obvious to those following post‐Cold War world events, there were those peace zones under similar civil war conditions but constructed by outsiders. They included political organizations such as the U.N.—which sought to implement its peacekeeping mission, and relief organizations—which sought safe passage for food and medicines aimed at grass roots populations caught up in the fighting. Cities, towns and regions in the former Yugoslavia or safe relief corridors in Somalia and the southern Sudan illustrated such “outsider in” peace zones. Both “bottom up” and “outsider in” zones seemed worthy of study.

The Intervener: Lone Wolf or ... ? Cooperation between Interveners in Civil Wars

Dunér, B. The Intervener: Lone Wolf or ... ? Cooperation between Interveners in Civil Wars. Cooperation and Conflict, XVIII, 1983, 197-213. In a civil war, external actors may either oppose one another or rally to the assistance of the same internal party. The latter situation is in focus in this article. It is sometimes assumed that certain external powers make use of others to promote their aims vis-à-vis a civil war. The author argues that the idea of asymmetry does not lead anywhere. The alternative perspective of military cooperation between interveners is elaborated. Four aspects of military cooperation are singled out, and the formation of hypotheses and related methodological questions discussed. An empirical analysis of major civil wars in the 1970s is presented. In most cases in which at least two interveners assisted the same internal party there tends to have been some form of military cooperation. Moreover, the extent of collaboration in individual cases is related to the number of interveners involved.

Florida During the Civil War , and: The Civil War in Louisiana , and: The Civil War in North Carolina (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Florida During the Civil War. By John E. Johns. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1963. Pp. ix, 265. $6.00.) The Civil War in Louisiana. By John D. Winters. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963. Pp. xiv, 534. $10.00. ) The Civil War in North Carolina. By John G. Barrett. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Pp. viii, 484. $10.00. ) It has become a truism in our time that THE WAR has captured the fancy of the American reading public in a way that no other event in our history ever has. Almost every literate adult entertains what can only be described as positive views on the causes, conduct, and consequences of the conflict and is perfectly willing to express them with feeling if not always with clarity. This widespread interest has been reflected in a number of ways. Sorry novels, grade B movies, and insipid TV programs about the war enjoy an almost incredible popularity. The Centennial celebration has attracted genuine public interest, despite the antics of grown men who dress up in refurbished uniforms and travel hundreds of miles to "play soldier" on battlefields deserving of more serious commemoration and in spite of the unseemly verbal guerrilla warfare among members of the U.S. Centennial Commission that almost led to a resumption of hostilities in Charleston. But by all odds the most consistent and reliable index of public interest has been the veritable avalanche of published works. There have been general histories, pictorial histories, regional histories, campaign and battle histories, army and unit histories, and even a few naval histories thrown in for good measure. Biographies of almost all major military and civilian leaders and an unsettling number of lesser luminaries have been written or rewritten , and the stream of memoirs, autobiographies, and contemporary accounts has reached flood tide. We have had volumes written about railroads , newspapermen, cloak-and-dagger types, prisoners, and minority groups. There have been studies of Confederate finance, Confederate engineers , Confederate doctors, Confederate music, and the Confederate command system. Lincoln's law partner, his wife, and his sons have been immortalized , as has been Mrs. Jefferson Davis. One publisher has even received a manuscript that purports to be the "definitive" study of Lee's horse, Traveller! Understandably, the quality of these works has been uneven. Some have been merely adequate, some have hardly been worth the paper they were written on, and some have been very good. I am pleased to say that the three Confederate state studies reviewed here belong to the last category. 437 438civil war history From a strictly military viewpoint, Florida was the least important of the three states as an active theater of operations. Floridians, following secession, immediately faced the problem of seizing Federal posts within their borders. Although installations at Chattahoochee and St. Augustine were successfully taken, the two most formidable strongholds, Fort Pickens and Key West, remained in Union hands throughout the war. Beginning in early 1862, Federal raids against selected posts in Florida were begun. While these raids did not materially affect Florida's contribution to the Confederate war effort or cause serious loss of life or property, they did cause a considerable amount of uneasiness and insecurity. There is here a detailed account of the battle of Olustee, the major Civil War battle fought on Florida soil. Among the more interesting observations made by Professor Johns are that very little manufacturing was done in Florida during the war; that comparatively little was accomplished in the area of railroad development, probably because Florida was not a major theater of combat; that no slave revolts occurred there; and that with the possible exception of Texas, Florida furnished fewer Negroes to the Union army than any other Confederate state. The author concludes that Florida was defeated not only by superior numbers and materiel but also because she had lost her will to fight. John Winters' study of Louisiana is essentially a "martial" book, one that underscores the sometimes neglected fact that events in the Western theater were very important in deciding the eventual outcome of the conflict. Louisiana , in particular, was the scene of many significant operations. The loss of New Orleans...

Major civil war plays, 1882–1899

(1954). Major civil war plays, 1882–1899. The Southern Speech Journal: Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 224-231.