Books by Mark E. Neely Jr.

Examining party conflict as seen through the lens of the developing war, the excesses of party patronage, the impact of wartime elections, the highly partisan press, and the role of the loyal opposition, Neely dismantles the longstanding argument in Civil War scholarship that the survival of the party system in the North contributed to its victory.

Neely considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limit that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen. Modern overemphasis on violence in Civil War literature has led many scholars to go too far in drawing analogies with the 20th century's "total war" and the grim guerrilla struggles of Vietnam.