Books in the Civil War America series

American Civil Wars takes readers beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the U.S. Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings?all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate how the United States' sectional strife was caught up in a larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future. These struggles were all part of a vast web, connecting not just Washington and Richmond but also Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Rio de Janeiro and--on the other side of the Atlantic--London, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. This volume breaks new ground by charting a hemispheric upheaval and expanding Civil War scholarship into the realms of transnational and imperial history. American Civil Wars creates new connections between the uprisings and civil wars in and outside of American borders and places the United States within a global context of other nations.Contributors:Matt D. Childs, University of South CarolinaAnne Eller, Yale UniversityRichard Huzzey, University of LiverpoolHoward Jones, University of AlabamaPatrick J. Kelly, University of Texas at San AntonioRafael de Bivar Marquese, University of Sao PauloErika Pani, College of MexicoHilda Sabato, University of Buenos AiresSteve Sainlaude, University of Paris IV SorbonneChristopher Schmidt-Nowara, Tufts UniversityJay Sexton, University of Oxford

During the US Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D.H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war", an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort.

In this rich study of Union governors and their role in the US Civil War, Stephen D. Engle examines how these politicians were pivotal in securing victory. While providing detailed and engaging portraits of these men, their state-level actions, and their collective cooperation, Engle brings into new focus the era's complex political history.

The role of slaves and free blacks in the politics of secession.

Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, this book looks at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery.