1861: The Civil War Awakening- A Book Review

Works of history are often able to synthesize long-term trends with great single events, stories of entire nations and peoples with individual biographies, weaving these macro and micro elements of history together into a cogent and complete analysis that recreates some aspect of the past. In time for the 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War, Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening pulls together many heroic and touching personal stories from soldiers’ and civilians’ diaries into a compelling account of how “the United States are” became “the United States is.”

The book begins on April 12, 1861, when the newly formed Confederate States of America fired the first shots of the bloodiest war of American history on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, releasing the decades-long tension between the northern, mostly free and industrialized states, and the southern, agrarian and slaveholding states. Despite the tensions that had been building over the years, the actual outbreak of war took many civilians by surprise, as few presumed that such a ‘domestic’ issue as slavery could spark such violence. Less than a century after its conception, the American experiment was in imminent danger of being prematurely ended by socio-economic forces and an inadequately compelling national identity.

Many Americans, in both North and South, identified first as members of their states rather than as federal citizens, and Goodheart shows through diaries, journals, letters and news articles that the Civil War was as much about forging a national identity as about ending of the practice of slavery. This local identification was exemplified in the way armies were raised, with regiments locally recruited and holding their loyalty first to their local colonels, fellows and states, and  secondly to the nation. Thus, the early armies of the Civil War were more an alliance of many small, local contingents loosely tied together by a national government. In 1861, Goodheart describes how this locally-focused mentality changed rapidly throughout the first two years of the war, and, though local sentiment was still important, armies on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line became more unified by the experience of war and bound to their respective national governments, a trend that was reflected in the country as a whole.

Goodheart recounts the untold stories of the American Civil War and fills his work with diary entries and letters from many soldiers and civilians who lived, fought and died through this terrible era. For that generation, as with the Greatest Generation, the war was the defining event of their lives, and through these first-hand accounts, Goodheart traces the gradual change of affiliation from local provincialism to nationalism. He turns the lens away from the usual stars of the story, the politicians, military officers, activists and editors who strove to direct the course of events, and instead, explores the quieter corners of Civil War America, introducing fascinating men and women who have now been forgotten.

The book is written in a conversational, yet scholarly style that is engaging and easily evokes the human beings who wrote their experiences in journals and diaries so many years ago. However, because Goodheart intensely focuses on the life-stories of his subjects, readers hoping for a conventional war story might be put off by the book’s anecdotal format. Others may disagree with Goodheart’s unabashed optimism and admiration of the Union cause and disdain for Confederate motivations. Regardless, it is a thought-provoking and interesting exploration into how the United States was forged into a unitary nation in the crucible of war.

Rating: 3.5/5