The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War.

Edited by Joan E. Cashin. (Princeton, N.J., and Oxford, Eng.: Princeton University Press, c. 2002. Pp. [xii], 397. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-691-09174-9; cloth, $65.00, ISBN 0-691-09173-0.)

This volume's fifteen essays about civilian life during the Civil War grapple with the difficulty of understanding the fullness of the war experience and the vagaries of postwar memory. Some do so by digging new ground, while others enliven old debates through new interpretive strategies or inventive methodologies. Divided into three sections--on the South, the North, and the border regions--the essays investigate such disparate topics as changes in the "soundscape" of the southern home front; the actions of northern women missionaries in the Civil War South; Deep South slaves and their understanding of the changing power relations wrought by the war; soldiers' sentimental ideas about home and family; the demographic and social history of Confederate widows; the life of outspoken Republican orator Anna Elizabeth Dickinson; continuing questions surrounding the guilt or innocence of Mary Surratt, who was executed for conspiring in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; the impact of border-state politics on white children growing up in wartime Maryland; and the ways that racism among northerners could be transfigured by wartime experiences.

Additional themes receive particularly fresh treatment, as in the two essays exploring issues of resistance and dissent in the North. William Blair's "We Are Coming, Father Abraham--Eventually: The Problem of Northern Nationalism in the Pennsylvania Recruiting Drives of 1862" investigates the relationship between military service and patriotism in the North. Blair cautions against misreading resistance to recruitment as disloyalty, arguing that the "nature of loyalty and disloyalty was being redefined" in the early years of the war (p. 184). Indeed, Pennsylvanians (like most Americans) believed that "[t]he locality did not serve the interest of the nation, but the nation-state had to represent, protect, and nurture the interests of the locality" (p. 204). Anti-enlistment dissent was rooted in a widespread belief that the state should accommodate the legitimate interests of the recruit. Thus, harvests should be reaped before enlistment, terms of service should be limited, and bounties should be offered to ensure the economic stability of a recruit's family in his absence. Blair demonstrates that such demands were not perceived as disloyal until the threat of conscription prompted "a subtle but important shift in community attitudes about the civilian men who ignored the recruiting drive" (p. 196). Approaching similar themes is Joan E. Cashin's "Deserters, Civilians, and Draft Resistance in the North." Reevaluating the historiography of northern desertion, Cashin concludes that though most civilians decried such behavior, certain citizens nonetheless tolerated, and sometimes actively assisted, conscription resisters throughout the war. Indeed, Cashin sees geographical patterns at work, noting that "commitment to the Union cause" was most likely to be "tenuous" in southern Illinois and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa (p. 263).

In "Union Father, Rebel Son: Families and the Question of Civil War Loyalty," Amy E. Murrell also investigates the nature of loyalty, but in the border states, where disagreements between fathers and sons frequently mirrored national divisions. Relying largely on personal correspondence, Murrell explains that while most fathers viewed their sons' dissent as an act of filial rebellion, sons believed it possible to maintain fidelity to fathers while rejecting parental political allegiances. The real disagreement thus lay "over the relationship between family and political loyalties," with fathers seeing "politics as a mere reflection of their personal relationship" and sons understanding political and personal loyalties as "entirely separate" (p. 368). Murrell concludes that the very ties tested by such disagreements ultimately fostered postwar rapprochement for most families, despite bitter wartime estrangements.

Two essays center on historical memory of the Civil War and its bearing on race relations in the postwar period. In "Race, Memory, and Masculinity: Black Veterans Recall the Civil War," W. Fitzhugh Brundage investigates the postwar activities and ideas of black veterans in the South. Noting that "[r]epresentations of history in the South were instruments of, and even constituted, power" (p. 137), he shows how black veterans struggled to defend the record of their "military service and valor" in the face of considerable opposition from white southerners as well as fellow veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic, whites who increasingly favored regional reconciliation over acknowledgment of black contributions to winning the war (p. 138). Margaret S. Creighton's "Living on the Fault Line: African American Civilians and the Gettysburg Campaign" explores similar themes by reconstructing the perilous circumstances for blacks living in southern Pennsylvania during Lee's 1863 invasion. Confederates aggressively pursued African American men, women, and children, subsequently transporting them to Virginia as slaves. Though such actions were deplored by local whites (who occasionally lent aid and assistance to the victims), they were generally deemed insignificant when measured against losses of white property or lives. The experiences of black Pennsylvanians were subsequently ignored during Gettysburg's memorialization. Only recently has this episode of Lee's campaign been highlighted, largely by local African Americans.

This collection will be of great interest to scholars for its breadth of coverage as well as for the notable strength of the essays' research, writing, and interpretation.

MARGARET M. STOREY

DePaul University