This Great Struggle: America's Civil War

Woodworth, of Texas Christian University, enhances his position in the front rank of Civil War scholars. He makes a strong case for three controversial points. First, the Civil War was about slavery. The fundamental dispute over the "peculiar institution" had continually defied peaceful resolution; state's rights, tariffs, all the other wedge issues were structured by slavery; and from the war's beginning both sides knew why they were really fighting. Second, Woodworth establishes the war's crucial sector as between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. The eastern theater rapidly stalemated; only in the west was there space to sustain the large-scale maneuver war that gave full scope to the Union's industrial superiority and to developed generals like Grant and Sherman. Third, Woodworth demonstrates that while the Union's conventional victory was "clear and overwhelming," Reconstruction was an unconventional phase of the war—"not quite open war but not quite peace"—in which the advantage rested with the vanquished South. A desperate commitment to sustaining white supremacy outlasted the North's will to complete the transformation of American society. This is a well-crafted, comprehensively researched overview of America's central conflict (Apr.)