Böcker av Gary W. Gallagher

In the seventy-three succinct essays gathered in The Enduring Civil War, celebrated historian Gary Gallagher highlights the complexity and richness of the war, from its origins to its memory, as topics for study, contemplation, and dispute.

A panoramic collection of essays written by both established and emerging scholars, American Discord examines critical aspects of the Civil War era, including rhetoric and nationalism, politics and violence, gender, race, and religion.

In this collection, Civil War historian Gary Gallagher examines Robert E. Lee, his principal subordinates, the treatment they have received in the literature on Confederate military history, and the continuing influence of Lost Cause arguments in the late-twentieth-century United States.

Today, many believe the Civil War was fought over slavery. This view satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gallagher's searing revisionist history shows, it is an anachronistic judgment. Northern citizen-soldiers fought the war to preserve the Union. Emancipation was secondary to the war's primary goal of safeguarding the republic.

Gallagher argues that we should not ask why the Confederacy collapsed so soon but rather how it lasted so long. He examines the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it to show how the home front responded to the war, endured its hardships, and assembled armies that fought with great spirit and determination.

Explores loyalty in the era of the Civil War, focusing on Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early. Looking at levels of allegiance to their native state, the slaveholding South, to the US, and the Confederacy, Gallagher shows how these men represent responses to the mid-nineteenth century crisis.