More than one hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired
on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination,
and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's social and
political landscape.
Louis P. Masur's The U.S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction offers
a masterful and eminently readable overview of the war's multiple causes
and catastrophic effects. Masur begins by examining the complex origins
of the war, focusing on the pulsating tensions over states rights and
slavery. The book then proceeds to cover, year by year, the major
political, social, and military events, highlighting two important
themes: how the war shifted from a limited conflict to restore the Union
to an all-out war that would fundamentally transform Southern society,
and the process by which the war ultimately became a battle to abolish
slavery. Masur explains how the war turned what had been a loose
collection of fiercely independent states into a nation, remaking its
political, cultural, and social institutions. But he also focuses on the
soldiers themselves, both Union and Confederate, whose stories
constitute nothing less than America's Iliad. In the final chapter Masur
considers the aftermath
of the South's surrender at Appomattox and the clash over the policies
of reconstruction that continued to divide President and Congress,
conservatives and radicals, Southerners and Northerners for years to
come.
In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley wrote that the war had "wrought
so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence
cannot be measured short of two or three generations." This concise
history of the entire Civil War era offers an invaluable introduction to
the dramatic events whose effects are still felt today.
