Blair What is the Civil War

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editors note: what is the civil war?

Welcome to the special golden-anniversary issue of Civil War History. For

the last fifty years this journal has provided a home for the best scholars

publishing in the field. This issue republishes several of the most influential

articles from this long run, along with a new, provocative essay by Drew Gilpin

Faust and reminiscences by two of the editors who provided turning points

in the life of this publication, James I. Robertson Jr. and John T. Hubbell.

This journal was born and matured during a protean time in the histori-

cal profession when the definition of history itself underwent transforma-

tion. The last fifty years has witnessed a shift from top-down approaches to

greater emphases on the lives of common people. To uncover the experience

of people who left little written record required more creative approaches

that employed additional methodological tools. Historians borrowed from

such disciplines as political science, linguistics, economics, and philosophy.

As a consequence, greater attention has been paid to the lives of women,

African Americans, and other disenfranchised groups. And scholars for the

most part acknowledge the differences among Americans wrought by class,

even if they do not always agree on the particular definition of a social group

or the extent of the conflicts. Today scholars are still investigating the expe-

riences of groups of people, but they also worry about fitting the different

pieces back into a larger American narrative, even as some doubt the ability

to create an all-encompassing story that incorporates the richness and

struggles of the lives of everyday people.

What constitutes the field of Civil War history similarly has changed over

the past five decades. Interpretations of the war and Reconstruction went

from emphasizing battles and leaders to learning the impact of war on soci-ety and how a people recently freed from slavery did not simply bow to the

forces of history but influenced policy making. During the life of this jour-

nal, slavery has been restored by historians as a central cause for the war, and

the Radicals have gone from villains to heroes, even if remaining somewhat

flawed human beings with racial blinders of their own. And now we pay

attention to the wars impact on our own lives,finding new ways that memory

affects todays debates and shapes current controversies.

No longer does the Civil War mean only military history, although mili-tary studies remain an absolutely essential component. It was, after all, a war

that almost ripped this country in two between and , and it would

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not do to ignore this fact. But even the definition of military history has

expanded. Logistical matters consume greater attention than they once did,

as do the motivations of soldiers and how a society mobilizes for war.

Womens participation has become more prominent, with scholars nowfinding them at times disguising themselves as men tofight in combat. Within

the past couple of decades, the homefront has grown into a newfield of

specialized study. Scholars now attempt to see the interrelationships between

the battlefield and the homefront rather than study campaigns in isolation.

On the whole, the path of scholarly inquiry during the past fifty years has

stretched both the boundaries of disciplines and the sense of chronology

itself. For much of its life, this journal bore the subtitle A Journal of the

Middle Period. This was dropped under the current regime because theterm has lost currency in favor of mid-nineteenth-century America; but this

expansive view of the era continues as we explore the causes, conflict, and

consequences over a longer period of time.

In this issue appear something old and something new. The old is repre-

sented by gems from the prior fifty years of publishing. Editorial board mem-

bers, the editorial assistant, and an editor past and present combined to se-

lect three of the articles deemed indicative of the rich offerings that have

appeared. The article by Otto H. Olsen on the extent of slaveowning in the

South has become a standard way for historians to answer at least part of the

question about why white Southerners supported the Civil War. For a long

time apologists argued against slavery as a cause of the conflict because most

of the white South did not own slaves. Olsens calculations, however, dem-

onstrated that on average nearly a third of white Southerners had direct ties

to slavery. In another influential article, James M. McPherson pushed fur-

ther the work of C. Vann Woodward in pondering the differences between

North and South and whether these developments were distinctive or part

of a broader pattern. McPherson argued for two distinct sections, with more

than economic conflict at the heart of the issue. Finally, Mark E. Neely Jr. has

conducted a repeated assault on the notion that the North engaged in a total

war against the South. Here, and in other works, he claimed that what was

remarkable about the war was its limited and targeted nature, which did not

escalate into an all-out conflict against civilians.

For the new we have some thoughts by Drew Faust on why we have such

a fascination for the Civil War and war in general. Additionally, we feature

reminiscences from two influential editors. James I. Robertson Jr. was notthe first editor, and by no means the person serving the longest in that ca-

pacity, but he did take over the journal at a critical moment, nudging it

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further toward becoming an important vehicle for scholarly endeavor. Also

inside is an essay by John T. Hubbell, the editor whowith a tenure span-

ning thirty-five yearsserved the longest and obviously had the greatest

influence on this publication. Johns essay adds additional context to thearticles that have been selected for reprinting and shows that many more

just as well could have been chosen to appear here.

Despite a voluminous outpouring of books and journal articles, histori-

ans are in some senses only beginning to catch up to certain facets of Americas

Civil War. While much has been achieved in the past fifty years, more work

remains ahead. For example, there is no comprehensive study of women in

the North similar to what Faust has done for the South, and no monographs

exist on black women in the North during the confl

ict. Some studies havebegun to focus on outrages during the conflict, but there is no comprehen-

sive work that puts the brutal side of the war into perspective. Very little has

been done on postwar adjustment of veterans in the North. In fact, most

aspects of the Northern war lag far behind the literature on the South and the

Confederacy, which have received far more attention. Various approaches to

history also remain somewhat separate, with social historians still learning

about the war, and emancipation and black history in general often treated as

topics separate from the battles. And while scholars have pursued certain of

the international dimensions of the conflictsuch as diplomacy and the pos-

sibility of intervention by England and Francethe American Civil War in

only a few cases has been rooted in its international context, as part of emerg-

ing trends in the Western world featuring certain kinds of nation building.

This only means that fifty years ofCivil War Historyhas been a very nice

start. There have been many significant achievements in understanding this

era that have come from the combined efforts of numerous authors, book

reviewers, editorial assistants, board members, peer reviewers, typographers,

copy editors, and editors. Yet it is comforting to note that new generations

of scholars continue to find fascination with the era and the ways that the

past informs the present. With the rich treasures that await further explora-

tion of this transformative era in the American past, it is not be too bold to

wish for fifty more years of wonderful discovery to grace the pages ofCivil

War History.

William Blair

Editor

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Blair What is the Civil War