Defining the Civil War Era

Defining the Civil War Era The latest issue of Civil War Book Review once again features a wide spectrum of books focusing on the Civil War era. Yet defining what constitutes the Civil War era sometimes proves challenging. When and how did the conflict start? At what point did arm...

Putting the Civil War in Context

Putting the Civil War in Context Context. Students of the Civil Warùand of any branch of history for that matterùalways search for the context in which events happened. Historians have always taken special interest in why the Civil War came, what provoked armed conflict between North a...

The Changing Face of Civil War Studies

The Changing Face of Civil War Studies Welcome to the new Civil War Book Review! What you see in this new issue is the culmination of an extensive redesign process we have undertaken to make the CWBR site a better experience for our readers. Of course, one will immediate...

Manifest Destinies: America\u27s Westward Expansion and the Road to Civil War

Re-examining American Expansion and the Coming of War America’s truly breathtaking westward expansion has captivated the attention of the nation’s citizens since those heady years preceding the Civil War. So too Manifest Destiny and its discontents have drawn generations of historians ...

Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation

Richard J. Ellis\u27s Old Tip vs. The Sly Fox is now the standard history of the contest between Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison. Every student of the early republic should read this account of how the Log Cabin Campaign was about style and substance

New Directions in Civil War History

Once in a generation it seems, a historian writes a book that literally changes the landscape of the history of the Civil War era. Scholars dream of producing that one seminal book that changes the way people understand a portion of our history. And readers eagerly await the next great book that w...

Old Buck and the Political Crisis of the 1850s

James Buchanan has never enjoyed a good reputation among historians and president-raters; most people rate his presidency at or near the worst in American history. Yet even as students of the 1850s note his shortcomings, many—if not most—of the scholars of this period qualify their answer. For Jam...

Preserving the Written Word

Preserving the Written Word The recent death of historian John Y. Simon marks the passing of one of the nation\u27s finest documentary editors and gives us a chance to reflect not only on the work of a remarkable historian, but also on what that work means to scholars of the Civil War era

How Historians Remember the Civil War

How Historians Remember the Civil War Many people tend to view Civil War commemoration as an almost strictly public act where individuals, civic organizations, veterans groups, heritage societies, and others participate in celebrations and ceremonies to remember the over 600,000 Union and C...

Commemorating the Life of Lincoln

Two hundred years ago this month, our nation\u27s sixteenth president was born in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. As so many Americans learned in grade school and have read in numerous books, Lincoln rose from those humble beginnings to become president of a nation in the midst of its...