What This Cruel War Was Over
Chandra Manning tackles the grey area between the intersection of slavery and war in "What This Cruel War Was Over", which began as her Harvard doctoral dissertation. Reviewing the book, Chuck Leddy writes in The Philadelphia Enquirer
A larger question is why Confederate soldiers who did not own slaves would risk everything fighting to protect slavery. And here is where Manning's study is at its scholarly best. She meticulously explores the differing conceptions of "liberty" and "manhood" on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, concluding that even poor, non-slaveholding Confederate soldiers viewed slavery as essential to their way of life.
(...)
Manning's final words rightfully bemoan "how the United States could in the crucible of war create such vast potential for change and then, in the end, fail to fulfill it." Despite its sometimes academic narrative style, Manning's book makes an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery and the Civil War.>
Comments are closed for this post.