The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War (OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES)

Every time Union armies invaded Southern territory there were unintended consequences. Military campaigns always affected the local population -- devastating farms and towns, making refugees of the inhabitants, undermining slavery. Local conditions in turn altered the course of military events. The social effects of military campaigns resonated throughout geographic regions and across time. Campaigns and battles often had a serious impact on national politics and international affairs. Not all campaigns in the Civil War had a dramatic impact on the country, but every campaign, no matter how small, had dramatic and traumatic effects on local communities. Civil War military operations did not occur in a vacuum; there was a price to be paid on many levels of society in both North and South. The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War assembles the contributions of thirty-nine leading scholars of the Civil War, each chapter advancing the central thesis that operational military history is decisively linked to the social and political history of Civil War America. The chapters cover all three major theaters of the war and include discussions of Bleeding Kansas, the Union naval blockade, the South West, American Indians, and Reconstruction. Each essay offers a particular interpretation of how one of the war's campaigns resonated in the larger world of the North and South. Taken together, these chapters illuminate how key transformations operated across national, regional, and local spheres, covering key topics such as politics, race, slavery, emancipation, gender, loyalty, and guerrilla warfare. "This volume integrates the military and social histories of the American Civil War in its chapter organization. Its contributors use War and Society methods: a holistic approach to understanding war and its consequences that incorporates the topics and techniques of a variety of historical sub-fields. Each chapter narrates a military campaign embedded in its strategic, political, and social context. Authors explore the consequences of a military campaign for the people who lived in its path and provide analysis of how an army's presence reverberated throughout society in its region of operation. The volume yields a number of important insights about the impact of military campaigns, including the scale of movement, deportation, and depopulation among civilians; how the refugee experience and military action shaped emancipation as a process; the extent of guerrilla warfare; resistance to Federal authority in the Great Plains and the southwest; locations of localized total war; the implementation of military conscription in the Confederacy; a campaign's consequences for cities, rural areas, and the natural environment; the synergy between war and politics. Chapters consider the role of weather, topography, logistics, and engineering in the conduct of military campaigns"-- Provided by publisher This volume integrates the military and social histories of the American Civil War in its chapter organization. Its contributors use war and society methods: a holistic approach to understanding war and its consequences that incorporates the topics and techniques of a variety of historical subfields. Each chapter narrates a military campaign embedded in its strategic, political, and social context. Authors explore the consequences of a military campaign for the people who lived in its path and provide analysis of how an army’s presence reverberated throughout society in its region of operation. The volume yields a number of important insights about the impact of military campaigns, including the scale of movement, deportation, and depopulation among civilians; how the refugee experience and military action shaped emancipation as a process; the extent of guerrilla warfare; resistance to federal authority in the Great Plains and the Southwest; locations of localized total war; the implementation of military conscription in the Confederacy; a campaign’s consequences for cities, rural areas, and the natural environment; and the synergy between war and politics. Chapters consider the role of weather, topography, logistics, and engineering in the conduct of military campaigns This title assembles the contributions of 39 leading scholars of the Civil War, each chapter advancing the central thesis that operational military history is decisively linked to the social and political history of Civil War America. The chapters cover all three major theaters of the war and include discussions of Bleeding Kansas, the Union naval blockade, the South West, American Indians, and Reconstruction. Each essay offers a particular interpretation of how one of the war's campaigns resonated in the larger world of the North and South. Taken together, these chapters illuminate how key transformations operated across national, regional, and local spheres, covering key topics such as politics, race, slavery, emancipation, gender, loyalty, and guerrilla warfare Assembles contributions from thirty-nine leading historians of the American Civil War into a coherent attempt to assess the war's impact on American society