1861: The Civil War Awakening (Vintage) (edition 2012)

This history actually covers the latter part of 1860 and events up to July 4, 1861. It is a fascinating description of public attitudes and social undercurrents in the run up to the Civil War which enlighten the conflict and round out our understanding of the early months of the conflict. I finally understand as much as I want about the New York Zouaves, their origins and their charismatic founder and leader. Goodheart also tells the story of how German immigrants kept Missouri in the Union. ( )

The battle for the union may have been paid for with blood, but it is generally written in perfume. I found it difficult to locate a book about the Civil War that doesn't drown in its own magnolia-scented prose. I started reading a half dozen different books about the Civil War before selecting and managing to get all the way through Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening. It's a solid overview of the way North and South perceived and dealt with the crisis that had lingered since the union's founding, and does a good job of focusing on both systemic pressure (slavery, international trade, the legal system) and individual action (Lincoln's perspective, a given soldier's decision-making, a slave's journey. The depiction of slavery is gut-wrenching.

I came away wanting to read more about the norms of antebellum life (I'll probably start with Mary Chesnut's diary) and the history of the cotton trade.

Adam Goodheart brings attention to the aspects of the early Civil War era that get bypassed in most history books. He brings out the human and personal aspects unlike most history books. A masterpiece. ( )

A fascinating book on selected topicsin 1861 leading to the Civil War. It covers many topics about which I had read in passing, so I learned a lot. ( )

What were Americans—Southern, Northern, Western, white, black—thinking at the outset of the Civil War? What made large numbers of Northerners willing to fight to keep the South in the Union, and eventually to get rid of slavery (as patchy and incomplete as that willingness was)? Goodheart argues that, while there is no doubt as to the right and wrong sides in the war, the standard narrative in which the South triggered the war downplays the agency of those in the North. He packs his account of that year with lots of physical details, from the sound of gunfire to the smell of shit in the Capitol where early troops were housed before better accommodations were found. It was hard not to read this history of the growth of apocalyptic thinking and the abandonment of compromise in the face of a Southern intransigience that seemingly wouldn’t be appeased by anything short of begging for forgiveness for electing Lincoln and letting slavery become universal as saying something about the Tea Party/the current role of the white South in our national war of all against all. ( )