Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction

by Allen C. Guelzo

The Civil War is the greatest trauma ever experienced by the American nation, a four-year paroxysm of violence that left in its wake more than 600,000 dead, more than 2 million refugees, and the destruction (in modern dollars) of more than $700 billion in property. The war also sparked some of the most heroic moments in American history and enshrined a galaxy of American heroes. Above all, it permanently ended the practice of slavery and proved, in an age of resurgent monarchies, that a liberal democracy could survive the most frightful of challenges.

In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. And unlike other surveys of the Civil War era, it extends the reader's vista to include the postwar Reconstruction period and discusses the modern-day legacy of the Civil War in American literature and popular culture. Guelzo also puts the conflict in a global perspective, underscoring Americans' acute sense of the vulnerability of their republic in a world of monarchies. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and especially the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South.

Written by a leading authority on our nation's most searing crisis, Fateful Lightning offers a vivid and original account of an event whose echoes continue with Americans to this day.

Genres: History, Civil War, American History, Nonfiction, American Civil War, War, Politics

576 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 4, 2012

About the author

Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953) is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored/He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword/His truth is marching on.”
- Julia Ward Howe, The Battle Hymn of the Republic

When I first read this book, several years ago, I did so during a fourteen hour flight to China. That’s the best compliment I can give Allen Guelzo’s Fateful Lightning. With a few exceptions – lunch, dinner, bathroom breaks, and a few minutes gazing out the window at Siberia – this book fully kept my attention. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t listen to music. I didn’t watch old episodes of Two and a Half Men. I just read, cover to cover, all 536 pages of text.

I don’t mean to flaunt my Civil War bona fides, but I’ve read a few books on this subject in my day (and visited a few battlefields, and collected a little memorabilia, and scared my wife by broaching the idea of reenacting). In short, I’m past the point in my Civil War reading where a one-volume overview of the war holds any interest for me at all.

Obviously, I made an exception for Fateful Lightning, and I did so for a simple reason: the author. Guelzo is an exceptional historian, who has produced excellent books across a range of Civil War topics, including the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction, and the Battle of Gettysburg (his Gettysburg: The Last Invasion is one of the best battle narratives of any battle I’ve ever read).

Fateful Lightning demonstrates everything that makes Guelzo (a professor at Gettysburg College, naturally) so good at his job. It is sharp, it is exceptionally well-written, it is finely crafted, it is enlightening, and it is skeptical without being contrarian. Every page brims with illumination and intelligence. The Civil War is a timeless subject, but it is also well-worn. In Guelzo’s hands, it somehow feels very fresh.

Fateful Lightning is not a typical one-volume history. It relies on a more topical, rather than chronological approach. Don’t get me wrong, it takes you through the war. It’s at its best, though, when engaging in discussions other than battlefield tactics and the litany of immortal clashes.

Guelzo begins with several chapters devoted to the beginning of the war. With remarkable efficiency, he leads the reader from the Articles of Confederation all the way up to Secession and the bombardment of Fort Sumter, describing how the “empire of liberty” turned into a fractious, sectionally divided nation. He covers the Nullification Crisis, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Dred Scott with a remarkable balance of brevity and erudition. Spoiler Alert: the war began because of slavery.

[S]lavery was neither a backward nor dying system…It was aggressive, dynamic, and mobile, and by pandering to the racial prejudices of a white republic starved for labor, it was perfectly capable of expansion. In 1810, the Southern states had a slave population of just over 1 million; by 1860, in defiance of every expectation for what a system of organized violence could do to the survival of a people, the slave population stood at just under 4 million. No matter that to outside observers the South looked like anything but a market society, and no matter that slavery was based on the absurd and irrational prejudice of race; slavery’s greatest attractions were its cheapness, its capacity for violent exploitation, and its mobility. Southerners understood that slavery was precisely the element that would help them transcend the limitations of poor soils and single-crop dependency and emerge into the dazzling light of a modern economy.

No one-volume history about the Civil War can be comprehensive. Tradeoffs have to be made. In Fateful Lightning, Guelzo eschews the description of individual battles, save for the most general remarks. He places the battles in their order, describes what they meant, explains their repercussions, but he does not make the slightest attempt to recreate the tableaus of, say, Shelby Foote. For instance, he describes Antietam as “a terrible, bitter, all-day battle,” and then goes on to devote the next thirteen pages to the Emancipation Proclamation, covering it from all angles (Constitutional, political, strategic). There is also an exceptional chapter dealing with logistics, detailing the problems of supply and manufacturing, especially in the blockaded South.

Guelzo is wonderful at finding the overlooked aspects of the war. For instance, he describes how West Point, under the influence of Denis Hart Mahan, imbued its officer corps with a “preference for a strategic defensive posture” calling for a limited offensive to seize and hold enemy territory, eventually forcing the enemy to attack you. This thinking informed the philosophy of an aging, gout-ridden Winfield Scott, who devised the much maligned “Anaconda Plan.” This plan, taking into account the unreliability of militiamen and volunteers, incorporated a blockade and a defensive cordon, along with an expeditionary force, to both squeeze the South and secure strategic ground. Scott soon lost his job, but parts of his plan were eventually put into place and used to win the war (though, for some reason, he has never received any credit for this).

Another point of focus is on politics, specifically, the role of political generals. Guelzo consistently highlights the importance of political identification to the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his many, many generals. Unfortunately, such concerns were often more important than military skill in determining who would lead the great Armies of both the North and South. The permeation of politics is sometimes lost in more battle-oriented histories. Here, its corrupting influence – party over country – infuses everything. (One shudders to think of Lincoln refusing to promote Ulysses S. Grant over fears of Grant’s political ambitions. Thankfully, Grant – for the duration of the war – disavowed any intent to seek higher office).

Guelzo does not neglect the common soldier, but his chapter devoted to them is concerned with their personal experiences, rather than where they were ordered to go, and by whom. As he did in Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, he describes the war in visceral detail:

The most frightening aspect of combat was the chance of being seriously or mortally wounded. Not only was the general inexperience of the volunteer officer more likely to expose a soldier to lethal amounts of fire for longer periods of time than in any other nineteenth-century war, but the soft led Minié ball (unlike the brass jacketed bullets of later wars) mushroomed upon impact, smashing up bones and cartilage, and making dreadful exit wounds. “Often did I see a simple gunshot wound,” wrote one surgeon, “scarcely larger than the bullet which made it, become larger and larger until a hand would scarcely cover it, and extend from the skin downward into the tissues until one could put half his fist into the sloughing wound.”

Fateful Lightning also goes beyond Appomattox and the death of Lincoln, to cover the oft-ignored period of Reconstruction (though you should definitely read Guelzo’s short, insightful Reconstruction: A Concise History).

Civil War literature is a crowded field. The standard one-volume on the subject is – and will probably remain – James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. The standard multivolume is – and will probably remain – Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative. I’ve read these, found them worthy, and recommend them.

But I also recommend this.

Learning solely about the battles is to learn the Civil War in a vacuum. Guelzo rebalances the scales in Fateful Lightning, and does so in a highly readable manner.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best one volume overview I have read this year about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Although it was heavy on Civil War and light on Reconstruction, the writing was lucid and concise. The author makes the argument that the Civil War was the epic event of the 19th century, along with the crooked events involving the 1876 Presidential election. Definitely worth your time, if you can absorb 500+ pages on one esoteric subject.

[Piker7977 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guelzo's Fateful Lightning is a superb history and a gold standard for any historian's ambition. His approach is sweeping to say the least as he manages to form a chronological construction of the events leading up to the conflict through the end of Reconstruction. Considering that he starts in the founding and ends in the early 20th century, that is no easy task. Through an expert condensing of the 18th and early 19th centuries, along with the 1870s through the 1920s, he creates helpful bookends to the war itself that are incredibly handy for grasping the slavery, race, and constitutional fault lines that the war attempted to fix, and how things came up tragically short in the long run. The main body of the work is not a strict military history, but a multi-lensed perspective that takes into consideration the Constitution, politics, military leaders, political leaders, biographies, battles, gender, race, slavery, technology, and a quick touch-point on the intellectual components associated with or birthed from the war.

Guelzo is not one to write the American Civil War off as a wash or overall disappointment. In the epilogue, which is wonderful, he puts an emphasis on Frederick Douglas's thoughts that the war created enough progress as never to be forgotten nor trivialized in addition to an anecdote of Union veterans discussing how they would shun any reunion that displayed the Confederate flag in their presence. However, this historian is not one to ignore irony and tragedy as he includes a small sketch about the annual rose sent to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (Union veteran) from Justice Edward Douglass White (Confederate veteran) on the anniversary of Antietam. It's as if to say that romanticism will always be a part of memory and history, but it must not overshadow the importance of progress and sacrifice; regardless of how ambiguous the results may be.

[Jake Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource! Superb one volume of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is surefoot, judicious, and profound. Whether it is a "better" history of the Civil War era than James McPherson or Harry Stout's volumes is difficult to say. Fateful Lightning is less detailed in its military history of the war than Battle Cry of Freedom, though as a religious, intellectual, and political historian I am not overly concerned about the military aspect of the conflict. Nor is the book a moral history of the war in the sense that Upon the Altar of the Nation is, though it is still very strong in terms of analysis and its assessment the long-term impact of the war. Despite being nearly 600 pages long, the book is a joy to read. It is also pleasing to see that the editors chose to use footnotes, as opposed to endnotes.

[Bob O'Bannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whenever a person frets that our nation is "more divided than ever," it is probably worth pointing out that about 150 years ago, our divisions were so deep that they led to a bloody civil war. Astonishingly, at that time, half of our nation decided to secede and form their own nation, with their own constitution and their own president. While slavery was certainly a major factor in the conflict, it was not the only catalyst at work. Many people in the north were just as racist as people in the south, so for them, it wasn't emancipation but the preservation of the union that was top of mind. (Even President Lincoln assured the South at one time that his aim was “not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states.” — p.158). If the south emerged victorious, thus permanently dividing the country, then every tyrannical king or dictator in the world at the time could gloat that the American experiment had failed.

So the war went on, and when it was over, the southern economy was devastated and 360,222 people were dead (a number almost certainly under-reported). In the north alone, probably 200,000 more soldiers died after the war from wounds and diseases incurred during the conflict. Similarly grievous was the fact that reconstruction efforts to ensure civil rights for African-Americans after the war met with one setback after another, causing some to wonder if the war's legacy was just to exchange one kind of slavery for another.

There is so much meat in this book to chew on. Allen Guelzo (a Christian who has been a frequent guest on Kevin DeYoung's podcast and is serving as an advisory member of the PCA's study committee on Christian nationalism) doesn't give us a mere chronological unfolding of events, but takes slight detours to help us understand factors not normally considered, such as the role of the US Navy in the Civil War; the way soldiers' uniforms were designed; the effect the war had on the banking industry (which can make for some slow reading); and the plight of women, both those at home and those wanting to fight (some by pretending they were men!).

It is sadly true that slavery was supported by some Christians, including the famous Presbyterian Robert Lewis Dabney (who asserted that slavery was “perfectly lawful and right” — p.87), but nevertheless, it was Protestant evangelicalism that “formed the backbone” of much resistance to slavery (p.45), including the efforts of the famous evangelist Charles Finney, showing that even people with aberrant theology can get some things right.

During the hardest of times we sometimes see displayed the greatest of virtues. Of course there is much to admire in men like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, but there is also Thaddeus Stevens, who died after the war was over and asked to be buried in a segregated cemetery for African-American paupers. He wanted to illustrate in his death "the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before his Creator." (p.504). It would be a long time before the vision of Lincoln, Grant and Stevens would start to become a reality.

[Andrew Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

To understand the US, I firmly believe you need to understand the Civil War. Not in some crass "the tea party are neo-confederates" way, but to get a sense of the diverse principles and impulses which work in the glorious, chaotic and utterly human society that is America.

This is a fantastic single volume history, that not only tells the story in a smooth, well written fashion, but also tries to convey both the scope of scholarly debate on the big historical questions, as well as providing as up to date an assessment of what actually happened and why.

In this day and age when the story of democracy seems a little grubby, full of decaying institutions and declining participation, the US civil war is an vitally important story. It offers many insights for understanding how and why democracies can and do fail. And the fundamental, historic importance of ensuring that democracy by and for the people shall endure on this earth.

Guelzo seeks to provide an broad brush overview of the war, the major characters and the major issues still debated by scholars. This is naturally a big picture history, with the main focus on the national politics and militaries, but he also has chapters that take in the wider view, showing how the war affected women, slaves, free blacks and worked at the level of class, ideology and culture. These chapters feel like natural extensions of the large story, given their place but never assumed to be more significant than the overall story. Likewise while there's a degree of Lincoln adoration, old Abe doesn't dominate too strongly as some histories like to portray.

There are reportedly over 50'000 books on the American Civil War. In preparing for this book, I feel Professor Guelzo may have almost read all of them. You could easily read this one and never have to read another. Though I suspect most will want more, and this book helpfully provides further reading lists on key topics as well as extensive (though not obtrusive) footnotes. The only section that felt a little short was the Reconstruction, a period I don't know as well, and still feel there is much to learn about. I'd have liked more on it, but at 535 pages, it's probably long enough as is.

After reading this and watching through Ken Burns' Civil War Doco, I've also ordered Shelby Foote's three volume history of the civil war. And while i'm normally not one for drawn out discussions of military tactics and battle stories, I'm also looking into some of his recommendations for books that cover the tactical and especially strategic campaigns in greater depth.

This is single volume history as it should be. Comprehensive enough you feel you don't need to read anything else, but wide enough in scope and enticing in discussion to awake you to dozens of new books and hundreds of pleasant hours of study and entertainment ahead.

Highly recommended.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book about the Civil War with a substantial portion dedicated to discussing the causes of the conflict. The first third explains the root causes of the war and the mounting hostilities between the slave and free states in the decades before 1861. Guelzo does an excellent job of presenting the major events and political decisions that eventually catapulted the country into war. If you are not familiar with this aspect of our history, this book is well worth a read just for this section of the book.

The latter two thirds of the book are short chapters on various aspects of the Civil War. He discusses everything from transportation issues to weaponry to morale of the troops to the European viewpoint of the American War plus various other topics. Some of the major engagements are discussed, but the battles aren't really the focus of this book. This portion of the book reads more like a series of essays on a variety of unrelated topics and is not organized chronologically. I didn't enjoy this section as much as the pre civil war section simply because some of the topics didn't interest me. The last couple of chapters are about Reconstruction and Johnson's disastrous Presidency.

[T.J. Radcliffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If the United States were a person, it would be suffering from schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, and this book explains why.

Allen Guelzo covers the history leading up to the American Civil War in considerable detail, placing the war in the context of evolving political, social and economic differences between the North and the South, and in particular the internal contradictions of Southern society that made it unable to live with the North, or even itself.

The national vision of the United States has been haunted by the horrendous visions of black slavery from the very beginning, and Guelzo argues that the uniquely racist slave society of the pseudo-aristocratic South was ultimately incompatible with the growing push toward a liberal, market-centric, democratic, industrial, "free-labor" republic in the North.

The war itself was, like all wars, not necessary to achieve anyone's goals. It was merely the worst of all possible solutions to the problems facing Americans in the mid-1800's, the one least likely to achieve its stated ends, and the most inefficient means available for the one single end it actually did achieve: the preservation of the United States as a single country. But for a nation that has always been led by men who hear the voice of God telling them to do terrible things, war was the easy option.

Guelzo does a good job of placing Emancipation in context, and emphasizes that most anti-slavery agitators were at best weakly supportive of civil and political rights for freedmen. His account of the war itself includes a nicely interwoven texture of social history along with the battles, and a lucid account of the political and personal gyrations that saw the numerically and financially superior North fight ineffectively and incoherently for the first several years of the conflict.

His account of Reconstruction is relatively short, as it practically must be. It is to all intents and purposes an event that is still going on as Americans continue to struggle with the trauma that layered itself on top of their national schizophrenia. Something close to one in ten young men died by violence and disease and malnutrition and neglect--those factors collectively known as "glory"--in the war years and after, and the larger social questions of racism, civil rights and political participation for all Americans are still not resolved, as modern political parties continue to gerrymander and pass "voter ID" laws that the manipulative operators who filled the void left by Lincoln's death would recognize as variations on their own theme.

Because when you hear the voice of God in your head telling you to do terrible things, the one thing you will never admit is that you were wrong to do them, or back down from your relentless pursuit of the goals they have directed you toward, regardless of the human cost.

[Brian Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guelzo's history is notable for its significant treatment of the years leading up to the Civil War as well as for a brief treatment of Reconstruction. The book is light on military history; the major battles are recounted but with great brevity. The book instead focuses on the political and cultural aspects of the war. Though McPherson's work remains the best single volume work on the Civil War for its comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the war, Guelzo's insightful analysis makes this well worth the read. For instance, in discussing popular sovereignty, Guelzo notes, "Most of all, Lincoln condemned popular sovereignty because it tried to dodge the moral issue of slavery. . . . Even if all the voters of a territory unanimously demanded [slavery], their demanding it did not make it morally right. Liberty was not an end in itself, as popular sovereignty seemed to claim; it was a means, and it was intended to serve the interests of the natural rights that Jefferson had identified in the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Otherwise, liberty would itself be transformed into power, the power of a mob to do whatever it took a fancy to." Insights like these throughout the book make it a worthy read.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Matt said. Genius, especially when paired with the more traditional (liberal) view of McPherson's great Battle Cry of Freedom.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating book. This won’t be an in-depth review, only a superficial one.

The author’s writing is captivating. That may be too strong a word. But when I am used to dry readings, this one clearly stands out. The writing drew me in to the stories and topics of discussion. I wish I was able to convey more clearly what I mean. But I have an 11 month old to take care of. Suffice to say, his prose was easy on my mind and imagination. He made the complex simple to follow and understand.

I enjoyed the depth of topics he chose to get into. For instance, as a light reader of history, I found the discussion of Lincoln’s view on slavery very enlightening. As well as the extended discussion of those views of slavery held by sectors of culture and other influential individuals of history (Ulysses S. Grant).

Other topics he selves into took my interest. It may be ‘old hat’ to some. But this guy doesn’t read a lot of history. So it was interesting to read about the war’s affect upon the people living out their lives at home. I’ve known about the community effort war brought (something unheard of for today). But the devastation of poverty it brought to most everyone is surreal to think about brought the lens of today. Add to that, the everyday life of soldiers.

I am not one to judge critically his research. But I have read books on US Grant. And at least done of his points about Grant falls short. Furthermore, I thought his treatment of response and beliefs of religious folk in the South to be lacking in proper assessment.

(We live in B grade culture. But C is average and A is reserved for the few top earned.)

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

"a point often missed in the terrible toll of the Civil War's losses and shortfalls, is that the Republic survived."

[Schoppie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the Civil War. It holds its own when compared to McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom - especially in dealing with religious subjects related to the war.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brisk, sweeping general history of the Civil War era. The book is mostly focused on such issues as the causes of the war, civilian government, and the experience of soldiers and civilians, as well as the story of Reconstruction, which Guelzo judges as an ultimate failure despite some short-term successes.

Guelzo covers the the run-up to the war, the campaigns and battles, diplomacy, strategy, economics, the slavery issue, and finally the basics of Reconstruction. Guelzo’s book is usually at its most interesting when discussing the impact of the war. Postwar America was shaped by a war-weariness that took its toll on people’s expectations, and Guelzo argues that this also led to a widespread loss of religious faith. However, it doesn’t always seem in-depth enough; Guelzo treats some of the northern social movements in a brusque, almost dismissive fashion, and Guelzo seems puzzled as to how Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin could have caused the reaction it did.

While the war is sometimes seen as brought on by inflexible radicals on both sides, Guelzo disagrees, writing that few of these “radicals” viewed themselves this way. Racism and the right of secession was seen by the South as perfectly rational. Although the format of the book makes it come off as brusque or somewhat superficial at times, it does have its good parts,such as Lincoln’s leadership and his political and personal troubles. He also does a fine job drawing up rounded, colorful, and human portraits of the war’s generals.

Guelzo does a fine job synthesizing the various threads of this history, but there is little real analysis. He gives some opinions here and there but doesn’t really try to organize them in any way, nor is there a single theme to the narrative. Also, his discussion of constitutional issues seems superficial.

Again, military aspects are dealt with in only the most general way. The book is not written in the style of a narrative history, but for the most part the narrative is still energetic and efficient, despite some odd tidbits like “Poor William Henry Harrison died in 1841” or Grant “was no closer to taking Vicksburg than ever.”

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine synthesis of the war in all its many dimensions -- military, political, social, racial, etc. Not seamless, but the seams are in the right places and well stitched. Perhaps difficult for my students to dissect and take away key points and milestones because Guelzo is not given to outlines and bullet points. This is narrative history, more readable than quizzable. I think I made a good choice in assigning it.

[Chuck Parrish · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author seemed a bit too sure of his opinion regarding the motivation behind the causes of the civil war. He also seemed to willing to place the south exclusively on the stool of repentance for the result of this terrible war.

[Adam Glantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, and I knew it would be great going in, since I'd listened to Prof. Guelzo's excellent lecture in the History of the United States title from the Great Courses series. Organized in a narrative that traverses chronology and conceptual themes, Guelzo's prose is a model of clarity. He strikes the right balance everywhere, explaining battles without drowning in the minutiae and rendering complicated political maneuvers comprehensible. I particularly appreciate how he "begins at the beginning," establishing a foundation for the Civil War in the birth of the United States, and thereby giving everything that follows a clear context.

What caused the Civil War? It was definitely slavery. (Bear in mind that I've read entire textbooks in school that refused to bite the bullet on this one.) But it was also the fact that the Framers of the Constitution delegated powers among the federal government and the several states, almost guaranteeing that states' rights and national sovereignty would come into conflict someday. From this vantage point, the South's secession is less a passionate blunder and more a rational calculation of its best interests.

Another thorny question: Given that Reconstruction foundered when Northerners lost interest, was the Civil War worth it? Guelzo points out that the answer depends upon one's ideological commitments. Those who see popular sovereignty and liberal republicanism as chimeras will claim the war essentially changed nothing, since capitalism dominated before and afterward. But those with faith in liberalism are inclined to disagree.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Reading this book just further proved to me how inadequate the coverage of this material was throughout my traditional education. I was surprised to learn about how many of the Unionists were not also necessarily abolitionists as well. Of course, when you think about, there is no reason to assume that that would be the case anyways, but that is the thesis that is often pushed when the War Between the States is being "taught."

The brief descriptions that the author gives of the conditions of the soldiers during the war was quite jarring, especially in the camps of the Confederate Army. Starvation, disease, worn out clothes and shoes, scavenged weaponry, primitive and ineffective medical practices - it is hard to comprehend the degree of hardship that these men underwent.

Exceptions have to be made in any one volume history of such a complicated historical event, but Guellzo is an excellent scholar and anyone who reads this volume is sure to come away with a better ,though certainly not comprehensive, understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding the War Between the States.

[Tom Stamper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and insightful history of the war every bit as good as McPherson while touching on new topics like contemporary art and literature. He also includes a summation of reconstruction something the history often skips and spends quality time with Andrew Johnson's impeachment and the issues that brought him in conflict with the radical Republicans. It's a deep boook and I would likely retain a lot more if read it twice in a row. I listened to it commuting over the course of a month and the early parts are already hazy..

Things I learned or didn't remember:

- General Sherman wasn't fighting to end slavery. He was fighting to win the war at any cost.

-Republican Rutherford B Hayes picked an ex-confederate as postmaster general, one of the most lucrative patronage jobs.

-Mrs. Lincoln did in fact like the play despite the other thing.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly solid overview of the Civil War and Reconstruction period. Guelzo clearly demonstrates slavery as the cause of the war, reaching back to decades before the war's onset to examine it as the cause. He deals with political, social, and military issues throughout the war. His interpretation is generally good, though I strongly disagree with his take on Gettysburg and Meade's performance there. I also wish there was more on how enslaved people worked for their own freedom--it wasn't simply granted by the Lincoln Administration. The section on Reconstruction was good, but short. I would highly recommend this clear, concise study of this period, especially to those less familiar with the era.

[David Mc · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a lifelong civil war buff, I have to say that this is one of the best one-volume books that I have encountered on the conflict. Along with very clear and concise writing, Guelzo did an amazing job of fully describing the significant events of the war, as well as incorporating detailed insights into generals, politicians, and everyday people who played a part in the conflict. As many of my fellow reviewers have already gone into enormous detail on this wonderful tome, I will simply conclude by pointing out that Guelzo’s book is perfect for newcomers to civil war literature, as well as for those of us who have read endless volumes on the conflict. Highly Recommended!

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific one-volume history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. More maps would have made it easier to follow the military battles but this is not a military history book. Guelzo excels at providing context and clarity.

Professor Guelzo is one of my favorite Great Courses lecturer. This is the first book of his I have read. It has the same tongue in cheek banter that works as well in book format as in videos. "Peace enough certainly existed, at least in the sense that the organized shooting was by then long over, but tranquility was quite another matter."

[Thomas McConnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally well-written history of the Civil War. Guelzo does not focus on the usual, tiresome chronologic sequence of battles, generals, and timeline. Instead he discusses the tectonic forces at work: politics (local, national and global), religion, crops, climate, slavery, cotton, railroads, logistics, naval blockade, war powers of the President, technology, and so on. Among the best history I've read.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic and engaging social, political and military overview of the events leading up to the war, during the war and a nice concise overview of reformation.
I really like it because it refutes (though not by name) Doris Kearns Goodwin's shallow pop history "Team of Rivals" and gets into the political back-stabbing Lincoln faced from his cabinet.
Highly recommended. I will look for more History books by Allen Guelzo!

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh take on seemingly exhausted material. While sometimes points are a little confusing, in that the nuance probably required greater attention than afforded, enjoyable and enlightening read. I highly recommend this work and will refer back to it and it’s fantastic footnotes and additional reading section at thw back for years to come.

[Steve Limkeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent account of The Civil War, full of fascinating anecdotes and insightful analysis. I appreciated how Guelzo organized his chapters into sections with each section title/theme driven by an excerpt from a powerful quote representative of the narrative he was telling. Simply captivating and illuminating.

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating insight, to use a cliché. I was woefully ignorant about the Civil War, having always thought it a little boring and irrelevant but it was so significant in so many ways, not least in relation to slavery, the abolition of which doomed black people to another 100 plus years of life that was little better in many respects.

[Kit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic history of the American Civil War. About 538 pages (plus about 20 of "Further Reading") this will probably feel a lot less daunting than, say, the Shelby Foote trilogy or James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.

[Steve Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the Civil War. The best part for me was enlightening information about the diplomatic endeavors. I never realized how close both England and France came to recognizing the Confederacy. Good information on the various plans for Reconstruction and the eventual failure of it.