The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union

by George M. Fredrickson

The Inner Civil War is a classic that has influenced historians' views of the Civil War and American intellectual change in the nineteenth
century. This edition includes a new preface in which the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of the work and updates its interpretations.
 

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

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

George M. Fredrickson was the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History at Stanford University, where he taught from 1984 until his retirement in 2002.

Reviews

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. This is a well written and accessible intellectual history of the North's struggle with the war. It is a wonderful explanation of how the victory of abolition in inadvertently destroyed the antebellum social reform movement because of the central importance of nationalism and the militaristic mood which looked at the reformers as idealists of the worst order. The war was therefore a much more conservative, perhaps even reactionary, moment than is commonly supposed. What makes it doubly good is the book transcends the Lost Cause, Just Cause, and even the reconciliation memories of the war, although reconciliation least of all in that group.

[Anna Schechter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for class. So dense but I appreciate the in-depth, fully-realized analysis of the Intellectuals' response to the Civil War. Clearly took a lot of time and research.

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an intelligent, scholarly book on how American intellectuals (Holmes, Emerson, Adams, William James among others) dealt with the Civil War and its aftermath. It was hard going at times, given my loathing for Emerson (and New England leftists in General), but ulitmately rewarding. After reading this book, i need to read:

1) more about Hawthorne and his political social views
2)John De Forest's letters
3) O.W. Holmes Civil War letters and diaries
4) Miss Revanel's Conversion
5) Thaddeus Stevens: Scourage of the South
6) Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson
7) Letters of Francis Parkman

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tracing the opinions of around eight Northern intellectuals before, during and after the American Civil War, Fredrickson is able to show an evolution of attitudes from the humanitarian, individualistic ante-bellum ethos to the scientific, institutional ethos of the post war period. For someone who wants to under stand the meaning of the Civil War for those who lived through it and the significance of the war for American attitudes towards authority, poverty and democracy this will be a very helpful book.