America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation

by David R. Goldfield

In this spellbinding new history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom . Where past scholars have limned the war as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatest failure: the result of a breakdown caused by the infusion of evangelical religion into the public sphere. As the Second GreatAwakening surged through America, political questions became matters of good and evil to be fought to the death. The price of that failure was horrific, but the carnage accomplished what statesmen could not: It made the United States one nation and eliminated slavery as a divisive force in the Union. The victorious North became synonymous with America as a land of innovation and industrialization, whose teeming cities offered squalor and opportunity in equal measure. Religion was supplanted by science and a gospel of progress, and the South was left behind. Goldfield's panoramic narrative, sweeping from the 1840s to the end of Reconstruction, is studded with memorable details and luminaries such as HarrietBeecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman. There are lesser known yet equally compelling characters, too, including Carl Schurz-a German immigrant, warhero, and postwar reformer-and Alexander Stephens, the urbane and intellectual vice president of the Confederacy. America Aflame is a vivid portrait of the "fiery trial"that transformed the country we live in. David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He is the author of many works on Southern history, including Still Fighting the Civil War ; Black, White, and Southern ; and Promised Land.

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

640 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2011

About the author

Dr. David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He has written several books on American history, two of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Maryland.

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a broad-stroke narrative about the lead into the Civil War, the war, and the after effect. The narrative started roughly in the 1820s and went up to the American Centennial, 1876. Goldfield argued that religious differences and values arose during America's Second Great Awakening movement. This was the Protestant spiritual movement that gave rise to the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and Adventism and revived Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterian denominations. This movement became the change agent for cultural shifts and norms throughout the nation. Having said that, it also sparked negative views towards Northern and Southern cultural stances.

Former coreligionists split into hostile camps, each believing themselves the true bearer of the Gospel, and the former brethren its desecrator. For evangelical southerners, slavery was no sin and churches must not make social policy. For evangelical northerners, the belief in individual spiritual rights and personal religious activism made such involvement a Christian duty. Southerners now saw northern ministers and their churches as instruments of the abolition fiend, and northerners viewed southern clerics and their congregations as complicit in the sin of slavery. The sacred and secular were becoming much less distinct and poisoning each other. pg 35

The book detailed the escalation to the Civil War, the aftermath and Reconstruction, post-war politics, racial divide and tensions, and the manifest destiny expansion into the West. This internal policy included the Indian Affairs and forced removal onto reservations, railroad expansion, population growth, and the harsh "Civilization & Christianization of the Indian" (pg 452). While everything was explained, it was done through a religious lens that reflected the societal norms of the times.

Overall there was a lot to absorb from this book. The information delivered was linear but covered so much it seemed to jump from topic to topic in my opinion. I would recommend this to anyone interested an umbrella writing style encompassing a lot of information about American history of his era. Thanks!

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an outstanding contemporary overview of the Civil War era, beginning in the 1830s and concluding with the nation's centennial celebration in 1876.

All of the familiar characters are here, and what distinguishes Goldfield's treatment of the period from that of earlier historians, is his emphasis on the importance of evangelical Christianity in bringing on the crisis that produced the war. In essence, he argues that evangelical Christians, especially in the North, increasingly saw many of the important issues of the day, slavery in particular, as moral causes that could not be compromised. In consequence, American and their political leaders became increasingly inflexible and in the end, the nation was plunged into a disastrous civil war in which both northerners and southerners would be totally convinced that God was on their side.

Goldfield eschews the notion of the war as a gallant, heroic effort and instead portrays in heart-rending and occasionally stomach-wrenching terms the brutal, ugly realities of this war that would cost 630,000 American lives--more than the lives lost in all of the nation's other wars combined.

When the war ended, the slaves had been freed, although equality for blacks remained a dim, distant dream. The triumphant North was bigger, stronger and far richer than ever before and, allied with the growing West, was in the process of building a new nation. The defeated South, on the other hand, was left largely to its own devices, the nation's poor relation, drifting in the memories of its "Lost Cause."

Most important, the war, in effect, created a new United States with a strong national government that was unafraid to use its muscle, particularly with regard to the development of the nation's economy. The states would now clearly be the junior partners in this relationship, and increasingly Americans would give their principal allegiance to the national government rather than their state governments. But all of this would be purchased at a horrible cost.

This is an excellent book that can be enjoyed by general readers as well as professional historians. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War or in mid-Nineteenth Century America will certainly want to read it.

[Geoff Sebesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first and best thing about this book is that it absolutely explodes the myth that the Civil War has anything to do with anything but slavery. It was about slavery, people. First, last, and always.

In this review, I sort of mix the compliments and complaints together. I want to give this book five stars but I can't. It's an absolutely arresting work. Goldfield has a fascinating perspective on the Civil War, and this book pulls you in like few other pure histories I've ever read. This book is very much what you would expect, and very much what it claims to be. It is a big and sprawling history of the Civil War, explaining what happened, where, when, and to who. The author says right in the beginning, he is not pro-North or pro-South, but anti-War, and specifically anti-the Civil War, a wasteful and unnecessary conflict that did not really do much to help the people it was claimed to save. Or so he says. And he more or less backs it up.

Goldfield has a rare hand with the sarcasm, and sometimes it's possible to discern what he truly believes in his gentle and deadly jabs at the slaveholders of the South and the hypocritical politicians of the North.

So why is it "only" four stars? Because he doesn't back up everything he says very well, and he completely runs out of steam about a hundred and fifty pages from the end of the book. Sometimes I disagree with him quite strongly. I suspect that there are serious lacunae in his historical vision or mine or both. Here are a few of my objections:

1) He talks about Texas history and the Texan Republic's decision to join the USA without ever once mentioning the word "Comanche." Either he knows something about Texas history that I don't, or he doesn't know much about Texas history.
2) His argument that the Civil War was unnecessary more or less predicates on the fact that the Reconstruction was an absolute disaster for civil rights, that the black people of the South were left in a state of all-but-slavery after the war that continued for a century, that no other nation in the world ever had to have a war to end slavery, and that if the Northern and Southern politicians had compromised it would have turned out better for everyone. He adds to this helpful statistics like, it would have been cheaper for the North to buy all the slaves, set them free, and buy them all some acres of land than it was to prosecute the war. This is absolutely true, but since we all just lived through the Iraq Invasion we know that's not how governments work. The rest of his arguments sort of fall to common sense examination, and he never quite proves his point. In fact, he sort of proves the opposite -- that the Southern aristocracy of the era was far too decrepit to be bargained with, and if there was a mistake it was the same mistake they made in WWII -- reasonable politicians appeasing insatiable evil.
3) He dogs on MacClellan and in the same breath admits that every other Union general was either a bloody maniac who got all his men killed or a bloody maniac who killed all the other sides' men as he got his own men killed, which should theoretically be a problem for him since he's theoretically against this war.
4) His thesis that the South was reasonable enough to be compromised with absolutely runs aground when he tries to explain why England and France did not intervene on the side of the CSA. He runs pretty fast from that topic (though he mentions the Paris Commune of 1871 about six hundred times when we get to the Reconstruction).
5) Yes, America might be the only nation to fight a civil war to get rid of the practice of racial slavery for economic exploitation, but on the other hand, America was more or less the only nation to do that at all, and the other ones that did all had slave rebellions, like Haiti. Germany, India, and Australia (frexes) didn't have a civil war to get rid of slavery because they didn't have this kind of slavery, and that's all there is to it.

Now, he does an awful lot of things right. He does a fantastic job of explaining the run-up to the War, I never felt that I understood these things before I read this book. I never understood Bloody Kansas,the Lecompton Constitution, the Dred Scott Decision, Harper's Ferry, or how the war began. He does a brilliant job of describing the Sumner Caning, an act of such vile mendacity that it undermines the entire idea that compromise was possible. Sumner was not brutally beaten (while sitting down, so he could not defend himself) because he was wrong, he was beaten because he was absolutely right. Goldfield takes you through the slow escalation of the Civil War from threat display to bloody man-grinding madness. He lets you fall under the spell of Abraham Lincoln as he gradually steers the nation deeper and deeper into the conflict. He places into context the Second Great Awakening and the role of evangelism in American politics and the birth of the Republican party. He really makes you feel the irony that it is the Democratic party is the current champion of civil rights, because the Democrats really went astray in the mid 1800s and it's amazing the party survived the Civil War. Let us never forget, it was once the Democrats in the KKK and the Republicans who worried about black people not being able to vote. It's really ironic how that turned around. I like the way that he's hard on the abolitionists, who were not exactly heroic by our modern mores.

He gets the swirling chaos that lead to the war, the pernicious weight of slavery, the growing horror of the War. It's a great book. It changed the way I look at the Civil War. It added inestimably to my knowledge of history.

But it's obvious that he doesn't care much about the Reconstruction, so reading those chapters is a dreadful chore, and he does not really prove the points that he so clearly sets out to prove, and I think I've detected a tendency to focus in too much on Let Me Tell You About The Last Book I Read (he clearly read one about the Paris Commune right when he wrote the book) and miss some of the other things going on (seriously, it's pretty well known why Britan didn't ally with the CSA. It's not because they didn't want to. It's because they were horrified by slavery). So it doesn't get five stars. Maybe it should, because it's worth reading. But it's also worth editing, Mr. Goldfield.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was informative and instructional. Do we really think things are much different these days. It seems as if politics have not changed so much over the years. Politicians and Congress are still standing on a religious bandbox leaving no room for other religions or tolerance in some instances.

I was dismayed about the settlement of the west. The people wanted only white settlers there was no room for any other race, because they were inferior to whites. Like Horace Mann said "Education is the great equalizer". Give a man, woman or child the same education and they will achieve the best to their abilities no matter the color of their skin, religion or otherwise.

I wanted to update a little. I researched the causalities in the civil war. There were 359,528 deaths on the Union side and 258,000 on the Confederate side. This included death by disease ,combat, and battle wounds due to infection.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well-written text tends towards being a social history of the U.S.A. from the early to the late 19th century. Focused on the civil war, it begins with the unsteady pre-war compromises between states, slave and free, and it ends with the end of Reconstruction. What it offers as a whole is a relatively clear portrayal of the difference between the (progressive, pragmatic) North and the (regressive, romantic) South--and this by a professor of history at the University of North Carolina. Although published in 2011, much of what the author describes remains applicable to contemporary American politics.

[Keith Akers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great historical work with an anti-war perspective on the Civil War. Somewhere early on in the book (I can't find the quote now) the author says something like, "I am anti-war, and especially against the Civil War." I read the book looking for evidence that neither side was especially justified in fighting, and found it in abundance.

Most people, including me, have certain romantic notions about the Civil War, even though we know they're not entirely true. Armies in battle, cavalry raids, the fight over slavery, and finally the triumph of freedom. This book will get rid of them rather quickly. It was, as the author says, America's greatest failure. The death of half a million Americans is bad enough, but what was worse that it was pretty much pointless as well.

If you have read other books on the Civil War, there isn't that much that is new here, and you may in fact wonder why you're reading yet another Civil War book. You have the causes of the war, the war itself, and reconstruction. What is different is that all those niggling little details that don't quite fit into our romantic pictures of the war -- like the anti-Catholic nature of the anti-slavery movement -- are given quite a bit of play. Eventually it becomes clear that these little disconcerting details are not just minor anomalies. They are, in fact, the big story, and shaped and explain the eventual outcome.

There was no glorious triumph of freedom. The anti-slavery movement was also an anti-Catholic movement. In fact, in the end it was also anti-Indian, anti-worker, anti-woman, and even anti-Black. These minorities were standing in the way of progress, symbolized by white Protestant males. One of the main reasons the North didn't want slavery in the territories was not just an abstract desire for justice for the slaves. The slaves were competition! The western migration would have been greatly complicated if suddenly slaves had appeared in Colorado, California, and elsewhere to compete with the free person's labor.

In the end, with half a million dead, the Civil War didn't really free the slaves. After freedom, black literacy rates rose, but the South as a whole was absolutely devastated, and whites had what little there was to have in the way of power. The South sank into a Depression deeper than any the country has experienced -- it was 60 years before the South saw the same standard of living that it did in 1860. By the 1870's, blacks were being openly gunned down and elections were being stolen through violence, and the north looked aside. In practical terms, real freedom had to wait, for a long time.

Many years ago I remember being struck by Marshall McLuhan's statement, "the civil war delayed the end of slavery." The author doesn't really make an explicit case for alternative policies that could have ended slavery without violence, but it would have been interesting to see him make such a case, which could easily be done on the basis of this book.

So, don't read this book for another stirring account of Gettysburg, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, bleeding Kansas, or tales of armies marching north and armies marching south. Read it for the reality it portrays -- the Civil War changed very little of America for the better, and at a horrific cost that is still with us today.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goldfield's belief is that religion was a primary cause of the Civil War. But I think he may have made more of a case for the belief that religious rhetoric created a situation in which compromise was unlikely. And these are not the same things, I think. As other writers have shown--in the case of the the Founding Fathers, for instance--one can get trapped in one's own rhetoric. It can be humiliating to be shown to be contradicting one's own words. And "religion" is often brought into an argument after one's position is already set--as a justification for one's belief rather than a foundational belief itself.

He writes:

“Each side persisted in the belief that the other threatened liberty and the Lord, and that only the fire of battle could save these ideals for now and for all time. The Civil War was not about territory per se; nor was it about wealth; nor was it about forms of government—remarkably few southerners mentioned states’ rights at all in their correspondence. Rather, the war was about God and the fulfillment of His plan to complete the American Revolution. Some likened the conflict to Armageddon or identified it as Armageddon itself. This perspective presaged a brutal and lengthy war, for the stakes were as high as heaven.//Both sides claimed the Revolutionary mantle and the filial responsibility to emulate and protect it.” 207

But later he notes that the South began drafting soldiers a year before the Union army writing, "If white southerners had supported the war wholeheartedly, there would have been no need for the draft in February 1862 and for subsequent conscription measures.” 211 If the war was about God, how could they have not supported the war wholeheartedly? The fact is that religious rhetoric was just useful and much more attractive than a wealthy southerner's concern that "How will I run my plantation if you free my slaves" or a poor southerner's concern that "how will I be able to compete for jobs with freed slaves." And since so many Unionists were not in favor of black emancipation, as he shows, Lincoln's positing of the war as one between good and evil, might have been a necessary rhetorical stance to gain support for the cause. But my point is simply that rhetoric is not reality. And sometimes when it turns out to be, it is because one is forced to walk the talk or even because one begins to believe oneself after saying something enough times....

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, a superb book. I thought it glorified the North immediately following the war just a bit much, and I don't think the destitution in the South that the war left behind got the attention it deserved. Otherwise, it seemed to be a well-balanced look at America between 1830-1880.

It's heart wrenching to think of the hundreds of thousands of people that died. And for what? Slavery ended, but it took another century for full enfranchisement, and we fight our prejudices to this day.

An excellent point that the book makes (repeatedly) is that the North wasn't the hero of the anti-slavery movement it is sometimes made out to be. Abolitionism didn't have anywhere near universal support, and the North's treatment of its underclasses (Irish, Catholics, etc.) didn't give them much of a moral high ground. Even in the late 1870s, when the literacy rate of blacks in the South was *higher* than the populations of some European countries (and up from < 10% a couple decades before), the prevailing "science" of the day held that they were an inferior race, somehow less human.

The book also talks quite a bit about the Native American wars, the other major American tragedy that the Founders weren't able to reconcile and that took massive amounts of bloodshed over 1 1/2 centuries to resolve (and whose resolution is far from ideal).

Key takeaways from the book:

1. History is never as idyllic as it is portrayed
2. Humans are capable of doing some pretty atrocious things to each other

[Daniel Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic one volume history of the Civil War. Actually, it gives a much broader sweep than the war itself, setting it in the context of Western expansion and the Second Great Awakening, so that the tensions leading to the war are seen as consequences of "Manifest Destiny" ideology and what Goldfield describes as "the passions stoked by the infusion of evangelical Christianity into the political process." The idea being that each side came to identify its own position as religiously non-negotiably. He doesn't romanticize the war as a noble movement toward liberty (though of course the end of slavery was a good thing), and does not defend or glamorize the South, but portrays the war as a national failure in which both sections had plenty to contribute.

The narrative of the actual war ends well before the end of the book, because Goldfield is also focused on the aftermath: on Reconstruction and its failures, on the changed relationship between the federal government and the states, the development of "Lost Cause" ideology in the South and the virtual abandonment of it to its own disfunction by the rapidly industrializing, developing, and secularizing North, and the continued warfare against the Plains Indians which, in some ways, contradicted the supposed values of the Civil War's winning side.

The book might be more cynical than most histories of the Civil War, but it seems realistic and balanced, and is extremely well-written and readable.

[Andrew Canfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty of books exist on the history of the Civil War.

Piecing together a list of the most informative offerings on various battles and generals is a task only slightly less herculean than compiling a list of the books on the life of President Lincoln. Discovering one that provides a new take on the Civil War era is therefore a worthwhile task, and David Goldfield’s America Aflame is up to this challenge.

While there are cursory looks at clashes like Antietam and Gettysburg, and while the likes of Edwin Stanton and Generals Sherman and Lee populate its pages, America Aflame sets out to accomplish something else entirely than a boilerplate recitation of the war. It instead seeks to demonstrate how the unwillingness of both the North and South to compromise--what Goldfield purports to be the primary cause of the inability for disagreements to be settled by peaceful means--was caused by the melding of evangelical Christianity and politics. The moral certitude of Southerners that their system of slavery was the God-ordained order of things (a point of view preached in a sermon by well-known New Orleans First Presbyterian pastor Benjamin Morgan Palmer after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860) clashed with the unyielding conviction of northern abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe that slavery was an evil that must be snuffed out.

It is worth noting, as America Aflame takes pains to do, that President Lincoln himself bent over backward during his First Inaugural Address in 1861 to promise the South they could maintain their system of slavery under his presidency. It was only the migration of it into the newly acquired Western states and territories, as well as the notion of secession, which he pledged to combat. The sixteenth president’s delicate balancing act to keep the border states from joining their Confederate counterparts was driven home by his reprimand of multiple Union generals, including 1856 Republican presidential nominee John “The Pathfinder” Fremont, for attempting to free slaves which fell under their jurisdiction (Missouri in the case of Fremont).

While he indeed gives the South a hard time for its white supremacist mentality both before, during, and after the Civil War, Goldfield departs from many historians’ proclivities by driving home the point that many Northerners expressed discomfort with the idea of equality between the races as well. He goes so far as to note that one reason many Americans wanted slavery kept out of the Western territories was to ensure the future of this new region was white and as a means to prevent a depression of wages for white workers. The New York City draft riot of 1863, which took place only days after Gettysburg and featured wanton attacks on the city’s blacks and Republicans, was covered to demonstrate the lack of unity in the North when it came to maintaining the martial course.

The draft-related violence, combined with Lincoln’s tough reelection against the fired General McClellan which was only ensured after the fall of Atlanta, showed the fragility of Union opinion even during the war. Despite the Southern states not even voting, Lincoln still managed just 55 percent of the vote and had to rely on swing states to push him across the finish line in 1864. The idea that postwar unity could be maintained when it came to ensuring the freed slaves had their rights protected seemed a farfetched one.

So, does Goldfield employ a both-sides-ism strategy that winds up letting the South off the hook and creating a moral equivalency between Dixie and the Yankees? Does he paint Lincoln, who confessed to enjoy hearing the band play “Dixie” and made clear during his 1858 debates against Stephen Douglas that, while he abhorred slavery, he believed blacks and whites could not coexist in society, as occupying the same moral plane as Jefferson Davis? Does he allow a willingness to utilize shades of gray destroy an ability to see the North’s victory, which resulted in a unified country and the abolition of slavery, as a net positive?

Not really.

Lincoln is shown to be a man whose Christian faith consisted of less absolute certainty than the abolitionists or fire eaters when it came to divining God’s will. While he and many in the North might not have initially been been fighting with slavery's abolition foremost in mind, the book pulls no punches in making clear that the rebel states were indeed fighting to uphold their system of bondage.

Excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches reveal the almost shocking lack of resentment he held toward the South as well as his unwillingness to gloat that the Union was a paragon of perfection. The terms he appeared willing to offer the South in his Ten Percent reconstruction plan, although coupled with amendments to end slavery and ensure the protection of freedmens’ rights, were surprisingly lenient toward the rebels. Lincoln’s statements at time seem born of a sort of deism, a view the book claims to be at odds with the zeitgeist spirit of reform and hands-on religion prevalent during his time.

The words of the Second Inaugural Address a month before his assassination reveal this resignation and unwillingness to finger point even after a conflict that left over half of a million Americans dead: “Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'"

The postwar North is shown to largely move on from evangelical religion. With the advent of Darwinism and a belief in science as guiding lodestar, Americans in the North allegedly became fixated on material gain as their new religion of sorts. As the 1870s progressed, many in the North seemed to tire of the constant wrangling between Reconstruction governments often viewed as illegitimate and the rabid attempts by white Southerners to “redeem” their states. Events like the Colfax massacre and the New Orleans riot of 1866 (a violent attempt by former Confederates to regain control of the Louisiana state government by force in a situation that calls to mind the January 6th, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol) were held up as two of the more egregious examples of vitriol shown by defeated Southerners toward their newly constituted state governments.

While President Ulysses S. Grant made valiant attempts to break the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina and used federal powers to protect freedmen rights, even he is shown to eventually tire of losing political capital in a cause many in the North were ready to move on from. As this was occurring, stories of a lost cause in the South and a determined effort to restore power to what they viewed as the superior race were combining to create a fervor the Republicans, many only lukewarm when it came to abolitionism in the first place, were largely unable to match.

The experience many in urban areas in the North were having with striking Irish workers, combined with the the sort of in-your-face theft going on at Tammany Hall courtesy of the Tweed machine in New York, made many Northerners sympathetic to the Southerners’ complaints of corrupt governance and anger at being ruled over by what they perceived as their societal inferiors. Even famous postwar Northern revival leaders of the day like Dwight Moody sought to push for what the book holds up as a chimera of “reconciliation” that went a long way to whitewashing the South’s role in the Civil War.

In this context, it comes as no surprise that the deal made to ensure Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed 1876 presidential election consisted of federal troops no longer being used to enforce Reconstruction policies. The willingness to resign Southern blacks to their fate ensured almost another century’s worth of their rights being trampled on by adherents to the same plantation mindset that led to the Civil War in the first place.

David Goldfield has written an excellent examination of the immediate prewar, wartime, and Reconstruction era. His even handed approach and willingness to examine his hypothesis even to the point of discomfort is commendable. An unflinching look at the good and bad of America is doubly important at a time when some states are attempting to clamp down on any teaching of history likely to cause discomfort in the white community under the pretext of stopping an almost nonexistent postgraduate course concept of study called critical race theory. This movement, happening in tandem with the push by states to crack down on voting (efforts primarily targeted at reducing the voice of marginalized communities in urban areas), demonstrates the importance of keeping in mind past efforts by Southerners to embrace undemocratic tactics when they feel their power is waning.

America Aflame’s unflinching nature redounds to its credit. Those who take the time to read it will finish with a well-rounded understanding of the 1861-1865 conflict and the contemporary viewpoints of the decision makers who both started and ended it.

-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is billed as a major new interpretation of the Civil War, but to be honest I'm not sure how 'new' an interpretation it really is. It focuses more heavily on the evangelical religious impulses interwoven through antebellum America society than perhaps other histories have done, and certainly those religious revivals played a more important role than has hitherto been acknowledged, but I'm not sure that entirely qualifies as a whole new interpretation of the War.

Goldfield's central thesis is that the rise of evangelical religion and its intrusion into politics is largely what led to the schism between North and South. When both sides believe their culture, way of life and beliefs to be not just preferable, not just right, but divinely sanctified, compromise is inevitably all but impossible. To the North, slavery was not just wrong, but evil. To the South, their way of life, slavery and all, was a divine blessing and the slave's role part of the natural order ordained by God. Once God starts to be invoked, conflict is usually inevitable, as the stakes become so much greater than simple politics or economics. In support of this argument, Goldfield connects the evangelical impulses to the strong anti-Catholicism of the time that infused other major political issues of the day such as anti-immigration and nativism.

It's a fine theory, and one I can well believe. He writes well in support of it, and this is an excellent examination of antebellum America from the 1830s onwards, quite apart from this new angle in the causes of the conflict. The book loses a little steam during the post-war narrative where his narrative deviates somewhat from the central thesis - if Civil War America was a direct result of these evangelical impulses, post-war America was a result of, well, the War and the religious angle loses focus. So a fine book and an excellent addition to any Civil War library, but perhaps not quite a ground-breaking as the publicists would have you believe.

[Jay Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Goldfield argues that uncompromising evangelical rhetoric was one of the main reasons why the Civil War was not averted. His thesis is very convincing. How could either side lay down their arms in what he calls a holy "crusade"? But "America Aflame" includes more than that. The cracks of antebellum America to the failures of Reconstruction are explored and discussed. Topics like the post war failure of civil rights in the south, the fall of evangelical influence in the north while it rose in the south, and the importance of Darwinian ideology after the war are also explained. Though his target audience is broad, this book should especially be read by current American evangelicals. Evangelicalism was the most influential force in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. The failure of evangelicals to use this influence for positive means in both North and (especially) the South helped cause this terrible American tragedy.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have zero interest in the Civil War. In the first 50 pages of this book I was almost ready to hang it up. And then....I was hooked. So many amazing stories I hadn't a clue about. And Goldfield has a great sense of humor. I was turning these pages like an addict, and then I was so disappointed when I had turned the last one. I should add that the author is very balanced in his assesments of the many tricky issues involved in this story. You can trust him not to have an agenda. Reading this book was a total blast.

[David]

When I picked this up, based on an internet controversy, I looked at it and thought, "532 page book about the Civil War? I'm not so sure." The first few chapters are quite engaging and interesting, and the perspective is new, to me. There are many questions I would ask about economics and class, but the emphasis on the Evangelicals is quite interesting. Not so much new under our national sun.

[Cristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read, but the thesis is hidden. He talks too much about the influence of evangelical extremists and how it aided the start of the Civil War, yet his overall thesis seems to be how the Civil War brought about the era of a new nation. The first 1/3 of the book is well written and succinctly done, only to have it seemingly fall apart as the book progresses. Eh.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent history of the Civil War and its prelude and postlude. What is particularly interesting is the role that narrow-minded religious and political zealotry played in tearing the country apart. Should be a lesson for Americans to heed today.

[Joe Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good summary of the events and ideas that lead to the Civil War, the War, and the aftermath. Lots of parallels to now worth noting. If you're interested in current political events read this book.

[Jan Underhill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense and absorbing, this account of the Civil War brought the events and issues to life for me.

[Andy Wiesendanger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. I guess to some extent, it's hard not to enjoy reading about this era, antebellum through Reconstruction, such an interesting time. It didn't start out so great, as Goldfield makes some statements that I would disagree with. I don't think he made a strong case for those statements throughout the book either, one drawback I have.

He mentions violence became accepted as a means to solve problems, but I don't see how that's new to antebellum era. I mean, the American Revolution was a violent response, Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey rebellion, treatment of Indians...

He also mentions evangelical Christianity entered politics in this era, and that this had a major effect on the leadup to the Civil War. He is certainly against religion, Christianity in particular. He says "When men refer to deity in politics, trouble follows. When they don't rely on laws, but some deity, then each man is a law to himself". It sounds reasonable, I just wonder, what defines my morals if not a deity? Myself? In practice, what is different? Again, Goldfield doesn't bother to make a case, just statements readers should take as gospel (pun intended).

But I think he does a good job of being objective about this era, mostly pointing out the failure of the north to make lasting change in the south happen, how southern whites were violent racists (whereas northern whites were just racist), and eventually the north just gave up and forced themselves to believe the south was changed. They just wanted to keep the (economic, technological) progress moving along (which was happening in north and west, just not the backward south).

I ask myself if the racism of the south is worse than that of the north. Maybe I'm biased, but I think it is. The south was willing to stunt growth and progress in order to return the black man to his place. And they convinced themselves it was what God wanted. Certainly the north thought blacks were inferior (and Indians, and Irish; Darwin proved it...), but cared more about making money than caring about what blacks did. I guess I live a life of relative ease b/c of that northern push for progress (though it had/has it's own problems), whereas what does the south have to show for their focus? Hatred. And 140 years later, I hoped it's changed.

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this book in only okay.

Professor David R. Goldfield is a professor of history at UNC Charlotte where he has had a distinguished career. His works includes co-editorship of a two-volume history of the American South with former UNCC history and later Wake Forest University dean Paul Escott and serving as editor for the Journal of Urban History.

While Dr. Goldfield's dissertation focused on the Civil War, most of his writing has focused on the 20th century south. While Dr. Goldfield has obviously kept up with the historical literature, I did not find his argument compelling.

In essence, Dr. Goldfield argues that evangelical Christianity, or perhaps most superficially, the social-reform minded aspect of American evangelicalism most associated with the northeastern and midwestern regions of the United States as a result of the Second Great Awakening as being responsible for the coming of the Civil War. He discussed in less detail the tragic turn of southern evangelical theology towards a defense of racial slavery. Dr. Goldfield posits that by casting political issues in moral terms, such as with regard particular to the institution of racial slavery, made political compromise ultimately impossible.

The book does look at issues such as the nativist impulses of the Know Nothings against surging immigration rates to the northeastern states in the antebellum period, the issue of economic change and unrest, and others but this weight seems, in my judgment misplaced. He seems to argue that, but for this factor, the United States would have abolished slavery, sometime, as did other western hemisphere nations.

Given more recent scholarship on slavery, I think this argument is misplaced. The more recent New Slavery economic histories suggest American slavery remained ec0nomically vibrant. And only a few parts of the south had dense populations of enslaved people making the specter of another Hattian Resolution unlikely

Ultimately, I did not find the books argument convincing. Perhaps if the author has sharply focused on his thesis, rather than recapitulating the period's history at such length, he might be able to make his care more strongly. I don't think so, but that would have been much suggestion.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: Evangelical Christians started the Civil War, and it was a great disaster
That is the these David Goldfield proposes, which wasn't what I was expecting based on the subtitle "How the Civil War created a nation". I had hoped, based on that phrase, to learn more about how Lincoln's daring assumptions of political power in the name of preserving the union after the conflict translated into the radically new (not just renewed or restored) concept of the "United States" after the war.

Instead I find as Goldfield lays out in his introduction that it was evangelical Christianity's

* moral certitude that slavery is wrong,
* coupled with their use of emerging media, cheap printing, and very high literacy rates (another effect of evangelical Christianity, although Goldfield does not acknowledge this; I wonder if he would condemn it as well?)
* Animus against Catholics, Native Americans, and other ethnic groups that threatened their milleniial path to Manifest Destiny
* Access to political power while at the same time polatizing the debate with moral absolutes (based on that nasty old moral certitude that slavery is wrong--silly Christians! Why can't we all just get along, I say? Lets just reinstate slavery and eliminate education and literacy while we're at it).

That lead to the Civil War, which was America's greatest failure!

In the introduction, Goldfield even promises to use Lincoln as one of his key narrative characters; how he will turn Lincoln into an evangelical is something I have to see! He starts out on logically shaky ground by going back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 where Linocoln's position "A House Divided" was based on Matthew 12:25 where Jesus is quoted saying "a house divided against itself shall not stand." To go from this use of a biblical quote to establishing Lincoln as an evangelical (or even more laughably as a tool of the evangelicals--imagine Lincoln as anyone's tool!) and Christianity as the cause of the Civil War will take a broad leap of intellect to both make and accept--and I haven't even finished the introduction yet! I'll read on.

One might even suspect that Goldfield himself doesn't really believe his argument., At one point, commenting on an antislavery editorial by Horace Greeley, Goldfield jokes: "It was all there: sex, class, and patriotism."--but not religion. In the burned-over region of Civil War scholarship, getting noticed requires flashy thinking, and by raising the spector of evil Christianity against peace-loving slaveholders who just want to be recognized as full participants in the benefits of the American system (yes, he seriously does make that argument) the cynic could be forgiven for suggesting that Goldfield seems to feel he's latched onto just the kind of thinking that will get him noticed.

And in fact, once past the introduction and the chapters laying the origins of the war at the feet of evangelical Christianity, he settles into a straightforward and quite readable narrative of the War and its aftermath. It is hard to find in Goldfield's arguments the evil hands of evangelicalism at work, or the sweeping assertion that the War was a great disaster.

Make no mistake, the Civil War was a great evil, with the loss of life, the suffering on the battlefield and off, that has scarred the American landscape and lives eveyr day since. But I don't think even Goldfield really thinks it a disaster, no matter how boldly he states it. Consider his summary (p. 156) of Lincoln's position on slavery during the 1858 debates:

Lincoln placed his differences with Douglas into this broader moral context so his listeners might understand the high stakes involved, that the slavery issue was not merely a political question like, say, the tariff or the transcontinental railroad but a test of America's democratic and religious ideals: 'It is the eternal sturggle between these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They are the two pinciples that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.' In these few sentences Lincoln related how the slavery issue connected to principles that transcended both time and space. He linked the anti-slavery cause to the nation's democratic legacy and its global mission.
If one could convincingly argue that Lincoln's moral position was driven by evangelical Christianity, then that body would accept the indictment with honor; however, Goldfield wisely does not make that argument here, even though that leaves his introduction further out on an unsupported limb and open to the charge of cynical bookselling. And even Goldfield himself seems to respect Lincoln and the nation for undertaking whatever suffering is necessary to fulfil its legacy and global mission. His admiring glance at Lincoln's stance seems to put askance his introductory rant of the war as a great disaster at any cost or benefit.

One area where Goldfield rightly condemns Christians is in Biblical defense of slavery. Galations 3:28 is crystal clear: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." While other verses call for acceptance of our position in life, even in a position of slavery, nowhere does Jesus ever posit or even acceept the right of one man to enslave another. The use of Scripture to defend slavery remains an abhorent stain on Christianity even today.

Goldfield concludes the war, and Lincoln's sad end, with over 100 pages left in the book, leaving plenty of time to talk about the nation the War created. He recounts the sad tale of Reconstruction, and draws parallels between the treatment of freed African-Americans and the reservation-bound Native Americans as they were swept away in the rush of immigration, railroad-building, and gold-and-silver fever of the decade after the war. While Goldfield does draw the element of religious rightness, self-rightesouness, and redemption in these outcomes of the war, it hardly seems as though Christianity started or is at fault for these sins, as much as false and hypocritical justification for them; the freedmen and the Native American's would have been restricted and reserved Christianity or no. They were, as Goldfield more accurately argues at the end (p. 524), swept aside in the rush to progress that the unified (read Northern) America pursued headlong after the war.

So, Goldfield has written a fairly standard narrative layman's history of the Civil War, which he has prefaced with a bold theory that can easily be summarized in hyped and overheated headlines like my title. The history is readable, but you'll have to judge for yourself if he proves his theory.

[Drkazmd65 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book last fall after watching an interview with a country music star who said he was reading it and that it had a very different perspective on the course of the Civil War, what started it, who the antagonists were, and how that war resulted in the version of modern America that we have today.

I must state - after finishing this book - that country music star wasn't wrong.

The book starts with a long lead-in to the 20-30 years before the Civil War actually started, and the author does a very good job of setting the stage with the Know-Nothings, the demise of the Whigs, the complicity of both Northern and Southern evangelical movements, and how the Republicans of the Lincoln era rebuilt a party around those ashes. While that Republican party held together around Lincoln through the end of the war, Goldfield's book also points out how that Republican marriage of convenience also fell apart in a lot of ways after the uniting effect of the war itself went away.

While there is a good deal of the book that does relate to the war, and the battles during that war, most of the book is focused on the underlying reasons why both North and South felt that war was justified and in many ways a righteous war. The book also focuses on how the Civil War in many ways built the industrial might that became our industrial nation, and how that also fueled the united expansion that finished settling the west, and building our united nation.

[Michael Kilianski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This week at the Pages of Creative History I'm reading "America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation" by #history professor and #nonfiction author David Goldfield originally published in 2011.

Initially, I thought "America Aflame", given its nearly 600 pages in length, might be repetitive and a little difficult to get through, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. "America Aflame" is the best overview of the #americancivilwar that I have read in awhile. Dr. Goldfield's vivid prose immerses readers in the #civilwar time period and brings to life the emotion, suffering and human drama of the Civil War Era.

What makes "America Aflame" truly stand out is its #historical breadth and depth of subject. Dr. Goldfield's book is so much more than just a book of #civilwarhistory. "America Aflame" is a thought provoking snapshot of #AmericanHistory and #AmericanLife and culture from the years 1830 to 1876 that covers issues as diverse as #religion, #race, #Warfare, #reconstruction and the American Centennial Celebration of 1876 🇺🇸

It is heartily recommended by Creative History and should be read by all Creative Historians.

@topfans

#ushistory #historymatters #historylovers #ShareTheHistory #militaryhistory #bookrecommendations #19thcentury #abrahamlincoln #waltwhitman

[Mike Lund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and Worth Reading

An interesting book thats worth reading.

Although I understand and agree with Goldfield’s thesis, I gave it 3 stars because, at times, it seemed a bit slow or something. It isn’t because it’s too detailed. For the most part, it stays at a high level, discussing broad topics that influenced the decision to go to war, such as religion. Religion in the North and South differed in their view of slavery. This topic was often explored in books written at the time, such as “Southern Slavery and the Bible: A Scriptural Refutation of the Principal Arguments Upon which the Abolitionists Rely” Nellie Norton, 1864. He follows up with an overview of the civil war, the end of reconstruction, racial upheavals and the start of the growth of the industrial age. I have already read a lot concerning this time period, so perhaps, I am just overly familiar with the topic

[Guera25 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, and as someone who lives in the South, I cannot disagree with his assessment of it as a beautiful, close-knit, insular, suspicious, petty, thin-skinned, racist morass of willful ignorance and religious mania. It is. This book helps explain how it got that way. It's not an easy read, but rather a catalogue of the country's failings, north and south, and I had to take a break more than once when it got to the virulently-racist attitudes of white people of all stripes after the war. The dripping condescension and smug superiority of even the "enlightened" and sympathetic toward anyone not white were hard to stomach. If you're looking for an uplifting read, this is not it, but it's well worth the effort.

[Rob Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history about how America changed because of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It starts long before the war putting on display the inability of the politicians of that time to compromise. They’re inability to see the other side. That inability lead to war, and the aftermath was again filled with politicians lacking true leadership. It is the story of the birth of the nation we now live in, which is very much different from that established in the 18th century by the Revolution. There are few hero’s here, but lots of petty failures. Reading this causes one to look at today, and wonder, are we going to do this yet again...

[Susan Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully written and I cannot recommend it enough. Goldfield begins his narrative with the events leading up to the Civil War and ends with the country's Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. What is different about this take on the Civil War is the impact evangelical religion prior to and after the war. I highly recommend this book.

[Jdetrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more interesting history books I've read, this doesn't chart the Civil War that much (I'd estimate it takes up less than a third of the book's length), but instead focuses on what caused it and what it's ramifications were. It's a fascinating look at what the war meant to the people in the north and the south and the problems it solved and the ones it didn't.

[Ronald Christoph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone remotely interested in American history. This is easily one of the most informational books on the civil war that I’ve ever read. The author explains in detail how the contemporary United States is still suffering/dealing with the effects of this conflict.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best short histories, not just of the civil war, but of that entire arc of history, starting in Antebellum times and finishing with the end of Reconstruction. A required primer for those who want to understand the roots of the America we have inherited today.