Edited by Ginette Aley and Joseph L. Anderson
The American Civil War has often been characterized as the
North vs. the South, but neither region was as homogenous as to fit within that
brief, and incorrect definition. The
many facets of the Southern war experience have been studied and dissected,
from its soldiers and generals, its politicians, the secessionists, the
Southern Unionists, the enslaved, its women and the war on the Southern home-front. The Northern perspective on the war is pales
in comparison, and often treated as a single identity. The Civil War was a vast and complicated
event; those for and against the war populated on both sides of the Mason-Dixon
Line. The Northern experience of the war,
every bit as factious as its Southern counterpart, but remains largely
unexplored in the large body of literature produced about the war.
Geographically speaking those states that comprised “The
North” can be split into three distinct regions, the Pacific Coast, the Midwest
and the East. Generally speaking the
states comprising the Midwest are those to the west and north of Pennsylvania,
and includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and
Kansas (Missouri and Kentucky, are often treated separately as “Border States”).
Ginette Aley and J. L. Anderson have consorted together and
edited a book which tackles the war from the Midwestern perspective in their
book “Union Heartland: The Midwestern Home Front During the Civil War.” Following a forward by noted Civil War
historian William C. Davis, its eight essays cover a wide variety of topics of
the war:
Together editors Alley and Anderson present an introduction,
“The Great National Struggle in the Heart of the Union.”
In “Captivating Captives: An excursion to Johnson’s Island
Civil War Prison” Michael P. Gray discusses Sandusky, Ohio’s entrepreneurial
windfall of having a camp for Confederate Prisoners of War just off its shore
attracting the curiosity of both the local population and tourists alike.
A group of students at the University of Michigan who took
it upon themselves, as their patriotic duty, to stay in school and finish their
education instead of enlisting in the Union Army is featured in Julie A. Mujic’s
essay “‘Ours is the Harder Lot’: Student Patriotism at the University of
Michigan during the Civil War.”
R. Douglas Hart covers “The Agricultural Power of the
Midwest during the Civil War.”
Soldiers’ wives left behind often became wards of their
in-laws. Nicole Etcheson delves into
theses sometimes troublesome relationships between women and their in-laws in
her essay “No Fit Wife: Soldiers’ Wives and Their In-Laws on the Indiana Home
Front.”
The theme of the lives of those left behind is continued
with Ginette Aley’s essay, “Inescapable Realities: Rural Midwestern Women and
Families during the Civil War.”
Many Midwestern farmers who enlisted in the army left their
wives at home to run the farm. J. L.
Anderson discusses how women adapted to running their farms, and the changing
relationships between them and their soldier husbands in his essay “The Vacant
Chair on the Farm: Soldier Husbands, Farm Wives and the Iowa Home Front,
1861-65.”
And lastly Brett Barker presents his essay “Limiting Dissent
in the Midwest: Ohio Republicans’ Attacks on the Democratic Press.”
Alone each essay stands on its own merits. All are well written and easily read. Endnotes at the end of each essay reveal the
depth and breadth of each author’s research, which due to a lack of secondary
sources a large percentage of the research was based on primary sources. Together each essay forms a cohesive portrait
of the Midwestern experience of the war.
Is it an in-depth treatment of the Midwestern home-front experience
during the war? No, nor was it meant to
be. It is but a scratch on the ground’s
surface of a well waiting to be dug, which when pumped will quench the thirst
of those who love to drink from the fountain of Civil War scholarship.
ISBN 978-0809332649, Southern Illinois University Press, ©
2013, Hardcover, 224 Pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Chapter End Notes
& Index. $39.50. To Purchase the book click HERE.
