More Than a Contest Between Armies:
The Department of History faculty at Marquette University developed the Frank L. Klement Lecture Series to honor the contributions of the series’ namesake, who joined the Marquette faculty in 1948, taught until the mid-1980s and passed away in 1994. Klement studied, and encouraged his students to delve into, non-military aspects of Civil War history, presaging a trend that is in full force today. Numerous scholars now illuminate the social and political aspects of the sectional conflict and thus enhance our understanding of those years. Klement himself focused on Northern dissenters and their effect on Union wartime policy and provided a refreshingly contrarian view to the dominant mid-20th century school of “consensus history,” which downplayed opposing voices to the Lincoln and Davis administrations. For more than a decade, the Klement Lecture Series at Marquette has showcased the best new scholarship in Civil War social, political and memory studies. Many of the biggest names in the field have penned the essays in these pages; reading them is akin to opening a time capsule of recent Civil War scholarship. Several of the essays in this collection represent the early work of scholars who are now established in their fields. Edward L. Ayers, the creator of an innovative Web project chronicling the coming of the Civil War, lectured on the communities of Augusta, Va., and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, four years before the publication of his acclaimed book In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (2003) about those two locales. Essays by David W. Blight, about the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and by Lesley J. Gordon, about the 16th Connecticut Infantry Regiment’s struggles with questions of bravery and cowardice after Antietam, also fall into the category of previews of later, award-winning works. More Than a Contest, however, does not completely ignore the battlefield. Three essays on prominent generals — John Y. Simon on the U.S. Grant-Henry Halleck relationship, Joan Waugh on the writing of Grant’s Personal Memoirs and Gary W. Gallagher on Jubal Early’s role in the development of the “Lost Cause” myth — explore both how these men performed during the conflict and how they helped to shape our collective memory of it afterward. The presence of an essay by John Simon is especially welcome after the distinguished Grant historian’s death. The interaction between battlefront and home front figures strongly here, in keeping with the intent of the Klement Lecture Series. George Rable, author of the acclaimed Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (2001), explores how newspaper correspondents and other commentators on both sides shaped popular opinion of the war’s conduct and helped in turn to shape strategic decisions back on the battlefield. Catherine Clinton offers an essay on the expansion of prostitution in Southern cities during the war, and Mark Neely Jr. evaluates the Confederate government’s treatment of wartime civil liberties, providing an interesting comparison to the more numerous studies of Abraham Lincoln’s positions on the same subject. The most dominant subject in this book is that of historical memory, befitting that subject’s status as the most prominent in the field of Civil War historiography. Robert W. Johannsen and J. Matthew Gallman survey postwar writers and novelists, while William Blair surveys postwar debates over the treatment of Confederate prisoners. Added to the essays by Blight, Gordon, Waugh and Gallagher, they constitute a strong survey of the field of Civil War memory studies. More Than a Contest Between Armies is an excellent collection that brings together some of the best in recent Civil War scholarship. It demonstrates that, as Gary Gallagher commented, Civil War history is indeed a “big tent” with room for many related fields. There is a little something for everyone here, from the “drums and trumpets” military historian to the practitioner of related fields of social, political, African-American and women’s history. In one concise place, the interested Civil Warrior can determine avenues for further reading or study. Professor Klement would surely be proud of the lecture series. Reviewer: Maj. Charles R. Bowery Jr. Maj. Charles R. Bowery Jr. is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. After serving in command and staff positions as an AH-64 Apache pilot from 1992-1999, he taught military history at the U.S. Military Academy and attended graduate school at North Carolina State. Major Bowery Jr., was a U. S. Army Aviator stationed in Iraq with the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade.
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Notes, suggested readings, index, 309 pp., 2008. The Kent State University Press, 307 Lowry Hall, P. O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242-0001, $35 plus shipping.