The New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War

by Edward L. Widmer (Editor), George Kalogerakis (With), Clay Risen (With)

Overview

Between 2011 and 2015, the Opinion section of The New York Times published Disunion, a series marking the long string of anniversaries around the Civil War, the most destructive, and most defining, conflict in American history. The works were startling in their range and direction, some taking on major topics, like the Gettysburg Address and the Battle of Fredericksburg, while others tackled subjects whose seemingly incidental quality yielded unexpected riches and new angles. Some come from the country's leading historians; others from those for whom the war figured in private ways, involving an ancestor or a letter found in a trunk. Disunion received wide acclaim for featuring some of the most original thinking about the Civil War in years. For millions of readers, Disunion came to define the Civil War sesquicentennial.

Now the historian Ted Widmer, along with Clay Risen and George Kalogerakis of The New York Times, has curated a collection of these pieces, covering the entire history of the Civil War, from Lincoln's election to Appomattox and beyond. Moving chronologically and thematically across all four years of hostilities, this comprehensive and engrossing work examines secession, slavery, battles, and domestic and global politics. Here are previously unheard voices-of women, freed African Americans, and Native Americans-alongside those of Lincoln, Grant, and Lee, portrayed in human as well as historical scale. David Blight sheds light on how Frederick Douglass welcomed South Carolina's secession-an event he knew would catapult the abolitionist movement into the spotlight; Elizabeth R. Varon explores how both North and South clamored to assert that the nation's "ladies," symbolic of moral purity, had sided with them; Harold Holzer deciphers Lincoln's official silence between his election to the presidency and his inauguration-what his supporters named "masterful inactivity"-and the effects it had on the splintering country.

More than any single volume ever published, Disunion reveals the full spectrum of America's bloodiest conflict and illuminates its living legacies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190621834
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/13/2016
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ted Widmer is a historian based at Brown University. He edited the two-volume set American Speeches for the Library of America and is writing a book about Abraham Lincoln's railroad journey in 1861. Clay Risen is an editor at The New York Times and the author of The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act. George Kalogerakis is a deputy Op-Ed editor at The New York Times and a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword
2. Introduction
3. The Secession Crisis
4. Slavery
5. The Homefront
6. The Battlefield
7. Native Americans
8. The Law
9. The West
10. International
11. Emancipation
12. Consequences
13. Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"This is a clear, focused and thoughtfully executed volume ... Disunion pushes its readers to contest and challenge conventional understandings of the causes, course and consequences of the Civil War. It is an innovative and compelling volume with wide-reaching appeal to both academic and general audiences." — Kristen Brill, History

"Noted academics, scholars, editors, and historians contribute to a collection of fresh, provocative essays on the Civil War, first published in digital form by the New York Times. ... Featuring a foreword by Ken Burns, who speaks to the persistent relevance of the Civil War as an initial but never satisfactory way of atoning for our original sin, the book elicits contemporary voices wrestling with internal conflicts that still haunt Americans today: as Widmer writes, 'anger at the federal government, unresolved racial tensions, simple helplessness before the constant onslaught of a 24-7 communications grid that matured during the war.' An excellent teaching tool, perfect for libraries." —Kirkus, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2016-07-19
Noted academics, scholars, editors, and historians contribute to a collection of fresh, provocative essays on the Civil War, first published in digital form by the New York Times.Times’ editors Risen (American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation's Favorite Spirit, 2015, etc.) and Kalogerakis team up with Widmer (Director, John Carter Brown Library/Brown Univ.; Brown: The History of an Idea, 2015, etc.) for a beautifully laid-out and organized version of their online Disunion blog, which ran until 2015. Featuring a foreword by Ken Burns, who speaks to the persistent relevance of the Civil War as an initial but never satisfactory way of atoning for our original sin, the book elicits contemporary voices wrestling with internal conflicts that still haunt Americans today: as Widmer writes, “anger at the federal government, unresolved racial tensions, simple helplessness before the constant onslaught of a 24-7 communications grid that matured during the war.” Each of the 10 chapters contains around 10 essays, from the first chapter, “Secession” (e.g., “The Strange Victory of the Palmetto State” by Manisha Sinha), to “The Battlefield” (e.g., “Humanity and Hope in a Southern Prison” by Peter Cozzens) to “Abraham Lincoln and the Federal Government” (e.g., “The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Salmon P. Chase” by Rick Beard) to the final chapter, “Consequences” (e.g., “Remembering the Gettysburg Address” by Joshua Zeitz). Widmer writes of the “liberating” form (for academics) of these punchy, original essays written for a “digital commons,” and indeed they spread the net widely for some surprising moments of erudition, such as Melinda Miller and Rachel Smith Purvis’ essay about the Cherokee leaders producing their own emancipation acts in the wake of Lincoln’s in February 1863 (“The Cherokees Free Their Slaves”). Also notable are Crystal N. Feimster’s “Rape and Justice in the Civil War” and contributions by scholars Adam Goodheart, Jon Grinspan, Paul Finkelman, and Harold Holzer. An excellent teaching tool, perfect for libraries.

Kirkus Reviews