Utah and the American Civil War

Utah and the American Civil War (2017) builds and expands upon Civil War Saints (2012) edited by Kenneth Alford, and in doing so, brings much new material to light concerning Utah and the era of the American Civil War. The current volume is a guide to documents and information in the era of the Civil War and is valuable to both professional historians and beginners doing research on Utah and the Civil War. Some earlier accounts suggest Utah had little to do with the war and war efforts, but Alford’s encyclopedic approach in this volume of more than eight hundred pages underlines the extensive involvement of Utah, the Mormons, and the U.S. military in many of the events of the period as they relate to the war and to the West. The book is organized to assist and inform researchers and casual readers. The initial division of the book in its first eighty pages into four sections establishes the framework and structure of the book. These four sections include a “Timeline of United States and Utah Territory History”; “Utah Territory and the Civil War: A Summary History”; “A History of the War of the Rebellion Official Records”; and a “Records Overview.” A chapter on Utah’s Civil War Official Records occupies almost two-thirds of the volume while a chapter on Additional Records from the Utah Territory is about one-fourth of the volume. These last two chapters (Chapters 4 and 5 in the book) are extensive and valuable in their historical contributions and occupy about seven hundred pages in Alford’s edited book. A Glossary and the Bibliography both located at the end of the book are informative and helpful.

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