In the Wake of War
Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4154747 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Frank J Byrne (0000-0002-5207-1826, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, New York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1024-1025 |
| Publication date | 2019-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz069 |
| OpenAlex | W2916292312 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
In the vast scholarship on the American Civil War, the literature on the Union's military occupation of the Southern states during and after the conflict is relatively slight. Important studies by Stephen V. Ash, Mark Grimsley, and others have made critical contributions to this topic, but many questions remain. This is why Andrew F. Lang's In the Wake of War is such a welcome addition to this historiography. Lang builds on the scholarship and challenges a number of conclusions that historians have reached about the realistic scope of Reconstruction. Lang argues that the Union army consisted of men who adhered to a “citizen-soldier” ideal “predicated on the individual's role in safeguarding the national mission through swift, decisive, and temporary military service” (p. 2). Lang emphasizes the voluntary and impermanent nature of this service, rooted in a republican tradition going back to the American Revolution. Furthermore, even the most patriotic soldiers, whether motivated to defend the Union, abolish slavery, or punish treason, viewed long-term occupation by a “garrison culture” as abrogating their rights as citizen-soldiers and a threat to the Republic (p. 135). The implications of this world view during and after the war were profound. It should be noted that the Union soldiers Lang describes are of European American descent, and the tens of thousands of African American troops fighting for the North “viewed the occupying army as the central vehicle by which to alter the South's entrenched racial hierarchy” (p. 13). How these two visions evolved from 1861 through the 1870s is the heart of In the Wake of War
Emancipation · Historiography · Military service · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Vision · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |