The Great Task Remaining before Us

At a time when Americans are reflecting on the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, we would do well to remember that the end of that war did not bring peace or resolution. This volume's primary theme is the continuity between the war and Reconstruction: the latter period did much to define more precisely what was achieved by the former. Most of the essays address the theme of continuity from the local level; with one exception, they treat life in the former slave states, including those that did not secede. Several essays examine both the possibilities and limits of the changes wrought by the war. For example, Derek W. Frisby's examination of west Tennessee Unionists in the postwar period emphasizes the role of violence and coercion in shaping the politics of the region: Unionists struggled to gain recognition of compensation claims for wartime damages. In Alabama, as Margaret M. Storey shows, Unionists continued to battle their wartime foes during Reconstruction. Anne E. Marshall argues that white Kentuckians maintained a spirit of rebellion by resisting emancipation. Common to all three of these essays are analyses of attempts to restore politics as usual in environments where coercion trumped consent

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Battle · Coercion (linguistics · Emancipation · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Theme (computing · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

• Civil Wars, from Beginning … to End

  David Armitage•The American Historical Review•2015

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