This chapter covers the secession of the Upper South, the struggle for the Border States, and the mobilization of resources, strategic planning, and early military campaigns. It addresses factors such as manpower, industrial capacity, geography, historical precedent, and European reaction as elements in handicapping the conflict.

This chapter charts the huge swings of momentum on the battlefield between the winter of 1861 and the winter of 1862; introduces students to key figures such as U. S. Grant, R. E. Lee, and George B. McClellan; discusses battles such as Shiloh, the Seven Days, and Antietam; and brings to the fore the concept of contingency.

This chapter explores the profoundly important concept of the citizen-soldier-which played an equally critical role in both the United States and the Confederacy. More than half of all men who served were true volunteers who entered service before conscription had been imposed.

This chapter builds on material in earlier chapters to explore the process by which emancipation came to be a non-negotiable war aim for the United States. It makes clear that until very late in the conflict emancipation was uncertain-the war could have ended with slavery largely intact and with few black men in uniform.

This chapter focuses on the year that often is described as the time when fortunes turned irrevocably toward United States victory-with Gettysburg and Vicksburg serving as twin turning points that doomed the Confederacy. In this chapter, a more complex reading of the period is presented-which also included massive anti-draft and anti-African American riots in New York City that highlighted political turmoil on the Union home front and continuing resolve across much of the Confederacy.

This chapter describes the sense of nation that imbued both war efforts, the massive expansion of central power in the Confederacy, the impressive– but less striking–expansion of federal power in the United States, and the need to engage the conflict as a war between two modern nation states rather than as a bloody uprising by one segment of the American population.

This chapter examines the varying experiences of different groups of women, white and black, behind the lines in the United States and the Confederacy (proximity to armies played a crucial role here). It explores the movement of women into different workspaces, black and white refugees in the Confederacy, and the degree to which women supported the respective war efforts.

This chapter examines the last year of the war with a focus on U. S. Grant’s strategic planning and execution. It reinforces the theme of contingency, showing how the summer of 1864 represented the lowest point of Union morale for the war and how emancipation, even at that late date, was not a sure thing.

This chapter describes the peace agreement signed at Appomattox Court House in 1865 that achieved the United States’ goals of reunion and emancipation, and then explores the aims of northern whites, southern whites, and the freed people in the immediate aftermath of war.

This chapter examines how Republicans fared in implementing congressional Reconstruction in the southern states from 1868 to 1876.

This chapter outlines the emergence of the major memory traditions of the Civil War — Union, the Lost Cause, Emancipation, and Reconciliation.