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Making America, A History of the United States
Making America, Third Edition
Carol Berkin, Baruch College, City University of New York
Christopher L. Miller, The University of Texas, Pan American
Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco State University
James L. Gormly, Washington and Jefferson College
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| | Suggested Readings
Chapter 15: A Violent Choice: Civil War, 1861-1865
Annie Heloise Abel. The Slaveholding Indians,
3 vols (1919-1925; rev. ed. 1992-1993).
This long-ignored classic work focuses on Indians
as slaveholders, participants in the Civil War, and subjects of Reconstruction.
Its three volumes have recently been updated by historians Theda Purdue and
Michael Green. Each volume can stand on its own and will reward the patient
reader.
Jeanie Attie. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women
and the American Civil War (1998).
A good overview of the role played by women
in the North during the Civil War.
Bruce Catton. This Hallowed Ground: The
Story of the Union Side of the Civil War (1956).
Catton is probably the best in the huge company of popular writers on the Civil
War. This is his most comprehensive single-volume work. More detailed but still
very interesting titles by Catton include Glory Road: The Bloody Route From
Fredericksburg to Gettysburg (1952), Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1962), A
Stillness at Appomattox (1953), and Grant Moves South (1960).
Paul D. Escott. After Secession: Jefferson
Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (1978).
An excellent overview of internal political
problems in the Confederacy by a leading Civil War historian.
Judith Ann Giesberg. Civil War Sisterhood:
The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition (2000).
An excellent study of the Sanitary Commission
and its role in increasing women’s awareness of their ability to organize that
would undergird a growing feminist consciousness.
Alvin M. Josephy. The Civil War in the American
West (1991).
A former editor for American Heritage,
Josephy writes an interesting and readable story about this little-known chapter
in Civil War history.
William Marvel. The Alabama &
the Kearsarge: The Sailor’s Civil War (1996).
Military and social historians have compared
this new study favorably with The Life of Billy Yank (1952) and The
Life of Johnny Reb (1943), Bell Irvin Willey’s classic studies of life for
the common soldier, calling it an insightful narrative of the Civil War experience
for the common sailor.
James McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom:
The Civil War Era (1988).
Hailed by many as the best single-volume history
of the Civil War era; comprehensive and very well written.
Emory M. Thomas. The Confederate Nation
(1979).
A classic history of the Confederacy by an
excellent southern historian.
Garry Wills. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The
Words that Remade America (1992).
A prize-winning look at Lincoln’s rhetoric
and the ways in which his speeches, especially his Gettysburg Address, recast
American ideas about equality, freedom, and democracy. Exquisitely written by
a master biographer.
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