The thin light of freedom The Civil War and emancipation in the heart of America

Edward L. Ayers, 1953-

Book - 2017

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Subjects
Published
New York : W.W. Norton & Company [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Edward L. Ayers, 1953- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxiii, 576 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 507-552) and index.
ISBN
9780393292633
  • List of Illustrations
  • List of Maps
  • Preface
  • Prologue
  • Part 1. The Scourge of War
  • July 1863 through November 1864
  • 1. The Great Invasion
  • May through July 1863
  • 2. A Gigantic Forlorn Hope
  • July 1863
  • 3. The Great Task Remaining Before Us
  • July 1863 through May 1864
  • 4. The Earth Will Tremble
  • April through June 1864
  • 5. To Burn Something in the Enemy's Country
  • June through October 1864
  • 6. A Campaign of Terrible Moment
  • September through November 1864
  • Part 2. The Harvest of War
  • December 1864 through 1902
  • 7. The Colossal Suicide of World History
  • December 1864 through March 1865
  • 8. The Perils of Peace
  • March through October 1865
  • 9. Rebelism
  • January through December 1866
  • 10. We Must Be One People
  • January 1867 through July 1869
  • 11. The Past Is Not Dead
  • 1868 through 1902
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • A Note on the Documentation
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by New York Times Review

DESPITE ALL THE TALK TODAY about the divisions between red and blue states, the Civil War remains the most divisive moment in our history. Yet in Edward L. Ayers's splendid book we are introduced to remarkably common emotions felt by the people of blue and gray states. "The Thin Light of Freedom" - like his 2003 Bancroft Prize-winning "In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863" - is groundlevel history, recounting the lives of ordinary men and women. It is based on archival materials from the Valley of the Shadow Project, a vividly detailed digital resource that Ayers co-created at the University of Virginia. The project presents the drama of life in two communities, one Southern and one Northern, from the time of John Brown's raid through the era of Reconstruction. Virginia's Augusta County and Pennsylvania's Franklin County are not far apart in the Great Valley, intersected by the Mason-Dixon line. After serving as president of the University of Richmond from 2007 to 2015, Ayers has returned with this study to the craft of historian and writer. He avoids traditional surveys, military histories and biographies of central political and military leaders, instead inviting readers into the private lives along a borderland, telling , stories in real time through diaries, letters, photographs, military records and newspapers. We follow the ebb and flow of beliefs and emotions, hopes and fears, from the invasion of Confederate forces into Pennsylvania in 1863 through the tumult of Reconstruction. Ayers employs both a wide angle and zoom lens, interspersing fascinating individual stories with insightful historical context, which he sets apart in italics. But he clearly prefers the zoom lens since it allows us to experience people's thoughts and emotions as they changed week by week. Figures like Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, the men who are front and center in most Civil War narratives, are seldom mentioned by Ayers's subjects. Many accounts of the war, both in print and film, depict the victory by the North as inevitable, because of its greater military manpower and industrial might. Ayers's intimate, chronological approach allows him to challenge that thesis. Rather than inevitability, the people of Staunton, Va., and Chambersburg, Pa., demonstrate contingency. Again and again, Ayers will bracket a poignant passage from a diary or letter with the phrase "at the time," to set up contrasts with standard interpretations. Thus, "at the time" of the Union victory at Gettysburg, the individuals whose letters and diaries are quoted here did not understand the battle to be a decisive turning point in the war. Again, for residents of Augusta County, Philip Sheridan's attacks in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 did not "at the time" feel like the total destruction described by later accounts. Slavery is a central thread that connects both of Ayers's books. In this one, he portrays the courageous determination of African-Americans after emancipation trying to take control of their own destinies. Their hopes are contrasted with the condescending racist attitudes of whites, not simply in Virginia, but also in Pennsylvania. A new word, "miscegenation," conjured up a new threat, the fear of the mixing of the races. WOMEN EMERGE AS central actors in this volume, too. With men either away fighting, or fleeing in the face of invasions in both Virginia and Pennsylvania, wives, mothers and daughters stood up and spoke out against the occupying armies. Staunton experienced invasion in both June and September 1864; letters and diaries reveal women's outrage directed not at the destruction of railroads and warehouses, but at the violation of the private spaces of their homes. Amid increasing suffering in the last years of the war, Ayers says, religion was the "only solace." Thirty-one-year-old John Dull, serving with Lee's troops at Petersburg, wrote to his wife, Genny, that "perhaps we have bin too mutch attacthed" to the world and the war "is intended to show us how transitory it is." Ayers is not only a seasoned historian, with a lifetime of writing about the American South and the Civil War behind him, he is also a compelling writer. He orchestrates many different voices into a steady rhythm, with a tempo that is fast-paced. He is extraordinarily sensitive when it comes to letting the crescendo of a story speak for itself through a particularly telling sentence from a diary or letter. Thanks to his careful work, we have the opportunity to hear the people in Augusta and Franklin counties in their own words, as they demonstrate both courage and cowardice in the face of a war more horrible than they could ever have imagined. RONALD C. WHITE'S latest book is "American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant." He is writing a biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 21, 2018]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Ayers, president emeritus of the University of Richmond, follows his 2004 Bancroft Prize winner, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, by telling the story of the final years of the Civil War in the Great Valley between the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. Both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the valley was the scene of brutal fighting. Like its predecessor, this book is grounded in the experiences of combatants and civilians alike, enslaved and free, harrowed by bitter war and at the mercy of uncontrollable forces. Rather than centering the story on leading figures, politics, and military strategy, Ayers shares riveting details about average, resilient people trying to survive the devastation around them. He describes, for instance, the deadly violence perpetrated by marauding cavalry forces in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and the total destruction of the northern town of Chambersburg, Pa., by fire. Readers looking for a conventional history of the Civil War or a fresh interpretation of it will find neither here. They'll instead discover on-the-ground, local history of ravaged communities and besieged Americans struggling through a terrible war and the vexations of Reconstruction. Ayers focuses on the thoughts, fears, and hopes of normal people struggling to stay alive and make sense of the murderous events taking place around them. The result is a superb, readable work of history. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Ayers's superb new Civil War history, which began with In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003), is set in Virginia's Great Valley and traces the stories of Augusta, VA, and Franklin, PA, counties from abolitionist John Brown's raid in 1859 to the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. The work begins with Confederate troops invading Pennsylvania and two years of conflict, followed by the social and political chaos of Reconstruction and the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. Ayers notes that many Americans on both sides of the war did not anticipate the unconditional surrender of the South, the end of institutional slavery, and the reconstruction of the country based on fundamental human rights for all. Paradoxically, Ayers concludes that without secession, the mobilization of huge countervailing armies and the threat from initial military successes by the Rebels, there would likely have been no early postwar attempt at emancipation for African Americans. The author finds that "Americans made each others' history, often in ways they did not foresee or intend." VERDICT An original contribution of unimpeachable scholarship. Highly recommended for Civil War and regional historians, military theorists, and all readers.-John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The renowned historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction continues the story begun in his Bancroft Prize-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003), recounting those events as they played out beyond the Blue Ridge.The Civil War was fought on many fronts but perhaps none more malleable than that in the Great Valley, which runs from Pennsylvania through Maryland and into Virginia. There, writes University of Richmond president emeritus Ayers (What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History, 2005, etc.) in this luminous account, Union armies threatened the Confederacy with near impunity, while Rebel forces attempted to do the same, as at Monocacy, Chambersburg, and other northward forays. As the author chronicles, these movements were calculated as much to prolong the war in the hope of costing Abraham Lincoln the 1864 election as to achieve any lasting military victory, reason enough for Robert E. Lee to raid into Pennsylvania, thus "making Northerners feel what it meant to live in an occupied land." Along the Pennsylvania border of this heartland, communities of emancipated African-Americans, who contributed many troops to the Union cause, suffered raids that returned prisoners to slaveryeven as, late in the war, Lee endorsed using black troops in the Confederate ranks. More than any other place, Ayers argues persuasively, the valley had special reason to fear the resumption of campaigning in the spring of 1864, when it "could come under assault from north and south, east and west, inside and outside." It was no less contested during Reconstruction, when voting laws were engineered to displace former rebels and impose rule by so-called carpetbaggers, an early instance of gerrymandering. As elsewhere in the South, the narrative on the war and its causes diverged from that favored in the North, building a lasting division even as the Supreme Court tolerated and even encouraged "complete legal segregation, disenfranchisement, and subjugation of black Southerners." An exemplary contribution to the history of the Civil War and its aftermath. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.