| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

William Gerrett Piston and Richard W. Hatcher III. Wilson's Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It. (Civil War Americas.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2000. Pp. xix, 408. $37.50.

The fascination about the Civil War is as much due to the allure of great books as it is great battles and intriguing leaders. It is perhaps the most storied of any war; the storytellers of the Civil War were the thousands of soldiers who managed to scribble something on a piece of paper while in combat or in camp while longing for the war to be over. There can be no denying that the trend in Civil War scholarship over the last two decades has been to bring the confluence of war and society front and center in understanding the conflict. William Gerrett Piston and Richard W. Hatcher III have added to the allure of the Civil War not only by writing a wonderful book that gives the participants a voice, but also by considering the political and military ramifications of the battle of Wilson's Creek in the larger societal context. They deepen our understanding of the relationship between the soldiers and the communities from which they came. 1

At the beginning of the conflict, Americans were anxious to see which states would join the secession movement and which would remain loyal to the Union. Missouri was among those border states where loyalties were bitterly divided. The question of whether or not the state would remain loyal to the Union was largely settled at an obscure creek in southwest Missouri made famous by the battle on August 10, 1861 that bore its name. For Piston and Hatcher, the second battle of the Civil War, Wilson's Creek, was as significant for its participants as it was for its political and military ramifications. . . .

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