| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 619 words from this article are provided below; about 600 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Edward L. Ayers, Gary W. Gallagher, and Andrew J. Torget, editors. Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2006. Pp. viii, 226. $35.00.
In the first of the essays collected in this volume, Andrew J. Torget notes how "few works" in history "have examined the diverse scenes of life that played out on Virginia's home front" (p. vii). More than enough has appeared about battles, but that is scarcely the whole story, he justly contends. Indeed, could the rebel states have long survived without Virginia's political and historical preeminence, its large population, its high Confederate morale, its generalship, and its industrial capacity?	1
In his introduction to the volume, Gary W. Gallagher drives home Virginia's significance in time of war. The eminent military historian agrees with Torget that much of the state's history remains in the shadows. That omission, happily, has left a grand opportunity for the contributors. Gallagher might have more forcefully alerted readers to the richness of historical ideas that awaits anyone turning these pages. To illustrate the point, in the first essay, Torget assails an old subject with new vigor. He observes that historians have long pondered why Virginia took so long to join its sister slave states to the south. Some scholars credit the state's healthy two-party system, which could no longer be found in the seceding states. Was it because slavery meant less to Virginia's diversifying economy than it did to the cotton states? To answer the matter, Torget thoroughly explores the complications of partisanship in the Shenandoah Valley. Remarkably, its citizens managed to unite with one voice for secession. That was all the more astonishing, he contends, given their previous political rivalries. Yet, questions of motive remain. A plausible suggestion is that family ties and common cultural sentiments prompted loyalty to the Lower South and Southwest. By the hundreds of thousands, Virginia settlers had established new lives in the states south and west. Yet they continued an intimacy with their connections at home. These slave-state kinfolks were not only brothers in arms but also in blood and could not be forsaken under threat of Yankee invasion.	2
In an elegant essay, Wayne Hsieh challenges Douglas Southall Freeman's portrayal of General Robert E. Lee as guiltless and guilt-free in breaking his Union allegiance. He argues that nearly a third of other Virginians in the United States military abided by their vows of fidelity. Those southern-born West Pointers who honored their pledge numbered 162, while 168 joined the Confederacy. That almost even split is seldom cited, Hsieh observes. Most notable was General George Henry Thomas, hero at Chickamauga. His Union commitment severed him from his Southampton County relatives. Rumor has it that some even demanded that he change his name. Hsieh's persuasive essay struck this reviewer, long an admirer of Lee, as one of the freshest in this impressive collection. It should require other southern historians to rethink Lee's interpretation of what his most honorable course ought to have been.	3
Aaron Sheehan-Dean's contribution demonstrates the importance of geographical regions in the state, before and during the period of secession and war. His helpful maps show how counties in the relatively slave-free Northwest remained consistently Unionist, how central Virginia proved loyal but sentiment overwhelmingly shifted for secession after the siege of Fort Sumter. The Tidewater counties were disunionist with their large slave populations. Sheehan-Dean's quite logical conclusion is that, apart from the West Virginia break-off, a sense of state loyalty grew out of the shared sacrifices and miseries of war. That unity was to govern Virginia's racist tendencies far into the future.	. . .

There are about 600 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.