| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Civil War Time: Temporality and Identity in America, 1861–1865. By Cheryl A. Wells (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. xii plus 195 pp. $39.95).

For at least fifteen years it has been a cliché of the war movie, usually illustrated through slow-motion action sequences, that a soldier's time perception is radically altered during battle. Scholars attempting to determine the length of a battle based on first-hand accounts can vouch for the fact that the manner in which war alters time consciousness is not simply a cinematic convention; men fighting side by side often report shockingly different assessments of the length of a fight. So Cheryl Wells' contention that "battle time" during the Civil War was a particular temporality that trumped attempts to impose clock discipline on warfare is not particularly surprising. What makes this brief study significant is the detailed manner in which she investigates precisely what was at stake in the struggle between clock and battle time, particularly on the battlefield, and the ramifications of the temporary victory of battle time among those participating in the war. Wells' primary argument here is that battle time "reconfigured activities in camps, hospitals and prisons by trumping all other times and forcing soldiers, prisoners, and nurses to embrace task orientation."(9) These changes were not permanent, after the war participants returned to a clock-oriented temporality.

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