Virginia's Civil War

Virginia's Civil War * Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. * Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005 * xii, 303 pp. * $35.00

For a state that took center stage in creating and sustaining a southern Confederacy, it is curious that Virginia's historical reputation is noted for its political moderation during the Civil War era. The essays in Virginias Civil War give us just cause to rethink this long-accepted assumption. Every contributor explores how the Old Dominion's citizenry acted and was acted upon by the revolutionary events of the Civil War. What emerges from this diverse set of essays is a compelling theme that Michael Fellmaii brilliantly articulates in his essay on Robert E. Lee. The general was like many white Virginians before, during, and after the Civil War. They employed the language of moderation that softened their public voice while distorting perceptions of political actions that were far from moderate. In reality, moderation masked the reactionary, violent, and political struggles that white Virginians relentlessly pursued in defense of elite rule and white supremacy.

Not all of the twenty essays in this volume speak directly to this theme, but virtually every contributor shows how white and black, rich and poor, and men and women saw themselves and the world around them in new ways after Fort Sumter. For instance, both Charles Irons and Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, in separate essays, explain how Christianity caused many Virginians to view secession and war with great suspicion. Irons correctly insists that pro-slavery religious leaders were not automatically transformed into political fire-eaters after Lincoln's election. Virginia's clergymen equated their obligations as citizens of the Union to their covenant with God. Hsieh found that Baptist ministers did not immediately call on Virginians to slay the enemy as part of a religious crusade against demonic Yankees. They cautioned their fellow Virginians against the baser instincts and emotions of war. Daniel Kilbride's excellent piece on Virginians who toured Europe in the 1850s also reveals a people who were not aggressively self-assertive in their sense of being southern or slaveholders. Their observations of Europe neither contained substantial criticism of free labor societies nor eloquent tributes to the South's way of life. All three scholars make it clear that white Virginians were conflicted and ambivalent when it came to the questions of secession, war, and what it meant to be southern.

A spirit of conservative Unionism and ambiguous notions about being southern, however, quickly gave way to aggressive political and military action in defense of a southern nation devoted to slavery. The radical change in public opinion after Lincoln called for troops is striking. By 1863 this strident support for the Confederacy gave way to fanaticism among most white Virginians. It is remarkable that the "reluctant rebels" found in the articles of Irons, Hsieh, and Kilbride became Confederate zealots almost overnight. The essays of Jason Phillips, LisaTendrich Frank, and David Smith help explain this incredible political and cultural transformation in the Old Dominion. Phillips takes the religious life of Virginia soldiers on their terms, and in doing so he offers a compelling case as to how Christianity inspired extreme devotion from the rank and file. Frank is equally persuasive in revealing how the North's policy of hard war actually intensified Confederate loyalties of elite Virginia women. And Smith shatters the myth that Lee's men behaved like Christian gentlemen while invading Pennsylvania during the summer of 1863. He found that many of Lee's soldiers acted as slave catchers, and their actions were endorsed by the Confederate high command. Their eagerness to enslave Pennsylvania blacks, coupled with the destruction of civilian property, underscores a spirit of vengeance that animated Confederate loyalties in the Army of Northern Virginia until the end of the war.

The political extremism of white Virginians during the war did not disappear after Appomattox. John M. McClure, Susanna Michele Lee, and Caroline Janney reveal bitter political contestations for power among all classes of Virginians. No group was willing to go away quietly, including the young men who returned as students to Washington College. These young men, McClure discovered, organized vigilante groups that terrorized Lexington's free blacks. This superb piece supports Fellman's argument that Lee's public statements of racial moderation masked the day-to-day reality of postwar Virginia where many whites used any means necessary to reestablish conservative rule. In one of the most creative essays in this volume, Susanna Michele Lee examines the records of the Southern Claims Commission to uncover the internal political battles among white Virginians. She found that the commissioners were primarily concerned about wartime expressions of Unionism, a perspective that clashed with many former Confederates who were trying to reconstitute themselves as postwar Republicans. These bitter political struggles also surfaced in Confederate memorial activities. Janney demonstrates in her impressive essay on the transformation of Blandford Church into a Confederate shrine that Lost Cause activities did not unite whites of all classes and political persuasions. She discovers that the contentious local politics of Petersburg gave shape and purpose to commemorative events.

Bertram Wyatt-Brown and Peter Wallenstein have put together an exceptional book. The essays are tightly edited (almost every piece is less than twenty pages) and they are highly interpretive, largely because the editors eliminated excessive details. This editorial decision enabled the contributors to think more broadly about their arguments, and they succeeded in connecting their ideas to larger historiographical debates. Virginia's Civil War brings attention to the exciting scholarship of many young scholars who participated in the 2002 Douglas Southall Freeman Conference at the University of Richmond. This book should sit alongside the works of Daniel Crofts, William Blair, and William Link as essential reading on Virginia during the Civil War era.

Reviewed by Peter S. Carmichael, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (2005).

Copyright Virginia Historical Society 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved