What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War

In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside the minds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern and Southern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. This is a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Civil War as it has never been rendered before.

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• Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era)
• This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library)
• Half Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition: The Roots of Civil War
• The American Revolution: A History (Modern Library Chronicles)
• A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
• Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History (Fifth Edition) (Vol. 1)
• Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South
• The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears (The Penguin Library of American Indian History)