The Civil War: The First Year Told By Those Who Lived It (2011)

This is the first of a four volume series published by Library of America. The editors have done an excellent job in providing the reader with a diverse group of selections written by a varied group of contributors. Many of the selections are speeches and other official writings that you would expect to find. At least one-third are letters and diary entries from people whose names were never in the newspapers. At the back of the book the editors have provided a section of short biographies of all of the contributors. This was very helpful in providing a context for the selections by the writers I was unfamiliar with.
Reading through the book I felt like an amateur historian. Reading primary source materials was similar to going through archives hunting for the facts about different events. The selections fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and changed my understanding of many events. One good example was a speech by Senator John J. Crittenden. In early 1860 he introduced several measures to provide a compromise to secession. Reading about it on other occasions I felt he was just an old man holding on to the past. The text of the speech was full of passion for the Union and the desire to take any steps necessary to save it. The emotion that came through his words created a vivid memory.
One woman writing in her diary questions, "Is this the beginning of the Civil War we have heard about?" which gives a sense of the immediacy of events that were happening out of control. The irony is that the entry was written January 9 and the war didn't start until April 12.
Reading the selections I realized that history does not happen in nice and neat packages of events. History as it happens is a messy confluence of happenings that doesn't fit any pattern or theory. Very few people writing in the first year of the war thought it was possible it could last more than a year. Many Southerners thought they had won the war after The First Battle of Bull Run.
I enjoyed reading this book very much. It added a great deal to my understanding of what it was like to live through this time. Along with the biographies the book includes a chronology, notes on the texts and 50 pages of end notes. I look forward to the next volume. ( )