The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction

by Mark E. Neely Jr.

Book Overview

The Civil War is often portrayed as the most brutal war in America's history, a premonition of 20th century slaughter and carnage. In challenging this view, the author considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limits that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674026586
• ISBN13: 9780674026582
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A modest thesis presented well

Neely's thesis in "The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction" is a modest one that scarcely desrves the usually derisive name of "revisionist history." He does not argue that the Civil War was a heart-warming affair of idealists, but he does argues oppose the tendency in recent Civil War writing to depict it as an orgy of violence as unrestrained, in its way, as the Second World War. In other words, as he is constantly at pains to point out, the general run of military behavior, including - most significantly - Sheridan's and Sherman's campaigns of destruction - was relatively restrained in comparison with what could easily have been done and what other nations, France for example, were doing in their own wars of the period. Campaigns of the Civil War carried out by non-guerrilla forces were far less brutal than the treatment American volunteers doled out to Mexican civilians during the Mexican War - treatment that revolted General Winfield Scott. Rape was common in Mexico; it was rare in Georgia. Neely cites the Confederate massacre of African-American troops at Fort Pillow as a genuine war crime, but emphasizes that it was virtually unique. The Sand Creek Massacre, in which cavalrymen slaughtered a village of peaceful Native Americans in Colorado in 1864, was another atrocity. But Neely points out an important, if distasteful, distinction between these events and the general run of things during the war. The victims at Sand Creek were Indians and the victims at Fort Pillow were African Americans. The Indians were regarded as barbarians by the vast majority of white Americans North and South, and the black soldiers at Fort Pillow were thought of as treasonous, treacherous, dangerously armed runaway slaves by the South, besides being only marginally better than barbarians. In other words, the pervasive racism of the period led to atrocities, but the sense on both sides was that, however rotten their military opponents might be, they were nevertheless civilized white Americans. This racial solidarity tended to insure more civilized rules of engagement. It is remarkable that no matter what Sheridan may have wished, and no matter what Sherman might have done, neither army's policy or practice was to kill or to physically harm noncombatant civilians. Civilian homes and property were indeed destroyed, but Federal policy in these campaigns was to spare civilian lives. When that line of policy is crossed - as it was in the First and Second World Wars - a new kind of especially horrific war ensues, in which no-one is ever safe from death, and in which governments care nothing about destroying hundreds of thousands (or millions) of civilian lives for the sake of victory. That Sherman and Sheridan did not bring that sort of "total war" to the South, neely believes, reveals something about those days compared with ours. The North could have waged vast, murderous campaigns against Southern civilians but did not. This was small comfort to the homele

A Revisionist Civil War History

In his book "The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction" (2007) historian Mark Neely offers a challenging reassessment of the destructive, brutal character of the American Civil War. Neely is Professor of History at Penn State University. He has written widely on the Civil War and on Lincoln. In considering differing views of the Civil War, Neely appropriately reminds his readers near the conlusion of his book that "[w]e should remain open to alternative viewpoints and not be committed to a single narrative." (p. 203) Neely attempts to challenge a commonly-held view, among both scholars and laymen, that the Civil War at least in its late stages became an unusually brutal and destructive conflict -- the harbinger of "total" war as practiced in the 20th Century. He argues that, to the contrary, the Northern and Southern Armies fought in a limited fashion, without undue and unnecessary destruction of the property and lives of civilians and noncombatants. He denies that, in comparing the Civil War with other conflicts, it was particularly brutal or horrid. Neely attributes what he finds to be the relatively civilized conduct of the Civil War to racial perceptions. Soldiers of both North and South treated each other with more respect than was the case when the perceived enemy was of a different race, such as Indian or Mexican. Neely develops his case in several different ways. First, he contrasts the Civil War with contemporary or earlier wars of the United States. Thus, Neely points out the many instances of brutal conduct by American volunteers against the enemy and against civilians in the Mexican-American War of the late 1840s, the conflict that proceeded the Civil War. During and shortly after the Civil War, the French overthrew the Mexican government and established an Emperor, Maximillian, in an attempt to reestablish a foothold in North America while the United States was otherwise occupied. Maximillian waged war against the Mexican populace with a brutality unmatched in the American conflict. Then again, during the course of the Civil War, the United States was engaged in fighting the Indian tribes on the plains. Neely documents the tactics of burning, destruction, and massacre of innocents that were practiced against the Indians but did not form the general practice of either side in the Civil War. Neely has done a service in reminding of his readers of these too-little known conflicts(the Mexican American War, Maximillian's "black decrees", and the Indian wars) in considering the Civil War, even if he does not convince the reader that the Civil War had a more benign character. Neely also tries to make his case by examining various incidents in the Civil War itself. He spends a great deal of time discussing guerilla war in Missouri, concluding that participants in that troubled theater of the war distinguished between all-out guerilla warfare and war fought between the regulars of the two sides. He denies that the early guerilla f