Kate Masur

2.5 stars

I’ve discovered that I love learning history in graphic form, so when I saw that this book was coming out, I was thrilled to have the chance to get to read it. I haven’t read a whole lot about the Reconstruction era just after the Civil War, so I found this read fascinating—especially considering the later Civil Rights Movement and everything else that followed.

Unfortunately, this book ultimately wasn’t for me, which makes me sad, because I really appreciated the history this book tells—it isn’t a topic that’s covered much. But I can’t entirely agree with parts of the worldview presented here. I absolutely agree that we need to treat everyone equally, but I don’t believe it’s right to put one group of people down in order to raise another group up. We all make mistakes, and we are not healthy as a society if we don’t acknowledge them. But there is also a time to move on and try to do better, leaving history as history.

As far as the artwork and storytelling style, I loved it. I felt it was difficult to keep track of all the historical characters represented in the story—I frequently flipped back to try to remember who this or that person was, so it felt like I spent some time jumping around between different people’s stories. Ultimately, this is a story of faith, hope, perseverance, and determination—and people who wouldn’t take “no” as an answer. I enjoyed the historical side of the story, and loved learning about the many courageous individuals whom I’ve never heard of before. I’m just sorry I couldn’t agree with all the conclusions this book came to, which brought my overall rating down.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book, and this is my honest opinion of it.… (more)

A major study about America'a first Civil Rights movement in the years prior to the Civil War.Some of the major issues involve Northern states not allowing Black people entry over their state borders and free Black sailors being captured and jailed (illegally) at Southern ports with no hope of release. Later the book moves into the debate and passage ot the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments. I learned much especialy with regard to my state's (Ohio) place in much of this fight. A valuable new book on a neglected area of Americn History.… (more)

The US Civil War is sometimes regarded as a kind of redemptive bloodletting for original sins, or a necessary and inevitable first step toward a defining consensus around ideas of democracy, freedom, and citizenship (“the American creed”). The chapters in The World the Civil War Made (a collection of conference papers from 2013) take the transformative nature of the Civil War as a question rather than an assumption, and suggest new ways of seeing the post-war period.

The notion of the Civil War as a transformative moment in American national development discounts the continuity across the antebellum and postwar periods. Postwar black politics had roots in antebellum slave communities. War and emancipation did not meaningfully change the longer trajectory of class relations or racial oppression (neither did a black president). Religious culture across the war also displayed remarkable continuity, particularly among southern whites, who produced unifying narratives of righteousness and triumph that have not only endured but strengthened over the course of the last 150 years.

Union schmunion. After the war, across regions, routine violence and enduring local power relations made it impossible for the federal government to enforce its own policies or to persuade people to accept the principles behind them. What defined the postwar era was not just the federal government’s new reach but the way that common people―southern freed peoples and rebels, western settlers and Indians―managed to resist its efforts. In both the South and the West, army interventions sparked intense debates about government’s proper role, size and cost. The Democratic Party regained popular support among northern white voters by raising fears of a standing army, a tyrannical central state, high tax rates, and racial equality.

As Downs and Masur write in the introductory essay, the postwar U.S. was a nation ruled by violence interrupted by flashes of rights, rather than a nation of rights undermined by inevitable flashes of violence. In various chapters we hear of whites rioting against Chinese mine workers in Wyoming and attacking the Nez Perce in Oregon, Latinos in New Mexico obstructing federal officials from freeing their peons, and black settlers displacing Native Americans in Indian Territory. The persistence and ubiquity of violence, lawlessness, and coercive labor practices belie any notion of national unity or commitment to a rationalized, legalistic public order. Chaos, anarchy and illiberal forms of power were more the norm than the exception after the Civil War.

What is valuable and interesting about The World the Civil War Made is the attempt by the various authors to avoid teleology and to contemplate the postwar moment itself rather than look back with the knowledge of what happened later. In deflating the mythology of the Civil War, the book also suggests that violence and ignorant chauvinism are defining parts of the American experience.… (more)