Response To Gallagher's The Union War

In The Union War, Gallagher discusses emancipation, slavery, and states rights and how they shaped post civil war America for the gory conflict they ahead. To Gallagher it was obvious why the south seceded and fought the war; he wanted to let his readers know why the north fought the war instead of letting the confederacy go. “The mid-nineteenth-century northerners felt a great deal of nationalism, when they learned of the secession they were outraged.” (Pg.78) He framed much of his book on the work of other authors like Orville Burton, Eric Foner, Walter McDougall, and David Williams. He was set out to not only write about how the white northerners fought the war but also how they won it.
In Gallagher’s writing he concentrates the readers

attention the citizen army and how it became a central point of wartime republican nationalism. Some of Gallagher’s northern soldiers, especially the African Americans, believe that emancipation is the Union’s main goal during the civil war but they are mistaken. The union concluded that the end of slavery could only help in the perpetual reunification of the Union. He used soldier’s letters and regiment histories to show how during the whole war the main goal of the north was to preserve the union in any way possible. That is where he departs from other scholars who believe the emancipation and Gettysburg address are the groundwork behind the Union’s efforts in the war. In Gallagher’s eyes emancipation was a military weapon that allowed the Union to recruit African American and white soldiers that were for the end of slavery, it also gave those soldiers a reason to fight longer and harder. Yet he does not see it as a major determining factor in the wars outcome. "The United States could have achieved victory with slavery intact and no African American units in its armies" just as it "could have lost the war with emancipation on the table and black men composing 10 percent of all loyal forces.” (Pg.88) Gallagher frequently reminds the readers that the victory of the Union relies heavily on the accomplishments of the armies and on the skills of the army generals like Ulysses S Grant who led the armies deeper and deeper into enemy territory.
Gallagher says that only failure on the battlefield, mainly Gen.

George B. McClellan’s failure to capture the confederate capitol Richmond, is the reason the northerner’s choose to act against slavery and promote emancipation. If the union had stronger military tactics and generals then there’s a chance that emancipation wouldn’t have been as big as it was. Gallagher writes: “Much recent civil war scholarship obscures the importance of Union for wartime generation. Two interpretive threads run through such literature. The first and more prominent suggests the Union of 1860-61 scarcely deserved to be defended at the cost of any bloodshed. The second argues that a major shift in war aims occurred when northerner’s realized that only emancipation made their sacrifice worthwhile. In both instances, modern sensibilities distort our view of how participants of a distant era understood the war.”
The Union War is an equal but opposite companion of The Confederate War, which describes in detail the confederate nationalism. The two volumes easily help the reader understand the two republican-minded peoples lives as they experience a seemingly never-ending war. The Union War reminds military historians to think more widely about their

subjects.
The Union War also brings up some important questions to think about during civil war times.

How did the foundation for such a deep commitment to the Union and the army develop, especially given the decentralized nature of federalism and the relatively small size of national institutions like the army prior to the war? If the war was less transformative of Northern views of slavery and race than previous scholars have supposed, does this suggest that Radical Reconstructionist hopes were largely stillborn? How, then, do we explain the political transformation from a pre-war Thirteenth Amendment that, if ratified, would have all but guaranteed slavery's permanency to a series of postwar amendments that not only ended the institution but expanded civil rights and the franchise to include freedmen? Answering these difficult questions requires an appreciation of the diverse approaches needed to account for the complex intersections of racial ideas and the institution of slavery with republican institutions and political practices. The Union War calls for a reassessment of some of the foundational assumptions that we bring to these and other questions.
Before the war, slavery powerfully affected the concept of self-government. Many citizens in the union identified democracy as a white privilege, a position embraced by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott v Sandford case of 1857. Which is why the transformation the Civil War brought on America was so remarkable. As George William

Curtis, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, in 1985 wrote about, the war transformed a government “for white men” into one “for mankind.” That was something worth fighting for.
Many scholars argue that the civil war brought a new notion of American nationhood. While Gallagher argues that the civil war only hardened the already existing patriotic values. He was right the after the civil war racism to African Americans still existed all over the unified nation, mainly in the deep south, and the northerners turned a blind eye to the segregation. Gallagher fails to acknowledge the egalitarian attitude that cause the revision and rewrite of the constitution and its amendments, that was the farthest the nation had gone to have equal rights for every citizen no matter there race, religion, or ethnic background.
The Union War and Gallagher go deeper into the civil war and its participants then just scratching the surface like most other scholars and books. In the book Gallagher liked to prove the ideas of other historians and prove them wrong providing great deal of proof to his point. He did a amazing job at explaining the reasons for the union participating in the war and opened my eyes to new things about the civil war and the North’s true intentions in the war.