What This Cruel War Was Over
Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
Using letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take us inside the minds of Civil War soldiers—black and white, Northern and Southern—as they fought and marched across a divided country, this unprecedented account is “an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery and the Civil War" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning 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.
CHANDRA MANNING graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, received the M.Phil. from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and took her Ph.D. at Harvard University. She has taught at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and served as Special Advisor to the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for two years. She is Professor of History at Georgetown University, and divides her time between there and Braintree, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and children.
Troubled Refuge
Chandra Manning