Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Library of America

“The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Lived It”

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By late 1861 and early 1862, people on both sides of the Civil War had begun to understand that this conflict wasn’t going to be “over by Christmas.” There would be no knockout punch; instead, it was going to be a long, tough slog. And the outcome was anything but assured. While we have the benefit of hindsight, the people who lived through the Civil War didn’t have foresight.

You can argue that every year of the Civil War was a critical year in some way, and 1862 was no different. The naval blockade of the Southern states would tighten; New Orleans would fall to Union Admiral David Farragut; and some of the bloodiest battles of the war – like Shiloh and Antietam – would be fought, along with Second Manassas or Second Bull Run. And Abraham Lincoln had begun to move toward a proclamation to emancipate the slaves in the seceding states – a political move rather than a military one, and one fraught with political risk.

The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Fought It tells the story of 1862. And it tells it in the words of the political and military leaders, soldiers, and ordinary citizens who led it, fought it, experienced it, survived it, and, in some cases, died during it.

Edited by historian and author Stephen Sears, the volume is the second of four in the Library of America collection of first-account Civil War writings. Sears has made use of memoirs, newspaper reports, letters, legislative acts, speeches, proclamations, and more, providing a short introduction to each to provide context. But you read what was happening by the people who were there.

The volume includes accounts by well-known authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, who visited the White House and met Lincoln; the poet Emily Dickinson; the poet and author Herman Melville; and Ralph Waldo Emerson. You read minutes and letters by the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, and diplomatic summaries from Charles Francis Adams (grandson of John Adam and son of John Quincy Adams), reporting from London. A considerable number of Lincoln’s letters, acts and proclamations are included (including both the first-draft Emancipation Proclamation issued together with the suspension of the write of habeus corpus). Speeches are here, like by former slave and emancipation activist Frederick Douglass. The letters of soldiers and officers to loved ones are represented. 

The Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which led to the surrender of New Orleans.

What emerges from all these reports is the understanding that the war would be costly, that there was nothing romantic about it, and that politics could be just as important in making military decisions as military objectives themselves.

Sears has published books on the battles of Gettysburg, Antietam, the Peninsular Campaign, and Chancellorsville, and on George McClellan, Lee’s lieutenants, Lincoln’s lieutenants, Lincoln’s generals, and related subjects. 

The Civil War: The Second Year by Those Who Lived It is an often surprising, sometimes shocking, and always fascinating story of what happened in 1862. And it’s told by the people of the time.

Top illustration: The Second Battle of Manassas or Bull Run in 1862.

Related: 

The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It.

“The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It”

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The refusal of Fort Sumter to surrender and the subsequent shelling by South Carolinian authorities might have been the immediate cause of the American Civil War, but it had been a long time coming. In retrospect, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Mexican War of the mid 1840s, which opened up vast new tracts of land for settlement; the Compromise of 1850; the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Dred Scott decision in 1857; and John Brown’s Raid in 1859 all edged, pushed, or shoved the nation towards an internal military war. The spark that lit the fuse was the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, followed by the secession of several Southern states. 

Documentation abounds. Few things occupied American minds in the 19th century like slavery. And Americans expressed their thoughts and deeds in diaries, letters, journals, newspapers, speeches, laws, and court decisions. Under the auspices of The Library of America, that documentation has been curated and published in four volumes collectively called The Civil War, edited by Brooks Simpson, Stephen Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean. Each volume is devoted to a specific year; volume 1 is The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It. 

The curated collection begins with an editorial in the Charleston (SC) Mercury on Nov. 3, 1860, asking what shall the South Carolina legislature do. It ends with a letter by Edwin Stanton, who became Lincoln’s Secretary of War, on Jan. 24, 1862, bluntly stating “This (federal) army has got to fight.”

In between are the thoughts, beliefs, hopes, and fears by Americans on both sides of the conflict, from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, officers and soldiers in the field writing to each other and loved ones, to civilians back home, writing in letters and diaries. You read the responses to the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), which was almost a Confederate defeat until it turned into a rout of the Union army, with soldiers fleeing back to Washington and fear gripping the federal capitol. You also read how, from the start, the Union army was grappling with the “contraband question,” which was what to do about slaves who had escaped to the Union armies. It was a question that dogged the federals all through the war. And you read the stirring writing of Frederick Douglass, during from the beginning that it be made a war over slavery: Lincoln initially focused on the idea of preserving the Union.

You see the strategic and tactical thoughts on people’s minds, and you see them dealing with the ordinary and mundane things of life. The reader has the benefit of hindsight; we know how this will end. But the people at the time did not, and both sides were determined to prevail. 

Brooks Simpson is an author and Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University. Stephen sears has published a biography of George McClellan and several individual battle histories. Aaron Sheehan-Dean is the Fred Frey Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of two Civil War histories.

The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It provides a considerable number of source documents for the first year of the war. It allows you to consider what people were thinking, believing, and experiencing. It’s an eye-opening and, at times, poignant read. 

Top illustration: An artist’s drawing of the shelling of Fort Sumter.