Book Description About the Author Samuel W. Mitchum Jr. is a former professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe who has taught at West Point. He is the author of more than forty books, including Bust Hell Wide Open: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege that Turned the Tide of the Civil War, and Desert Fox: The Storied Military Career of Erwin Rommel. He was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War and is qualified through the rank of major general. He lives in Monroe, Louisiana. Read more Customers Review: Excellent book, well written and documented. Should be required reading for all history classes.
This book is an excellent addition to the written history of this country’s greatest conflict, and in less than 200 pages provides a wonderful presentation of all the factors (yes, including the place of slavery) that led up to it. I heartily recommend this book, especially if you have never heard anything but what you were incorrectly taught in junior high school. You do yourself a huge disservice if you follow the crowd and blow off the “Civil War” as being “only about slavery” without looking at the MUCH bigger picture.That said, I doubt the 1 star reviews actually read this book. The history of the country in the lead up to the war in 1861-1865 is some of the most complex, and heartbreaking you can study. From their comments you can tell, they were not up to the task, or clear minded enough to look on facts that don’t fit their preferred narrative.
I have recently read 50 books relating to the WBTS, this is the best one yet. It exposes the untruths about the war, which I’ve read in other books also. This book should be a must read for history students, and all high school students across the country. Part, and only part of the reason for secession was about slavery. The war had nothing to do with freeing slaves, it was about money and power from the North.
The author is fighting against a strawman. He claims that those historians he disagrees with believe that the Civil War “was all about slavery”. Of course that is not true. Recognizing that slavery was the central cause does not entail the belief that it was the only cause.And based on the title of his book, he must think that those historians who disagree with him are deliberately spreading falsehoods.And as the other reviewer points out, there is really nothing new in this book. He just rehashes the old claim that the central cause was money.Read the preview or download a sample. That will give enough info to know one shouldn’t waste their money on such nonsense.
I was taught the basics of the economic foundation for causing the Civil War back in 1975, and it was well broadly considered for many years before that. This is not a new perspective. Any reviewers thinking the author is eye-opening just shows their own ignorance.
I did a project for my college history class. I analyzed the percentage of votes for Georgia’s secession county by county, and compared it to the percentage of the slave population in each county. High slave areas voted overwhelmingly FOR secession, and low slave density counties voted overwhelmingly AGAINST secession.48% of 1861 Georgians voted against secession in support of slavery. if it was about taxes and economics, the entire state would have voted for secession, but they didn’t. This Lost Cause revisionism in this book is appalling, and based on an opinion, not facts.The civil war was like the schisms in the Baptist and Methodist churches a decade before secession, it was about slavery with the churches, too.
Tensions boiled over in part due to the federal government dragging its feet when enforcing the fugitive slave act, which renders the “state’s rights” argument little more than a cool joke confederate sympathizers can tell themselves. The government stopped giving escaped slaves back, so they made a new government where states could keep a better grip on their slaves.Let’s stop trying to justify the actions of slavers and traitors.
We know it was all about slavery because the confederate racist traitors told everyone it was all about slavery when they wrote their secession documents.This book is a poor attempt at whitewashing the racist treason of the failed confederacy. |
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