Abstract
Since 1955 the journal Civil War History has served as the forum for important articles about the Civil War era. The Kent State University Press, its current publisher, has begun to issue a series of readers that reprint articles drawn from the entire run of the periodical. Loosely grouped by theme, the readers provide the unaltered texts of the articles, along with a scholarly introduction and index.
Race and Recruitment is the second instalment in the series. It contains sixteen articles that all deal with ‘racial thought generally’ as well as ‘antislavery, abolition, emancipation, slavery, and the recruitment and subsequent history of the [United States Colored Troops], in particular’ (p. x). Besides selecting the articles, editor John David Smith provides a short introduction that gives the general context in which the articles initially appeared, as well as how they fit within the historiography of the Civil War. An essay by Eugene Genovese that critiques Stanley Elkins’s ‘Sambo’ thesis begins the volume. Subsequent chapters by Lawrence J. Friedman, Reinhard O. Johnson, and Michael J. Kurtz deal with abolition in New York, Massachusetts, and wartime Washington, DC, respectively. Other pieces by Don E. Fehrenbacher, Allen Guelzo, Harold H. Hyman, Ludwell H. Johnson, and Mark E. Neely investigate Abraham Lincoln’s views on race, slavery, and colonization. Several primary documents – the opinion of Lincoln’s attorney general, Edward Bates, regarding the citizenship status of African Americans during the war and testimony regarding the Confederate massacre of United States Colored Troops at Fort Pillow in Tennessee – also appear. A chapter by David Blight considers the influence of eschatological religious traditions upon Frederick Douglass, while in another chapter Brooks Simpson examines Ulysses S. Grant’s shifting opinions on Union war aims and emancipation. A final trio of articles by Donald R. Shaffer, Andre Fleche, and M. Keith Harris all consider how United States Colored Troops fared in the post-war period. These last three chapters also fit within the current historiographical trend of memory studies; they examine how Americans interpreted the Civil War after it had ended.
Race and Recruitment will prove most useful to scholars without access to electronic or physical versions of Civil War History. Though all the chapters touch upon ‘antislavery, abolition, emancipation’ or ‘slavery’ in some fashion, they do not add up to a volume that coheres well. This problem was probably unavoidable, considering that each article had initially been written as a self-contained piece. Nonetheless, the selection does convey the wide range of scholarly interest in those topics within the pages of the journal. The introduction adequately contextualizes the articles, and the addition of the index is helpful. The wide range of articles reprinted renders the collection somewhat problematic for assignment in undergraduate courses, as it is likely that no more than a few of the articles will be relevant to any given course. The volume might be more suitable for graduate-level courses where more focus is placed upon historiography, especially considering its modest cost.