Understanding Societies in War

This chapter emphasizes the analysis of the wartime forces in both sections that affected unity or division. It raises questions about the roots of the large amount of internal violence or irregular warfare in the South. For the North, it probes the nature of nationalism and asks about that section’s social, political, and religious divisions. Factors affecting both the Republican and the Democratic Parties of the North deserve new attention, as do the role of women in both sections, ethnic groups in the North especially, and the impact of emancipation and racism.

Consequences and Continuities

This chapter focuses on the consequences of the Civil War, especially for the nation-state, for African Americans, and for the West. It examines, with commentary and suggestions, new ideas about how to conceptualize the era. An uneven process of national consolidation yielded a national government that was strong in some areas and weak or absent in others. The long-term effects of the war on communities, veterans, immigrants, and attitudes North and South are key areas for research.

Military History

This chapter focuses on the major strategic issues relating to the war and the way those issues were debated in both the North and the South. Questions of strategy, operations, generalship, relations between civilian and military leaders, and internal political or societal constraints on military action are issues deserving greater exploration. There are important controversies relating to theaters, departmental commands, and irregular warfare. An important challenge is to find ways to integrate battlefield events and home-front issues. The chapter suggests approaches to questions of civilian control, the status of soldiers and military heroes, and the experience of soldiers during and after the conflict.

Environmental Approaches to the Civil War

This chapter deals with environmental approaches to studying the Civil War era. It discusses how the environment affected the war and how human beings and their warfare changed the land. Considering the environment as a set of relationships between the physical world and many types of human activity broadens the focus to include economic, psychological, and gender-related results and interactions with the environment.

New Techniques, New Opportunities

This chapter discusses and examines the new techniques of digital humanities. Beyond the important advantage of having primary sources available in digital form, historians now can use computers to analyze huge data sets, to combine different but related data sets, to collect information, to map information, and to visualize changes over time. Using the “crowd-sourcing” approach, it is possible to assemble huge amounts of scattered but useful data that would be beyond one person’s efforts. This chapter examines several examples of innovative projects and offers suggestions for future work and for enhancing cooperation among researchers.

Understanding the Roots of War

This chapter focuses on the sectional conflict leading to war. It reviews changing interpretive approaches before focusing on new work that often takes a global or Atlantic and primarily economic perspective. It raises many questions that may usefully inspire future research. The South, the North, and the “middle” or “border” third of the nation receive attention, as do African Americans and popular attitudes toward the nation.

African Americans in the Civil War Years

The nation’s African Americans, living in both the North and the South and in freedom and in slavery, formed a diverse population. This chapter focuses first on the South’s slaves, whose initiatives for freedom—by running to Union lines—changed the nature of the war. It also examines the determined political activism of black people in the North and the pressures they exerted on the government in order to win not just freedom for the race but equal rights as well. Questions about the organization and resources of Northern blacks as well as the connections between the Northern and Southern black populations deserve attention, and the chapter offers many suggestions or questions.