Overview

In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth R. Varon argues that Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. And that Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, were determined to preempt, discredit, and silence Yankee appeals to the Southern masses. Interweaving military and social history, Varon shows how the Union's politics of deliverance helped it to win the war but also ultimately sowed the seeds of postwar discord.

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9780197517000

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Reviews

Elizabeth R. Varon's highly original and sweeping new study is one of the few histories of the war that deserve to be ranked as essential reading. Varon never veers too far from her overarching theme, but she has done her readers an enormous service by resisting the temptation to use 'deliverance' as a cudgel to reframe every last aspect of the war. When she returns periodically to her main argument, she does so with admirable deftness backed by persuasive research. --The Wall Street Journal Varon's main theme, offered in clear, straightforward prose, is that, contrary to what many have maintained, the Union tended to see the war as one of liberation--a mission of freeing a broad mass of poor deluded whites (and, for some, enslaved blacks) from the thrall of a tiny elite of oligarchical slaveholders. Varon shows that we can often learn more about what led to victory from politics than from battles. --The New York Times This is some of the finest battle writing around, and a sweeping analysis of both United States and Confederate strategy and tactics. -The Washington Post This is not a traditional story of North versus South but rather a story of North and South versus the Confederacy. Running alongside this revisionist narrative in Armies of Deliverance is a more-or-less straightforward political and military history of the Civil War, done very well. Varon creates thrilling set pieces of all the familiar battles and controversies. --The Christian Science Monitor Elizabeth Varon's Armies of Deliverance promises a 'new history of the Civil War.' She satisfies this bold claim by offering an interpretation of the conflict that subsumes the competing perspectives on northerners and slaveryEL. Most existing one-volume histories of the war adopt a rigorously chronological approach, centering the military narrative and following the contingencies of battles and campaigns through to Appomattox. Although Varon's book likewise moves forward through time, her strong interpretive framework distinguishes the approach. For teachers reluctant to assign a single text because students protest the anodyne feel of textbooks, the strength of Varon's argument makes this book a welcome choiceEL.Her narrative carries the story with remarkable effectiveness and concision. Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Journal of the Civil War Era

Author Information

Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History and a member of the Executive Council of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.

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