--- title: American Civil War description: The Civil War decided slavery and the Union. You will learn its causes, the campaigns and leaders, emancipation, the home front and Reconstruction, via the best narrative and academic histories. category: humanities subcategory: history difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/american-civil-war --- # American Civil War The Civil War decided slavery and the Union. You will learn its causes, the campaigns and leaders, emancipation, the home front and Reconstruction, via the best narrative and academic histories. ## Available Resources 6 Books • 1 Courses • 1 Websites ## Podcasts ### 1. The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast **Author:** Jim Hessler and Eric Lindblade Long-form podcast working through the 1863 Gettysburg campaign episode by episode, hosted by two Licensed Battlefield Guides. Each installment examines a specific unit, decision, or phase of the fighting, with attention to terrain and conflicting accounts. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/battleofgettysburgpodcast **Tags:** gettysburg, gettysburg-campaign, civil-war-battles, battlefield-terrain, military-history ## Books ### 1. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War **Author:** Drew Gilpin Faust Faust examines how mass wartime death reshaped American burial, mourning, religious belief and the federal government's obligation to its dead, including the creation of national cemeteries. Reframes the war around its central fact - the scale of the dying - and shows how that fact built institutions and changed a culture. Supplies the home-front and cultural dimension campaign histories omit. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375703837?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** civil-war-death, mourning-and-burial, national-cemeteries, civil-war-home-front, american-cultural-history ### 2. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory **Author:** David W. Blight Blight traces how, across the fifty years after 1863, a white sectional reconciliation displaced emancipation in American memory and licensed the Lost Cause. Equips you to identify and dismantle neo-Confederate accounts of what the war meant. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674008197?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** civil-war-memory, lost-cause, sectional-reconciliation, emancipation, historiography ### 3. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Anniversary Edition) **Author:** Charles B. Dew Dew reconstructs the 1860-61 speeches and letters of the secession commissioners sent between Southern states, showing they argued openly for slavery and white supremacy. Directly answers the question that dominates every popular argument about this war - was it about slavery - with the secessionists' own documents rather than interpretation. Short, entirely primary-source based, and the most direct rebuttal to states'-rights claims. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0813939445?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** secession, causes-of-the-civil-war, slavery, primary-sources, secession-commissioners ### 4. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (Updated Edition) **Author:** Eric Foner Eric Foner's standard history of Reconstruction from 1863 to 1877, covering emancipation, freedpeople's politics, Republican governments in the South, white terror and Northern retreat. Readers can trace how the promises of emancipation were built, contested and then dismantled. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062354515?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** reconstruction-era, emancipation, freedpeople, southern-politics, american-civil-war, us-history ### 5. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era **Author:** James M. McPherson McPherson's Pulitzer-winning single volume runs from 1848 to Appomattox, weaving politics, slavery, economics and campaigns into one narrative. Finish it and you can explain why secession happened, how emancipation became war policy, and why the Union won. The single most widely agreed-upon one-volume account of the war, at the top of essentially every scholarly and institutional reading list checked. Campaigns are subordinated to the political and economic argument about why the war came and why it ended as it did. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/019516895X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** american-civil-war, secession, slavery, union-and-confederacy, military-campaigns, us-history ### 6. With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War **Author:** Robert Cowley (editor) Nineteen essays from MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, by historians including James McPherson, David Herbert Donald and Stephen Sears, reexamining commanders, battles and turning points of the conflict between 1861 and 1865. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399147373?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** civil-war-military-history, civil-war-commanders, civil-war-battles, historical-essays ## Websites ### 1. Freedmen and Southern Society Project A true primary documentation source rather than a summary, and the one underpinning the modern self-emancipation thesis now standard in the academy. University of Maryland archive built from roughly 50,000 National Archives documents on emancipation, 1861-1867: letters by freedpeople, black soldiers, planters and officials. Reading them shows how enslaved people forced emancipation rather than passively receiving it. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/ **Tags:** emancipation, primary-sources, freedpeople, black-soldiers, reconstruction ## Courses ### 1. HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 **Author:** David W. Blight Twenty-seven recorded Yale lectures by David Blight with video, audio, transcripts and syllabus. Blight builds the era from the sectional crisis through Reconstruction, leaving you with a full structural account of causes, emancipation, total war and memory. Blight is the leading scholar of Civil War memory, so the course is explicitly immunised against Lost Cause framing. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119 **Tags:** american-civil-war, reconstruction-era, sectional-crisis, emancipation, civil-war-memory, university-lectures --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/american-civil-war