Readings

Undergraduates are expected to read at least 100 pages a week, and graduate students are expected to read at least 200 pages a week. Students may pick readings from the below options for each class session.

WEEK # TOPICS READINGS
1 General Histories of the War

Amazon logo McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780195038637. [Preview with Google Books]

  • The best single volume treatment of the war. Highly recommended.

Amazon logo Guelzo, Allen. Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780199843282. [Preview with Google Books]

  • The latest history of the war. Well reviewed, thus far.

Amazon logo Nevins, Allan. The War for the Union. Vol. 4. Scribner's, 1959.

  • The best multi-volume treatment. Strong emphasis on the organizational aspects of the war.

Amazon logo Catton, Bruce. This Hallowed Ground The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War. Doubleday, 1956. (An Older Classic.)

Amazon logo Hattaway, Herman. Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War. University of Missouri, 1997. ISBN: 9780826211071. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Donald, David. Liberty and Union. D. C. Heath & Company, 1978. ISBN: 9780669011524.

Amazon logo Masur, Louis P. The Civil War: A Concise History. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199740482. [Preview with Google Books]

  • The best brief treatment of the war.

Amazon logo Mitchell, Reid. The American Civil War, 1861–1865. Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780582319738.

Amazon logo Maier, Pauline, et al. Chapter 16 in Inventing America: A History of the United States. 2nd ed. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN: 9780393926750.

  • A single chapter treatment that emphases the technological aspects of the war.
2 Historiography of the War

Amazon logo Cooper, William, and James McPherson. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand. University of South Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781570032592.

  • An excellent set of historiographic appraisals of Civil War literature, though somewhat dated.

Amazon logo Woodworth, Steven E., ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. Greenwood, 1996. ISBN: 9780313290190. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Pressly, Thomas J. Americans Interpret their Civil War. The Free Press, 1962.

  • An important contribution that should be read in conjunction with Cooper and McPherson (above).
3 Historiography of Technology

Amazon logo Hindle, Brooke. Technology in Early America: Needs; Opportunities for Study. Chapel Hill, 1966.

Buy at MIT Press Amazon logo Martello, Robert, and Merritt Roe Smith. "Taking Stock of the Industrial Revolution in America." In Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution. Edited by J. Horn, L. Rosenband, and M. R. Smith. MIT Press, 2010, pp. 169–200. ISBN: 9780262515627. [Preview with Google Books]

  • A historiographic treatment of technology in America up to the Civil War.

Usselman, Stephen W. "From Sputnik to SCOT: The Historiography of American Technology." Organization of American Historians Magazine of American History 24, no. 3 (2010): 9–14.

  • An excellent short treatment of the subject.
4 The Political Scene

Why the Southern States Seceded

Amazon logo Dew, Charles. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780813921044. [Preview with Google Books]

Abraham Lincoln

Amazon logo Marszalek, John F. Lincoln and the Military. Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780809333615. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals (The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln). Simon & Schuster, 2005.

  • This is the book on which the recent film "Lincoln" was based.

Amazon logo Donald, David. Lincoln. Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN: 9780684808468.

  • The best single volume biography of Lincoln. There are many.

Amazon logo McPherson, James. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. Penguin Press H. C., 2008. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. Abraham Lincoln. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780195374520.

Amazon logo Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. ISBN: 9780393066180.

Amazon logo Cohen, Eliot A. Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime. Free Press, 2002, pp. 15–51. [Preview with Google Books]

  • A very perceptive discussion of Lincoln as a war president.

Political Implications of the Civil War

Amazon logo Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.

Amazon logo Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War. Harvard University Press, 1997.

Economic Implications of the Civil War

Amazon logo Cochran, Thomas C. "Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?" In Views of American Economic Growth. Vol. 1. Edited by Thomas C. Cochran and Thomas B. Brewer. McGraw-Hill, 1966, pp. 252–61. ASIN: B000YIX6KO.

Amazon logo Andreano, Ralph, ed. The Economic Impact of the American Civil War. Schenkman Publishing Company, 1967.

Amazon logo Gilchrist, David T., and W. David Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era. Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1965.

Amazon logo McPherson, James M. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780195055429. (see especially chapter 1)

5 The Battlefield

The War on Land

Amazon logo Grant, U. S. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Vol. 2. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1884. (Also available from Penguin Classics (1999), with introduction by James McPherson.)

Amazon logo Joan Waugh's reflective essay on the "Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A History of the Union Cause." In More Than a Contest Between Armies: Essays on the Civil War Era. Edited by James Marten and A. Kristen Foster. Kent State University Press, 2008, pp. 219–49. ISBN: 9780873389129.

Amazon logo Ballard, Michael B. U.S. Grant: The Making of a General, 1861–1863. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. ISBN: 9780742543089. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo McPherson, James M. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam. Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780195173307. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg. Crown Publishing Group, 2003.

Amazon logo Wert, Jeffrey D. The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac. Simon & Schuster, 2005. ISBN: 9780743225069. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command. Indiana University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780253305466.

Amazon logo Hess, Earl J. The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat. University Press of Kansas, 1997. ISBN: 9780700614219.

Amazon logo ———. Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign. The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780807831540. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780807832820. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth. University Press of Kansas, 2008. ISBN: 9780700616077.

Amazon logo Glatthaar, Joseph T. General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse. Free Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780684827872. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War. Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780674160552.

Amazon logo Rafuse, Ethan S. Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863–1865. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. ISBN: 9780742551251. [Preview with Google Books]

The War at Sea

Amazon logo Musicant, Ivan. Divided Waters: The Naval History of the Civil War. Harpercollins, 1995. ISBN: 9780060164829.

Amazon logo Symonds, Craig L. The Civil War at Sea. Praeger, 2009. ISBN: 9780275990848. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Hoogenboom, Ari. Gustavus Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780801889868.

Amazon logo Mindell, David A. War, Technology, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780801862502. [Preview with Google Books] (Re-issued as Iron Coffin (2012).)

Amazon logo Roberts, William H. Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801868306. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. Now for the Contest: Coastal and Oceanic Naval Operations of the Civil War. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780803238619. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Dougherty, Kevin. Strangling the Confederacy: Coastal Operations in the American Civil War. Casemate, 2010. ISBN: 9781935149248.

Amazon logo Symonds, Craig L. Union Combined Operations in the Civil War. Fordham University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780823232864. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Still, William N., et al. Raiders and Blockaders: The American Civil War Afloat. Brassey's Incorporation, 1998. ISBN: 9781574881646.

Amazon logo McPherson, James M. War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861–1865. The University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780807835883. [Preview with Google Books]

6 Supply Bureaus and Logistics

Union Army

Amazon logo Smith, Merritt Roe. "Army Ordnance and the American System." In Military Enterprise and Technological Change. MIT Press, 1985, pp. 39–86. ISBN: 9780262192392. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo ———. "Yankee Armorers and the Union War Machine: A Technological Perspective on the American Civil War." In Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War. Edited by Barton C. Hacker. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2016. pp. 25-54. ISBN: 9781935623915

Amazon logo Bruce, Robert. Lincoln and the Tools of War. Literary Licensing, Limited Liability Company, 2011. ISBN: 9781258083427.

Amazon logo Davis, Carl L. Arming the Union: Small Arms in the Union Army. Kennikat, 1973. ISBN: 9780804690447.

Raber, Michael S., et al. Forge of Innovation: An Industrial History of the Springfield Armory, 1794–1968. 2008, pp. 19–25, 41–45, 227–32, 264–69, and 292–309.

Amazon logo Farley, James J. Making Arms in the Machine Age: Philadelphia's Frankford Arsenal, 1816–1870. Penn State University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780271028217. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Tate, Thomas K. General James Wolfe Ripley, Chief of Ordnance: Answers to His Critics. BookSurge Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 9781439207338.

  • Defends Ripley's actions as the Union Army's Chief of Ordnance, especially his resistance to the adoption breechloading and repeating firearms.

Amazon logo Nosworthy, Brent. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War. Basic Books, 2003. ISBN: 9780786711475.

Amazon logo Bilby, Joseph G. Small Arms at Gettysburg: Infantry and Cavalry Weapons in America's Greatest Battle. Westholme Publishing, 2008.

Amazon logo Wilson, Mark. The Business of War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780801883484. [Preview with Google Books]
Also see Wilson's condensed version of his book in
Amazon logo John, Richard, ed. Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America. Penn State University Press, 2006, pp. 44–73. ISBN: 9780271028972. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Wilson's work is the best that exists on the work of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Department.

Amazon logo Abrahamson, James L. The American Home Front: Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II. University of Michigan Library, 1983, pp. 43–85.

  • A useful overview.

Amazon logo Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War. Knopf, 1965.

Amazon logo Hsieh, Wayne Sei-Siang. West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780807832783. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Haupt, Herman. Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt. University of Michigan Library, 1901.

  • An autobiography by Lincoln's "Railroad General."

Confederate Army

Amazon logo Vandiver, Frank E. Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command System. Louisiana State University Press, 1984.

Amazon logo ———. Ploughshares Into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance. University of Texas Press, 1952.

Amazon logo Coulter, E. Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: A History of the South. Louisiana State University Press, 1950. ISBN: 9780807100073.

Amazon logo Wilson, Harold S. Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War. University Press of Mississippi, 2002. ISBN: 9781578064625. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Tate, Thomas K. From Under Iron Eyelids: The Biography of James Henry Burton, Armorer to Three Nations. Author House, 2005. ISBN: 9781420821260. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Delfino, Susan, and Michele Gillespie, eds. Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age. University of Missouri Press, 2008. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Davis, Jr., Robert S. Cotton, Fire, and Dreams: The Robert Findlay Iron Works and Heavy Industry in Macon, Georgia, 1839–1912. Mercer University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780865545984.

Amazon logo Norman, Matthew W. Colonel Burton's Spiller & Burr Revolver: An Untimely Venture in Confederate Small-Arms Manufacturing. Mercer University Press, 1996. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Iobst, Richard W. Civil War Macon. Mercer University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780865546349.

Amazon logo Majewski, John. Modernizing a Slave Economy. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. [Preview with Google Books]

Logistics

Amazon logo Jones, Gordon L. Confederate Odyssey: The George W. Wray Jr. Civil War Collection at the Atlanta History Center. University of Georgia Press, 2014. ISBN:9780820346854

7 Transportation and Communication Networks

Union Railroads

Amazon logo Angevine, Robert G. The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780804742399. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Abdill, George B. Civil War Railroads. Superior Publishing Company, 1961. ISBN: 9780517012437.

Amazon logo Clark, Jr., John E. Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact Of Management On Victory And Defeat. Louisiana State University Press, 2001.

Amazon logo Turner, George Edgar. Victory Rode the Rails The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War. Bobbs-Merrill, 1953.

Amazon logo Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War. King's Crown Press, 1952.

Amazon logo Haupt, Herman. Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt. University of Michigan Library, 1901.

Amazon logo Ward, James R. That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt. Louisiana State University Press, 1973. ISBN: 9780807102251.

Amazon logo Thienel, Philip M. Mr. Lincoln's Bridge Builders: The Right Hand of American Genius. White Mane Publishing, 2000. ISBN: 9781572491984.

Amazon logo Thomas, William G. The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America. Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780300141078.

Confederate Railroads

Amazon logo Black, Thomas C. The Railroads of the Confederacy. The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780807847299.

  • The standard treatment of the subject.

Amazon logo Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780801891304. [Preview with Google Books]

Steamboats

See Delfino (above)

Amazon logo Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Harvard University Press, 1949. [Preview with Google Books]
A classic.

Amazon logo Gudmestad, Robert. Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom. Louisiana State University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780807138397.

Telegraphy

Amazon logo Hochfelder, David. Chapter 1 in The Telegraph in America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781421407470.

Amazon logo Cohen, Eliot. Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime. Free Press, 2002, pp. 23–29. ISBN: 9780743230490. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Raines, Rebecca R. Getting the Message through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. University of Michigan Library, 1996, pp. 3–40.

Amazon logo Thompson, Robert L. Wiring a Continent - The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States 1832–1866. Princeton University Press, 1947.

Amazon logo Plum, William R. The Military Telegraph during the Civil War in the United States. Vol. 2. Ayer Company Publishers, 1974. ISBN: 9780405060533.

Amazon logo Bates, David Homer. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps during the Civil War. University of Nebraska Press, 1995. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Bates served in the War Department telegraph office.

Amazon logo Markle, Donald E., ed. The Telegraph Goes to War: The Personal Diary of David Homer Bates, Lincoln's Telegraph Operator. Edmonston Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 9781892059024.

Amazon logo Wheeler, Tom. Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War. Harper Business, 2006. ISBN: 9780061129780.
Articles by James R. Fleming.

8 Medicine and Public Health

Amazon logo Humphreys, Margaret. Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781421409993. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Duffy, John. From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine. University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780252063008. [Preview with Google Books]

  • See chapter on Civil War.

Amazon logo Adams, George W. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. Henry Schuman, 1952. ISBN: 9780890290866.

  • An oldie but goodie.

Amazon logo Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Galen Press Limited, 2002. ISBN: 9781883620080.

Amazon logo Denney, Robert E. Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded. Sterling Publishing Company Incorporation, 1994. ISBN: 9780806908793.

  • Contains some very graphic first-hand accounts of wounded soldiers.

Amazon logo Duncan, Louis F. Medical Department of the U.S. Army in the Civil War. Butternut Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780942211306.

Amazon logo Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War. University of Illinois Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780252070105.

Amazon logo Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service. Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

  • Another oldie but goodie.

Amazon logo Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. Confederate Hospitals on the Move: Samuel H. Stout and the Army of Tennessee. University of South Carolina Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780872499645.

Amazon logo Schmidt, James M., and Guy R. Hasegawa, eds. Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine. Edinborough Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781889020358.

Amazon logo Wilbur, C. Keith. Civil War Medicine. Globe Pequot Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780762703418.

Amazon logo Beller, Susan Provost. Medical Practices in the Civil War. Shoe Tree Press, 1992. ISBN: 9781558702646.

Figg, Laurann, and Jane Farrell-Beck. "Amputation in the Civil War." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48 (1993): 454–75.

Amazon logo Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. Random House, 2005. ISBN: 9780375503153.

Amazon logo Coco, Gregory A. A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1-November 20, 1863. Thomas Publications, 1988. ISBN: 9780939631094.

Amazon logo Calcutt, Rebecca B. Richmond's Wartime Hospitals. Pelican Publishing, 2005. ISBN: 9781589802971.

Hawk, Alan. "An Amulating Hospital: Or, How the Hospital Train Transformed Army Medicine." Civil War History 48, no. 3 (2002): 197–219.

Amazon logo Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. W W Norton & Company Incorporations, 1994. ISBN: 9780393036664.

Schultz, Jane E. "Seldom Thanked, Never Praised, and Scarcely Recognized: Gender and Racism in Civil War Hospitals." Civil War History 48, no. 3 (2002): 220–36.

Amazon logo Oates, Stephen B. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War. Free Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780028740126. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Maher, Mary Denis. To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War. LSU Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780807124390.

Amazon logo Smith, George W. Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories during the Civil War. Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780789009470.

Amazon logo Steiner, Paul E. Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861–1865. Charles C Thomas Publications Limited, 1968. ISBN: 9780398018528.

Amazon logo Hasegawa, Guy R. Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780809331307. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Ott, Katherine, David Serlin, and Stephen Mihm, eds. Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics. New York University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780814761984. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Fredrickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780252062742.

Amazon logo Spar, Ira. New Haven's Civil War Hospital: A History of Knight U.S. General Hospital, 1862–1865. McFarland, 2013. ISBN: 9780786476824. [Preview with Google Books]

9 Why the North Won

Amazon logo Donald, David, ed. Why the North Won the Civil War. Collier, 1960.

  • The best starting point for discussion of the subject.

Amazon logo McPherson, James M. Chapters 8-9 in Drawn With Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War. Publisher, 1996, pp. 113–50. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Cowley, Robert, ed. With My Face to the Enemy. Highbridge Audio, 2001, pp. 59–102. ISBN: 9781565114616.

10 Why the Confederacy Lost

Amazon logo Wesley, Charles H. The Collapse of the Confederacy. University of Nebraska Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780803221703.

Amazon logo Kerby, Robert. "Why the Confederacy Lost." In The American Civil War. Edited by Ethan S. Rafuse. Ashgate Publication Company, 2005, pp. 505–24. ISBN: 9780754625148.

Amazon logo Black, Thomas C. Chapter 22 in The Railroads of the Confederacy. The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780807847299. (see above).

Amazon logo Wiley, Bell I. The Road to Appomattox. Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983.

Amazon logo Grimsley, Mark, and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. The Collapse of the Confederacy. University of Nebraska Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780803221703.

Amazon logo Beringer, Richard E., et al. Why the South Lost the Civil War. University of Georgia Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780820308159.

Amazon logo Boritt, Gabor, ed. Why the Confederacy Lost. Oxford University Press, 1992. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Davis, William C. The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy. University Press of Kansas, 1996. ISBN: 9780700608096.

Amazon logo Castell, Albert. Chapters 1–2 in Winning and Losing in the Civil War: Essays and Stories. University of South Carolina Press, 2010, pp. 1–32. ISBN: 9781570039171.

Amazon logo ———. Articles of War: Winners, Losers, (and Some Who Were Both) During the Civil War. Stackpole Books, 2001, pp. 233–38. ISBN: 9780811700054.

Amazon logo Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War. Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 3–13, 153, and 157–72. ISBN: 9780674160552.

Amazon logo Ransom, Roger. Chapter 2 in The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. ISBN: 9780393059670.

Amazon logo Rafuse, Ethan S. Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863–1865. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. ISBN: 9780742551251. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Glatthaar, Joseph T. General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse. Free Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780684827872. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War. Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780674160552.

11 Outcomes and Implications

Political Reconstruction of the South

Amazon logo Maier, et al. Alex Keyssar's chapter on "Reconstruction." Chapter 19 in Inventing America: A History of the United States. 2nd ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. ISBN: 9780393168167.

Amazon logo Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. Harper Collins, 1988. ISBN: 9780060158514.

Amazon logo Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901. Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674006379.

Morrill Land Grant Act

Amazon logo Nevins, Allan. The State Universities and Democracy. University of Illinois Press, 1962.

Wade, Kathryn L. A. This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader."The Intent and Fulfillment of the Morrill Act of 1862." (PDF) M. A. Thesis, Auburn University, 2005.

Amazon logo Becker, Carl. Cornell University: Founders and the Founding. Fall Creek Books, 2010. ISBN: 9780801476150. [Preview with Google Books]

Buy at MIT Press Amazon logo Smith, Merritt Roe. "'God Speed the Institute': The Foundational Years, 1861–1894." In Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision. Edited by David Kaiser. MIT Press, 2010, pp. 15–36. ISBN: 9780262113236. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America; Non-Military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. ISBN: 9780826511171.

Amazon logo Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War. Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780674362130.

Pacific Railroad Act, 1862

Amazon logo Bain, David H. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Diane Publishing Company, 1999. ISBN: 9780756764494.

Amazon logo White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. ISBN: 9780393061260.

Amazon logo Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893. Doubleday, 1987.

Amazon logo Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869. Touchstone Books, 2000. [Preview with Google Books]

International Arms Trade

Amazon logo Bradley, Joseph. Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Northern Illinois University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780875801544.

Amazon logo Marcot, Roy. Chapters 2–5 in Remington: America's Oldest Gunmaker. Primedia, 1998. ISBN: 9781881657002.

Amazon logo Wengenroth, Ulrich. "Industry and Warfare in Prussia." In On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871. Edited by Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 249–62. ISBN: 9780521560719.

Rise of the Machine Tool Industry

Amazon logo Roe, Joseph W. English and American Tool Builders. Yale University Press, 1916.

  • The classic study.

Amazon logo Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780801829758. For a synopsis of Hounshell's argument, see his "Mass Production in American History, 1800–1932." Polhem 1 (1984): 1–28.

Amazon logo Meyer, David R. Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780801884719. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Thomson, Ross. Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States, 1790–1865. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780801891410. [Preview with Google Books]

The Rise of Modern Management (Controlling the Shop Floor)

Amazon logo Chandler, Jr., Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Harvard University Press, 1997.

For an excellent synopsis of the V. H., see
Amazon logo Chandler. "The United States: Evolution of Enterprise." Chapter 2 in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume VII. The Industrial Economies Capital, Labour, and Enterprise, Part 2. Edited by Peter Mathias and M. M. Postan. Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 70–133. ISBN: 9780521215916.

For a critique of Chandler, see
Amazon logo White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, pp. xxix–xxxi, 231–32, 244, and 509. ISBN: 9780393061260.

Amazon logo Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877–1920. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1967. ISBN: 9780313226472.

Amazon logo Porter, Glenn. The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1920. 2nd ed. Harlan Davidson, 1992. ISBN: 9780882958828.

Amazon logo Noble, David F. America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. Knopf, 1977. ISBN: 9780394499833.

Amazon logo Nelson, Daniel. Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920. University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780299069001.

Amazon logo Trachtenberg, Alan. Chapter 4 in Incorporation of America: Culture and Society, 1865–1893. Hill & Wang Publishing, 1982, pp. 79–107. ISBN: 9780809058273.

Amazon logo Licht, Walter. Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780801850141.

Amazon logo Wrege, Charles D., and Ronald Greenwood. Frederick W. Taylor: The Father of Scientific Management: Myth and Reality. Business One Irwin, 1991. ISBN: 9781556235016.

Buy at MIT Press Amazon logo Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. MIT Press, 2005. ISBN: 978026261206.

Amazon logo Aitken, Hugh G. J. Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal: Scientific Management in Action, 1908–1915. Harvard University Press, 1960.

  • Arguably the best work on scientific management.

Labor Relations (The Response to Industrialism)

Amazon logo Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872. University of Illinois Press, 1981. ISBN: 9780252008696.

Amazon logo Johnson, Russell L. Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City. Fordham University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780823222698. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Gutman, Herbert. Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America. Vintage, 1977. ISBN: 9780394722511.

Amazon logo Palladino, Grace. Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840–1868. Fordham University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780823225910. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Wallace, Anthony F. C. Chapter 6 in St. Clair: A Nineteenth Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-prone Industry. Knopf, 1987. ISBN: 9780394528670.

Amazon logo Bruce, Robert. 1877: The Year of Violence. Bobbs-merrill Company, Incorporations, 1959.

Amazon logo Foner, Philip. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. Pathfinder Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780873488280.

Amazon logo Bellesiles, Michael. 1877: America's Year of Living Violently. New Press, 2012.

Amazon logo Stowell, David O. Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877. University of Chicago Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780226776699. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780691047119. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America. Pantheon, 2006. ISBN: 9780375422379.

Amazon logo Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1880–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780822954668. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Buder, Stanley. Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880–1930. Oxford University Press, 1967.

Amazon logo Hayes, Samuel. The Response to Industrialism 1885–1914. University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226321646.

Legacies of the Civil War

 Amazon logo Cochran, Thomas C. "Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?" In Views of American Economic Growth. Vol. 1. Edited by Thomas C. Cochran and Thomas B. Brewer. McGraw-Hill, 1966, pp. 252–61. ASIN: B000YIX6KO.

Amazon logo Warren, Robert Penn. The Legacy of the Civil War. Meditations on the Civil War. Random House, 1961. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Luvaas, Jay. The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance. University Press of Kansas, 1988, pp. ix–xxx, 1–13, and 203–33. ISBN: 9780700603794.

Amazon logo O'Brien, Patrick. Chapters 1 and 6–7 in The Economic Effects of the American Civil War. Humanities Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780391035614.

Amazon logo Bruchey, Stuart. Chapter 9 in Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People. Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 254–80. ISBN: 9780674257467. [Preview with Google Books]

Amazon logo Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery. Granta Books, 2003, pp. 1–101.

Amazon logo Gallagher, Gary, and Alan T. Nolan. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Indiana University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780253338228. [Preview with Google Books]