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Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism. By Timothy S. Huebner. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016. Pp. 544. Cloth, $34.95.)
General readers interested in a fine history of the United States immediately before, during, and immediately after the Civil War who can tolerate some false advertising will appreciate Timothy S. Huebner's Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism. The book's title promises a constitutional history. Its first two sentences declare, "This book is about the relationship between the Civil War generation and the founding generation. That is, it examines how Americans of the mid-nineteenth century understood the founders' handiwork, the Declaration of Independence of1776, and the Constitution of1787" (ix). The actual text is a fairly comprehensive history of the United States from 1845 to 1876, with perhaps a little more attention to constitutional issues than other general studies of this time period. Readers will enjoy and profit from a good history, though perhaps not the good history they might have expected from the title and introduction.
Liberty and Union is good history. Huebner deftly combines constitutional, legal, political, military, and social history when exploring the reasons Americans fought the Civil War, how they fought the Civil War, and the consequences of the war for the United States. He explores how events and practices ranging from the structure of land ownership in the South, to the nature of the Democratic Party, to the command structure of the Union army influenced matters as diverse as American politics, American race relations, American gender relations, and the course of American religion. Approximately 20 percent of the book is devoted to...