United States History - 19th Century - Civil War

1863: The Rebirth of a Nation

Name: 1863: The Rebirth of a Nation
Author: Joseph E. Stevens
ISBN: 9780553378368

by Joseph E. Stevens

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Overview

American history has never seen a more tumultuous or more significant year than 1863. During this crucial time the tide of the Civil War turned inexorably from the Confederacy to the Union, with momentous consequences that are still being felt today. It was a year of upheaval unparalleled in our national experience: twelve months of searing brutality and ennobling sacrifice, 365 stirring, dramatic days that changed our country forever.

Integrating the events of this epochal year into a panoramic narrative, Joseph E. Stevens presents a grand portrait of the Union and Confederacy at war. He captures two nations struggling to define the American experiment and create a new understanding of freedom on the bloody battlefields of Stones River, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. He also traces the astonishing political, economic, and social transformations that marked 1863 as a watershed.

1863 features a remarkable cast of characters: larger-than-life leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis; charismatic and controversial military commanders like Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, Joseph Hooker, Stonewall Jackson, George Armstrong Custer, and Nathan Bedford Forrest; avaricious young capitalists like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan; war-haunted writers like Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman; war-inspired painters like Winslow Homer and Conrad Wise Chapman.

Here, too, is a host of less well known but no less fascinating personalities: soldiers and civilians, slaves and slave owners, farmers and city dwellers, politicians and profiteers, artistocrats and refugees. Their stories—humorous and harrowing, inspiring and appalling—make 1863 not just a sweeping re-creation of events but a gripping human tale as well.

1863 is popular history at its best—vivid, vibrant, and immensely readable. Written with dramatic intensity and impassioned humanity, it is a thrilling account of the pivotal year of the war that remains the central historical event in the life of our nation.

Synopsis

USA Today - Tom O'Brien

The major virtue of 1863: Rebirth of a Nation, besides its vigorous style, is how it puts so many complex details in clear order. Civil War buffs will be engaged by its interweaving of major and minor events of the year. Other readers will find the war more complex and intriguing than they imagined.... This is solid history written in a clear, vigorous and exciting manner.

About the Author, Joseph E. Stevens

Joseph E. Stevens's first book, Hoover Dam: An American Adventure, received the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize of the Western History Association, and the Western Writers of America's Spur Award. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed America's National Battlefield Parks. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Editorials

Tom O'Brien

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

On the first day of 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. At that time, the Union was pondering the very real possibility of gloomy defeat in the wake of successive Confederate battlefield victories. But by year's end, Grant and Sherman had won resounding victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, and the North, its industrial superiority clearly evident, was increasingly confident of victory. In this fast-paced, episodic account of the pivotal year, Stevens (Hoover Dam) paints engaging portraits of the major personalities who either drove or symbolized events. In addition to political and military leaders such as Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Lee and Grant, he devotes time to lesser figures: Robert Gould Shaw (the white commander of the 54th Massachusetts, the first all-black regiment) and other idealistic aristocrats of both the North and the South; cynical young capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie ("too busy looking after his own financial affairs to pay much attention to the war," he took advantage of a common practice available to the wealthy and paid a substitute to answer his draft notice); and great writers and moral leaders such as Whitman, Louisa May Alcott and Emerson. Making good use of personal letters, official documents and dramatic photographs, Stevens moves quickly from one person to another, from the North to the South, from the trenches to the home front. The result is an energetic, gripping popular history from which readers will gain a panoramic view of this historical turning point.

Library Journal

Whether 1863 was the pivotal year of the Civil War is open to debate, but that it was a momentous year is beyond question. Commencing with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, it was marked by major Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, the latter two bringing Ulysses S. Grant to the fore as the general best able to lead the Union to victory. And yet it was also a year of draft riots, nasty guerrilla warfare, and the first reports of Confederate atrocities against black soldiers. Stevens, author of the prize-winning Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (LJ 6/15/88) offers an overview of these and other events. Some sloppy minor mistakes and an occasional overreliance on accounts of dubious accuracy mar the narrative, but Stevens's lively prose and willingness to take his readers beyond the battlefield make this a compelling read for casual students of the conflict.--Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Kirkus Reviews

A highly accessible chronicling of the Civil War's pivotal year. Prize-winning historian Stevens (Hoover Dam: An American Adventure) presents the important political and military developments of 1863, a year that crippled the Confederacy's hopes for national independence. In January, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, enabling the Union to seize the war's moral high ground. With one stroke of the pen, Lincoln rendered the Confederacy an international pariah. On the battlefield, the Union began asserting its industrial and numerical superiority. In Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, Lincoln finally found commanders who would wage a relentless war of attrition, attacking the enemy and bleeding it (and themselves) dry. During his long siege of Vicksburg, Grant's army dug miles of trenches, blazed away with heavy artillery, and waited for the starving city to surrender. On July 4, the Confederates raised the white flag over Vicksburg, giving Union forces complete control of the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee marched north into Pennsylvania, hoping to surprise the Union army. At Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War resulted in a second major Union victory. Lee's battered army crawled back into Virginia. In just one disastrous week, the Confederacy had been split in half and its army beaten back to the suburbs of Richmond. While Stevens provides an excellent analysis of battlefield tactics, he's less effective on the political front. Considering the plethora of Lincoln scholarship, Stevens's portrait of the president lacks nuance and depth. We never sense Lincoln's brilliant navigation between idealism and practical politics. YetStevens must be commended for including informative, colorful vignettes of Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, Louisa May Alcott, and John D. Rockefeller. Throughout, the prose is simple and easily digested. A solid, largely successful history of 1863 aimed at the general reader.