By Paul Carrier
If you’re going to assemble a dream team to publish a heavily illustrated account of the Civil War, it’s hard to imagine better partners than the Smithsonian Institution, with its impressive collection of artifacts, and Dorking Kindersley, known for its dazzling DK reference books and travel guides.
Predictably, considering these players, The Civil War: A Visual History is a treat.
Students who are so-called visual learners will benefit from the impressively varied graphics that accompany the text. And Civil War buffs who already have the history down pat will enjoy feasting their eyes on the countless engravings, cartoons, photographs, maps, eyewitness accounts, and paintings that adorn the volume.
The 360 pages in this coffee-table-sized book (10x12 inches) are divided into seven chapters, beginning with a a look at the pre-war period. That is followed by a separate section on each year of the war, and a closing chapter on the conflict’s legacies.
The wartime chapters open with a two-page illustration, plus a large map showing the territorial status of the combatants at that point in time, and a month-by-month timeline summarizing major developments in the course of the 12 months covered by that chapter.
Each of the biggest names on both sides, civilian and military, get an eye-catching two-page spread. The write-up on Union Gen. George B. McClellan features side-by-side pages of text illustrated with a large photo of the “Young Napoleon,” photos of his chess set and Colt revolver, freestanding quotes from McClellan and Abraham Lincoln, and a vertical, 23-item timeline of McClellan’s life. Robert E. Lee’s two pages of text are broken up by a painting and a photo of the Confederate general, an interior shot of his field tent, prominent quotes by and about Lee, and a timeline that runs from his birth in 1807 until his death in 1870.
Sidebars suffice for the likes of generals George Meade, John Pope, Joseph E. Johnston, and John Bell Hood, as well as civilians Gideon Welles, Horace Greeley, Stephen Russell Mallory and Alexander Stephens.
Prominent women, such as Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, get the double-page treatment, although it could be argued that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s role in the buildup to the war is underplayed in her sidebar. Noticeably absent are South Carolina diarist Mary Chestnut and Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Dorothea Dix is profiled in a sidebar.
The references to slavery are many and varied, with entries of two pages or more on how divisive the issue was before the war; a gripping eyewitness account of a slave auction; the role of African-Americans in the war; the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation; and a nicely illustrated bio of Frederick Douglass.
Major battles, such as Gettysburg, get more than two pages apiece, while many other aspects of the conflict receive double-truck treatment, including medical equipment, POWs, railroads, the home front, immigrants in the ranks, uniforms, flags, field artillery, pistols, and rifles and muskets, among others.
An interesting feature found throughout the book is a short before-and-after look attached to many entries. An examination of the use of cavalry during the war, for example, is accompanied by two sidebars - one on the role cavalry played prior to the Civil War, and another dealing with the years that followed.
By its nature, The Civil War: A Visual History does not go into extensive detail on any of these subjects. This is an overview, not a tome examining individual battles, or the lives of politicians and generals, in great detail.
In fact, this isn’t so much a book to be read from cover to cover - although it can be - as a feast to be sampled. There’s much to be learned and enjoyed simply by dipping into its pages when you have a few minutes to check out Stonewall Jackson's spurs, a Confederate cipher machine captured in Richmond, Jeb Stuart's jacket, or William Tecumseh Sherman's campaign hat.
