The Fall of the House of Dixie

As the Civil War entered its final days, Chaplain William H. Hunter stood before a packed house of freedmen and Black union soldiers in Wilmington, North Carolina's Front Street Methodist Church. Hunter, a former slave who purchased his freedom, addressed the crowd and in a few sentences summarized the momentous social, political, and cultural changes wrought throughout the United States: "A few short years ago I left North Carolina a slave; I now return a man. I have the honor the be the regular minister of the Gospel in the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States and also a regularly commissioned chaplain in the American Army" (p. 264). The implications of the Emancipation Proclamation, the centrality of slave and freedmen religion, and the pride attending black military service all intersected in the life of William H. Hunter.

In this well-written narrative of the Civil War, historian Bruce Levine argues that the conflict amounted to nothing less than a "second American Revolution." While the first American Revolution was radical in its own time—given that equality among white men was a novel concept—by 1870 this second revolution ushered in emancipation, voting rights, and full legal equality to black and white men. Frederick Douglass described the "inexorable logic" of abolishing slavery once the Civil War commenced, and Bruce Levine injects that logic into his own narrative to describe the procession from sectional conflict during the 1850s, secession after the Election of 1860, the twin Confiscation Acts that legalized ad hoc emancipation, the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that transformed the conflics from one of reunion into the full assault on slavery, and finally Reconstruction's 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States' Constitution that abolished slavery, conferred citizenship upon freedmen, and granted the franchise to black men, respectively.

Bruce Levine interprets the Emancipation Proclamation gradually emerging from the exigencies of a protracted war against the Confederacy. While politicians and military strategists predicted a short, decisive contest after Ft. Sumter, all quickly realized that Confederate tenacity and Northern disorganization predicted a long, bitter struggle. Frederick Douglass, Benjamin F. Butler, and others pressed Lincoln to attack the heart of Confederate resistance, manpower, and support: the peculiar institution. After Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation he faced severe criticism from Northern Democrats, but the realities that Union soldiers encountered in the slave South, Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, and Confederate intransigence convinced many that abolishing slavery was pragmatic (or morally commendable) and rallied support to Lincoln in the Election of 1864. That Election sealed the fate of the C.S.A because it amounted to nothing less than a public mandate for Lincoln to continue with his policies.

Many of the sub-arguments in The Fall of the House of Dixie come from recent histories written by Joseph Glatthaar, Gary Gallagher, and Mark Grimsley on the conflict. Nevertheless, Levine pushes an original thesis about the "second American Revolution" that forces his reader to grapple with important questions about the significance of the Civil War. In this way, Levine demonstrates the vital connections between American wars and transformations in American political culture and social relationships. This book speaks to the continued relevance of military history for the academy and the specific value of "war and society" historiography. The interested reader will find in Levine a clear, gripping and terrifying story of the Civil War.

I highly recommend this work to any and all interested in the Civil War, especially those looking for a volume that integrates both important military episodes (battles, tactics, campaigns) and the simultaneous and subsequent social changes made possible by the conflict. It's also up-to-date on the most recent interpretations of the conflict produced by academic historians.