"A recent and welcome addition to the Blackwell Companions to American History series. . . . The choice of Lacy Ford to edit this volume was an excellent one. Ford has assembled a stellar team of scholars . . . Most of the essays are certain to become essential reading for specialists but are also accessible to nonspecialists . . . . [T]his volume belongs on the 'must-read' shelf of scholars of the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as those of nineteenth-century southern and U.S. history." Journal of Southern History