Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union's War Governors

by Stephen D. Engle

Overview

In this rich study of Union governors and their role in the Civil War, Stephen D. Engle examines how these politicians were pivotal in securing victory. In a time of limited federal authority, governors were an essential part of the machine that maintained the Union while it mobilized and sustained the war effort. Charged with the difficult task of raising soldiers from their home states, these governors had to also rally political, economic, and popular support for the conflict, at times against a backdrop of significant local opposition.

Engle argues that the relationship between these loyal-state leaders and Lincoln's administration was far more collaborative than previously thought. While providing detailed and engaging portraits of these men, their state-level actions, and their collective cooperation, Engle brings into new focus the era's complex political history and shows how the Civil War tested and transformed the relationship between state and federal governments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469659060
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2020
Series:	Civil War America
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	736
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.62(d)

About the Author

Stephen D. Engle is professor of history at Florida Atlantic University and director of the Alan B. and Charna Larkin Symposium on the American Presidency.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In this expansive history of an understudied facet of the Civil War, Stephen D. Engle offers the first extended examination in more than half a century of Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the Union's loyal state governors. A substantial contribution to Civil War scholarship by a major scholar.—Gary W. Gallagher, author of Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War

Without the proactive role of Union governors in the Civil War, the Lincoln administration could not have mobilized the men and resources to win the war. Stephen D. Engle's detailed accounting of their tireless activities offers new information and insights, especially with respect to the governors of border slave states, who navigated between the dangerous shoals of loyalty and disloyalty.'—James M. McPherson, author of War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865

Editorial Reviews

Will stand for years as the book on Lincoln's relationship with the Union governors. . . . Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand how the North mobilized to win the Civil War.—Journal of American History

Engle has done more than anyone previously to survey the Union governors and make the case for their centrality.—Journal of the Civil War Era

Should be read by anyone interested in the growth of federal authority, as well as political historians of the Civil War Era.—Civil War Monitor

Offers a valuable and convincing corrective to a long-standing thesis on the war president and the war governors.—Indiana Magazine of History

Engle's study is rich and deep, thorough and convincing. . . . Explores the changes that occurred as the war lengthened with care and complexity.—Emerging Civil War

In a thorough and well-written study on a topic not covered in almost 70 years, Engle presents a much-needed reexamination of the relationship between Lincoln and the Union governors during the Civil War. Highly recommended.—Choice

Will assuredly become the standard work on the subject of Lincoln and the Union war governors for generations to come.—Civil War Book Review

The definitive monograph on the relationship between federal and state government during the Civil War.—Journal of Southern History

Will long stand as the authoritative account on Lincoln's wartime relationship with the governors and is essential to understanding how the North mobilized its society on the unprecedented scale necessary to defeat the Confederacy.—North Carolina Historical Review

Mr. Engle thoroughly covers a subject that has been analyzed in a piecemeal manner by prior historians, and in the process accomplishes the rare feat of adding something new to discussions of the Civil War.—Weston Democrat

From the Publisher