Jersey Blue: Civil War Politics in New Jersey, 1854-1865 / Edition 1

by William Gillette

Overview

This political history of New Jersey during the Civil War and the years immediately before and after invites us to rethink New Jersey's role and in particular its relationship to the border states. William Gillette argues that there is little evidence supporting the idea that New Jersey's residents were pro-southern before the war, or even antiwar during it, although attitudes toward the abolition of slavery were more ambivalent. The perspectives Gillette offers in Jersey Blue, from the recruiting ground, the battlefield, and the home front, cast new light on New Jersey's wartime activities, state identity, and our understanding of the interrelationships between New Jersey's national, regional, and state developments.

Gillette takes a broader view of the politics of the Civil War as he touches on the economy, geography, demography, immigration, nativism, conscription, and law. The result is a pioneering history of New Jersey that deepens our understanding of the Civil War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813526942
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

WILLIAM GILLETTE is a professor of history at Rutgers University and author of Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879.

Table of Contents

1. Change and Continuity, 1854-1856
2. Precarious Balance, 1857-1859
3. Contests for the Presidential Nominations of 1860
4. Party Paralysis and Unionist Consensus: The Election of 1860
5. The Union in Peril: New Jerseyans React to Secession
6. The Politics of Patriotism, 1861
7. New Jerseyans Go to War
8. Partisanship in Wartime, 1862
9. The Perils of Power: Democratic Factionalism in Early 1863
10. War Crises in 1863
11. Preelection Skirmishing in Early 1864
12. The Wounds of War: The Presidential Election of 1864
13. Northern Triumph and National Tragedy
14. The Fruits of Victory: The State Election of 1865
Statistical Appendix / Lex Renda

Editorial Reviews

Gilette has done Civil War studies in the North a service by exploring in great depth the interrelated political issues of slavery, expansion, unionism, and dissent. . . . [It's] the most comprehensive and penetrating study of New Jersey politics in the Civil War era.

Civil War History

Gillette, professor of history at Rutgers University, comprehensively challenges the familiar image of New Jersey as a Northern state with Southern sympathies. He describes New Jersey's border-state status as the product of geography rather than politics or economics. Neither New Jersey's extensive prewar trade with the South nor the wartime strength of its Democratic party, he asserts, influenced its loyalty to the Union in the critical decade from 1854 to 1865. Gillette shows how the state's Democratic legislators and administrators made consistent and successful efforts to raise troops and sustain support for the war. Of scholarly interest. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly