What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War

Using letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take us inside the minds of Civil War soldiers—black and white, Northern and Southern—as they fought and marched across a divided country, this unprecedented account is “an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery and the Civil War" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slaver...