hundreds of little wars: community, conflict, and the real civil war

From Texas to Virginia, towns, regions, counties, regiments, prisons, and even refugee camps played a significant role in shaping the contours of the Civil War. According to historian Daniel E. Sutherland, whose many books and essays helped establish the field of community studies, these varied assemblages of individuals experienced and fought the real war. Following his lead, the contributors to Hundreds of Little Wars reveal how viewing the war from the vantage point of singular communities allows us to better understand the larger conflict.

The volume includes contributions from a wide array of Civil War scholars. Lesley J. Gordon and Eric P. Totten examine military outfits, namely the 126th New York Regiment and the 4th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. Madeleine C. Forrest provides an analysis of Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1862, and Matthew M. Stith evaluates a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in East Texas. Christopher Phillips and Scott A. Tarnowieckyi investigate the middle border region spanning the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Lorien Foote and G. David Schieffler assess the demographically diverse Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as Helena, Arkansas. Barton A. Myers and Terry L. Beckenbaugh employ Sutherland’s framing while considering irregular war, first with an examination of partisan officers and then with a survey of the White River Valley in Arkansas. Finally, Niels Eichhorn and Michael Shane Powers assume a transnational viewpoint, comparing Richmond with Vienna, Austria, and analyzing a community of Confederate veterans in Central America.

The essays in Hundreds of Little Wars show that no one single conflict defined the Civil War. Instead, hundreds of wars existed, variously categorized by geography, race, gender, environment, and myriad other factors. Only by concentrating on these communities can we grasp the scope and complexity of the Civil War.

G. David Schieffler is an instructor of history at Crowder College.

Matthew M. Stith is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler and author of Extreme Civil War: Guerrilla Warfare, Environment, and Race on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier.