In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets “grows in our consciousness,” arousing complex emotions and leaving “a gallery of great human images for our contemplation.” "The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner here presents his opinions on how the Civil War shaped modern America," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 5/15/61). Warren is an unbiased observer and in analyzing the causes and effects of the fighting places guilt in both camps. This remains "a timely and valuable book." Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Warren brings to this task his critical acuteness as a historian . . . his verbal sensitivity as a novelist, and his insight as a poet."—David Donald, New York Times Book Review "Here is a perfect gem of a book. . . . Here is something sound and meaty about the place of the Civil War in American history and its place in American thinking."— Chicago Sunday Tribune "A brilliant piece of work, quick and sharp with insight, yet compassionate. A stimulating book."— New Yorker "A thoughtful discussion . . . stimulating to any reader conscious of the American heritage."— Library Journal In this book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets "grows in our consciousness", arousing complex emotions and leaving a "gallery of great human images for our contemplation". A distinguished poet, novelist, and historian, Robert Penn Warren wrote The Legacy of the Civil War for the centennial in 1961. Introducing this edition is Howard Jones, University Research Professor and chair of the History Department at the University of Alabama. His works include Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War , also available as a Bison Book. The Legacy of the Civil War By Robert Penn Warren UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS Copyright © 1961 Robert Penn Warren All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8032-9801-9 CHAPTER 1 The civil war is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history. Without too much wrenching, it may, in fact, be said to be American history. Before the Civil War we had no history in the deepest and most inward sense. There was, of course, the noble vision of the Founding Fathers articulated in the Declaration and the Constitution — the dream of freedom incarnated in a more perfect union. But the Revolution did not create a nation except on paper; and too often in the following years the vision of the Founding Fathers, which men had suffered and died to validate, became merely a daydream of easy and automatic victories, a vulgar delusion of manifest destiny, a conviction of being a people divinely chosen to live on milk and honey at small expense. The vision had not been finally submitted to the test of history. There was little awareness of the cost of having a history. The anguished scrutiny of the meaning of the vision in experience had not become a national reality. It became a reality, and we became a nation, only with the Civil War. The Civil War is our only "felt" history — history lived in the national imagination. This is not to say that the War is always, and by all men, felt in the same way. Quite the contrary. But this fact is an index to the very complexity, depth, and fundamental significance of the event. It is an overwhelming and vital image of human, and national, experience. * * * Many clear and objective facts about America are best understood by reference to the Civil War. The most obvious fact is that, for better or worse, and despite any constitutional theorizing by Governor Almond of Virginia, we are a united nation. Before the War there had been, of course, a ferocious love of the Union, but the Union sometimes seemed to exist as an idea, an ideal, rather than as a fact. There was a sense that it had to be struggled for, to be won and re-won against many kinds of enemies — not only the Burrs and Wilkinsons and Houstons and the conventioneers of Hartford, Connecticut, and the nullifiers of South Carolina, but also distance, sprawling space, apathy, selfishness, ignorance, the westward slope of the watershed beyond the Appalachians. This unionism was, we remember, particularly ferocious in the South, as the old Jackson, the young Calhoun, and many a Whig planter, even in 1860, would testify. We can recall with what reluctance Jeffer