Booknotes: 'Tis Not Our War

New Arrival:

• 'Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the Civil War North by Paul Taylor (Stackpole Bks, 2024).

At this point in time, numerous Civil War publications, in whole or in part, have examined the myriad reasons why boys and men of military age—North, South, and in between—chose to volunteer to fight for their cause of choice. Through those works, we know a great deal about what motivated Civil War soldiers. On the other hand, Paul Taylor's new book 'Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the Civil War North seeks to scrutinize the other side of the equation through an equally penetrating lens.

From the description: Taylor's book "examines the reasons why at least 60 percent of service-eligible men in the North chose not to serve and why, to some extent, their communities allowed them to do so." In exploring those issues, key questions arise: "Did these other men not feel the same patriotic impulses as their fellow citizens who rushed to the enlistment office? Did they not believe in the sanctity of the Union? Was freeing men held in chains under chattel slavery not a righteous moral crusade? And why did some soldiers come to regret their enlistment and try to leave the military?"

Taylor attempts to answer those questions by going direct to the ground source (i.e. "the thoughts, opinions, and beliefs of average civilians and soldiers"). The author "digs deep into primary sources—newspapers, diaries, letters, archival manuscripts, military reports, and published memoirs—to paint a vivid and richly complex portrait of men who questioned military service in the Civil War and to show that the North was never as unified in support of the war as portrayed in much of America’s collective memory."