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Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Remembered most often for his uncompromising administration of the Federal occupation of New Orleans during the war, Butler reemerges in this lively narrative as a man whose journey took him from childhood destitution to wealth and profound influence in state and national halls of power. Prize-winning biographer Elizabeth D. Leonard chronicles Butler's successful career in the law defending the rights of the Lowell Mill girls and other workers, his achievements as one of Abraham Lincoln's premier civilian generals, and his role in developing wartime policy in support of slavery's fugitives as the nation advanced toward emancipation. Leonard also highlights Butler's personal and political evolution, revealing how his limited understanding of racism and the horrors of slavery transformed over time, leading him into a postwar role as one of the nation's foremost advocates for Black freedom and civil rights, and one of its notable opponents of white supremacy and neo-Confederate resurgence.Butler himself claimed he was "e;always with the underdog in the fight."e; Leonard's nuanced portrait will help readers assess such claims, peeling away generations of previous assumptions and characterizations to provide a definitive life of a consequential man.

Of all the heroes produced by the Civil War, Robert E. Lee is the most revered and perhaps the most misunderstood. Lee is widely portrayed as an ardent antisecessionist who left the United States Army only because he would not draw his sword against his native Virginia, a Southern aristocrat who opposed slavery, and a brilliant military leader whose exploits sustained the Confederate cause.Alan Nolan explodes these and other assumptions about Lee and the war through a rigorous reexamination of familiar and long-available historical sources, including Lee's personal and official correspondence and the large body of writings about Lee. Looking at this evidence in a critical way, Nolan concludes that there is little truth to the dogmas traditionally set forth about Lee and the war.

Comprised of essays from twelve leading scholars, this volume extends the discussion of Civil War controversies far past the death of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. Contributors address, among other topics, Walt Whitman's poetry, the handling of the Union and Confederate dead, the treatment of disabled and destitute northern veterans, Ulysses S. Grant's imposing tomb, and Hollywood's long relationship with the Lost Cause narrative. The contributors are William Blair, Stephen Cushman, Drew Gilpin Faust, Gary W. Gallagher, J. Matthew Gallman, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Harold Holzer, James Marten, Stephanie McCurry, James M. McPherson, Carol Reardon, and Joan Waugh.

"This collection of original essays reveals the richness and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Civil War era. Inspired by the lines of inquiry that animated the writings of the influential historian Gary W. Gallagher, this volume includes nine essays by leading scholars in the field who explore a broad range of themes and participants in the nation's greatest conflict, from Indigenous communities navigating the dangerous shoals of the secession winter to Confederate guerrillas caught in the legal snares of the Union's hard war to African Americans pursuing landownership in the postwar years. Essayists also explore how people contested and shaped the memory of the conflict, from outright silences and evasions to the use of formal historical writing. Other contributors use comparative and transnational history to rethink key aspects of the conflict. The result is a thorough examination of Gallagher's scholarly legacy and an assessment of the present and future of the Civil War history field. Contributors are William A. Blair, Peter S. Carmichael, Andre M. Fleche, Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, Caroline E. Janney, Peter C. Luebke, Cynthia Nicoletti, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, and Kathryn J. Shively"--