One More War To Fight: Union Veterans’ Battle For Equality Through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, And The Lost Cause, by Stephen A. Goldman

It seems almost uncharitable to note that the author of this book is not a historian but is in fact a psychologist whose interest in this particular matter comes from a familiarity with a set of texts relating to permanently disabled survivors of the Union in the Civil War who formed part of the Grand Army of the Republic as well as being generally representative of the Union veterans of the war in terms of demographics. To be sure, this book presents a worthwhile tale that deserves to be told, and the set of documents that this book’s records are taken from deserves to be preserved as well, since it has important insights concerning the historical memory of the American Civil War. That said, there are certainly cases where the tone of the author–not least in the book’s title, as well as the author’s distinct lack of empathy or compassion for the place of the Grand Army of the Republic in the era around 1910 or for those white veterans who settled (for whatever reason) in the American South and struggled to find ways of being able to enjoy a social life with their unreconstructed neighbors.

This book is about 350 pages or so long and it is divided into ten chapters. The book begins with a foreword by the custodian of the papers on which the book is based. This is followed by an introduction to the text that discusses the author’s background and interest in the subject despite a lack of training as an academic (or popular) historian. The first chapter of the book introduces some crippled veterans who sought to shoulder the unfinished work of the Civil War to provide genuine equity for freed blacks (1). This is followed by a discussion of the politics of the 1866 Midterm elections won by radical Republicans and the 14th Amendment (2). After that comes a discussion of Reconstruction and African-American equality (3) as well as a look at doing battle with the Ku Klux Klan and the end of Reconstruction (4). The book takes a generally chronological look at the fight against Jim Crow by the Grand Army of the Republic (5), made up of Union veterans of the Civil War, as well as the faith that they kept with black veterans and their goals for equality and freedom of opportunity (6). This is followed by chapters that discuss reconciliation, resistance to the rise of the lost cause myth in the American South, and lynching (7) as well as the still-thorny issue of the commemoration of Civil War dead including black veterans and rebel traitors (8). The last chapters of the book deal with betrayal and remembrance (9) and the notorious Robert E. Lee statue in Congress and the struggle over it (10), after which the book concludes with an appreciation, endnotes, index, and information about the author.

At its core, even when one strips the book of its rather strident tone, there is something sad about the story that this book tells when it comes to the place of blacks within American society as well as the struggle over historical memory in the aftermath of the Civil War. By and large, the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, and significant parts of the North, did not hold to anything that we (or blacks) would consider to be racial equality. Any semblance of a social status elevated from near-slavery even after 1865 in the American South required federal enforcement at the barrel of a gun, and this the North was increasingly unwilling to do as the decades wound on after the Civil War. Nor did Southern survivors and their descendants have any willingness to view Lee and others like him as traitors unworthy of public recognition, which led to the proliferation of statuary honoring the heroes of a rebellion once the numbers of Civil War veterans who retained a highly negative view of the Confederacy started to die off and lose political influence. Moreover, it seems that it took the highly traumatic experience of war to see the worth of black soldiers, and thus only among those who fought besides blacks and saw their commitment to a country that offered little to them was there the widespread change of perspective that could overcome the pervasive racism of the time. Providing opportunity for advancement and respect for the memory of black Union soldiers meant eternal hostility to white Southerners and the cause of the Confederacy, and reconciliation with white Southerners meant sidelining any calls for racial equality or widespread elevation of blacks beyond the lower segments of the population. In such circumstances middle ground was elusive, and genuine social harmony was and remains a seemingly impossible challenge.