Elizabeth R. Varon's Books

Armies of Deliverance

A New History of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Armies of Deliverance

A New History of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims.

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529

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ISBN 10

019086060X

ISBN 13

9780190860608

Secession Winter

When the Union Fell Apart

By: Robert J. Cook,William L. Barney,Elizabeth R. Varon

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Secession Winter

When the Union Fell Apart

By: Robert J. Cook,William L. Barney,Elizabeth R. Varon

What prompted southern secession in the winter of 1860–61 and why did secession culminate in the American Civil War? Politicians and opinion leaders on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line struggled to formulate coherent responses to the secession of the deep South states. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861 triggered civil war and the loss of four upper South states from the Union. The essays by three senior historians in Secession Winter explore the robust debates that preceded these events. For five months in the winter of 1860–1861, Americans did not know for certain that civil war was upon them. Some hoped for a compromise; others wanted a fight. Many struggled to understand what was happening to their country. Robert J. Cook, William L. Barney, and Elizabeth R. Varon take approaches to this period that combine political, economic, and social-cultural lines of analysis. Rather than focus on whether civil war was inevitable, they look at the political process of secession and find multiple internal divisions—political parties, whites and nonwhites, elites and masses, men and women. Even individual northerners and southerners suffered inner conflicts. The authors include the voices of Unionists and Whig party moderates who had much to lose and upcountry folk who owned no slaves and did not particularly like those who did. Barney contends that white southerners were driven to secede by anxiety and guilt over slavery. Varon takes a new look at Robert E. Lee's decision to join the Confederacy. Cook argues that both northern and southern politicians claimed the rightness of their cause by constructing selective narratives of historical grievances. Secession Winter explores the fact of contingency and reminds readers and students that nothing was foreordained.

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Page Count

130

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1421408953

ISBN 13

9781421408958

Armies of Deliverance

A New History of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Armies of Deliverance

A New History of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. So argues Elizabeth R. Varon in Armies of Deliverance, a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike. The theme of deliverance was essential in mobilizing a Unionist coalition of Northerners and anti-Confederate Southerners. Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, were determined to preempt, discredit, and silence Yankee appeals to the Southern masses. In their quest for political unity Confederates relentlessly played up two themes: Northern barbarity and Southern victimization. Casting the Union army as ruthless conquerors, Confederates argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South. Interweaving military and social history, Varon shows that everyday acts on the ground--from the flight of slaves, to protests against the draft, the plundering of civilian homes, and civilian defiance of military occupation--reverberated at the highest levels of government. Varon also offers new perspectives on major battles, illuminating how soldiers and civilians alike coped with the physical and emotional toll of the war as it grew into a massive humanitarian crisis. The Union's politics of deliverance helped it to win the war. But such appeals failed to convince Confederates to accept peace on the victor's terms, ultimately sowing the seeds of postwar discord. Armies of Deliverance offers innovative insights on the conflict for those steeped in Civil War history and novices alike.

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529

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190860626

ISBN 13

9780190860622

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

A gripping account of the Civil War era story of Elizabeth Van Lew: high-society Southern lady, risk-taking Union spy, and postwar politician.

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332

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195179897

ISBN 13

9780195179897

Appomattox

Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Appomattox

Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

Winner, Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction Winner, Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies, New York Military Affairs Symposium Winner of the Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize of the Austin Civil War Round Table Finalist, Jefferson Davis Award of the Museum of the Confederacy Best Books of 2014, Civil War Monitor 6 Civil War Books to Read Now, Diane Rehm Show, NPR Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind -- it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in this vividly narrated history, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked, who brought their own understanding of the war's causes, consequences, and meaning. In Appomattox, Varon deftly captures the events swirling around that well remembered-but not well understood-moment when the Civil War ended. She expertly depicts the final battles in Virginia, when Grant's troops surrounded Lee's half-starved army, the meeting of the generals at the McLean House, and the shocked reaction as news of the surrender spread like an electric charge throughout the nation. But as Varon shows, the ink had hardly dried before both sides launched a bitter debate over the meaning of the war and the nation's future. For Grant, and for most in the North, the Union victory was one of right over wrong, a vindication of free society; for many African Americans, the surrender marked the dawn of freedom itself. Lee, in contrast, believed that the Union victory was one of might over right: the vast impersonal Northern war machine had worn down a valorous and unbowed South. Lee was committed to peace, but committed, too, to the restoration of the South's political power within the Union and the perpetuation of white supremacy. These two competing visions of the war's end paved the way not only for Southern resistance to reconstruction but also our ongoing debates on the Civil War, 150 years later. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the future? For Lee, it was the past, the era of the founding generation. For Grant, it was the future, represented by Northern moral and material progress. They held, in the end, two opposite views of the direction of the country-and of the meaning of the war that had changed that country forever.

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Page Count

316

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199347921

ISBN 13

9780199347926

We Mean to Be Counted

White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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We Mean to Be Counted

White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

Over the past two decades, historians have successfully disputed the notion that American women remained wholly outside the realm of politics until the early twentieth century. Still, a consensus has prevailed that, unlike their Northern counterparts, women of the antebellum South were largely excluded from public life. With this book, Elizabeth Varon effectively challenges such historical assumptions. Using a wide array of sources, she demonstrates that throughout the antebellum period, white Southern women of the slaveholding class were important actors in the public drama of politics. Through their voluntary associations, legislative petitions, presence at political meetings and rallies, and published appeals, Virginia's elite white women lent their support to such controversial reform enterprises as the temperance movement and the American Colonization Society, to the electoral campaigns of the Whig and Democratic Parties, to the literary defense of slavery, and to the causes of Unionism and secession. Against the backdrop of increasing sectional tension, Varon argues, these women struggled to fulfill a paradoxical mandate: to act both as partisans who boldly expressed their political views and as mediators who infused public life with the "feminine" virtues of compassion and harmony.

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249

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807866083

ISBN 13

9780807866085

Disunion!

The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Disunion!

The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

The author of We Mean to Be Counted blends political history with intellectual and cultural history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis in a study that brings together the voices of competing interests, including fugitive slaves, white Southern dissenters, free black activists, abolitionists, and other outsiders.

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471

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807832324

ISBN 13

9780807832325

Six Encounters with Lincoln

A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons

By: Elizabeth Brown Pryor

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Six Encounters with Lincoln

A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons

By: Elizabeth Brown Pryor

Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award from The Civil War Round Table of New York “Fascinating reading. . .this book eerily reflects some of today’s key issues.” – The New York Times Book Review From an award-winning historian, an engrossing look at how Abraham Lincoln grappled with the challenges of leadership in an unruly democracy An awkward first meeting with U.S. Army officers, on the eve of the Civil War. A conversation on the White House portico with a young cavalry sergeant who was a fiercely dedicated abolitionist. A tense exchange on a navy ship with a Confederate editor and businessman. In this eye-opening book, Elizabeth Brown Pryor examines six intriguing, mostly unknown encounters that Abraham Lincoln had with his constituents. Taken together, they reveal his character and opinions in unexpected ways, illustrating his difficulties in managing a republic and creating a presidency. Pryor probes both the political demons that Lincoln battled in his ambitious exercise of power and the demons that arose from the very nature of democracy itself: the clamorous diversity of the populace, with its outspoken demands. She explores the trouble Lincoln sometimes had in communicating and in juggling the multiple concerns that make up being a political leader; how conflicted he was over the problem of emancipation; and the misperceptions Lincoln and the South held about each other. Pryor also provides a fascinating discussion of Lincoln’s fondness for storytelling and how he used his skills as a raconteur to enhance both his personal and political power. Based on scrupulous research that draws on hundreds of eyewitness letters, diaries, and newspaper excerpts, Six Encounters with Lincoln offers a fresh portrait of Lincoln as the beleaguered politician who was not especially popular with the people he needed to govern with, and who had to deal with the many critics, naysayers, and dilemmas he faced without always knowing the right answer. What it shows most clearly is that greatness was not simply laid on Lincoln’s shoulders like a mantle, but was won in fits and starts.

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498

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

014311123X

ISBN 13

9780143111238

Disunion!

The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Disunion!

The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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471

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Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807832324

ISBN 13

9780807832325

Longstreet

The Confederate General Who Defied the South

By: Elizabeth Varon

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Longstreet

The Confederate General Who Defied the South

By: Elizabeth Varon

An authoritative biography of the second-highest-ranking and most controversial Confederate general, who rejoined the Union after the Civil War, advising other Confederate soldiers to put that war behind them. After joining an interracial government in New Orleans, Longstreet fought against white supremacists when they attacked these postwar elected officials, for which he was vilified and attacked by other Southerners, and blamed for the South's defeat in the Civil War"--

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Page Count

480

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982148284

ISBN 13

9781982148287

Appomattox

Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Appomattox

Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

Examines the events surrounding Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, focusing on the debate over the meaning of the Civil War that immediately followed its end.

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316

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199751714

ISBN 13

9780199751716

Longstreet

The Confederate General Who Defied the South

By: Elizabeth Varon

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Longstreet

The Confederate General Who Defied the South

By: Elizabeth Varon

Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Finalist A “compelling portrait” (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author) of the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South. It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle. After the war, Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course. He supported Black voting and joined the newly elected, integrated postwar government in Louisiana. When white supremacists took up arms to oust that government, Longstreet, leading the interracial state militia, did battle against former Confederates. His defiance ignited a firestorm of controversy, as white Southerners branded him a race traitor and blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War. Although he was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, Longstreet has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his postwar actions in rejecting the Lost Cause mythology and urging racial reconciliation. He is being discovered in the new age of racial reckoning as “one of the most enduringly relevant voices in American history” (The Wall Street Journal). This is the first authoritative biography in decades and the first that “brilliantly creates the wider context for Longstreet’s career” (The New York Times).

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480

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982148292

ISBN 13

9781982148294

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

A gripping account of the Civil War era story of Elizabeth Van Lew: high-society Southern lady, risk-taking Union spy, and postwar politician.

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Page Count

332

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195179897

ISBN 13

9780195179897

We Mean to Be Counted

White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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We Mean to Be Counted

White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia

By: Elizabeth R. Varon

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

249

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Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807866083

ISBN 13

9780807866085

Book's by Elizabeth R. Varon

Armies of Deliverance

Armies of Deliverance

Secession Winter

Secession Winter

Armies of Deliverance

Armies of Deliverance

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

Appomattox

Appomattox

We Mean to Be Counted

We Mean to Be Counted

Disunion!

Disunion!

Six Encounters with Lincoln

Six Encounters with Lincoln

Disunion!

Disunion!

Longstreet

Longstreet

Appomattox

Appomattox

Longstreet

Longstreet

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy

We Mean to Be Counted

We Mean to Be Counted

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