ROYSTER : The destructive war (fülszöveg)
IN THIS penetrating re-examination of the American Civil War, Charles Royster brings his wide research and analytic brilliance to bear on an overriding issue that is here treated, for the first time, as of central importance to our understanding of the war: its massive violence — violence quickly and completely out of control, violence far beyond the initial expectations of its architects on both sides of the conflict.
Royster makes clear the roots of that violence: how zealots in both camps, patriots all, driven by their need for a national identity, set out to validate their own regional definition of America by destroying those who had a differing vision.
Reconstructing bloody battles and such massive actions as the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, and delving into the testimony of Sherman and Jackson (the opposing generals who most clearly epitomized the drastic use of force), Royster uncovers the belief, held on both sides, that a direct link existed between destruction and the attainment of political ends. He traces how the assumption that the war would be horrendous resulted in a willingness to make it so — and eventually to an obsession with war-making, even an exalted faith that war would morally uplift the nation.
Royster then draws our attention to the misconceptions, evasions, illusions, and myths used to explain and promote the destruction. We see the war's violence taking on a momentum of its own, beyond the intentions of its creators. We see the unionists embracing it, despite their participation in, or awareness of, its worst excesses. And we see the Confederates accepting it as the only reality that could cause them to cease resistance. Royster underlines, as well, the postbellum efforts to validate the war as purposeful, intelligible, and right, as a progressive undertaking that would yield beneficial results for society. And he demonstrates, finally, that the violence was more vast, more powerful, more arbitrary, than had been expected or could ever be justified.
His brilliant, challenging, and lucidly written book throws a strong new light on the American Civil War and, ultimately, on the nature of war itself.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
