American Civil Wars
A Continental History, 1850-1873
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In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a pivotal twenty-year period in which North America's three largest countries--the United States, Mexico, and Canada--all transformed themselves into nations. The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies. The outbreak of the Civil War created a continental power vacuum that allowed French forces to invade Mexico in 1862 and set up an empire ruled by a Habsburg archduke. This inflamed the ongoing power struggle between Mexico's Conservatives--landowners, the military, the Church--and Liberal supporters of social democracy, led ably by Benito Juarez. Along the southwestern border Mexico's Conservative forces made common cause with the Confederacy, while General James Carleton violently suppressed Apaches and Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona. When the Union triumph restored the continental balance of power, French forces withdrew, and Liberals consolidated a republic in Mexico. Canada was meantime fending off a potential rupture between French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and English-speakers in Ontario. When Union victory raised the threat of American invasion, Canadian leaders pressed for a continent-wide confederation joined by a transcontinental railroad. The rollicking story of liberal ideals, political venality, and corporate corruption marked the dawn of the Gilded Age in North America.
About this Author
Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, is the author of American Revolutions and American Republics, prior volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Reviews
"Taylor...offers compelling new insights.... [His] transnational approach reveals the often unnoticed connections between America's war over slavery's future and the concurrent battles for individual rights in Mexico and Canada."
"Taylor is a formidable historian and masterly writer. He briskly disposes of some persistent myths about the Civil War,...[and] as for anyone who believes that the current turbulence on the U.S.-Mexican border is an anomaly, they will be edified by Taylor's account of how Texans attacked Mexico for offering freedom to runaway slaves."
"Taylor's core argument is a compelling, and ultimately convincing, one.... [I]n his book's greatest strength, Taylor doesn't simply rehash the stories of these neighboring nations, but stitches them to the American saga. Indeed...it is the interplay of these jostling forces within Mexico, the United States, and Canada that truly makes the era, and his book, a continental swirl."
"American Civil Wars demonstrates, as no previous work has, the great political transformations sweeping all of North America during the middle of the nineteenth century. With a geographical frame embracing Canada and Mexico as well as the United States, Alan Taylor once again challenges and deepens our historical perspective."
"From its first map showing the United States of America and the Confederate States of America bordered not only by each other but also by the Republic of Mexico, British Canada, and Indian Territory, American Civil Wars shifts our perspective to reveal the US Civil War in the context that everyone at the time understood to involve multiple sovereignties in North America debating and fighting over territory, slavery, sovereignty, and democracy. This is a gripping and deeply important addition to the magisterial Alan Taylor collection."
"With his trademark erudition, Alan Taylor illuminates the great conflicts that rocked Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He shows how these foundational national struggles, while unique, arose from similar tensions over state and national power and ended in greater federal authority."
"A truly North American history of the defining political crises of the nineteenth century. . . . A must-read for all Civil War aficionados."
"Given the momentous events and delicious cast of characters, as well as the two-time Pulitzer winner's masterful storytelling skills, it's no surprise that the book is nearly impossible to put down."
"This penetrating study is a must for Civil War history buffs."
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