Description:
Winner of the Wiley-Silver Prize
Cecily N. Zander's The Army under Fire is a pathbreaking study focusing on the fierce political debates over the size and use of military forces in the United States during the Civil War era. It examines how prominent political figures interacted with the professional army and how those same leaders misunderstood the value of regular soldiers fighting to reunify the fractured nation.Brief description: Cecily N. Zander is assistant professor of history at Texas Woman's University.
Review Quotes: "Cecily N. Zander's book is a revelation. Countering the notion that the U.S. Army was the celebrated agent of nineteenth-century American frontier expansion, Zander shows that, in fact, the ascendant Republican Party looked suspiciously upon the nation's military. Deeply researched and wonderfully written, The Army under Fire marks the debut of a most promising scholar working at the intersection of the Civil War and the American West."--Andrew R. Graybill, author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West