Robert M. Browning Jr.’s Top Ten Civil War Books

Originally published November 2020 · pp. 18–19

Robert M. Browning Jr.’s Top Ten Civil War Books In Alphabetical Order: 1. Why the South Lost the Civil War by Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. The University of Georgia Press, 1986. In contrast to Owsley’s book (listed below), this is a more modern and an alternate view of the reasons for the South’s demise. 2. Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863– 1877 by Eric Foner. Harper & Row, Perennial Library, 1989. Foner’s careful work is the best on this subject and brings the war and its consequences to their conclusions. 3. The Civil War: A Narrative, 3 vols., by Shelby Foote. Random House, 1958. Shelby Foote’s trilogy is not perfect and it has some issues with interpretation. But, the writing is so compelling that after three generations it is still an important source to introduce persons to the Civil War. 4. Lee’s Lieutenants – A Study in Command, 3 vols., by Douglas Southall Freeman. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. This is a penetrating and overarching study of the

Army of Northern Virginia that dissects the leadership of Robert E. Lee and his subordinates. 5. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. This is an epic book that will influence historians for a generation and currently is the best overview of the war. 6. States Rights and the Confederacy by Frank Lawrence Owsley. Chicago, Ill., The University of Chicago Press, 1925. I realize this is old school, but this work truly turned the history of the war upside down claiming that, due to the actions and inactions of the Southern states, that the Confederacy “died of states rights” rather than due to losses on the battlefield. 7. The Destructive War, William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans by Charles Royster. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Another overview of the war’s causes, however, with many almost dark and complex ideas of how and why the war was fought. It looks at the levels of violence, the battles becoming more devastating as the war progressed. It is a book different than any other. 8. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam by Stephen W. Sears. Ticknor and Fields, 1983. This is a well written and engaging narrative of the Battle of Antietam. I believe that this is the best book on a single battle. 9. The Life of Billy Yank by Bell Irvin Wiley, Louisiana State University Press, 1983, and The Life of Johnny Reb. Louisiana State University Press, 1982. I realize that this counts as two books but I really cannot separate them. Together they represent the original scholarly social history of Civil War soldiers. 10. Mary Chestnut’s Civil War edited by C. Vann Woodward. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1981. Mary Chestnut gives us a view of the war from the perspective of a civilian, albeit a wealthy, well-connected one. Her experiences and the comments she made are some of the most poignant and penetrating of the war. Robert M. Browning Jr. earned his Ph.D. at the University of Alabama, and embarked on his history career, working as a Park Superintendent at the Battleship Texas. In 1989, he began work as a historian with the U.S. Coast Guard, and in 1991, became the Coast Guard’s Chief Historian. He retired from Government service in 2015. He is the author of six books and over five-dozen articles relating to the Coast Guard, the U.S. Civil War, and U.S. naval and maritime history.