Paper 17243 Hard Hand of War book report, 4 pages.
Like most wars, historians generally agree that the American Civil war grew in brutality as it lasted longer in duration. Soldier-mounted attacks against Southern civilians had been unthinkable in 1861. By 1864, however, attacks against Southern civilians" property, as chronicled in movies like Gone with the Wind, had become commonplace and an officially sanctioned part of wartime strategy.
The thesis behind The Hard Hand of War is that the evolution of the Union government's policies towards civilians in the South during the Civil War. Historian Mark Grimsley's contribution to this scholarship is a chronicle of this transformation. Grimsley provides an account of how the Union war effort moved from a limited war geared towards cultivating conciliation among white southerners to a "hard war," a broader assault on both their property, resources and psyches. This assault was coupled with the emancipation of enslaved black people.
The changes in strategies were rooted in changing political considerations. During the first phase, the Union army emphasized conciliation. In fact, maintains Grimsley, President Lincoln took pains to stress that the Constitution remained in full effect throughout the country, North and South. The President thus promised, "the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country" (11-12).
Grimsley attributes this strategy on a widespread Northern-based assumption that secession moves in the South were driven by only a one percent slave power minority. This early emphasis was thus geared towards undermining the mass of Southern civilians" support for the war.
Grimsley carefully differentiates this Federal policy of conciliation from the policies of "hard war" practiced by the Union armies in other wars and by other military around the world.