'American All': Reforging a National Brotherhood, 1876-1917
Cecilia O'Leary looks at how national identity was repaired following the fratricidal traumas of the American Civil War.
The Civil War tested the viability of the United States enduring as one nation-state. The strategy of 'complete conquest' in which Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan engaged in a 'people's war' – directed not just at fighting 'hostile armies, hut a hostile people' – spoke to the depth of the challenge. The generals believed that the will of- a 'whole people' needed to be destroyed or else formal war would be followed by untold years of guerrilla warfare. Thus Sherman decided to march into the heartland of the enemy's country. At the war’s end, the struggle to establish the primacy of the nation- state moved from the battlefield into the arenas of political, economic, and cultural life.
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