Scholars have analyzed the ways in which race, class, and gender shaped the experiences of both soldiers and civilians in one of the most tumultuous eras of American history, the Civil War.

            Questions about race have looked at how the African American Civil War experience differed from whites. This question is broken down further by evaluating regional differences between north and south: free versus enslaved, white versus black, white versus white, black versus black, etc.  There is not one all-encompassing experience to explain how race altered the lives of men, women and children who endured exposure to mass death and violence during the Civil War.  One’s experience was very much contingent upon their local circumstances including the social and racial constructions of their society.

Questions on gender have emphasized the experience of women during the Civil War and its enduring legacy. How did the war affect female advancement during and after the war? Why was manhood an important factor in Civil War enlistment? Like questions on race, gender was influenced by differences in class and racial categorization. Wartime was not the same for poor white men and slaveholding men or poor white women and enslaved women. Again, regional circumstances would play a role in dictating one’s experience.

In recent historiography historians have attempted to re-center previously subordinated groups including freedmen, slaves, poor whites, and women. There is an effort to demonstrate that these groups had agency and were not passive participants in history.  For example, Battle Scars, an anthology edited by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, examines how gender and sexuality affected the social and political landscape of the Civil War era. They show that gender mattered for both men and women and help shed light on why and how gender changes our understanding of Civil War history. Working Cures by Sharla Fett, though focused on slavery rather than the Civil War, also seeks to give agency to enslaved African Americans. In studying the history of antebellum medical relations Fett finds that slaves were neither helpless dependents of white health care nor were they passive victims of medical malice. Instead, she shows that slaves had a rich culture of medical practice on south slave plantations. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War was Over take strides away from scholarship that privileges the elite perspective of the Civil War. She analyzes ordinary soldiers and their perceptions of the relationship between slavery and the Civil War to reveal their awareness of slavery and racial discrimination as the root of the war.

In short, recent Civil War historiography has complicated the traditional narrative which focused on military activity and political leadership. It is clear that there is much more to be learned about how the war influenced people’s lives beyond the confines of the military and the battlefield.