A People's History of the Civil War

Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom

David Williams

A New Press People's History
Howard Zinn, Series Editor

paperback

$24.95 / £14.99

A reconsideration of the Civil War that addresses its impact on ordinary people. . . . A useful counter to the sanitized picture many historians paint of our nation’s greatest struggle.
—KIRKUS REVIEWS

Bottom-up history at its very best, A People’s History of the Civil War “does for the Civil War period what Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States did for the study of American history in general” (Library Journal). Widely praised upon its initial release, it was described as “meticulously researched and persuasively argued” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Historian David Williams has written the first account of the American Civil War though the eyes of ordinary people—foot soldiers, slaves, women, prisoners of war, draft resisters, Native Americans, and others. Richly illustrated with little-known anecdotes and first-hand testimony, this pathbreaking narrative moves beyond presidents and generals to tell a new and powerful story about America’s most destructive conflict.

A People’s History of the Civil War is “readable social history” which “sheds fascinating light” (Publishers Weekly) on this crucial period. In so doing it recovers the long-overlooked perspectives and forgotten voices of one of the defining chapters of American history.

David Williams is the author of Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, Johnny Reb’s War, and Rich Man’s War. He is a professor of history at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, where he lives.