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Military History

Introduction

The history of the American Civil War has often been criticized in the past for being too focused on the war and not enough on the society that fought it and how the war brought massive changes to Americans of all descriptions. Recent military historians have emphatically corrected that, showing time and again how citizens became the soldiers of the 1860s and blurred the lines between civilian life and the military like never before. Civil War Governors can certainly add to that discussion, but the documents here can help open new windows onto the military history of the war. Historians need a better understanding of how the war was fought, how the military acted as an institution and as a bureaucracy. Showing the interaciton of federal and state and civil and military power in Kentucky, Civil War Governors is an excellent place to ground a new phase of United States military history research.