• Editor’s Overview

The June 2023 issue capitalizes on the journal’s storied history as the oldest Civil War history academic publication today. To build on this tradition and to show the relevance of previous issues—from even decades ago—we are republishing Eric Foner’s 1974 article, “The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions,” which originated as a paper that Foner gave at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting in 1972. Foner’s article responded to historian David Donald’s claim that the study of the causes of the Civil War was dead. Donald had posited that argument in a short four-page article in the South Atlantic Quarterly in 1960, and Foner fired back over a decade later, assessing the state of the field and offering many valuable insights that can guide current research. We are republishing Foner’s article as it was originally written; the work follows 1974 Civil War History style. Of special note, the word black is not capitalized. The footnotes also differ considerably from the journal’s current form.

Within the field of Civil War history, many students and scholars recognize Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (1988) as his major intervention, but his earlier study, Free Labor, Free Soil, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970), on the origins of the Republican Party as well as this article point to how his analysis of slavery and racism framed the social and political history of the Civil War era for decades.

To better evaluate whether Foner’s article stands the test of time, I invited some of the nation’s leading Civil War historians to reread it and to offer their reactions. I invited scholars at various ranks from a diverse range of institutions. Their own published writings cover the broad spectrum of topics from abolition to military history to studies of gender to new research into the cultural history of the Civil War. Some of the contributions stayed within the eight-hundred-word limit but others far exceeded it. The overall product is a generative, insightful forum that I hope you will enjoy and assign.

This issue also includes an excellent article from Jeremy Neely about the intersection of military command and civilian politics. By carefully examining the polemical tenure of Thomas Ewing Jr., the Union general who issued General Orders No. 13, that banished several thousand civilians from western Missouri in August 1863 as a tactic to keep Confederate guerrillas from relying on countryside farms for necessities, Neely offers a new take on a familiar story. He discusses how the press covered Ewing’s policy and how Ewing himself gauged public reaction by carefully reading newspapers. As Neely explains, military historians [End Page 9] have overlooked the civilian politics of General Orders No. 13 and historians of journalism have overlooked how the military mattered to the press. This article has many merits, including its emphasis on centrality of the nineteenth-century newspapers, which was part of a special issue (volume 68, no. 2, June 2022) on print culture edited by Sarah E. Gardner and Jonathan Daniel Wells.

As always, the book review section is a major highlight of the journal. I want to acknowledge Sarah Gardner’s tireless, outstanding work in putting together a truly excellent and engaging book review section. Typically, academic book reviews are published years after their publication date. This lag makes the reviews feel less relevant and out of step with conversations taking place among scholars at conferences and on social media platforms. Sarah has done an extraordinary job of getting new releases reviewed immediately and putting them in production so they can be part of larger discussions. This issue includes many talked-about books, including Sarah J. Purcell’s Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War, reviewed by James J. Broomall as well as Marcy S. Sacks’s review of Earl Hess’s edited volume Animal Histories of the Civil War Era. [End Page 10]

• 编辑概述

2023 年 6 月号利用了该期刊作为当今最古老的内战历史学术出版物的传奇历史。为了建立这一传统并展示以前问题（甚至几十年前）的相关性，我们将重新发表 Eric Foner 1974 年的文章“美国内战的原因：最近的解释和新方向”，该文章最初是 Foner 发表的一篇论文1972 年，他在美国历史学家组织年会上发表了这篇文章。Foner 的文章回应了历史学家大卫·唐纳德 (David Donald) 声称对内战起因的研究已经死亡的说法。唐纳德在南大西洋季刊的一篇四页的短文中提出了这个论点1960 年，Foner 在十多年后进行了反击，评估了该领域的现状并提供了许多可以指导当前研究的有价值的见解。我们将按原样重新发布 Foner 的文章；该作品遵循 1974年内战史风格。特别注意，黑色这个词没有大写。脚注也与期刊的当前形式有很大不同。

在内战历史领域，许多学生和学者认为福纳的重建：美国未完成的革命（1988 年）是他的主要干预，但他早期的研究，自由劳动，自由土地，自由人：内战前共和党的意识形态战争(1970)，关于共和党的起源以及这篇文章指出了他对奴隶制和种族主义的分析如何构成了几十年来内战时代的社会和政治历史。

为了更好地评估 Foner 的文章是否经得起时间的考验，我邀请了美国一些主要的内战历史学家重读它并提供他们的反应。我邀请了来自不同机构的不同级别的学者。他们自己出版的著作涵盖了广泛的主题，从废除死刑到军事史，再到性别研究，再到对内战文化史的新研究。一些贡献在八百字的限制之内，但其他的则远远超过了限制。整个产品是一个生成性的、有见地的论坛，我希望你会喜欢并分配。

本期还包括杰里米·尼利 (Jeremy Neely) 撰写的一篇关于军事指挥与平民政治交集的精彩文章。通过仔细研究发布第 13 号一般命令的联邦将军小托马斯·尤因的争论性任期，该命令于 1863 年 8 月从密苏里州西部驱逐了数千名平民，作为防止同盟游击队依赖农村农场获取必需品的策略，尼利为熟悉的故事提供新视角。他讨论了媒体如何报道尤因的政策，以及尤因本人如何通过仔细阅读报纸来衡量公众的反应。正如 Neely 解释的那样，军事历史学家[End Page 9]忽视了第 13 号总令的平民政治，新闻史学家忽视了军队对媒体的重要性。这篇文章有很多优点，包括强调 19 世纪报纸的中心地位，这是莎拉·E·加德纳 (Sarah E. Gardner) 和乔纳森·丹尼尔·威尔斯 (Jonathan Daniel Wells) 编辑的关于印刷文化的特刊（第 68 卷，第 2 期，2022 年 6 月）的一部分。

一如既往，书评部分是该期刊的一大亮点。我要感谢莎拉·加德纳 (Sarah Gardner) 孜孜不倦、出色的工作，将书评部分整合在一起，这部分内容非常出色且引人入胜。通常，学术书评是在出版日期多年后发表的。这种滞后使评论感觉不那么相关，并且与学者在会议和社交媒体平台上进行的对话不一致。Sarah 在立即审查新版本并将其投入生产方面做得非常出色，因此它们可以成为更广泛讨论的一部分。本期包含许多热门书籍，包括莎拉·J·珀塞尔 (Sarah J. Purcell) 的《悲痛奇观：内战中的公共葬礼与记忆》，由 James J. Broomall 以及 Marcy S. Sacks 对厄尔·赫斯 (Earl Hess) 编辑的《内战时代动物史》一书的评论进行了评论。[结束第 10 页]