American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873

by Alan Taylor

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A superb and unique military history, American Civil Wars is populated by deeply human characters written with the mastery of a true historical powerhouse.

“Alan Taylor is a formidable historian and masterly writer.” —Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review

A masterful history of the Civil War and its reverberations across the continent by a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a pivotal twenty-year period in which North America’s three largest countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—all transformed themselves into nations. The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.

The outbreak of the Civil War created a continental power vacuum that allowed French forces to invade Mexico in 1862 and set up an empire ruled by a Habsburg archduke. This inflamed the ongoing power struggle between Mexico’s Conservatives—landowners, the military, the Church—and Liberal supporters of social democracy, led ably by Benito Juarez. Along the southwestern border Mexico’s Conservative forces made common cause with the Confederacy, while General James Carleton violently suppressed Apaches and Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona. When the Union triumph restored the continental balance of power, French forces withdrew, and Liberals consolidated a republic in Mexico.

Canada was meantime fending off a potential rupture between French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and English-speakers in Ontario. When Union victory raised the threat of American invasion, Canadian leaders pressed for a continent-wide confederation joined by a transcontinental railroad. The rollicking story of liberal ideals, political venality, and corporate corruption marked the dawn of the Gilded Age in North America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324110491
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/27/2025
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, is the author of American Revolutions and American Republics, prior volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

"Those doubting that there is anything fresh to say about the bloodiest event in the republic’s history should read Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor’s brilliant, panoramic account of the conflict."

Literary Review - Richard Carwardine

"A truly North American history of the defining political crises of the nineteenth century.… A must-read for all Civil War aficionados."

Manisha Sinha

"Alan Taylor…offers compelling new insights.… Mr. Taylor’s transnational approach reveals the often unnoticed connections between America’s war over slavery’s future and the concurrent battles for individual rights in Mexico and Canada."

Wall Street Journal - Amanda Brickell Bellows

05/27/2024

This sweeping account from Pulitzer winner Taylor (American Republics) examines the Civil War in a wider North American context. America’s conflict forms the backbone of Taylor’s narrative—he moves through the war’s epochal events with striking conciseness—while his explorations of developments in Canada and Mexico reveal how the fates of all three nations were intertwined. After Mexico’s defeat in the 1846–1848 Mexican-American War, the country was “bitterly divided” between conservative and liberal factions and defenseless against regular incursions by American raiders. Meanwhile, Canadian leaders worked to bridge divisions between Francophone and Anglophone states in hopes of forming a confederation—eventually established in 1867—that would be “better prepared to resist American invasion,” a perceived likelihood at the time. Strife on the continent heightened further with the French invasion of Mexico in 1862 and the 1864 elections, which were riven with tension in all three countries, especially in Mexico, where the French held votes structured to prove that Mexicans welcomed French rule. Taylor trenchantly observes that the situation in Mexico further spurred America’s Unionists, who feared similar European incursion into their own divided country. He also provides fresh analysis of Mexican and Canadian leaders Benito Juárez and John A. Macdonald, liberals whom he credits with holding their countries together in the face of out of control conservative revanchism. This penetrating study is a must for Civil War history buffs. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Taylor is a formidable historian and masterly writer. He briskly disposes of some persistent myths about the Civil War,…[and] as for anyone who believes that the current turbulence on the U.S.-Mexican border is an anomaly, they will be edified by Taylor’s account of how Texans attacked Mexico for offering freedom to runaway slaves."

Thomas E. Ricks

"From its first map showing the United States of America and the Confederate States of America bordered not only by each other but also by the Republic of Mexico, British Canada, and Indian Territory, American Civil Wars shifts our perspective to reveal the US Civil War in the context that everyone at the time understood to involve multiple sovereignties in North America debating and fighting over territory, slavery, sovereignty, and democracy. This is a gripping and deeply important addition to the magisterial Alan Taylor collection."

Kathleen DuVal

"American Civil Wars demonstrates, as no previous work has, the great political transformations sweeping all of North America during the middle of the nineteenth century. With a geographical frame embracing Canada and Mexico as well as the United States, Alan Taylor once again challenges and deepens our historical perspective."

Steven Hahn

"Taylor’s core argument is a compelling, and ultimately convincing, one…. [I]n his book’s greatest strength, Taylor doesn’t simply rehash the stories of these neighboring nations, but stitches them to the American saga. Indeed…it is the interplay of these jostling forces within Mexico, the United States, and Canada that truly makes the era, and his book, a continental swirl."

The Bulwark - Casey Michel

"With his trademark erudition, Alan Taylor illuminates the great conflicts that rocked Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He shows how these foundational national struggles, while unique, arose from similar tensions over state and national power and ended in greater federal authority."

Andrés Reséndez

★ 06/21/2024

The histories of the United States, Mexico, and British North America (primarily Canada) are inextricably intertwined in the years between 1850 and 1873. In this sweeping text—the fourth in a series—Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor (Univ. of Virginia; American Republics) outlines the military and political events of the U.S. Civil War and developments within the nation's neighbors. His book shows that during the 1860s, Mexican liberals fought against conservative forces and a French invasion during their own civil war. American unionists fought enslavers to maintain the fragile union between the States, while British North Americans warily eyed their southern neighbors and wondered if they could quell the more restive elements of their Francophone population. After the Union victory in the Civil War, the United States emerged as the continental superpower, allowing both Canada and Mexico to consolidate their statuses as fully formed nations. Taylor argues that all three nations failed to fully realize the larger promises of 19th-century liberalism, but what they achieved was unmatched elsewhere during any similar period. VERDICT Based on an impressive array of secondary sources, this outstanding account will appeal to readers interested in the U.S. Civil War seeking to understand how it affected Mexico and British North America.—Chad E. Statler

Library Journal