Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction

"While it has been a matter of quiet satisfaction that the main outlines of the story require little or no revision in the light of these new studies, I welcome the opportunity to refine or expand my treatment of several subjects that have been the focus of particularly intensive scholarship in the recent years: the changing status of women during this [Civil War] era, and their contributions to the war efforts of both sides ; the impact of economic growth on the antebellum working class ; the ambivalent position of nonslaveholding whites in a slave society at war ; internal political and social issues in the Confederacy ; and the active part the slave population took in their own emancipation"--Pref., 2nd ed.