'Tis Not Our War

Paul Taylor has written numerous books on the Civil War, including "My Dear Nelly": The Selected Letters of General Orlando M. Poe to His Wife (Kent State, 2020), "The Most Complete Political Machine Ever Known": The North's Union Leagues in the American Civil War (Kent State, 2018), and "Old Slow Town": Detroit during the Civil War (Wayne State, 2013). He has been a book reviewer for Civil War News since 2015 and also been published in Michigan History and North & South. He lives near Detroit, Michigan.

Opposition to military service is an important tradition in American history. Its mass expression was in the Civil War, when only a small fraction of men drafted by the Lincoln administration complied with the call to protect the republic. 'Tis Not Our War explores the evolution in Northerners' views of fighting, from military service as a patriotic opportunity to a form of forced labor not that different from the chattel slavery that, with great controversy, the Emancipation Proclamation declared as the Union's target. The elaborate bounties and allowance for substitutes with which northern recruiters incentivized military-age men, the diverse ruses of which shirkers were capable, widespread anti-war racism, and exposure to mortal danger of provost marshals ordered to round up draft dodgers, in hindsight, and keeping in mind the Union's goal to thwart secession and end slavery, now seems shocking. But as all good history does, 'Tis Not Our War shows how a culture of disloyalty made sense to many Northerners in the moment. --Dr. Timothy Mason Roberts, editor of "This Infernal War" The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard