The War for the Union, Volume III: The Organized War, 1863-1864

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. First Edition. [Scribner's "A" on the verso] Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. [12], 532 pages. Frontispeice Illustrations. Footnotes. Index. DJ soiled: small tears and some wear along edges. Minor edge soiling. Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 - March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as his public service. He was a leading exponent of business history and oral history. Nevins wrote his first book, The Life of Robert Rogers (1914) (about a Colonial American frontiersman and Loyalist) and a history of the University of Illinois (1917) during his postgraduate studies in that institution. Nevins then accepted positions with the New York Evening Post and The Nation and worked as a journalist in New York City for twenty years, as well as continued writing and editing history books. He resigned from the Nation in 1918, and the Post about a year after publishing its history The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism in 1922. In 1923 Nevins published American Social History as Recorded by British Travelers and The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775-1789 in 1924. In 1928, Nevins joined the history faculty of Columbia University, where he remained for three decades until his mandatory retirement in 1958. Nevins served as special representative of the Office of War Information in Australia and New Zealand in 1943-1944, and in 1945-1946 worked in London as chief public affairs officer at the American embassy. Ordeal of the Union is an eight-volume series of books (published 1947-1971) on mid-19th century American history, and particularly on the American Civil War and its background, written by historian Allan Nevins. The first two books in the series have the collective title Ordeal of the Union (with differing subtitles), the third and fourth the collective title The Emergence of Lincoln, and the fifth through the eighth the collective title The War for the Union; the series is, however, generally referred to as Ordeal of the Union as a whole. The qualities of clarity, absolute command of the sources, and full recognition of the drama inherent in the theme, which have distinguished the previous volumes can all be found here as well. And there is something a communication without sentimentality of the heartbreak of this national tragedy for the victors as well as the vanquished. ("He seemed," wrote one observer of President Lincoln, "to be in mourning for all the dead of all the endless battles.") Nevins provides the reader with an analysis of the social and economic effects of the conflict which is outstanding for wisdom and depth. Allan Nevins won the National Book Award for The Organized War 1863-1864, and the following volume, The Organized War to 1864-1865, which completed The War for the Union series.