Well, I read through a lot of the thread Pat mentioned above along with some of the blog entries, and it turned out to be a lot less interesting than I had hoped. I learned that some "social" historians make mistakes regarding military history, and social history of the war is more popular now than military history. And there was much bickering. And then the black confederate thing. I really have nothing to add that wasn't already stated in that thread.
I didn't see anything related to this in that discussion, though:
...the military historian’s assumption that martial violence in fact possesses a logic of sorts that goes beyond simple criminality.
Is all this military stuff just criminal activity? I'm curious to see someone's argument in favor of that view. Anyone got any links?
Like Brass said above, I don't think the people at the time saw it that way. That way of stating seems to be equivalent to calling someone "crazy" just because you disagree with their point of view. It's a way of dismissing somebody or something as being unworthy of further interest or study, and is a mistake.
Personally, I became interested in the war's social aspect originally. I would skim over all those parts of the books I read when they started talking about
regiment XYZ did this, and
this brigade fought that brigade. Boooring! I just wanted to learn how one part of the country managed to be at odds with another part that it led to fighting for 4 years. The fighting itself was just meaningless details. And I was never interested in the military at all, so I can understand how someone could be interested in a war yet not think that the military aspect of it was that important.
But after a while I realized I was wrong. It's
all part of the story, as Brass stated above, and studying that aspect adds to the understanding of history. Those who fought were not only products of their time and society, but also influenced their time and society. They didn't fight in a vacuum (vacuums are way too small
).