Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War

Abstract

Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. By Megan Kate Nelson. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Pp. xvii, 332. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $69.95, cloth; $24.95, paper.)War inflicts destruction. On the surface, this statement is a truism, but Megan Kate Nelson uncovers the multiple layers of meaning that humans assign to the ruins of war, particularly those of cities, houses, forests, an bodies. Ruin Nation explores the complex and nuanced narratives that northerners and southerners developed during the Civil War in order to understand the ruins they created. Nelson effectively entwines cultural, gender, environmental, and military history in order to offer a unique perspective on war's destructiveness.Americans on both sides of the conflict interpreted the ruin of cities and houses through a shared discourse of civilized warfare. Nelson tells the story of three urban ruins: Hampton (VA), Chambersburg (PA), and Columbia (SC). When Confederate troops fired Hampton in August 1861, in order to keep the community out of the hands of invading Union troops and runaway slaves, they created the first urban ruins of the war. Union officials condemned the destruction as a savage act that gratuitously attacked non-combatants, an accusation that would be the centerpiece of all subsequent debates over the destruction of cities. Confederates countered by depicting Hampton residents as patriots who willingly made a necessary sacrifice for the cause. From the ruin of houses evolved another narrative. Southerners accused Union soldiers of violating the rules of civilized warfare when they vandalized, pillaged, tore down, or entered homes. Union soldiers and northerners articulated a defense that blamed southern civilians for the actions of Confederate armies.Nelson layers an intriguing gender analysis into her discussion of how Americans assigned meaning to the ruins of domestic spaces. Because southerners practically conflated the interior of homes with women's bodies, Nelson argues that historians have underappreciated the psychological impact of looting. When Union soldiers entered homes, it was a violent assertion of power that southerners likened to rape in their language describing such incidents. The Yankee soldier who violated domestic privacy thus embodied the dishonorable and unmanly nature of an uncivilized enemy.Less controversial was the war's consumption of forests. Nelson provides a unique and detailed narrative of soldiers' and armies' use of trees: as torches to light roads, as varied types of field fortifications, as cover in battle, as the material to express soldiers' architectural ingenuity in camp. …