Hard Hand of War

The Hard Hand of War, first published in 1996, explores the Union army's policy of destructive attacks upon Southern property and civilian morale - how it evolved, what it was like in practice. From an initial policy of deliberate restraint, extending even to the active protection of Southerners' property and constitutional rights, Union armies gradually adopted measures that subjected civilians to the burdens of war. Yet the ultimate 'hard war' policy was far from the indiscriminate fury of legend. Union policy makers emphasised a program of directed severity, and Grimsley demonstrates how and why it worked. Through comparisons with earlier European wars and through the testimony of Union soldiers and Southern civilians alike, he shows that Union soldiers exercised restraint even as they made war against the Confederate civilian population.

"This is one of the best books of Civil War military history published in twenty-five years." Journal of American History, "Well researched, clearly written, and elegantly conceived, this is an important book." Choice, "Students of the Civil War continue to debate the degree to which the North embraced a strategy designed to punish the Confederacy's civilians as well as to defeat its soldiers. The Hard Hand of War is a major contribution to this debate, in which Mark Grimsley argues that northern policies and practices fit comfortably within European traditions rather than marking a dramatic break with the past. Especially useful in its discussion of factors that promoted restraint among the North's citizen-soldiers, Grimsley's book should be essential reading for anyone interested in whether the Civil War deserves to be called a 'total war.'" Gary W. Gallagher, The Pennsylvania State University, "Mark Grimsley has written the best study of how Northern policy evolved from a limited war to restore the old Union into a "hard war" to dismantle the old South and build a new free-labor nation...The writing is lucid, the argument persuasive, the analysis illuminating." James M. McPherson, Princeton University, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, "Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War is the latest and best study to strip away the myth and explore the reality of Sherman's attack on the Southern civilian economy and population as a means of winning the war...Grimsley tells that story more clearly than anyone else has so far done. In lucid, straightforward prose grounded in thorough research he analyzes the evolution of Union strategy through three main phases." James M. McPherson, New York Review of Books