The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865

This is a conversion of the author's graduate thesis, composed while he was a student at The Ohio State University. The subject of the study is evident in the subtitle of the book: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865. The central theme of the book is that the policy mentioned evolved over time, getting more and more harsh with the civilians that the army encountered. The evolution, however, didn't go nearly as far as some later alleged, and the supposed depredations of the Union army in the various Southern states in the last year of the war are, as far as the author is concerned, mostly exaggerations.This is a good overview of the subject, and the author goes over things with a good analytical eye. I disagree with the other reviewer, who thinks that he's unfairly easy on the Union soldiers who foraged "liberally" during the latter part of the Civil War. I did notice one shortcoming of the book's central argument: the author went over the motivation for attacking things like houses in retaliation for ambushes and attacks against Union troops, but overlooked the possibility that the troops themselves needed to feel that they were somehow retaliating for being attacked. Burning down a house, even if it had no effect on the Southerners who ambushed them, did serve the purpose of making the Union soldiers think that they were doing *something*.This is a thesis, reworked as a book. It's sprinkled with footnotes, and written in a scholarly, dry tone. The result is a lot of information, with interesting and well-reasoned arguments stemming from them, written in rather wooden prose that's not very easy to read. I would recommend this book to hard core Civil War buffs who want to know more about the subject, but only to them.