Uncivil Warriors

"""Uncivil Warriors makes the Civil War seem like a fresh and underexplored topic-no small accomplishment."" -- Jeremy Weber, Air War College, Air University, H-Net reviews ""Hoffer's explication of the legal conflicts is remarkably clear and perceptive, both in the details of the individual issues and in their significance to a contemporary understanding of what the war was about and what the two sides were fighting for. He raises, and then largely answers, questions that even many Civil War buffs have likely never considered, thus providing a rare fresh approach to a conflict that has been exhaustively surveyed. A worthy addition to the thinking person's Civil War library.""--Kirkus ""Peter Hoffer, one of our nation's most prolific and distinguished legal historians, demonstrates the centrality of law, lawyers, and judges to the road to Civil War and the prosecution of the war. In this readable and wide-ranging book we see how southerners tried to make their actions look lawful and how law was used to justify limitations on radical change. This suggests law can bind us together as a nation, and at the same time, constrains how much we can change.""--Alfred Brophy, Professor of Law and History, University of Alabama, and author of University, Court, and Slave ""Peter Hoffer's masterful book, Uncivil Warriors, reveals the fascinating and hitherto untold story of the battle of legal minds that took place behind the conflict of arms that is more familiar to readers of American Civil War history.""--Don H. Doyle, author of The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War ""Peter Hoffer breathes new life into the cliche 'the pen is mightier than the sword' by detailing the major role lawyers played during the secession crisis, defining the objects of the Civil War, justifying legal strategies during the Civil War, and on the northern side, developing the constitutional justification for the more powerful regime that emerged in the wake of the Civil War and that regime's commitment to equality.""--Mark A. Graber, Regents Professor, Carey School of Law, University of Maryland ""Peter Hoffer's lively and engaging account of the lawyers who shaped the constitutional and political strategies of both the North and South during the Civil War convincingly places law at the center of the conflict. As much as the generals, these lawyers helped determine the outcome of America's most devastating war.""--William E. Nelson, Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law and Professor of History, New York University ""A startlingly original work of history . . . Readers will be studying, and debating, Mr. Hoffer's unique scholarship for years-and profiting handsomely."" --Harold Holzer, The Wall Street Journal ""Jacobs seems to have written this with an eye to the time between the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the events of 9/11, when it seemed that democracy had finally achieved peace, only to find it widely rejected. His look at how these five figures struggled with similar turns of events is worth pondering."" --Library Journal ""Hoffer's explication of the legal conflicts is remarkably clear and perceptive, both in the details of the individual issues and in their significance to a contemporary understanding of what the war was about and what the two sides were fighting for. He raises, and then largely answers, questions that even many Civil War buffs have likely never considered, thus providing a rare fresh approach to a conflict that has been exhaustively surveyed. A worthy addition to the thinking person's Civil War library."" --Kirkus"