A major new narrative interpretation of the US Civil War by the dean of American military historians Weigley contends that the South gave up more easily than might have been expected Both sides struggled to cope with new technologies and new strategic and tactical procedures A Great Civil War is renowned military historian Russell Weigley's major new interpretation of the events which continue to dominate the American imagination and identity nearly 150 years after the war's end. Our Civil War. The Civil War. "A great Civil War," as Lincoln phrased it in the Gettysburg Address. In personal as well as historical terms, more even than the war for independence, the Civil War has been the defining experience of the American democracy. The Civil War was great not only in the massiveness of the slaughter and destruction. It was, for all its horror, a war about values-- democracy and the freeing of the slaves--that was worth the effort.
