Behind the Lines
By William C. Davis · Originally published January-February 2025 · pp. 6
Behind the Lines By William C. Davis
The Civil War has been declared dead more than once. That is, pundits have declared that interest in the subject has fallen off and Americans’ attentions have gone elsewhere. Especially was this the case in the wake of the Civil War Centennial, 1961–1965. There is no question that the public was bombarded with pot-boiling content during those years. Publishers issued hundreds of books, many of limited value—if any—and most are now forgotten. Television tried to capitalize on public focus with a couple of eminently forgettable series; I remember “The Gray Ghost,” and “The Americans.” Motion pictures followed suit, and they, too, are far out of mind these days except for “Shenandoah,” and “Major Dundee.” By 1965 a growing media fatigue set in. The Civil War was reduced to a marginal event in the background in some Westerns, and lagging sales had mainstream publishers pulling back from putting out new Civil War titles. By the end of that decade, only the academic publishers were still doing Civil War titles in any number, many of them very good. In the popular mainstream, however, the general assumption was that the Civil War was “dead” as a profitmaking subject on publishers’ lists. That was the scene in June of 1969 when I, as a 22-yearold college graduate bound for graduate school at the University of Chicago, started a summer job that wound up lasting 21 years. Ten years earlier a Harrisburg, Penn., newspaperman had started a modest monthly magazine called Civil War Times. The recently ended Centennial had helped push it up to about 12,000 subscribers, but there it stuck for several years, and by the time I started working on the magazine its founder was already redirecting his company’s focus toward other publications. There was serious talk of just allowing Civil War Times to fade away to an inevitable death. Then something happened. As it turned out, the publishers were all wrong. The Civil War wasn’t dead. Interest in it survived and still thrived among the audience to whom all history really belongs, the people. In the early 1970s a couple of publishers began taking chances on modest editions of new books in the field, and they sold at least well enough to encourage the publication of more. The great Bruce Catton’s publisher Doubleday led the way. In this same period the old Civil War Round Tables, which waned for some years, began to see a spurt of growth in members anxious to attend their monthly dinners and lectures. In time their rolls numbered not in the tens and teens, but in the scores and even hundreds. The battlefield preservation movement—which had always been there but in a very modest scope—suddenly attracted more widespread interest, and by the end of the 1970s the Civil War was very much alive and well. And Civil War Times Illustrated, far
from languishing to its grave, grew almost by itself to over 100,000 subscribers, and inspired the creation of several other magazines in the field. Jump ahead to the early 1990s, and television and film were back on board, books were coming out at a brisk pace, and the Civil War “industry” thrived as never before. So how did we get from there to today? Almost all of the Civil War magazines have died. Earlier this year the venerable 65-year-old Civil War Times Illustrated closed its doors, and many Civil War round tables have experienced dwindling membership. Academic publishers, once the most reliable source of books in the field, are almost afraid to take on books they would have jumped at twenty years ago. In this era of obsession with race, class, and gender, a recent non-fiction writing competition saw not one conventional mainstream history entrant of any kind make it into contention. Instead, all but one of the thirty finalists were on women’s or LGTB topics, and all but one written by women. Taking nothing away from the validity and importance of gender history—which after long neglect is finally coming into its own—this is a stark example of how conventional historical narrative might seem to be endangered in mainstream media. But then look at the trade publishers and, unlike the aftermath of the Centennial, Civil War books—and good ones—continue to come out at an encouraging pace. Meanwhile, battlefield preservation is enjoying greater success than ever, and visitation to our Civil War National Parks, and state parks, is at an all-time high after recovering from COVID’s impact. Even if Civil War Times Illustrated went to its demise earlier this year, this fine new magazine Civil War News has risen from the ashes, so to speak, to continue the work of giving our people their own story. In short, recent reports of the death of the Civil War have been much exaggerated. It is alive and well, in a new edition for a new era, and I think we may confidently look forward to a healthy and expanding resurgence of interest in the most crucial period of our national past, and the men and women who lived it. William C. Davis was managing editor, then editor,
then publisher of Civil War Times Illustrated from 1969
to 1990. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books in Civil War and Southern history, and former director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia
Tech, where he served as professor of history until 2013. His most recent book is The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C Wharton & Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865, co-edited with Sue Heth Bell.