The History Press, 2014, 172 pp., $19.99
Image courtesy of barnesandnoble.com
Too often, the ideals of the Civil War and the study of the conflict range from a series of battles between North and South. Recently, however, there have been studies into the number of “border states” which were part of an inner conflict. Maryland was one of those states who had quite a few sympathizers for the Confederacy but was forced to remain in the Union. Thus the work Union-Occupied Maryland comes about by Claudia Floyd who does an excellent job at chronicling the heart break and difficulties of living in the state during the American Civil War.
Claudia Floyd is a retired professor of history at Stevenson University which is in the Baltimore area. She has numerous degrees from Carlow University, Duquesne University, John Hopkins University and the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. Her main focus while she was teaching at Stevenson University was Women’s History in the Civil War. In her retirement, she volunteers at Monocacy National Battlefield and the Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area. She is greatly active in the Society of Women and the Civil War and is also the author of Maryland Women in the Civil War: Unionists, Rebels, Slaves and Spies which is also published by The History Press.
The subject of Maryland in the American Civil War is one of great interest and of heart break. The reason I say heart break is due to the forceful nature of this Union Occupied Maryland as Floyd states. What I truly enjoyed about the book was that it was not a chronicle of the men from Maryland and where they fought, but it was a story about Maryland as a whole. Beginning of the arrival of the military in Baltimore and other major cities in Maryland, there were things going on which could easily have been frowned upon by today’s standards. Floyd talks about the many incidents during the occupation which affected the lives of the children with once instance of a boy shooting another in the leg with a gun they had found. She even mentions that some of the men entered the city of Baltimore with loaded rifles due to their distrust of the people and the rumors of secessionist activity going on. Because of the ideals of the border state, there are many historians who automatically assume that Maryland was mainly a Confederate state. Thanks to Floyd, that is greatly proven wrong. There were many soldiers who upon returning home were shocked to see the division among the people and it seemed more that the area closer to the shoreline was leaning more towards the Confederacy and greater division amongst themselves.
There are a handful of books on the American Civil War which have moved me. I am happy to say that this book is one of them. The amount of research in this book has brought about stories of incredible division among a people and it seemed as though the state of Maryland was fighting its own Civil War. Much like the state of Missouri, there were many divisions and they would last all throughout the conflict. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Civil War and or the history of Maryland. What Floyd has done is given us a sweeping narrative of what history has long covered and it is well received. Highly Recommended!