Mutiny in the Civil War

Book excerpt: This is the first ever study on mutiny during the Civil War, covering approximately two hundred separate incidents, and in startling fashion, highlights and dramatizes the rigid class distinctions of military machines on both sides, in which the gulf between a commissioned officer and a private was stupendously wide. Here Webb Garrison dispels the romantic and nostalgic notion that every man carrying a musket or rifle revered his officers and his central government. At the same time, sources of many mutinies show us how clumsy and inefficient the war effort really was.