Congratulations to Prof. Joan Cashin on winning the 2019 Outstanding Publication Award from the Ohio Academy of History for her book, War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War.

 

Michael Brooks, PhD, the 2019 Publication Committee chair at the Ohio Academy of History stated,

"With an eye toward environmental history and material culture, Cashin impressed the Academy’s publication award judges with her work. Cashin effectively demonstrated that there were two wars being fought simultaneously between 1861 and 1865: a conflict between Union and Confederate armies, and also a conflict between civilians and military forces over such limited resources as food, labor, and shelter.

 

One of the judges observed that what made the book 'most gripping is the way she shows how far the behavior of soldiers on both sides of the conflict deviated from the shared small-town ethos in which most soldiers on both sides had been raised.' The conflict between Union and Confederate armies was one in which both sides were 'desperate for resources and willing to violate all of the conventional rules of war to get them.'

 

Cashin, who is already an established scholar in the time period, drew upon her expertise to create a unique contribution to what is admittedly a crowded historiography of Civil War research. Another of the judges remarked that War Stuff is 'both a well-written synthesis of much existing literature and a significant contribution to that literature.'

 

An example of the interdisciplinary nature of Cashin’s methodology is found in the chapter “Breakdown,” which examines conditions in 1864 in war regions. This, Cashin argued, was a year in which 'the startling, the lurid, and the surreal became commonplace,' as resources in many parts of the South became nearly non-existent. Cashin drew upon meteorological reports to explain that massive deforestation across the South was hastened by soldiers cutting trees for firewood in the harsh winter conditions of early 1864 and the early arrival of winter in October that year. The unusual weather, noted Cashin, had the effect of exacerbating the existing scarcity of timber, worsening the resource struggle between civilians and armies.

 

While the book is a 'grim picture of modern war in all its horrors,' Cashin nonetheless provides a fascinating perspective in this revisiting of Civil War history. War Stuff showcases the material, environmental, and logistical sides of the war in a compelling narrative that belongs on the shelves of every scholar in the field."