In every war there develops a predominant shared public perception of "who are the enemy?". Such views are most usually stereotypical and morally grounded, leading inevitably to dehumanizing the enemy. Our conception of the enemy informs our willingness to accept the sacrifice and loss that war brings about. In the Civil War, the author suggests, the public conception of "the enemy" was different. There was a distinction in the public mind between the elites of the southern polity and the masses, those who were disdained as the "Slave Power" for whom there was great antipathy and the lower castes by and large not slaveholders. As the title suggests, many in the North held the belief that a great number of rebels were at arms only due to the coercion and manipulation of the political leadership and social aristocracy of the planter elite. Thus, the subjugated masses, the North believed, would recognize and respond, if only given the opportunity to do so, to the "deliverance" from their oppressors as the Union armies gained territory throughout the South. The fervency to restore the national union was bolstered by the understanding that the lower castes of the Southern states would come to accept the North not as invaders, but as redeemers.

The reaction to emancipation demonstrates how this deliverance would be manifested among the general populace. Many in the North were indifferent to slavery as a social ill and opposed to abolitionism. The sense that eliminating slavery would be necessary to achieve national reunion took hold, even in light of rampant racism among Northerners. The average Southerner had no stake in the perpetuation of slavery as slave holding was in the main the province of the elite. Thus, once the strangle hold of the ruling class was broken the masses would show their support for emancipation.

The North's political leaders and many editors of the newspapers significantly over estimated the degree of overt and latent unionism throughout the Southern states. There was a mistaken sense that once unburdened of the oppressive yoke of the power elite many Southerners would openly rally to restoration of the Union. This misapprehension supported the belief that all but the top political and military leaders of the rebel states were deserving of leniency at the conclusion of armed conflict. This certainly informed Lincoln's reconstruction plan and Johnson's even more liberal approach. This degree of open welcome back to the fold was not shared by the Radical Republicans who disputed Johnson's executive actions and put into effect their own harsher legislation.

While not primarily a military history, the author does a good job of succinctly recounting the military campaigns and weaving the public's reaction toward these military events into the theme of hoped for deliverance from the tyranny of the ruling elite. ( )