Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War edited by Carol A. Shively is a colorful and interesting introduction to the participation of Asian immigrants in the Civil War. This is similar in layout to other National Park Service guides to Civil War-related topics. If you have been to the bookstores at Gettysburg or Antietam, you have seen these guides with lots of pictures and accessible text. It is beautifully illustrated, and because of its high graphic content it is very accessible for middle school and high school students, but it will not disappoint adults.
Readers who think that Asian immigration is a new phenomenon will learn about the thousands of Chinese in the United States at the start of the Civil War, including the Chinese men in New York who married Irish immigrant women who came to the U.S. from the opposite side of the world.
There are also revelations about race here. Because the racial codes of American society had difficulty classifying anyone who was not black or white, the Union army recruited Asians at a time when it barred blacks from service. This is a neat book for anyone studying the Civil War.
The book was published in 2015, but it is still up to date. I noticed that Amazon no longer carries it.
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