The 2022 Organization of American Historians award for Civil War and Reconstruction Books went to Lorien Foote of Texas A&M University for her Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the Civil War published by the University of North Carolina Press. The award committee wrote:
“Rites of Retaliation‘s particular brilliance, through its focus on the southeastern theater, is in outlining the central role of Black soldiers in shaping both Union and Confederate retaliation policies—a multifaceted series of exchanges that sometimes led to restraint, and on other occasions, an acceleration of violence and brutality. The approach is as innovative and provocative as it is impeccably researched and cogently argued.”
Here is the publisher’s description of the book:
During the Civil War, Union and Confederate politicians, military commanders, everyday soldiers, and civilians claimed their approach to the conflict was civilized, in keeping with centuries of military tradition meant to restrain violence and preserve national honor. One hallmark of civilized warfare was a highly ritualized approach to retaliation. This ritual provided a forum to accuse the enemy of excessive behavior, to negotiate redress according to the laws of war, and to appeal to the judgment of other civilized nations. As the war progressed, Northerners and Southerners feared they were losing their essential identity as civilized, and the attention to retaliation grew more intense. When Black soldiers joined the Union army in campaigns in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, raiding plantations and liberating enslaved people, Confederates argued the war had become a servile insurrection. And when Confederates massacred Black troops after battle, killed white Union foragers after capture, and used prisoners of war as human shields, Federals thought their enemy raised the black flag and embraced savagery.
The program for the award says of the book that it;
sharpens our focus on a military and legal concept that suffused Civil War tactics and combat but has
long been overlooked by historians. Retaliation, as Lorien Foote frames it, was a complex, almost
ritualized set of threats and responses that often determined how both sides fought the war, giving
structure to the experiences of countless soldiers, prisoners, and civilians. Rites of Retaliation’s particular
brilliance, through its focus on the southeastern theater, is in outlining the central role of Black soldiers in shaping both Union and Confederate retaliation policies—a multifaceted series of exchanges that
sometimes led to restraint, and on other occasions, an acceleration of violence and brutality. The approach is as innovative and provocative as it is impeccably researched and cogently argued.
Honorable Mention: Brian K. Mitchell, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Barrington S. Edwards, teacher/artist/publisher of comics and graphic media, and Nick Weldon, The Historic New Orleans Collection, Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana (The Historic New Orleans Collection, publisher; University of Virginia Press, distributor)
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