Edited volumes pose problems to review. Occasionally they present a unified statement, a bold manifesto meant to reshape an existing field. This book's essays are more diverse and its aims more earth-bound, simply highlighting the neglected intersection of two fields of study. In this carefully delineated goal the book succeeds nicely.

The editors point out that Southern urban historians have moved quickly over the Confederate era as an aberration, and that Civil War historians have tended to cede the topic of wartime changes altogether. The editors instead give “more equal analytic weight” to both words in the title, to consider “how southern cities as cities affected the Civil War and in turn how the conflict affected the urban South” (286). The book opens with an instructive historiographic essay on the reasons scholars have ignored the topic, and the editors situate their contribution to a still-developing field well. One cannot examine the individual contributions at length in a short review, but collectively the quality is strong.

The first two essays “debate the big historical question about the urban South's modernity” (12). J. Matthew Gallman contends that few southern cities “had grown to be true urban areas,” and that slavery had much to do with why (43). The quantitative contrasts northward are difficult to discount, as Gallman contends. David Moltke-Hansen instead emphasizes the urban dimension of Confederate print culture. He points out that towns just below the official urban threshold were much more significant by the antebellum era. Thus, “the region was urbanizing more rapidly” than it was actually creating big cities (48). These contrasting essays might pair nicely in a seminar.

The contribution of Frank Towers engages the literature as well, joining interest in urban boosterism with emerging work on Confederate nationalism. Through the device of database searching for “New York of the South,” he demonstrates the contradiction between distaste for northern-style development and the hopes of urban growth in a new southern nation. Secessionists approached boosters opportunistically, the author thinks, viewing these ethnically diverse, cosmopolitan enclaves as less than wholly committed to the Confederate project.

Lloyd Benson ranges farther afield intellectually, examining gender and household rhetoric in six cities. He compares the Confederate South with two other contemporary nationalist movements, for a united Canada and the resorgimento in Italy. Benson argues that charged gender analogies characterized the southern region, which lent itself to the ultimatums and maximal demands. The point is clear: “Slavery's urban context made the gender and family rhetoric deployed by Confederates unique among its sister cities” (116). I found this transnational argument difficult to evaluate, but historians will appreciate the novel comparative context.

There are other stimulating contributions, like Michael Pierson's study of sexual tourism in occupied New Orleans, which argues that the sporting life there would have been familiar to Yankee soldiers. One might also note Keith Bohannon's examination of the 1863 bread riots in urban Georgia. It critiques of the influential work of Stephanie McCurry, among others.

None of these essays really feature African Americans as actors, despite their increasing concentration in cities, especially after war's end. Several later essays address that topic, hoping to “dehomogenize” the black experience, restoring a measure of balance to the book as a whole (15). Editor Slap offers a thoughtful analysis of black veterans, using pension applications. They fared best in the urban South where they could mutually reinforce each other, especially with reference to the bureaucratic paperwork process. It seems a stretch to see them as spearheading the Great Migration, but everything else sounds right. Justin Behrend examines Natchez in the political mobilization of the surrounding countryside. The discussion of the Union League and its urban focus looks accurate, though I doubt the freedmen were as interested in railroad matters as Behrend suggests. The author's claim that black political participation transformed the city needs more examination of urban governance, but this is a problem shared with the Reconstruction literature as a whole. Behrend's well-researched essay draws on a recent book, as does Hilary Green's study of black education in Mobile. She offers a sensitive examination of internal tensions among education supporters, among them black conflicts with northern missionary societies and the Freedmen's Bureau. Particularly striking is the internal conflict between ex-slaves and the freeborn Afro-Creole caste, who had managed before the war to establish schools and even secure modest public subsidies for their efforts. Despite the toleration Creoles enjoyed, after emancipation, indiscriminate racist violence fused all people of African descent politically.

The concluding two essays have strengths but raise issues. William Link's examination of Atlanta is well-told and sensible, but the contribution to the literature could be more clearly defined. John Majewski's ambitious examination of the vicinity of Hampton Roads covers centuries, to challenge the framework of C. Vann Woodward's New South. Postwar subjugation to northern capital finally shook the region out of its longtime torpor and brought real urban growth. The only problem is that passages of the essay repeat other phrasings quite closely (263 and 267, for example). There were some other editorial gaffes in the book, one as early as page 2. The Confederate government was formed three months after Lincoln's election, not four. And someone should have double-checked that Georgia actually touches the Gulf coast. Nope, it doesn't (100).

While the editors concede the diversity of these contributions, they conclude by highlighting areas of substantial agreement, especially the postwar convergence of the urban and rural South. They use this opportunity to mainstream the race-themed essays with the broader topic addressed, through emphasizing postwar black mobility. I think the open-ended, detailed framing essay combined with a concluding snapshot at the end works well. Editors Slap and Towers are to be congratulated for providing a fine overview of an important field, one that offers interpretive connections to the Gilded Age and beyond.