The late David van Tassel taught for many years at Case Western University, and is best remembered as an authority on the history of Cleveland, as well as the founder of National History Day. Behind Bayonets emerges from his engagement in public history, notably the Western Reserve Historical Society's exhibition “Civil War, for God, Union and Glory,” which he curated in 1998. Although the book remained unfinished at his death in 2000, fellow Cleveland historian John Vacha stepped in to finish the task. Assisted by van Tassel's voluminous accumulation of sources, Vacha completed two unfinished chapters and added a concluding chapter and epilogue, providing “the minimum necessary” additional text to the original work (x).

According to Vacha, van Tassel intended the book to appeal to “a regional audience,” conveying “the power of original source materials” (ix). Behind Bayonets certainly furnishes a vivid impression of the war, seen principally from the home front in letters, memoirs, newspapers and private journals. The overwhelming majority of sources come from Cleveland, a city somewhat removed from the (admittedly fluid) front line of the war, but very much at the forefront of the war effort. The emotional tone ranges from comedic lampoonery in the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the terse reaction of an Ohio officer at Vicksburg to the death of his infant son. Ohio's role in the abolitionist struggle is also given critical attention in chapter 1. While antebellum Ohio could be unwelcoming for escaped slaves, popular opposition to the slave system was manifested in incidents such as the Oberlin-Wellington rescue of 1859, when local residents broke free an escaped slave held in a makeshift jail.

Behind Bayonets is a lively read, well illustrated and containing sufficient fresh material to appeal to both academic and general audience alike. Vacha's additional material seamlessly complements the original text, despite the book's slender width. Chapter 5 looks at the period immediately following the war, charting the political landscape as well as the rapid ascendancy of industrial moguls such as John D. Rockefeller. We see how Cleveland was transformed from prosperous Great Lakes entrepôt to industrial powerhouse, founded on the demands of military mass production. A meditation on the titanically ornate Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, completed in 1894, is a fitting epilogue to this book, encompassing both the wartime sacrifice of Clevelanders and the burgeoning face of gilded-age capitalism.