ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Clausewitz's basic outlook on war as logical and the mere continuation of politics by other means has perhaps come to pervade contemporary thinking on the American Civil War. The Prussian officer and philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, are well known for his dictum that war is merely the continuation of politics by other means war is an instrument of policy. It must necessarily bear the character of policy and measure by its standards. In the realm of Civil War studies, the New Social History centres around the study of community, gender and the common man, with the idea, not that the common man or woman was a passive object, but rather that this person was empowered and autonomous, struggled against and contested oppression and unreasonable authority and, on a certain level, was almost heroic. These principles are seen at work, perhaps most dramatically, in African American studies.
