Sometimes a book comes along whose message is important for the historiography in which it wants to engage, but also, even if inadvertently, for the specific moment when that book is released. In Zachery Fry’s A Republic in the Ranks, he observes very simply that “loyalty was what unified the North” and contributed greatly to the eventual victory of the Army of the Potomac (17). This was an eventual victory because, as Fry lays out in his narrative, the definition of loyalty was a contested space within the Army of the Potomac throughout the war, and all soldiers took part in this discussion over the meaning of Union loyalty. Democrats defined loyalty by the preservation of the Union as it related only to the direct opposition to secession. These Democrats winced at abolition becoming a signature feature of the Civil War. At the other end were Republicans (and other...

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