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Michael Barton, New Jerseyans in the Civil War: For Union and Liberty. By William J. Jackson. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000. xii, 270 pp. $36.00, isbn 0-8135-2775-9.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1079–1080, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700447
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William J. Jackson has written a holistic account of New Jersey's role in the Civil War, throwing light on the state's social divisions before and during the conflict, its political life in the 1860s, its material and military contribution to the Union war effort, and the role of its African American populace at home and in battle.
New Jersey's social divisions first show up in disputes over slavery. Pressed by its Quaker residents, the state provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves, but other citizens approved colonization movements. New Jersey politicians supported the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, but the state's most prominent senator in the 1850s, William Dayton, once declared he had “never seen a genuine Jersey abolitionist.” Public opinion on the fugitive slave issue was “uniquely ambiguous,” writes Jackson, and reaction across the state to the Dred Scott decision in 1857 “was not clearcut.” In sum, its actions and attitudes made New Jersey “much like a border state.”
