With Fire and Sword

DeBlack offers the first serious synthesis and overview of a field that has seen significant innovative and revisionist work over the last two decades. He has produced a book that will prove fascinating both to historians and to general readers." —Carl Moneyhon, author of The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas: Persistence in the Midst of Ruin

"A readable, engaging survey of this critical period in our state’s history." —Elliott West, Arkansas Histories series editor and author of The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado

"Historian Thomas A. DeBlack’s recent contribution to the field of Trans-Mississippi Civil War studies, With Fire And Sword: Arkansas, 1861-1874, fills a great need in the literature on both the theater and the state. … With Fire and Sword provides a powerful introduction to Arkansas in the secession crisis, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction era." —Jeffery S. Prushankin, H-Net Reviews, August 2005

"In his new work, With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861-1874, the fourth in the Histories of Arkansas series, Thomas DeBlack focuses on that period of U.S. history that was the most defining for all of the Southern states: the Civil War and Reconstruction. This particular study benefits from and acts as an amalgamation of over one hundred years of writing on the subject. His overall purpose and scope seem clear: to compile a definitive work on this period of his state’s history. With rich primary sources, such as family diaries and journals, and secondary sources of equally deep focus, DeBlack’s completed work is what will doubtless be the seminal study of this period of Arkansas state history for many years to come. DeBlack manages this feat with an incredibly well-written and easy-to-follow narrative of state events as they transpire against the backdrop of national crisis. … Even outside the scope of state history, With Fire and Sword also emerges as a vital work in the genre of Civil War studies as a whole, funneling the national calamity down to one of its most basic and important levels: the Southern state." —Richard A. Hall, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 2004

"DeBlack has written a compelling synthesis of the Civil War period in Arkansas, a task that will not need repeating any time soon." —Michael Fellman, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 2003

Clear, engaging, authoritative, and eminently accessible to undergraduates, With Fire and Sword is an outstanding overview of a state and its people enmeshed in civil conflict and social upheaval." —William L. Shea, The Journal of Southern History, May 2006