This course explores the policy and strategy of the American Civil War and the politics of Reconstruction. We will examine the causes and consequences of the war; the goals and policies of the respective governments; political, economic and strategic factors affecting both sides, domestic politics in both the North and the South; the fate of civil liberties during the war; Union and Confederate diplomacy; the respective strategies of the Union and Confederacy; leadership, civil-military relations, and the "politics of command;" emancipation as a political-military strategy, the role of black soldiers; and the operational art of the war. To this end, we will analyze a number of campaigns, paying special attention to such factors as: 1) the strategic objectives of the campaign; 2) the plan and its implementation; 3) operational factors including movements, combats, deception, intelligence, and logistics; and 4) command relations. We will also examine in some detail the period of Reconstruction that followed the war. We will trace the debate between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans while the war was still raging, and follow its evolution from presidential Reconstruction (Lincoln and Johnson) to Radical Reconstruction and its consequences for the Grant administration, the "reconstructed" states, and the civil rights of the freedmen.