3) You argue that Ohio played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war. How so?

 Modern Ohioans sometimes feel they exist on the edge of things. A hundred and fifty years ago, Ohioans were not only at the center of things, its men and women were among the most important leaders. All things considered, no state played a larger role in winning the Civil War than Ohio. Put plainly, the North could not have won it without Ohio.

 4) You say that the Civil War put the American Dream at stake? What do you mean?

 As historian Douglas Brinkley says, “Optimism is our oxygen, this belief that you can do better for yourself through work, and your children, and your children’s children can do better, too.”That’s what the American Dream is all about—the promise that ours is the Land of Opportunity with a “golden door,” just because there is a level playing field with liberty and equal opportunity for each of us. So the American Dream is really all our dreams put together. The Confederacy denied there should be an American Dream for all: it insisted inequality was the natural state of mankind, and that there should be a master race of privileged whites. If the Southern Rebellion had succeeded, Lincoln said, it would have proven that democracy is “an absurdity” and that liberty and justice for all was not a workable idea.

 5) How important was the Civil War in American history?

 The American Revolution gave us our freedom. The Civil War decided how much freedom we should have. Following the writing of the Constitution to the present day, the Civil War is the most important event in American history, bar none. It saved the American Dream and made us unique in the world. As someone once said, America is not about who you are. It’s about who you can be.

6) You say that “most Americans misunderstand the conflict and its importance to modern America.” Explain this? Are the history books wrong?

 We’ve been getting the war backwards for 150 years. Thanks to the big Eastern news media of the 1860s and a lot of books since then, we have the impression the most important battles—the “real war”—was fought in the eastern states. But until 1864, the “real war” was going on, almost out of sight, west of the Appalachian Mountains—and the people fighting it were Midwesterners, Ohioans most of all. The Midwest’s soldiers were farmers, shopkeepers, and country lawyers, almost all of whom volunteered to go to war. Very few were drafted. Most had never seen battle before, got little training, and were poorly supplied. But they were determined to save their country and they weren’t easily discouraged, although they had to endure great hardships. During the first three years of the war, Midwestern soldiers won victory after victory and brought the Confederacy to its knees west of the Appalachians. During the same time, eastern forces achieved only a bloody stalemate with the Confederates. By late 1864, Midwestern citizen-soldiers, not Easterners, had settled the conflict’s eventual outcome, and that’s the great untold story of the Civil War.

 7) Your book stresses the importance of women and African Americans in the war. What kind of significant roles did they play?

 Women and blacks haven’t gotten credit for all they did to win the war. While their men were away, women not only ran things at home, they did a lot more. Midwestern women sent so much food, clothing, and medicine to the poorly supplied western troops that it probably influenced the outcome of battles. Some women went to the front as volunteer nurses and a few even disguised themselves as soldiers. Blacks made a big difference, too. At first, African Americans weren’t welcome in the army, but by the end of the war, they were at least 12 percent of Union troops, had fought in many battles, and had won more than dozen Medals of Honor.  Many were former slaves, so Confederates saw their worst nightmare come true: the people they had oppressed for so long finally rose up against them.

 8)  You argue that “visitors to eastern battlefields and nearby states are looking in all the wrong places.” Where should they be looking?

The eastern battlefields in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania only tell part of the story of the Civil War. To get the big picture, you need to visit the beautiful battlefield parks in the war’s Western Theater. The biggest battle in the West was fought early in the war at Shiloh, Tennessee. Dwarfing Bull Run, it was a struggle so big and bloody that both sides finally realized they were in for a long war. Elsewhere in Tennessee, Chattanooga offers some of the most incredible battlegrounds you’ll ever see, including Lookout Mountain. On Lookout Mountain’s steep sides the “Battle of Above the Clouds” was fought. At Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, Grant’s great victory was overshadowed in July 1863 by the almost simultaneous Union victory at Gettysburg. If Gettysburg got more attention, however, Vicksburg meant more to the Union cause. It reopened the Mississippi River, which was the great highway of the West. Many other Civil War sites well worth seeing exist west of the Appalachians.

 9) With the 150th anniversary of the war fast approaching, how does your book fit into all of the “hype”?

 What really happened west of the Appalachians and what it meant to American history has been one of the great untold stories of the Civil War. It’s high time Midwesterners—especially Ohioans, including men, women, and blacks—got the credit they deserve for what they did to win the Civil War. Blood, Tears, and Glory gives them that. Let’s hope observances on this anniversary finally get it right.