Most historical writing on the subject of Union victory and Confederate defeat in the Civil War has been characterised by certain unstated and indeed often unrecognised epistemological and even moral assumptions. Most scholars in the field have a tendency to stress agency rather than structure and, as a result, it might be suggested, to exaggerate the freedom of movement of individuals and even large groups (such as armies) whilst simultaneously neglecting or underestimating the structural constraints under which those individuals and groups operated. This has coloured many explanations of Confederate defeat. In a minority of cases, there has been a conspicuous failure to respect the integrity of the past by taking seriously moral codes that differ sharply from those of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. Similarly, among some scholars there has been a clear preference for narrative over analysis and, though this may have brought some rewards, it must also be held partly responsible for some striking weaknesses in what is by now a very sizeable literature.