Ghosts of the Confederacy

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019977210X
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghosts of the Confederacy by : Gaines M. Foster

Download or read book Ghosts of the Confederacy written by Gaines M. Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-04-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.

Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815–1870

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Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807172308
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815–1870 by : Jeffrey Zvengrowski

Download or read book Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815–1870 written by Jeffrey Zvengrowski and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original study of Confederate ideology and politics, Jeffrey Zvengrowski suggests that Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his supporters saw Bonapartist France as a model for the Confederate States of America. They viewed themselves as struggling not so much for the preservation of slavery but for antebellum Democratic ideals of equality and white supremacy. The faction dominated the Confederate government and deemed Republicans a coalition controlled by pro-British abolitionists championing inequality among whites. Like Napoleon I and Napoleon III, pro-Davis Confederates desired to build an industrial nation-state capable of waging Napoleonic-style warfare with large conscripted armies. States’ rights, they believed, should not preclude the national government from exercising power. Anglophile anti-Davis Confederates, in contrast, advocated inequality among whites, favored radical states’ rights, and supported slavery-in-the-abstract theories that were dismissive of white supremacy. Having opposed pro-Davis Democrats before the war, they preferred decentralized guerrilla warfare to Napoleonic campaigns and hoped for support from Britain. The Confederacy, they avowed, would willingly become a de facto British agricultural colony upon achieving independence. Pro-Davis Confederates, wanted the Confederacy to become an ally of France and protector of sympathetic northern states. Zvengrowski traces the origins of the pro-Davis Confederate ideology to Jeffersonian Democrats and their faction of War Hawks, who lost power on the national level in the 1820s but regained it during Davis' term as secretary of war. Davis used this position to cultivate friendly relations with France and later warned northerners that the South would secede if Republicans captured the White House. When Lincoln won the 1860 election, Davis endorsed secession. The ideological heirs of the pro-British faction soon came to loathe Davis for antagonizing Britain and for offering to accept gradual emancipation in exchange for direct assistance from French soldiers in Mexico. Zvengrowski’s important new interpretation of Confederate ideology situates the Civil War in a global context of imperial competition. It also shows how anti-Davis ex-Confederates came to dominate the postwar South and obscure the true nature of Confederate ideology. Furthermore, it updates the biographies of familiar characters: John C. Calhoun, who befriended Bonapartist officers; Davis, who was as much a Francophile as his namesake, Thomas Jefferson; and Robert E. Lee, who as West Point’s superintendent mentored a grand-nephew of Napoleon I.

With Malice Toward Some

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469614057
Total Pages : 430 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis With Malice Toward Some by : William Alan Blair

Download or read book With Malice Toward Some written by William Alan Blair and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era

The Lost Colony of the Confederacy

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Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781585441020
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lost Colony of the Confederacy by : Eugene C. Harter

Download or read book The Lost Colony of the Confederacy written by Eugene C. Harter and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lost Colony of the Confederacy is the story of a grim, quixotic journey of twenty thousand Confederates to Brazil at the end of the American Civil War. Although it is not known how many Confederates migrated to South America-estimates range from eight thousand to forty thousand-their departure was fueled by bitterness over a lost cause and a distaste for an oppressive victor. Encouraged by Emperor Dom Pedro, most of these exiles settled in Brazil. Although at the time of the Civil War the exodus was widely known and discussed as an indicator of the resentment against the Northern invaders and strict governmental measures, The Lost Colony of the Confederacy is the first book to focus on this mass migration. Eugene Harter vividly describes the lives of these last Confederates who founded their own city and were called Os Confederados. They retained much of their Southernness and lent an American flavor to Brazilian culture. First published in 1985, this work details the background of the exodus and describes the life of the twentiethcentury descendants, who have a strong link both to Southern history and to modern Brazil. The fires have cooled, but it is useful to understand the intense feelings that sparked the migration to Brazil. Southern ways have melded into Brazilian, and both are linked by the unbreakable bonds of history, as shown in this revealing account. The late EUGENE C. HARTER retired from the U.S. Senior Foreign Service and lived in Chestertown, Maryland, until his death in 2010. He was the grandson and greatgrandson of Confederates who left Texas and Mississippi as a part of the great Confederate migration in the late 1860s. Harter is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Andersonvilles of the North

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Publisher : University of North Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1574412558
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Andersonvilles of the North by : James Massie Gillispie

Download or read book Andersonvilles of the North written by James Massie Gillispie and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study argues that the image of Union prison officials as negligent and cruel to Confederate prisoners is severely flawed. It explains how Confederate prisoners' suffering and death were due to a number of factors, but it would seem that Yankee apathy and malice were rarely among them.

Starving the South

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0312601816
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (126 download)

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Book Synopsis Starving the South by : Andrew F. Smith

Download or read book Starving the South written by Andrew F. Smith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From the first shot fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, to the last shot fired at Appomattox, food played a crucial role in the Civil War. In Starving the South, culinary historian Andrew Smith takes a fascinating gastronomical look at the war and its aftermath. At the time, the North mobilized its agricultural resources, fed its civilians and military, and still had massive amounts of food to export to Europe. The South did not; while people starved, the morale of their soldiers waned and desertions from the Army of the Confederacy increased.....' (Book Jacket)

Why The North Won The Civil War

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Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786251981
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (862 download)

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Book Synopsis Why The North Won The Civil War by : David Herbert Donald

Download or read book Why The North Won The Civil War written by David Herbert Donald and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHY THE SOUTH LOST What led to the downfall of the Confederacy? The distinguished professors of history represented in this volume examine the following crucial factors in the South’s defeat: ECONOMIC—RICHARD N. CURRENT of the University of Wisconsin attributes the victory of the North to fundamental economic superiority so great that the civilian resources of the South were dissipated under the conditions of war. MILITARY—T. HARRY WILLIAMS of Louisiana State University cites the deficiencies of Confederate strategy and military leadership, evaluating the influence on both sides of Baron Jomini, a 19th-century strategist who stressed position warfare and a rapid tactical offensive. DIPLOMATIC—NORMAN A. GRAERNER of the University of Illinois holds that the basic reason England and France decided not to intervene on the side of the South was simply that to have done so would have violated the general principle of non-intervention to which they were committed. SOCIAL—DAVID DONALD of Columbia University offers the intriguing thesis that an excess of Southern democracy killed the Confederacy. From the ordinary man in the ranks to Jefferson Davis himself, too much emphasis was placed on individual freedom and not enough on military discipline. POLITICAL—DAVID M. POTTER of Stanford University suggests that the deficiencies of President Davis as a civil and military leader turner the balance, and that the South suffered from the lack of a second well-organized political party to force its leadership into competence.

Searching for Black Confederates

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469653273
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Searching for Black Confederates by : Kevin M. Levin

Download or read book Searching for Black Confederates written by Kevin M. Levin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

Armies of Deliverance

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 019086060X
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Armies of Deliverance by : Elizabeth R. Varon

Download or read book Armies of Deliverance written by Elizabeth R. Varon and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims.

Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 078647663X
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt by : William T. Auman

Download or read book Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt written by William T. Auman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-22 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of the seven military operations conducted by the Confederacy against deserters and disloyalists and the concomitant internal war between secessionists and those who opposed secession in the Quaker Belt of central North Carolina. It explains how the "outliers" (deserters and draft-dodgers) managed to elude capture and survive despite extensive efforts by Confederate authorities to hunt them down and return them to the army. The author discusses the development of the secret underground pro-Union organization the Heroes of America, and how its members utilized the Underground Railroad, dug-out caves, and an elaborate system of secret signals and communications to elude the "hunters." Numerous instances of murder, rape, torture and other brutal acts and many skirmishes between gangs of deserters and Confederate and state troops are recounted. In a revisionist interpretation of the Tar Heel wartime peace movement, the author argues that William Holden's peace crusade was in fact a Copperhead insurgency in which peace agitators strove for a return of North Carolina and the South to the Union on the Copperhead basis--that is, with the institution of slavery protected by the Constitution in the returning states.

Fighting for the Confederacy

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807882348
Total Pages : 693 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Fighting for the Confederacy by : Gary W. Gallagher

Download or read book Fighting for the Confederacy written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published by UNC Press in 1989, Fighting for the Confederacy is one of the richest personal accounts in all of the vast literature on the Civil War. Alexander was involved in nearly all of the great battles of the East, from First Manassas through Appomattox, and his duties brought him into frequent contact with most of the high command of the Army of Northern Virginia, including Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet. No other Civil War veteran of his stature matched Alexander's ability to discuss operations in penetrating detail-- this is especially true of his description of Gettysburg. His narrative is also remarkable for its utterly candid appraisals of leaders on both sides.

Agriculture and the Confederacy

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469620014
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Agriculture and the Confederacy by : R. Douglas Hurt

Download or read book Agriculture and the Confederacy written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War. Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.

The Seventh Star of the Confederacy

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Publisher : University of North Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1574412590
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis The Seventh Star of the Confederacy by : Kenneth Wayne Howell

Download or read book The Seventh Star of the Confederacy written by Kenneth Wayne Howell and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the curse of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and cultural aspects of the war receive new analysis, including the experiences of women, African Americans, Union prisoners of war, and noncombatants.

Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469610752
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South by : Jaime Amanda Martinez

Download or read book Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South written by Jaime Amanda Martinez and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-12-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under policies instituted by the Confederacy, white Virginians and North Carolinians surrendered control over portions of their slave populations to state authorities, military officials, and the national government to defend their new nation. State and local officials cooperated with the Confederate War Department and Engineer Bureau, as well as individual generals, to ensure a supply of slave labor on fortifications. Using the implementation of this policy in the Upper South as a window into the workings of the Confederacy, Jaime Amanda Martinez provides a social and political history of slave impressment. She challenges the assumption that the conduct of the program, and the resistance it engendered, was an indication of weakness and highlights instead how the strong governments of the states contributed to the war effort. According to Martinez, slave impressment, which mirrored Confederate governance as a whole, became increasingly centralized, demonstrating the efficacy of federalism within the CSA. She argues that the ability of local, state, and national governments to cooperate and enforce unpopular impressment laws indicates the overall strength of the Confederate government as it struggled to enforce its independence.

Why Confederates Fought

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 080788765X
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Confederates Fought by : Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Download or read book Why Confederates Fought written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first comprehensive study of the experience of Virginia soldiers and their families in the Civil War, Aaron Sheehan-Dean captures the inner world of the rank-and-file. Utilizing new statistical evidence and first-person narratives, Sheehan-Dean explores how Virginia soldiers--even those who were nonslaveholders--adapted their vision of the war's purpose to remain committed Confederates. Sheehan-Dean challenges earlier arguments that middle- and lower-class southerners gradually withdrew their support for the Confederacy because their class interests were not being met. Instead he argues that Virginia soldiers continued to be motivated by the profound emotional connection between military service and the protection of home and family, even as the war dragged on. The experience of fighting, explains Sheehan-Dean, redefined southern manhood and family relations, established the basis for postwar race and class relations, and transformed the shape of Virginia itself. He concludes that Virginians' experience of the Civil War offers important lessons about the reasons we fight wars and the ways that those reasons can change over time.

Baptized in Blood

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Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820306819
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Baptized in Blood by : Charles Reagan Wilson

Download or read book Baptized in Blood written by Charles Reagan Wilson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.

Becoming Confederates

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Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820345407
Total Pages : 150 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Becoming Confederates by : Gary W. Gallagher

Download or read book Becoming Confederates written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Becoming Confederates, Gary W. Gallagher explores loyalty in the era of the Civil War, focusing on Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early--three prominent officers in the Army of Northern Virginia who became ardent Confederate nationalists. Loyalty was tested and proved in many ways leading up to and during the war. Looking at levels of allegiance to their native state, to the slaveholding South, to the United States, and to the Confederacy, Gallagher shows how these men represent responses to the mid-nineteenth-century crisis. Lee traditionally has been presented as a reluctant convert to the Confederacy whose most powerful identification was with his home state of Virginia--an interpretation at odds with his far more complex range of loyalties. Ramseur, the youngest of the three, eagerly embraced a Confederate identity, highlighting generational differences in the equation of loyalty. Early combined elements of Lee's and Ramseur's reactions--a Unionist who grudgingly accepted Virginia's departure from the United States but later came to personify defiant Confederate nationalism. The paths of these men toward Confederate loyalty help delineate important contours of American history. Gallagher shows that Americans juggled multiple, often conflicting, loyalties and that white southern identity was preoccupied with racial control transcending politics and class. Indeed, understanding these men's perspectives makes it difficult to argue that the Confederacy should not be deemed a nation. Perhaps most important, their experiences help us understand why Confederates waged a prodigiously bloody war and the manner in which they dealt with defeat.