Author: Ben Wynne
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Published: 2010-03
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 0881461792
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Not strictly a military history, Ben Wynne examines in this book the social components of Confederate service in the context of the experiences of a single regiment. Using first person accounts from letters, diaries, memoirs and other primary materials, the book sets the 15th Mississippi in a personal context. The narrative is chronologically arranged by the events of the western theater of the Civil War. Emphasizing the real war and not a romanticized version, the story of this unique regiment follows a group of men who entered the war with visions of glory and honor but within one year came to recognize the true nature of the conflict.
Author: Paul D. Escott
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1992-08-01
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780807118078
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The secession of the southern states from the Union was not merely a culmination of certain events; it was also the beginning of the trial of Confederate nationalism. The slaveholding elite which had led the South out of the Union now had to solidify its support among the nonslaveholding small farmers, a class that constituted the bulk of the white population.But Jefferson Davis and the new government were greatly hampered in their bid for widespread public support, partially because of the same force that had resulted in secession -- the strong states' rights predisposition of many southerners and their opposition to a strong central government -- and partially because of the great social and economic gap that separated the governed from the governors.In After Secession Paul Escott focuses on the challenge that the South's widespread political ideals presented to Jefferson Davis and on the way growing class resentments among citizens in the countryside affected the war effort. New material is included on Jefferson Davis and his policies, and interesting new interpretations of the Confederate government's crucial problems of decision making and failure to respond to the common people are offered. The result is both a fresh look at the pivotal role that strong leadership plays in the establishment of a new nation and a revealing study of how Jefferson Davis' frustrations increasingly affected the quality of his presidency.
Author: William W. Freehling Singletary Professor of the Humanities University of Kentucky
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2007-04-16
Total Pages: 625
ISBN-13: 0198022425
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It is one of the great questions of American history--why did the Southern states bolt from the Union and help precipitate the Civil War? Now, acclaimed historian William W. Freehling offers a new answer, in the final volume of his monumental history The Road to Disunion. Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject.
Author: Ben Wynne
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 9780881460391
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book examines Mississippi's Civil War experience. It begins with an introductory overview of the socio-political climate of the state during the1850s and ends with a treatment of Mississippi's post-war environment and the rise of Lost Cause mythology. In between, the work covers the pivotal events, issues, and personalities of the period. Wynne emphasizes the experiences of Mississippians?male and female, black and white?as they struggled to deal with the crisis. The political events leading to seces-sion, Mississippians? initial enthusiasm for war, voices of dissent, the disbursement of troops in and out of the state, the home front, freedom for the slave community, waning enthusiasm (both in the military and on the home front) as the war dragged on, defeat, and the ultimate struggle to turn defeat into a moral victory through Lost Cause mythology are also discussed. This book makes significant contributions to Civil War literature.
Author: Dan T. Carter
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1985-04-01
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780807112045
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the months after Appomattox, the South was plunged into a chaos that surpassed even the disorder of the last hard months of the war itself. Peace brought, if anything, an increased level of violence to the region as local authorities of the former Confederacy were stripped of their power and the returning foot soldiers of the defeated army, hungry and without hope, raided the already impoverished countryside for food and clothing. In the wake of the devastation that followed surrender, even some of the most virulent Yankee-haters found themselves relieved as the Union army began to bring a small level of order to the lawless southern terrain. Dan T. Carter’s When the War Was Over is a social and political history of the two years following the surrender of the Confederacy—the so-called period of Presidential Reconstruction when the South, under the watchful gaze of Congress and the Union army, attempted to rebuild its shattered society and economic structure. Working primarily from rich manuscript sources, Carter draws a vivid portrait of the political leaders who emerged after the war, a diverse group of men—former loyalists as well as a few mildly repentant fire-eaters—who in some cases genuinely sought to find a place in southern society for the newly emancipated slaves, but who in many other cases merely sought to redesign the boundaries of black servitude. Carter finds that as a group the politicians who emerged in the postwar South failed critically in the test of their leadership. Not only were they unable to construct a realistic program for the region’s recovery—a failure rooted in their stubborn refusal to accept the full consequences of emancipation—but their actions also served to exacerbate rather than allay the fears and apprehensions of the victorious North. Even so, Carter reveals, these leaders were not the monsters that many scholars have suggested they were, and it is misleading to dismiss them as racists and political incompetents. In important ways, they represented the most constructive, creative, and imaginative response that the white South, overwhelmed with defeat and social chaos, had to offer in 1865 and 1866. Out of their efforts would come the New South movement and, with it, the final downfall of the plantation system and the beginnings of social justice for the freed slaves.
Author: Joan E. Cashin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-09-01
Total Pages: 425
ISBN-13: 0691218110
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Though civilians constituted the majority of the nation's population and were intimately involved with almost every aspect of the war, we know little about the civilian experience of the Civil War. That experience was inherently dramatic. Southerners lived through the breakup of basic social and economic institutions, including, of course, slavery. Northerners witnessed the reorganization of society to fight the war. And citizens of the border regions grappled with elemental questions of loyalty that reached into the family itself. These original essays--all commissioned from established scholars, based on archival research, and written for a wide readership--recover the stories of civilians from Natchez to New England. They address the experiences of men, women, and children; of whites, slaves, and free blacks; and of civilians from numerous classes. Not least of these stories are the on-the-ground experiences of slaves seeking emancipation and the actions of white Northerners who resisted the draft. Many of the authors present brand new material, such as the war's effect on the sounds of daily life and on reading culture. Others examine the war's premiere events, including the battle of Gettysburg and the Lincoln assassination, from fresh perspectives. Several consider the passionate debate that broke out over how to remember the war, a debate that has persisted into our own time. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Peter W. Bardaglio, William Blair, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Margaret S. Creighton, J. Matthew Gallman, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Anthony E. Kaye, Robert Kenzer, Elizabeth D. Leonard, Amy E. Murrell, George C. Rable, Nina Silber, Mark M. Smith, Mary Saracino Zboray, and Ronald J. Zboray. Together they describe the profound transformations in community relations, gender roles, race relations, and culture wrought by the central event in American history.
Author:
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1991-09-01
Total Pages: 630
ISBN-13: 9780820313962
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Offers a chronological account of the Civil War, reexamines theories for the South's defeat, and analyzes Confederate and Union military strategy
Author: Christopher J. Olsen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-10-19
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 0195351266
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This groundbreaking study of the politics of secession combines traditional political history with current work in anthropology and gender and ritual studies. Christopher J. Olsen has drawn on local election returns, rural newspapers, manuscripts, and numerous county records to sketch a new picture of the intricate and colorful world of local politics. In particular, he demonstrates how the move toward secession in Mississippi was deeply influenced by the demands of masculinity within the state's antiparty political culture. Face-to-face relationships and personal reputations, organized around neighborhood networks of friends and extended kin, were at the heart of antebellum Mississippi politics. The intimate, public nature of this tradition allowed voters to assess each candidate's individual status and fitness for public leadership. Key virtues were independence and physical courage, as well as reliability and loyalty to the community, and the political culture offered numerous chances to demonstrate all of these (sometimes contradictory) qualities. Like dueling and other male rituals, voting and running for office helped set the boundaries of class and power. They also helped mediate the conflicts between nineteenth-century American egalitarianism, democracy, and geographic mobility, and the South's exaggerated patriarchal hierarchy, sustained by honor and slavery. The political system, however, functioned effectively only as long as it remained a personal exercise between individuals, divorced from the anonymity of institutional parties. This antiparty tradition eliminated the distinction between men as individuals and as public representatives, which caused them to assess and interpret all political events and rhetoric in a personal manner. The election of 1860 and success of the Republicans' antisouthern, free soil program, therefore, presented an "insulting" challenge to personal, family, and community honor. As Olsen shows in detail, the sectional controversy engaged men where they measured themselves, in public, with and against their peers, and linked their understanding of masculinity with formal politics, through which the voters actually brought about secession. Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi provides a rich new perspective on the events leading up to the Civil War and will prove an invaluable tool for understanding the central crisis in American politics.
Author: Andrew Johnson
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Published: 1967
Total Pages: 904
ISBN-13: 9780870493461
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →