Download or read book Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy written by Albert Burton Moore and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy written by Albert Burton Moore and published by Southern Classics Series. This book was released on 1996 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A standard source for more than three generations of Civil War scholars, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy remains the authoritative study of the Confederate draft. In this landmark book, Albert Burton Moore uses conscription to illustrate a central paradox of the Confederacy: in order to protect its commitment to states' rights, the Confederacy was forced to adopt tactics of centralized government. Charting the strength of Confederate forces before and after conscription's implementation in 1862, Moore examines the system's daily operations, troublesome procedures for substitutions and exemptions, and ultimate collapse. He conveys the controversy surrounding conscription by quoting from acerbic and sometimes eloquent arguments for and against conscription put forth by governors, congressmen, newspaper editors, and soldiers. Although Moore credits Confederate conscription with a high degree of success, he blames it for causing friction between state governors and President Jefferson Davis, dissension between state and national judicial systems, and bureaucratic problems of colossal proportions. William Garrett Piston's new introduction places the volume in its historical context and underscores one of the most remarkable features of the study - Moore's forthright admission that a large number of Southerners did not support the Confederacy.
Download or read book Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers written by John M. Sacher and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-12-08 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jules and Frances Landry Award Finalist for the 2022 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize In April 1862, the Confederacy faced a dire military situation. Its forces were badly outnumbered, the Union army was threatening on all sides, and the twelve-month enlistment period for original volunteers would soon expire. In response to these circumstances, the Confederate Congress passed the first national conscription law in United States history. This initiative touched off a struggle for healthy white male bodies—both for the army and on the home front, where they oversaw enslaved laborers and helped produce food and supplies for the front lines—that lasted till the end of the war. John M. Sacher’s history of Confederate conscription serves as the first comprehensive examination of the topic in nearly one hundred years, providing fresh insights into and drawing new conclusions about the southern draft program. Often summarily dismissed as a detested policy that violated states’ rights and forced nonslaveholders to fight for planters, the conscription law elicited strong responses from southerners wanting to devise the best way to guarantee what they perceived as shared sacrifice. Most who bristled at the compulsory draft did so believing it did not align with their vision of the Confederacy. As Sacher reveals, white southerners’ desire to protect their families, support their communities, and ensure the continuation of slavery shaped their reaction to conscription. For three years, Confederates tried to achieve victory on the battlefield while simultaneously promoting their vision of individual liberty for whites and states’ rights. While they failed in that quest, Sacher demonstrates that southerners’ response to the 1862 conscription law did not determine their commitment to the Confederate cause. Instead, the implementation of the draft spurred a debate about sacrifice—both physical and ideological—as the Confederacy’s insatiable demand for soldiers only grew in the face of a grueling war.
Download or read book Reluctant Rebels written by Kenneth W. Noe and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-05-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the feverish mobilization of secession had faded, why did Southern men join the Confederate army? Kenneth Noe examines the motives and subsequent performance of "later enlisters." He offers a nuanced view of men who have often been cast as less patriotic and less committed to the cause, rekindling the debate over who these later enlistees were, why they joined, and why they stayed and fought. Noe refutes the claim that later enlisters were more likely to desert or perform poorly in battle and reassesses the argument that they were less ideologically savvy than their counterparts who enlisted early in the conflict. He argues that kinship and neighborhood, not conscription, compelled these men to fight: they were determined to protect their families and property and were fueled by resentment over emancipation and pillaging and destruction by Union forces. But their age often combined with their duties to wear them down more quickly than younger men, making them less effective soldiers for a Confederate nation that desperately needed every able-bodied man it could muster. Reluctant Rebels places the stories of individual soldiers in the larger context of the Confederate war effort and follows them from the initial optimism of enlistment through the weariness of battle and defeat.
Download or read book Why Confederates Fought written by and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Why Confederates Fought written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the massive volume of writing on the American Civil War, one of the fundamental questions about it continues to bedevil us. Why did non slave holders sacrifice so much to build a slave republic? Non slave holders commitment was not marginal; they formed the vast majority of soldiers who fought on behalf of the Confederacy. Nor was slavery a tangential concern to the conflict; the political debate over slavery and its expansion drove the North and South to arms, and the shift to emancipation by the North ensured a desolating war. Though relatively brief in comparison to other nineteenth-century wars, the Civil War generated catastrophic losses for both sides. What facilitated the level of division and destruction witnessed in this war? In what follows, I answer this question by exploring the inspirations that compelled Confederate soldiers into the war and sustained them in the face of horrific losses. Inspirations is not too strong or romantic a word; southern white men felt moved to enlist by a host of personal, familial, communal, religious, and national obligations. Similarly, the decision to reenlist or remain in service was not undertaken lightly. Southern men drew on a variety of motivations when they considered why they needed to resist the Norths efforts to recreate the Union. Understanding how those motivations developed offers insight into what leads human beings to support a war and fight in it.
Download or read book They Went Into the Fight Cheering written by Walter Carrington Hilderman and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book discusses the day-to-day operation of the Confederate conscription process in North Carolina during the Civil War"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Day of the Confederacy A Chronicle of the Embattled South written by Nathaniel W. Stephenson and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Day of the Confederacy: A Chronicle of the Embattled South" by Nathaniel W. Stephenson is a vivid historical account that delves into the struggles and challenges faced by the South during the Confederacy era. Stephenson's engaging storytelling and well-researched narrative provide a captivating glimpse into the tumultuous times of the American Civil War, making this book an absorbing choice for history enthusiasts and Civil War buffs.
Download or read book Rebels against the Confederacy written by Barton A. Myers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, Barton A. Myers analyzes the secret world of hundreds of white and black Southern Unionists as they struggled for survival in a new Confederate world, resisted the imposition of Confederate military and civil authority, began a diffuse underground movement to destroy the Confederacy, joined the United States Army as soldiers, and waged a series of violent guerrilla battles at the local level against other Southerners. Myers also details the work of Confederates as they struggled to build a new nation at the local level and maintain control over manpower, labor, agricultural, and financial resources, which Southern Unionists possessed. The story is not solely one of triumph over adversity but also one of persecution and, ultimately, erasure of these dissidents by the postwar South's Lost Cause mythologizers.
Download or read book Bitterly Divided written by David Williams and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known history of anti-secession Southerners: “Absolutely essential Civil War reading.” —Booklist, starred review Bitterly Divided reveals that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars—the external one that we know so much about, and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness. In this fascinating look at a hidden side of the South’s history, David Williams shows the powerful and little-understood impact of the thousands of draft resisters, Southern Unionists, fugitive slaves, and other Southerners who opposed the Confederate cause. “This fast-paced book will be a revelation even to professional historians. . . . His astonishing story details the deep, often murderous divisions in Southern society. Southerners took up arms against each other, engaged in massacres, guerrilla warfare, vigilante justice and lynchings, and deserted in droves from the Confederate army . . . Some counties and regions even seceded from the secessionists . . . With this book, the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Most Southerners looked on the conflict with the North as ‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight,’ especially because owners of 20 or more slaves and all planters and public officials were exempt from military service . . . The Confederacy lost, it seems, because it was precisely the kind of house divided against itself that Lincoln famously said could not stand.” —Booklist, starred review
Download or read book Correspondence Between Governor Brown and President Davis written by Georgia. Governor (1857-1865 : Brown) and published by . This book was released on 1862 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Virginia s Private War written by William Blair and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-24 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of how Confederate civilians in the Old Dominion struggled to feed not only their stomachs but also their souls. Although demonstrating the ways in which the war created many problems within southern communities, Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 does not support scholars who claim that internal dissent caused the Confederacy's downfall. Instead, it offers a study of the Virginia home front that depicts how the Union army's continued pressure created destruction, hardship, and shortages that left the Confederate public spent and demoralized with the surrender of the army under Robert E. Lee. This book, however, does not portray the population as uniformly united in a Lost Cause. Virginians complained a great deal about the management of the war. Letters to the governor and to the Confederate secretary of war demonstrate how dissent escalated to dangerous proportions by the spring and summer of 1863. Women rioted in Richmond for food. Soldiers left the army without permission to check on their families and farms. Various groups vented their hatred on Virginias rich men of draft age who stayed out of the army by purchasing substitutes. Such complaints, ironically, may have prolonged the war, for some of the Confederacy's leaders responded by forcing the wealthy to shoulder more of the burden for prosecuting the war. Substitution ended, and the men who stayed home became government growers who distributed goods at reduced cost to the poor. But, as the case is made in Virginias Private War, none of these efforts could finally overcome an enemy whose unrelenting pressure strained the resources of Rebel Virginians to the breaking point. Arguing that the state of Virginia both waged and witnessed a "rich man's fight" that has until now been downplayed or misunderstood by many if not most of our Civil War scholars, William Blair provides in these pages a detailed portrait of this conflict that is bold, original, and convincing. He draws from the microcosm of Virginia several telling conclusions about the Confederacy's rise, demise, and identity, and his study will therefore appeal to anyone with a taste for Civil War history--and Virginia's unique place in that history, especially.
Download or read book A Separate Civil War written by Jonathan Dean Sarris and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans think of the Civil War as a series of dramatic clashes between massive armies led by romantic-seeming leaders. But in the Appalachian communities of North Georgia, things were very different. Focusing on Fannin and Lumpkin counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains along Georgia’s northern border, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South argues for a more localized, idiosyncratic understanding of this momentous period in our nation’s history. The book reveals that, for many participants, this war was fought less for abstract ideological causes than for reasons tied to home, family, friends, and community. Making use of a large trove of letters, diaries, interviews, government documents, and sociological data, Jonathan Dean Sarris brings to life a previously obscured version of our nation’s most divisive and destructive war. From the outset, the prospect of secession and war divided Georgia’s mountain communities along the lines of race and religion, and war itself only heightened these tensions. As the Confederate government began to draft men into the army and seize supplies from farmers, many mountaineers became more disaffected still. They banded together in armed squads, fighting off Confederate soldiers, state militia, and their own pro-Confederate neighbors. A local civil war ensued, with each side seeing the other as a threat to law, order, and community itself. In this very personal conflict, both factions came to dehumanize their enemies and use methods that shocked even seasoned soldiers with their savagery. But when the war was over in 1865, each faction sought to sanitize the past and integrate its stories into the national myths later popularized about the Civil War. By arguing that the reason for choosing sides had more to do with local concerns than with competing ideologies or social or political visions, Sarris adds a much-needed complication to the question of why men fought in the Civil War.
Download or read book Plain Folk in a Rich Man s War written by David Williams and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A significant voice in a significant debate . . . full of marvelous quotes."--William W. Freehling, University of Kentucky "Shows clearly that the Solid South was not solid at all [and] demonstrates that the war encompassed much more than military strategy and tactics . . . it was fought at home as well as on the battlefield."--Wayne K. Durrill, University of Cincinnati This compelling and engaging book sheds new light on how planter self-interest, government indifference, and the very nature of southern society produced a rising tide of dissent and disaffection among Georgia's plain folk during the Civil War. The authors make extensive use of local newspapers, court records, manuscript collections, and other firsthand accounts to tell a story of latent class resentment that emerged full force under wartime pressures and undermined southern support for the Confederacy. More directly than any previous historians, the authors make clear the connections between the causes of class resentment and their impact. Planters produced far too much cotton and avoided the draft at will. Speculators hoarded scarce goods and brought on spiraling inflation. Government officials turned a blind eye to the infractions of the rich, and were often bribed to do so. Women left to go hungry took matters into their own hands, stealing livestock in rural areas and rioting for food in every major city in Georgia. The hardships of families back home weighed heavily on soldiers in the field, contributing to rampant desertion. Deserters banded together, sometimes with draft dodgers and blacks escaping enslavement, to defend themselves or to go on the offensive against Confederate authorities. Some whites even planned and participated in slave resistance, a joining of forces that previous historians have long dismissed as highly improbable. So violent did Georgia's inner civil war become that one resident commented, "We are fighting each other harder than we ever fought the enemy." This work stresses more forcefully than any before it that plain folk in the Deep South were far from united behind the Confederate war effort. That lack of unity, brought on largely by class resentment, helped to ensure that the Confederacy's cause would, in the end, be lost. David Williams is professor and acting chair of the Department of History at Valdosta State University.
Download or read book Slavery and War in the Americas written by Vitor Izecksohn and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking new work, Vitor Izecksohn attempts to shed new light on the American Civil War by comparing it to a strikingly similar campaign in South America--the War of the Triple Alliance of 1864–70, which galvanized four countries and became the longest large-scale international conflict in the history of the Americas. Like the Union in its conflict with the Confederacy, Brazil was faced with an enemy of inferior resources and manpower--in their case, Paraguay--that nonetheless proved extremely difficult to defeat. In both cases, the more powerful army had to create an elaborate war machine controlled by the central state to achieve victory. While it was not the official cause of either conflict, slavery weighed heavily on both wars. When volunteers became scarce, both the Union and Brazilian armies resorted to conscription and, particularly in the case of the Union Army, the enlistment of freedmen of African descent. The consequences of the Union’s recruitment of African Americans would extend beyond the war years, contributing significantly to emancipation and reform in the defeated South.Taken together, these two major powers’ experiences reveal much about state building, army recruitment, and the military and social impact of slavery. The many parallels revealed by this book challenge the assumption that the American Civil War was an exceptional conflict. A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era
Download or read book Confederate Reckoning written by Stephanie McCurry and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist Winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize Winner of the Merle Curti Prize “Perhaps the highest praise one can offer McCurry’s work is to say that once we look through her eyes, it will become almost impossible to believe that we ever saw or thought otherwise.”—Drew Gilpin Faust, The New Republic The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. When the grandiosity of Southerners’ national ambitions met the harsh realities of wartime crises, unintended consequences ensued. Although Southern statesmen and generals had built the most powerful slave regime in the Western world, they had excluded the majority of their own people—white women and slaves—and thereby sowed the seeds of their demise. Wartime scarcity of food, labor, and soldiers tested the Confederate vision at every point and created domestic crises to match those found on the battlefields. Women and slaves became critical political actors as they contested government enlistment and tax and welfare policies, and struggled for their freedom. The attempt to repress a majority of its own population backfired on the Confederate States of America as the disenfranchised demanded to be counted and considered in the great struggle over slavery, emancipation, democracy, and nationhood. That Confederate struggle played out in a highly charged international arena. The political project of the Confederacy was tried by its own people and failed. The government was forced to become accountable to women and slaves, provoking an astounding transformation of the slaveholders’ state. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.
Download or read book The Confederate Republic written by George C. Rable and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although much has been written about the ways in which Confederate politics affected the course of the Civil War, George Rable is the first historian to investigate Confederate political culture in its own right. Focusing on the assumptions, values, and beliefs that formed the foundation of Confederate political ideology, Rable reveals how southerners attempted to purify the political process and avoid what they saw as the evils of parties and partisanship. According to Rable, secession marked the beginning of a revolution against politics, in which the Confederacy's founding fathers saw themselves as the true heirs of the American Revolution. Nevertheless, factionalism developed as the war dragged on, with Confederate nationalists emphasizing political unity and support for President Jefferson Davis's administration and libertarian dissenters warning of the dangers of a centralized Confederate government. Both sides claimed to be the legitimate defenders of a genuine southern republicanism and of Confederate nationalism, and the conflict between them carried over from the strictly political sphere to matters of military strategy, civil religion, and education. Rable concludes that despite the war's outcome, the Confederacy's antipolitical legacy had a profound impact on southern politics.
