What Civil War Book Most Influenced You?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I speak often about the many Civil War books that I have found compelling over the years. Of course, there is Bruce Catton's body of work - my introduction to Civil War history, and David Blight's Race and Reunion - the very best book I have ever read that I disagree with. I keep these books on my short list for a variety of reasons.

But if there is one book that most influenced my thinking - at least when it comes to Confederate nationalism, Confederate identity, and how the Confederate States of America finally succumbed to defeat, I would have to give the nod to Gary W. Gallagher's Confederate War.

Before I thoroughly engaged this book, I considered Confederate defeat in terms of internal divisions. Popular national support (or lack thereof - for a multitude of reasons), popular connections to the institution of slavery, and the disconnect between civilian and military leadership all seemed problematic enough to suggest that maybe...just maybe the Rebels did themselves in.

Gallagher's book did not change my mind on the spot - but it got me thinking about the Confederate cause and how the Confederate people persevered for four years despite these things. Further investigation convinced me that the Rebels had internal troubles to spare, but were profoundly committed to independence and a slave-holding republic and were willing to sacrifice nearly everything to get it. You don't need to take my word for it - just read the book...have a look at the evidence in comparison to other works discussing Confederate defeat (Robinson's Bitter Fruits of Bondage would be a good start) and decide for yourself.

And in case you were wondering about my current thoughts on Confederate defeat - I am going to have to go with George Pickett: I am pretty sure the Union army had something to do with it.

Peace,

Keith

The Bitter Fruits of Bondage by Armstead Robinson

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

There is an interesting story behind the book, Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy. Civil War scholar Armstead Robinson passed away in 1995. He had been working on this book for years but never completed it. Since his death, a number of scholars pieced together the manuscript and selected evidence and arguments (from diverse and often conflicting segments) to make this book the best representation of Robinson’s voice as possible.

By the time it was finally published in 2005, Robinson's book was far out of date, even though Edward L. Ayers’s jacket blurb says otherwise. This book is a child of the 1980s – when social historians were searching for the internal divisions that destroyed the Confederate States of America. Their efforts sought to disprove Lost Cause arguments suggesting northern superiority in men and material did the Confederacy in. Had Robinson published his book back then, it would have been a monument in the historiography. As it is now, it is a window into the past, but not useful to advance the understanding or challenge more recent scholarship on why the Confederates lost.

The point of this book is simple enough: The southern way of life was unable to provide the support necessary to sustain a war effort – specifically, slavery sapped nationalism from the very beginning.

Robinson highlights the class tensions between slaveholders and increasingly bitter yeomen and other nonslaveholders. This is a familiar tale (see also William Freehling’s The South vs. The South on internal dissension) of a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. Slaveholders duped everyone else into waging war, and it then became apparent (because of substitutes and 20 slave laws) that the nonslaveholders were fighting to maintain a system that only benefited rich whites – all the while the very same rich whites were weaseling their way out of the army.

Meanwhile, slaves were fleeing to Union lines in great numbers, denying the CSA their labor and handing it over to the US war effort. This served to exacerbate growing tensions between the white classes. Bread riots at home and huge desertion rates suggested that Confederate soldiers and civilians were not behind the war effort – particularly an effort conceived on the premises of a “slaveholders republic.”

Arguing that an internal class conflict eroded the white southern will to sustain a bid for independence is to confront directly the heritage of the Lost Cause Many things: the peculiar configuration of Confederate mobilization, the genesis of popular discontent with the war effort, the failure of agricultural adjustment, the birth of state rights ideology, the halting attempts by Jefferson Davis to cope with rampant internal dissention, the disintegration of Confederate society – all of these stemmed from the Confederacy’s failure to preserve stability on the home front. The Civil War south discovered that it could not sustain wartime slavery and simultaneously retain the allegiance of the nonslaveholding majority – and thus…the Confederacy was destroyed from within.

Now I disagree with this argument entirely – I believe that the overwhelming majority of white southerners supported the cause – despite the grumblings that take place when a society goes to war. They supported independence and slavery - even the nonslaveholders had a stake in the system. But I suggest reading this book – it is a great time capsule of sorts. And although published early in the 21st century…it is a nice window into the historiography of the 1980s.

Peace,

Keith