The Confederate War
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
If one is to believe contemporary historians, the South never had a chance. Many allege that the Confederacy lost the Civil War because of internal division or civilian disaffection; others point to flawed military strategy or ambivalence over slavery. But, argues distinguished historian Gary Gallagher, we should not ask why the Confederacy collapsed so soon but rather how it lasted so long. In The Confederate War he reexamines the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it to show how the home front responded to the war, endured great hardships, and assembled armies that fought with tremendous spirit and determination.Gallagher’s portrait highlights a powerful sense of Confederate patriotism and unity in the face of a determined adversary. Drawing on letters, diaries, and newspapers of the day, he shows that Southerners held not only an unflagging belief in their way of life, which sustained them to the bitter end, but also a widespread expectation of victory and a strong popular will closely attuned to military events. In fact, the army’s “offensive-defensive” strategy came remarkably close to triumph, claims Gallagher—in contrast to the many historians who believe that a more purely defensive strategy or a guerrilla resistance could have won the war for the South. To understand why the South lost, Gallagher says we need look no further than the war itself: after a long struggle that brought enormous loss of life and property, Southerners finally realized that they had been beaten on the battlefield.Gallagher’s interpretation of the Confederates and their cause boldly challenges current historical thinking and invites readers to reconsider their own conceptions of the American Civil War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a book based on the 1995-1996 Littlefield lectures at the University of Texas at Austin, Gallagher confronts a paradox arising from recent decades of Civil War scholarship. Working back from the South's defeat, historians have developed a picture of a society doomed from the start by a failure of will, lack of national feeling and an inappropriate military strategy. But the Confederacy came close to winning the war at several points. Had the Union flank been turned on the second day at Gettysburg, or had Atlanta not fallen before the 1864 presidential election, argues Gallagher, the war almost certainly would have ended in Southern independence. Gallagher draws on contemporary records to examine the will of the Southern people, their spirit of nationalism and the military strategy of the Confederacy before concluding that the South lost only because it was overwhelmed by superior military and economic force. Gallagher, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University, tends to take his sources too much at face value, though: wartime exhortations may not be the most accurate indicators of true beliefs. Gallagher is at his best when dealing with military strategy, convincingly showing that Southern generals did the best they could. The hole at the center of this work is a reluctance to discuss the formative issue of slavery. While Gallagher often refers to it, he fails to grapple with its implications. Readers will end up convinced that Southerners indeed fought hard for their nation, but will be unclear about what they were so fired up to accomplish. Forty halftones. History Book Club selection.
