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The Confederate War

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Among historians, the dominant view of the Confederacy since the 1960s was the "lack-of-will" thesis, which offers the vision of a failed CSA collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions. A Southern government abandoned by its people, rejected and repudiated by every non-slaveholding white person, fighting with an army of disgruntled draftees: That is some people's estimation of the CSA.

Since the early 1990s, however, this fixation with Southern "lack of will" has been questioned by some of the most active and able historians, who believe we have replaced one unbalanced view (the old "Lost Cause" thesis) with another.

Such questioning invites a charge of "neo-Confederate," or worse, from people who have some political or personal investment in the prevailing paradigm. Yet this questioning is not the work of "moonlight-and-magnolia" sentimentalists. Many of them are not Southern-born; many have no ancestors who fought the war.

Gary W. Gallagher is among them. This handsome little book, engagingly written, summarized the work that has been done to date in correcting the historical view of the South's war effort.

Gallagher, in an interview, has said, "Common sense should play more of a role in historical evaluation than it often does. To be able to wage war, the Confederacy was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of its young men and suffer the destruction of its economy. In terms of military casualties, Confederates sacrificed far more than any other generation of white Americans in U.S. history. Yet the South still fought. This would suggest broad popular support for the war."

Among the points he makes: The battle losses the South took would translate into six million U.S. battle casualties in World War II (instead of 961,977, the actual figure); nearly a million in Vietnam, instead of 201,000. Yet the "lack-of-will" partisans call the Confederacy a failed society. Gallagher points out that there's a danger of circular reasoning in this, because it sets the bar of "commitment to the cause" awfully high. Is total victory or total annihilation the only proof of "commitment"? Half of the Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. How many more would have had to take a bullet to qualify as "commitment"?

This quotation from Lee's analysis of Confederate prospects in Virginia in 1864 might be applied to the overall military picture in the South argues Gallagher. Bucking revisionists who blame Confederate defeat on a lack of popular support for the war effort, the author attempts to show how the agrarian South mustered a heroic effort against overwhelming odds, much as the "Lost Cause" supporters originally held. He counters Alan Nolan's argument that Lee's aggressive strategy was at fault with contemporary reports about the effect of this strategy on civilian morale. While the evidence on both sides of this argument is less than convincing, Gallagher finds the mark with statistics comparing the losses in men and property suffered by the Confederates compared with those suffered by U.S. forces in both this and all other wars involving American forces. He points out that a proportional Federal loss of 850,000 men during a conflict in which Northern war weariness led even Lincoln to the brink of despair might have found the Northern populace lacking in will. Although much of his argument is necessarily anecdotal, Gallagher presents a strong case that civil war buffs will spend a long time attacking or defending.

In this short but very important work, Gallagher challenges the notion that the Confederacy did not develop a sense of nationalism and also many of the notions of the "lost cause" theory as well as a notion that the Confederacy was "stabbed in the back" by extensive internal tension among the populace as well as desertions. Gallagher uses many diaries and letters to bring home his points that the citizens of the CSA did in fact develop an extensive sense of nationalism and supported their cause right up until the end at Appomattox and even beyond. Gallagher also proves that while there were extensive disertions among some troops during many points in the war, many of those same troops rejoined their units after taking care of affairs at home. He also shows that rather than encouraging disertion because of problems at home, many Confederate women encouraged their men to stay with the army and not shirk their responsibilities to the CSA. Many historians also have recently concluded the CSA would have been better served to adopt a strategy of guerilla warfare against Union troops, Gallagher shows why this strategy would have been detrimental to southern society and the slave holding republic it wished to establish and therefore many recent historians miss the mark in asserting this strategy would have been proper and acceptable to the southern populace which wanted victories over Union forces.
My only gripe with this book is that it is really a compliation of several lectures by Dr. Gallagher that have been footnoted and extended. Therefore they really don't form an interconnected narrative and read like seperate small books. Had Dr. Gallagher attempted to form a more complete narrative with each of his sections of the book it would have been much better. However this is still an outstanding book and necessary for any serious student of the Civil War.

This is an interesting study, really more of an essay than a fully-fledged work of research. It asks relevant questions of other current scholarship and proposes topics for further study.

Gallagher's thesis is essentially that the South did not, as some scholars have proposed, lose the war because of a lack of will to fight, but because of military defeats. I found his thesis, and his criticisms of the lack-of-will scholarship, convincing. However, I did find some elements of Gallagher's argument questionable. He gives the Army of Northern Virginia an absolutely central role. What about other Confederate armies, in which many men suffered under much worse leadership? And Gallagher pretty much chooses not to discuss the existence of substantial numbers of people in the Southern mountains who never supported the Confederacy at all.

Nevertheless, the question which Gallagher proposes for future study -- why did so many people support the Confederacy for so long and at such cost -- I think is a vital one, and I hope to see it addressed.

Gary Gallagher has written an excellent and insightful book that presents novel interpretations and raises insightful questions; this book should be required reading for all Civil War historians.

In The Confederate War, Gallagher discusses the historiography and different interpretations of important themes in Confederate history--popular will, nationalism, military strategy, and ultimately defeat. One of Gallagher's main contentions develops the idea that Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia were the rallying point for nationalism and the support of the Confederate people, yeomen and slaveholder alike: he writes, "As the war progressed, Confederate citizens increasingly relied on their armies rather than on their central government to boost morale, and Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia eventually became the most important national institution." Gallagher also contends that the Southern people had a strong sense of nationalism prior to the war, and he cites numerous letters, diaries, and other written documents of the time to illustrate this Southern concept and identity. In addition, by presenting evidence of Southern support from the home front throughout the war and the unique problems surrounding Confederate desertion (fear of Yankee threats to loved ones at home and not lack of support for the war effort), Gallagher masterfully illustrates that the war was not lost because of internal divisiveness or strife within the Confederacy. He says that the Confederacy "waged a determined struggle for independence," and argues that the South could have won the war. Working from the beginning of the war, and not backwards from the defeat, Gallagher argues the Confederacy lost because of a flawed military strategy. He discusses the issues of supplies and men, as well as guerrilla warfare tactics and conventional tactics, which proved too costly for the Confederacy. Gallagher ends his book by discussing the defeat, and restating that "the Confederacy capitulated in the spring of 1865 because northern armies had demonstrated their ability to crush organized southern military resistance." Continuing, he comments, "persevering despite great adversity, they surrendered only when their pool of manpower had been ravaged, Union armies stood poised to smash opposing Confederate forces, and much of their country literally lay in ruins."

This book is an excellent read and should be included in every Civil War historian's library.

If there is one thing I like about Gary Gallagher it is that he is determined to try and get things right when he discusses the Civil War. Unlike some other historians, he is not afraid to use a blend of perspectives (battlefield, cultural, political, etc.) when trying to explain or discover what happened, or more importantly, why things turned out a certain way in the Civil War. This book represents his attempt to discuss the Confederate war experience as it unfolded.

This book is classic Gallagher in that he uses a series of essays to really dig deep into many Confederate issues like: Why did the Confederates lose the war? How did they make it last so long? Was the Confederacy doomed from the start? Did most Southerners support the War, and/or believe in the cause? He augments his arguments with statistical analysis, passages from letters, and other supporting documents. Overall, he does a solid job of supporting his theory that historians should focus more energy into the question of How did the South make the war last so long instead of why did the South lose the war.

Some may find this book a bit dry since Gallagher spends many pages discussing other historians works. But, if you are interested in trying to see the war from the Southern perspective, then you will most likely enjoy this book. It is an interesting array of material from one of today's best Civil War scholars.

One thing I enjoy about Gallagher - His volumes are an easy, yet fact-filled and stimulating read - This book is no exception. Where others have placed the demise of the Conferacy on a multitude of issues, Gallagher's basic premise is that the South lost the war due to it's armies failures to provide enough victories. He also provides powerful evidence that contrary to modern thinking, the Confederate populace did indeed have the morale and stamina to prosecute the war. Only with the defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia did the population "give up the ghost."

The most interesting issue presented in this volume is the perspective that historians should, instead of concentrating on why the South lost, look at why and how did the South last so long and fight so hard.

Overall a thought provoking book and a must for the Civil War affecianado.

Gary Gallagher is one of those historians everyone envies, at least in the historical community. His reputation is (at least as far as I know) very good, and his body of work really well-respected. He's written a number of intelligent books on the war, edited a much-celebrated series of essay collections on the war's major campaigns in the Eastern theater, and generally had a good career. This book isn't an addition to the historical side of his work; instead it's more of an extended essay, four of them, really, that argues with the reader (and other historians) on the subject of the Confederate surrender, why it took so long, and what caused it.

Gallagher is somewhat troubled by the current divide in the historian's community. Historians of the Civil War have divided into two camps: military historians, who pay no attention to anyone who isn't a military historian, and social historians, who pay no attention to the military historians. As a result, you get two explanations as to why the war went the way it did, and concluded as it did: either the South lost the war on the battlefield, or the fighting had almost nothing to do with their defeat. Gallagher argues, here, that both of these ideas are silly. He's more of a military historian than a social one, so his arguments are more likely to side with that group, but he makes the case that each side has something to learn from the other side's interpretation of the facts, arguing that a combination of the two sets of causes is probably somewhat more appropriate.

However, he does argue (very eloquently, in my opinion) that the argument that battles had *nothing* to do with the war's outcome are very misguided. He also insists that the modern interpretation of the Confederacy, that it collapsed because of internal dissension, is more or less wishful thinking on the part of 20th Century historians looking back at the events of 150 years ago through modern lenses.

Some reviewers of this book seem to think that the author shouldn't put forward views unless they're politically correct, or some such thing. The professional reviewer on the book's main page says that Gallagher's opinion about Southern morale sticks in his/her craw. Unfortunately, histoy isn't always politically correct; just because someone is offended by the actions or views of someone from the past doesn't mean we should ignore them. Some of Gallagher's points seem over-drawn, but he has a point of view, and given his background he should be taken seriously, not just dismissed because his views aren't in line with current scholarship on the subject.

I really enjoyed this book. I like arguing with an author, in my head, while reading a book, and this work is clearly intended to provoke that. Highly recommended for Civil War buffs and historians.

I can generally subscribe to Gallegher's premise that The South was defeated because it was defeated, period. Though I admire his somewhat iconclastic view of conventional historical wisdom, I cannot accept that will was not decisive. This is particularly the case in the industrial and agricultural powerhouses of Georgia and North Carolina. Both these states were at times as much at war with the Confederacy as the United States. There is simply too much truth to the notion that The War was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. Greed, opportunism, and ambition doomed the CS though the Army of Northern Virginia's courage and self-sacrifice gave it a far longer life than its political leaders deserved. I have ancestors in gray or butternut planted in virtually every battlefield from the Seven Days to Petersburg so it is with some pain that I largely reject Gallegher's thesis. But, from the distance of 130 years the best thing one can do to preserve one's Southern heritage is be truthful about it.

Gary Gallagher is one of the most argumentative Civil War historians writing today. Practically every piece that he writes is controversial in at least one way. The Confederate War is no exception.

His principal thesis is to determine, not why the CSA lost the war, but "Why did so many Confederates fight for so long?" He attempts to answer this question by examining Southern feelings of nationalism, popular will, and the CSA's military strategy.

This work is primarily an apoligist's response to recent criticism of the CSA war effort, and some of the commonly held assumptions about why the war was concluded in the manner that it was. Many of Gallagher's assertions are intriguing, and occasionally refreshing. Unfortunately, he is so determined to prove that the CSA has been slandered that he frequently contradicts himself. Let me provide you with one example.

In the second section he attempts to prove that Southerners did have nationalist feelings about the CSA. As evidence of this he claims that towards the end of the war the CSA was considering arming slaves. Gallagher cites letters from soldiers that make referrence to this possibility and embrace it. In the third part, though, which analyzes CSA military strategy, he claims that the fear of slave rebellions made conducting a guerilla war impossible, and that historians who claim that having done so would have secured their independence are not looking at the situation properly. There are several other instances in which Gallagher uses an example to make a point, and then uses the counter example to make another.

This waffling does detract from the scholarly quality of the book, but it should not deter you from giving it a read. Gallagher is one of the most widely respected Civil War historians, and for good reason. The emotional nature of this book should not tarnish that reputation; in many ways it makes the book all the more interesting.