Customer Reviews

Disloyalty in the Confederacy

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is an eye opener for anyone that believes that the South fought the Civil War as a cohesive society -- there was plenty of unrest, infighting, secret societies, antiwar groups, and not a few killings of neighbors by neighbors during the Civil War. The discord grew as the war wore on. This is an excellent, concise account of those turbulent years.

This work is a survey of disloyalty and outright treason among confederate troops and civilians during the civil war.

First published in 1934 as a an expanded doctoral thesis, this work was seminal in civil war historiography for knocking down one of the legs of the "Lost Cause" that the south was united in it's desire to fight the north. It's well known that border states like Tennessee and Virginia were divided over secession, but this work makes clear that even deep south states such as Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama had significant movements dedicated to undermining confederate war efforts.

The work does not go into analysis, and questions about the impact of the anti war movements, or a comparison of such movements between the north and the south are not answered.

Worth three stars for the portrait of life in the rural south during the war.