The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies [Hardcover]

Victoria E. Bynum (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 18, 2010

In The Long Shadow of the Civil War, Victoria Bynum relates uncommon narratives about common Southern folks who fought not with the Confederacy, but against it. Focusing on regions in three Southern states--North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas--Bynum introduces Unionist supporters, guerrilla soldiers, defiant women, socialists, populists, free blacks, and large interracial kin groups that belie stereotypes of the South and of Southerners as uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause.

Examining regions within the South where the inner civil wars of deadly physical conflict and intense political debate continued well into the era of Reconstruction and beyond, Bynum explores three central questions. How prevalent was support for the Union among ordinary Southerners during the Civil War? How did Southern Unionists and freedpeople experience both the Union's victory and the emancipation of slaves during and after Reconstruction? And what were the legacies of the Civil War--and Reconstruction--for relations among classes and races and between the sexes, both then and now?

Centered on the concepts of place, family, and community, Bynum's insightful and carefully documented work effectively counters the idea of a unified South caught in the grip of the Lost Cause.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bynum (Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South), a historian at Texas State University, offers an analysis of home front schisms in three Confederate regions: Big Thicket in eastern Texas, Piedmont North Carolina's Quaker Belt, and the counties in Mississippi's Piney Woods known as the Free State of Jones. Geographically and culturally isolated, they were largely populated by nonslaveholding subsistence farmers whose relationships with slaves and free blacks often generated a lively interracial subculture and even interracial family networks. Conscription policies favoring planters and manufacturers, together with food requisitions and taxes collected in kind by force, contributed to a sense of rich man's war, poor man's fight that made civilian-supported desertion and draft-evasion endemic. Defiance escalated to insurgency; Bynum quotes one unrepentant de facto Unionist: we fought [Confederates] like dogs, and we buried them like asses.... The collapse of Reconstruction left these dissenters marginalized by a race-based legal system and a lost cause mythology. Bynum highlights the solid South as a construction and even more successfully presents the importance of kinship, community, and place in sustaining resistance to oppression. 9 illus., 1 map. (Apr. 15)
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Review

"An interesting read and opens up avenues for scholars who wish to trace kinship migrations throughout the South and the cultural linkages those migrations may have established."
-The Review of Politics

"A masterful community study. . . . Based on exhaustive and innovative research. . . . [That] brilliantly demonstrates that common men and women, yeoman farmers, poor whites, slaves, and freedpeople left their stories behind for historians to excavate."
-Arkansas Historical Quarterly

"Bynum's emphasis on individual characters makes this story come alive. . . .The Long Shadow of the Civil War is a fascinating account of southern Unionist activity and fills a large hole in Civil War historiography."
-The Journal of Southern History

"A solid contribution….an engagingly written exposition of buried and contested histories….Bynum has done a great service to Southern history."
-Southern Historian

"The book is an interesting read and opens up avenues for scholars who wish to trace kinship migrations throughout the South."
-The Review of Politics

"The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth has come and gone, and with it a flood of books about the sixteenth president. But the sesquicentennial of the Civil War now looms on the horizon, promising its own deluge of books of every size, shape and description. We will be fortunate indeed if in sheer originality and insight they measure up to . . . The Long Shadow of the Civil War, [a] new work by . . . Victoria Bynum . . . on the Confederate experience."
-Eric Foner, The Nation

"Bynum has plunged deeply into the primary sources on these interesting individuals, family groups, and local communities. . . . Valuable . . . because it proves that dissent was not rare and insignificant."
-H-Civil War

"Offers vivid examples of the different Souths that fought, endured, and remembered the war."
-North Carolina Historical Review

"Bynum maps a road that few took, but the evocative stories of these families demand notice."
-Virginia Quarterly Review

"Fascinating. . . . Bynum demonstrates an impressive, intricate knowledge of the case. . . . The book is an interesting read and opens up avenues for scholars who wish to trace kinship migrations throughout the South and the cultural linkages those migrations may have established."
-The Review of Politics

"[This book] ranks among the most innovative in its methods and its findings….[Bynum] is to be commended for her sheer doggedness as a researcher and her creative use of methods and sources."
-The Journal of American History

"Historians wishing to pursue such comparisons and questions will find great value in Bynum's careful research."
-Journal of the Civil War Era

"Supported by impressive research and crafted to enlighten rather than celebrate or condemn, this book offers a penetrating portrait of the dissenters and their world. A strong addition to upper-level Civil War collections, it will also serve as a lively read for the general public. . . . Highly recommended."
-Choice

"Sophisticated, multi-layered analysis of class relations....An intriguing narrative about small, local bands of citizens who believed in the Union and strove to counter Confederates, white supremacists, and other southern conservatives."
-Civil War Monitor

"Bynum highlights the 'solid South' as a construction and even more successfully presents the importance of 'kinship, community, and place' in sustaining resistance to oppression."
-Publishers Weekly

"The South in the Civil War era was anything but solid. Victoria Bynum tells us why, introducing us to a set of intriguing events and a cast of unforgettable characters."
--Suzanne Lebsock, author of A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial

"Based on deep and creative research, this book opens up large and hotly debated questions of racial identity, gender roles, national identity, family life, and community in the South during and after the Civil War. It is a poignant portrait of all manner of Southern common folk coming to grips with war, freedom, and dislocation on a scale that few Americans have ever experienced."
--W. Fitzhugh Brundage, editor of Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Regional Identity in the American South

"Those who enjoy the study of Reconstruction social and political battles as much or more than the military conflicts of the Civil War will find a wealth of material here for further study. . . . [Bynum's] engaging writing style will no doubt interest many readers of her book as well."
-TOCWOC

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (February 18, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807833819
• ISBN-13: 978-0807833810
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #756,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Professor Victoria E. Bynum's historical research focuses on Southern dissenters: women who did not behave like "ladies"; whites who crossed the color line socially and sexually; African Americans who did not follow Jim Crow rules; and families that opposed secession and the Confederacy. Her works include UNRULY WOMEN (Chapel Hill, 1992), THE FREE STATE OF JONES (Chapel Hill, 2001), and THE LONG SHADOW OF THE CIVIL WAR: SOUTHERN DISSENT AND ITS LEGACIES (Chapel Hill, 2010).

To learn more about Victoria Bynum's work, visit her website, Renegade South, at www.renegadesouth.com, and her blog site at www.renegadesouth.wordpress.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A historian reviews "Long Shadow of the Civil War" May 29, 2010

By E. Payne

Format:Hardcover

I hesitated about submitting a review for "Long Shadow of the Civil War" since I provided some research and comments to the author and am mentioned in the acknowlegements. With that as a caveat, I am posting a review by Paul Escott of Wake Forest University as originally published on H-Net. I feel it provides a very balanced and insightful overview of the work:

Reviewed by Paul Escott (Wake Forest University)
Published on H-CivWar (May, 2010)
Commissioned by Matthew E. Mason

"Few histories," writes Victoria Bynum, "are buried faster or deeper than those of political and social dissenters" (p. 148). The Long Shadow of the Civil War disinters a number of remarkable dissenters in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. It introduces the reader to stubbornly independent and courageous Southerners in the North Carolina Piedmont, the Mississippi Piney Woods, and the Big Thicket region around Hardin County, Texas. These individuals and family groups were willing to challenge their society's coercive social conventions on race, class, and gender. They resisted the established powers when dissent was not only unpopular but dangerous-during the Civil War and the following decades of white supremacy and repressive dominance by the Democratic Party. Their histories remind us of two important truths: that the South was never as monolithic as its rulers and many followers tried to make it; and that human beings, though generally dependent on social approval and acceptance by their peers, are capable of courageous, independent, dissenting lives.

Bynum begins by focusing on the fierce, armed resistance to Confederate authority that developed in the North Carolina Piedmont, in Mississippi's "Free State of Jones," and in Texas' Big Thicket counties.... All three areas "had solid nonslaveholding majorities with slaves making up only 10 to 14 percent of their populations" (p. 16). Guerrilla leaders in all three supported the Union over the Confederacy, sheltered and encouraged deserters, and fought the soldiers and authorities of the new Southern nation. They often gained considerable power locally and forced Confederate leaders to dispatch troops in vain internal efforts to eradicate them.

Bynum gives detailed attention in this part of the book to the North Carolina Piedmont. Religious conviction was an important part of resistance in North Carolina's "Quaker Belt," where particularly strong resistance developed in Randolph County, an area that had also been influenced by the antislavery beliefs of Wesleyan Methodists. Women played an especially prominent role in dissent in the Piedmont. They aided their husbands, stole to feed their families, helped other deserters, and both protested to and threatened Confederate officials. "Deeply felt class, cultural, and religious values animated" these women's actions (p. 51).

In nearby Orange County, North Carolina, there was "a lively interracial subculture" whose members "exchanged goods and engaged in gambling, drinking, and sexual and social intercourse" (p. 9). During the war these poor folks, who had come together despite "societal taboos and economic barriers," supported themselves and aided resistance to the Confederacy by stealing goods and trading with deserters. During Reconstruction elite white men, who felt that their political and economic dominance was threatened along with their power over their wives and households, turned to violence to reestablish control. Yet interracial family groups among the poor challenged their mistreatment and contributed to "a fragile biracial political coalition" (pp. 55-56) that made the Republican Party dominant before relentless attacks from the Ku Klux Klan nullified the people's will.

Bynum next focuses on Newt Knight's military company that fought the Confederacy in Jones County, Mississippi. These armed resisters were so powerful that by late 1863 the Confederate government had to send troops to the area in order to carry out two major (and largely unsuccessful) raids against them. Knight also defied racial taboos by choosing to live with and father children by a black woman named Rachel, who was a slave of Newt's grandfather. Together they started "a multiracial community that endures to this day" (p. 8). Bynum's careful research adds to our understanding of the nature and roots of resistance in the "Free State of Jones." Through three decades following the Civil War, Knight petitioned for financial compensation from the United States for the pro-Union efforts of himself and his military company. The documents of his long and ultimately unsuccessful quest reveal details about Jones County Unionism and his own determination. Pro-Union ideals played a far larger role than religion among Knight's company. Newt's obstinate resistance to the South's ruling class led him to embrace and work for Populism in the later years of his life.

Family and community ties were at least as important among dissenting Southerners as among the slaveholding elite. Close relatives of Newt Knight and of his two key lieutenants in the "Free State of Jones" had moved to east Texas in the 1850s. There several brothers-Warren, Newton, and Stacy Collins-became principal figures in the anti-Confederate resistance that flourished in the Big Thicket region. Only one of eight Collins brothers chose to be loyal to the Confederate government. After fighting Confederate authorities during the Civil War, the Collinses and their relations later became active in the Populist Party and then in the Socialist Party. They stood up against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of greedy or corrupt capitalists just as they had rejected the dominance of slaveholders. Back in Mississippi, members of the Collins clan chose to resist not only the power of the Democratic Party but the religious and cultural dominance of the Baptist Church, which had become part of the "white southern orthodoxy" (p. 108). Jasper Collins and other members of his family began a Universalist church; Newt Knight's brother Frank "converted to Mormonism and moved to Colorado." Such "dissident religious groups" faced "fierce and frequently violent" reactions, for they "threatened the reconstituted order over which the Democratic Party reigned supreme" (p. 105).

Professor Bynum closes her book with a chapter on the interracial offspring of Newt and Rachel Knight. Called "white Negroes" or "Knight's Negroes" by their neighbors, these individuals continued to exhibit an independent spirit as they dealt with their society and with each other. They chose to identify themselves in a variety of ways; different members of the family adopted different approaches to life. Some passed as white, others affirmed their African American identity, and still others saw themselves as people of color but kept a distance from those whom society defined as Negroes. Within the family group there were many independent spirits. One woman, the ascetic Anna Knight, forged a long and energetic career as an educator and Seventh-Day Adventist missionary.

Victoria Bynum has plunged deeply into the primary sources on these interesting individuals, family groups, and local communities. Her footnotes will be very useful to future scholars. Yet, micro-history of this type often proves to be more tangled, complex, and difficult to comprehend than study of a large region, because the connections are both more abundant and, inevitably, less fully documented. It also is difficult to tell a multiplicity of short but complicated stories clearly. Professor Bynum's history of these dissenters lifts the veil on a complicated web of friends, enemies, allies, and family relations who interacted over time. To describe the variety and extent of local conflicts, she must characterize the local community and introduce a host of minor characters. The multiplication of names, places, and details can be as confusing as it is illustrative of the depth of her research. Unfortunately, the welter of briefly mentioned details makes the reader's experience choppy and sometimes confusing. Had the sources been rich enough, three separate books might have been easier to read than one peopled by so many characters whose personalities remain dim.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War is valuable, however, because it proves that dissent was not rare and insignificant. It modifies the image created by those in power of a solid, unchanging South united behind class dominance, white supremacy, and subordination of women. As writers like Eudora Welty have shown us, the Southern man or woman can be an independent, stubborn, dissenting, even eccentric individual. The fact that we tend to remember so few of these Southerners testifies to the coercive power that repressive elites have exercised through most of the region's history. Read more ›

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening information on a hugely misunderstood and widely misinformed topic June 2, 2010

By P. Smith

Format:Hardcover

I so appreciate the task that Bynum undertook with the research necessary to put this story together. The enlightenment about the social climate of the South during and after the Civil War told in stories about real people has sparked my interest. I wanted to find out more about this time in the history of our country that I now see has been hugely misrepresented by the education system. It seems that over the last 150 years changing political platforms and religious doctrines reinforced by prejudice and private agendas have served to dictate the social stigmas attached to the end of slavery in this country. The racial issues created and how they were addressed have been the excuse to bury and distort the history of our country during and after the Civil War. To learn the South was not a united front for Secession - what an eye opener this book is!

5.0 out of 5 stars good read February 1, 2013

By mikeh

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Having read Eco of the black horn first it was intersesting to read another side of the Jones county history.

5.0 out of 5 stars Dissenters of the "Solid South" September 16, 2012

By Ann B. Elwood

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Victoria Bynum is an uncompromisingly honest historian who has spent twenty-five years researching Civil War dissenters and their descendants in North Carolina (Quaker Belt), Mississippi (the Free State of Jones), and Texas (the Big Thicket jayhawkers). In The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies, with a sharp historian's eye, a novelist's sensibility, and a deep commitment to the people she studies, she tells the story of the dissenters' local wars within the Big War and, using archival research and interviews, traces the influence of that crisis-ridden time down the generations.
Bynum has an eye for the detail that brings history to life: the backyards that "ran with blood," dissenters serving pie to Yankee soldiers, starving women stealing flour, poverty-stricken Martha Sheets calling the rich slave-holding sheriff a "nasty old whelp." Placing the individual in the context of a time is not easy. Bynum is a master at this. She knows how to analyze motives and emotions of the long dead without resorting to the kind of psychological analysis that does violence to an accurate picture of past time.
Bynum challenges the myth of the "Solid South." Dissenters included evaders and deserters and civilians who were against the war; they were black, white, and multi-racial. This is a war that is not just about battlefields where Yankees fought Confederates, but communities where southerner fought southerner for food as well as for principle - wars within the Big War. The dissenters' stories are quite different - different according to individual temperaments, the groups they belonged to, and the situations in which their actions were embedded.
This is also a story of the complexity of race relations in the South of the Civil War and after.... One way that Bynum illustrates that complexity is with the stories of mixed-race Knights (descendants of the dissenters of the Free State of Jones) who chose to "pass" as white and those who did not and with analysis of the kinship that existed between white and mixed-race Knights. For instance, there is Anna Knight, Newt Knight's daughter, who did not choose to pass as white. She became a Seventh Day Adventist and founded a school for black and mixed-race children in her community, which she defended against moonshiners with a revolver and "sometimes a double-barrelled shotgun.
If you're interested in the "true facts" about the Civil War South and its aftermath, this book is a must. Read more ›

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Praises for the Long Shadow of the Civil War February 21, 2010

By Vikky L. Anders

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

`The Long Shadow of the Civil War'. What a treat! But only if one enjoys great story telling......The subtitle of this book provides a big clue. `Southern dissent and it's legacies". And dissent they did. All the way into the 20th Century. Vikki is one great myth buster. Perhaps it has something to do with her willingness to pore over thousands of old documents and then sort out fact from fiction. Even a review of her bibliography makes for interesting reading.

Vikki is my kind of historian. A wordsmith who can also tell a great story. And yes, also a very sad story. Who can read any details about the Civil War and not be moved by the needless suffering and deaths that went on and on and on. Still, this is our collective American history. And regardless of age, we need to know these facts. Socialists in TX early 20th century? Who knew? Want enlightenment? This is the book to read!

A treat listening to Dr G and his Mud Cats as I type away on this blog.

Vikky Anders in San Diego