Customer Reviews

War of Another Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion

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

 

 

A book not fully appreciated without a first hand knowledge of the Albemarle region of North Carolina, Mr. Durrill certainly delves into the (sometimes remote) interests of social historians. The author chose as the location for his study, a small town inside a very rural county in North Carolina. The town, Plymouth, located in Washington County, was not only a military objective of two opposing armies, but a focus of division between many economic classes. Mr Durrill presents the county very accurately as a region of very rich and very poor struggling for political and social power during the period immediately prior and during the 1861-1865 war. Presented as a war within a war, the book documents many conflicts betweeen planters and yeoman farmers, between civilians and soldiers, and not most inconsequentially, between armies. Tracing the removal of the planters' slave labor forces from the Albemarle region behind Confederate lines and showing the effects of a social upheaval, the author has shown the importance of all classes of people in maintaining the inequities of the Southern agricultural antebellum economy. Wayne Durrill has presented the economic ideals that each social group manipulated in their own interests through the war years, and shown how ideals changed with each advance or retreat of a military force.

I found this to be the best civil war documentation so far for this region. My own research turned up a great great uncle who fought for the Union Army after my great great grandfather was imprisoned. The Unionist side has never been told as well as Durrill's studies have brought it to light. Too much time has been spent studying the great battles, but the Battle of Plymouth ranks right up there in importance. How many yankees think that all southerners agreed and fought for the south, only God knows. They should read this one.

This book is a non-military history of the cause and effects of the division of loyalities in Eastern North Carolina. This area was evenly divided between abolitionist and Confederates. General Burnside was able to raise a Division sized force of Black and White volunteers to help hold the East coast of North Carolina. Much of the terminology and many of the stories match those I heard growing up. This book is disappointing in that it does not include true military history. Those extraordinary events in Eastern North Carolina still wait to be told in a single comprehensive document.

I found this to be the best civil war documentation so far for this region. My own research turned up a great great uncle who fought for the Union Army after my great great grandfather was imprisoned. The Unionist side has never been told as well as Durrill's studies have brought it to light. Too much time has been spent studying the great battles, but the Battle of Plymouth ranks right up there in importance. How many yankees think that all southerners agreed and fought for the south, only God knows. They should read this one.