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

~ (Author) "On Tuesday evening, October 16, 1860, about twenty Washington County slaves assembled at a shingle-maker's camp in McRae's swamp..." (more)
Key Phrases: unionist cavalry, chattle property, white wage laborers, Washington County, North Carolina, William Pettigrew (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gives a lively and much-needed account of the underside of the Confederacy that heretofore only occasionally has seen the light of day."--North Carolina Historical Review
"Durrill has done that which is no longer expected, skillfully combining the strengths of the best new social history with some quantitative analysis and excellent political and military narrative....War of Another Kind sets a high standard for future scholars."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Durrill's superb study...is a major contribution."--Science & Society
"A finely crafted work....Coherent and compelling....Makes a significant contribution to understanding transition within agrarian societies [and] has importance both as a case study that suggests directions for future scholarship on Southern agriculture, and for comparative analysis of the demise of plantation society in the Americas."--Journal of Peasant Studies
"Durrill's highly readable, provocative book will stimulate further inquiry into the war's internal effects, and for that reason, he is to be congratulated."--Civil War History

Product Description

In this book Durrill describes in graphic detail the disintegration, during the Civil War, of Southern plantation society in a North Carolina coastal county. He details struggles among planters, slaves, yeoman farmers, and landless white laborers, as well as a guerrilla war and a clash between two armies that, in the end, destroyed all that remained of the county's social structure. He examines the failure of a planter-yeoman alliance, and discusses how yeoman farmers and landless white laborers allied themselves against planters, but to no avail. He also shows how slaves, when refugeed upcountry, tried unsuccessfully to reestablish their prerogatives--a subsistence, as well as protection from violence--owed them as a minimal condition of their servitude.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Trade edition (April 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195089235
• ISBN-13: 978-0195089233
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,203,571 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An observation of economic division in the South, 1861-1865., March 10, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Creswell, North Carolina) - See all my reviews

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real eye opener., July 2, 2001

By	Roger L. Pelletier (Oak Island, NC United States) - See all my reviews

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.

3.0 out of 5 stars Civil War at a regional level, September 18, 2009

By	M. Bailey "Wonderful Life" (Newport News VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.