Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. This fast-paced book will be a revelation even to professional historians. Pulling together the latest scholarship with his own research, Williams (A People's History of the Civil War), a professor of history at Valdosta State University, puts an end to any lingering claim that the Confederacy was united in favor of secession during the Civil War. His astonishing story details the deep, often murderous divisions in Southern society. Southerners took up arms against each other, engaged in massacres, guerrilla warfare, vigilante justice and lynchings, and deserted in droves from the Confederate army (300,000 men joined the Union forces). Unionist politicians never stopped battling secessionism. Some counties and regions even seceded from the secessionists. Poor whites resented the large slave owners, who had engineered the war but were exempt from the draft. Not surprisingly, slaves fought slaveholders for their freedom and aided the Union cause. So did women and Indians. Williams's long overdue work makes indelibly clear that Southerners themselves played a major role in doing in the secessionist South. With this book, the history of the Civil War will never be the same again. Illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
There was not one civil war between 1861 and 1865 but many--so many that if the South were to rise again, it would do so on only one leg. "Secession," writes Williams (History/Valdosta State Univ.; A People's History of the Civil War, 2005, etc.), "divided families all across the slave states. It pitted fathers against sons, siblings against each other, and even wives against husbands." It divided communities as well. Whole counties in Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Virginia refused to leave the Union and seceded from the secession; homegrown unionist militias fought guerrilla wars against the Confederacy throughout the South; and as much as a quarter of the Union Army were Southern boys. Small wonder that one Atlanta newspaper opined early in the war, "If we are defeated, it will be by the people at home." As the war went on, the tide of sentiment turned against rebellion, as civilians starved and farmers had their crops and livestock requisitioned out from under them. By Williams's Marxist-tinged account, the Confederacy brought this upon itself, for it was a stringently class-conscious society organized for the economic and political benefit of the rich and visibly against the poor. The poor suffered disproportionately, but they did not rise up en masse, even though plenty of those poor folk worked quietly against the government. And not just the poor, as Williams observes. African-Americans resisted the Confederacy, too. Similarly, many Native Americans within the bounds of the South packed up and moved rather than take up arms against the Union; the band led by Opothleyahola, a Creek chief, petitioned Lincoln to protect them and, upon receiving no reply, relocated to Kansas, attacked by pro-Southern Indians as they traveled. These acts of struggle within the Civil War are too little documented within standard textbooks, and Williams does a good job with this book, though some historians may question his close focus on class analysis. Of interest to students of the Civil War, and certain to provoke discussion in the professional journals. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Williams marshals abundant evidence to demonstrate that the Confederacy also lost an internal civil war during 1861-65. Slaveholding planters had pushed secession against the wishes of the nonslaveholding majority of white Southerners, who were profoundly skeptical of slavery. Most Southerners looked on the conflict with the North as a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, especially because owners of 20 or more slaves and all planters and public officials were exempt from military service. The planters' continued raising of cotton and tobacco rather than food for the army; a military draft from 1862 on; skyrocketing taxes; the confiscation of nonplanters' goods for the army all these and more reinforced the class-based perception of the war. From the outset, desertion from the army was constant, and because deserters were savagely hunted, a new underground railroad arose, bringing deserters north, often to join the ranks of the half-million Union soldiers from the South. The Confederacy lost, it seems, because it was precisely the kind of house divided against itself that Lincoln famously said could not stand. This firm repudiation of the myth of the solid Confederate South is absolutely essential Civil War reading.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2008 Booklist
Choice Review
Civil War historians frequently fall into two opposing camps when explaining the failure of the Lost Cause--one stressing the Union advantages, the other the South's divisions. Williams (Valdosta State Univ.) takes the latter view and argues that the Lost Cause was lost before it even began. To make his case, he documents internal opposition to the Confederacy by many different kinds of Southerners. Wealthy planters excused themselves from the draft and grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Poor whites scornfully called the conflict a "rich man's war" and rioted in the streets. Others in the mountains of the South formed armed anti-Confederate bands. Factions of Southern Indians defied their tribes' alliances with the Confederacy and vigorously opposed rebel authority. Southern blacks also resisted in increasingly overt ways and escaped by the thousands. The author argues that the South was, in fact, fighting two violent civil wars--an external one and an internal one. In his view, the inner civil war was fueled by the poor's deep resentment of the rich, which would tear Dixie apart and ultimately bring about the downfall of the Confederacy. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. E. M. Thomas Gordon College