Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South

"This is such an original book. It offers a fresh perspective on the Confederacy by looking beyond the elected representatives and other traditional foci of political history. Stephanie points out that there were 12 million individuals in the Confederate States and only 2 million of them were consulted about secession, through elections or representation. Another 10 million Southerners, including women and enslaved people, were not consulted. In the war on the horizon, the South was overmatched, in resources and population, so it needed to mobilize its entire population. Women and enslaved people, who had never before been offered any participatory role in society, had leverage because their labor and loyalty were essential to the Confederate cause. Stephanie points out that white women, defining themselves as ‘soldiers’ wives,’ asserted claims on the state, the right to be consulted and provided help in feeding their families. Similarly, the enslaved population was able to assert more power over their lives because their labor was more necessary than ever. So, the Confederate South compromised some of the assumptions about female dependence and black suppression, which had been defining principles before the war. The book is done brilliantly, with extensive research and insight into the experiences of these two populations. When I taught this book in a spring seminar, the students felt these stories opened a new window into Civil War. In many ways, the Confederacy was a last gasp, an effort to sustain an institution that was eroding in the rest of the world. But it was a last gasp effort infused with confidence. Clearly, many Southerners believed that their ‘way of life’ could be sustained if they seceded."