Virginia's Private War
Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:17th Dec '98
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£35.99(9780195140477)
William Blair's Virginia's Private War is a close study of the home front in the Confederacy and a significant contribution to our understanding of the Confederate defeat. Blair challenges and effectively overturns the dominant assumption that internal stresses and conflicts, particularly along lines of class and race, undermined the Confederacy. Rather, he shows that for most of the South the centripetal forces of Confederate nationalism and defence of home and hearth against an invading enemy were more powerful. Internal problems, including dissent, wracked the state of Virginia, yet these private wars actually helped prolong the conflict as they forced authorities to turn the war into more of a rich man's fight.
Blair has significantly advanced our understanding of the Confederate experience * Reviews in American History 27 (1999) *
William Blair's contribution to the long-running debate is well-researched, lucidly written, and persuasive * Reviews in American History 27 (1999) *
Blair has written a sound, solid, and scholarly work that well merits the attention it undoubtedly will receive * The Historian (Autumn 2000) *
"Bill Blair has made an important addition to the growing literature on the home front in the Civil War, which adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of that conflict. He demonstrates that, whatever their opinion of the Confederate governemnt and its measures, most Virginians remained loyal to the cause of Southern independence to the bitter end. Instead of sapping the will to win, as some scholars have maintained, white civilians helped to sustain army morale. In Virginia the Confederate cuase did not collapse internally; it was crushed externally by a determined enemy."-- James McPherson Princeton University
ISBN: 9780195118643
Dimensions: 211mm x 147mm x 25mm
Weight: 408g
216 pages