Confederate Georgia

Confederate Georgia PDF Author: Thomas Conn Bryan
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
Published in 1953, Confederate Georgia describes life in Georgia during the Civil War. T. Conn Bryan presents the political, military, economic, and social aspects of life, including secession, preparations for war, industry and transportation, wartime finance, desertion and disloyalty, women in the conflict, social life and diversions, the press and literary pursuits, education, and religion. Although Georgia's relations with the Confederate government are fully treated, the main emphasis is on activities within the state. Numerous quotations from letters, diaries, and other source materials give a personalized view of the war and capture the spirit of the times.

Confederate Georgia

Confederate Georgia PDF Author: Thomas Conn Bryan
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
Published in 1953, Confederate Georgia describes life in Georgia during the Civil War. T. Conn Bryan presents the political, military, economic, and social aspects of life, including secession, preparations for war, industry and transportation, wartime finance, desertion and disloyalty, women in the conflict, social life and diversions, the press and literary pursuits, education, and religion. Although Georgia's relations with the Confederate government are fully treated, the main emphasis is on activities within the state. Numerous quotations from letters, diaries, and other source materials give a personalized view of the war and capture the spirit of the times.

The Civil War in Georgia

The Civil War in Georgia PDF Author: John C. Inscoe
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082034138X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A project of the New Georgia Encyclopedia"

Baptized in Blood

Baptized in Blood PDF Author: Charles Reagan Wilson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820306819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.

Civil War Macon

Civil War Macon PDF Author: Richard William Iobst
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780881461725
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Macon was a business community dedicated to supplying the needs of its citizens, of the cotton planters who grew the short-staple upland cotton, the principal foundation of wealth for the antebellum South. This book offers an encyclopedic history of Macon, Georgia, during the Civil War.

Berry Benson's Civil War Book

Berry Benson's Civil War Book PDF Author: Berry Benson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820342254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
Confederate scout and sharpshooter Berry Greenwood Benson witnessed the first shot fired on Fort Sumter, retreated with Lee's Army to its surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, and missed little of the action in between. This memoir of his service is a remarkable narrative, filled with the minutiae of the soldier's life and paced by a continual succession of battlefield anecdotes. Three main stories emerge from Benson's account: his reconnaissance exploits, his experiences in battle, and his escape from prison. Though not yet eighteen years old when he left his home in Augusta, Georgia, to join the army, Benson was soon singled out for the abilities that would serve him well as a scout. Not only was he a crack shot, a natural leader, and a fierce Southern partisan, but he had a kind of restless energy and curiosity, loved to take risks, and was an instant and infallible judge of human nature. His recollections of scouting take readers within arm's reach of Union trenches and encampments. Benson recalls that while eavesdropping he never failed to be shocked by the Yankees' foul language; he had never heard that kind of talk in a Confederate camp! Benson's descriptions of the many battles in which he fought--including Cold Harbor, The Seven Days, Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg--convey the desperation of a full frontal charge and the blind panic of a disorganized retreat. Yet in these accounts, Benson's own demeanor under fire is manifest in the coolly measured tone he employs. A natural writer, Benson captures the dark absurdities of war in such descriptions as those of hardened veterans delighting in the new shoes and other equipment they found on corpse-littered battlefields. His clothing often torn by bullets, Benson was also badly bruised a number of times by spent rounds. At one point, in May 1863, he was wounded seriously enough in the leg to be hospitalized, but he returned to the field before full recuperation. Benson was captured behind enemy lines in May 1864 while on a scouting mission for General Lee. Confined to Point Lookout Prison in Maryland, he escaped after only two days and swam the Potomac to get back into Virginia. Recaptured near Washington, D.C., he was briefly held in Old Capitol Prison, then sent to Elmira Prison in New York. There he joined a group of ten men who made the only successful tunnel escape in Elmira's history. After nearly six months in captivity or on the run, he rejoined his unit in Virginia. Even at Appomattox, Benson refused to surrender but stole off with his brother to North Carolina, where they planned to join General Johnston. Finding the roads choked with Union forces and surrendered Confederates, the brothers ultimately bore their unsurrendered rifles home to Augusta. Berry Benson first wrote his memoirs for his family and friends. Completed in 1878, they drew on his--and partially on his brother's--wartime diaries, as well as on letters that both brothers had written to family members during the war. The memoirs were first published in book form in 1962 but have long been unavailable. This edition, with a new foreword by the noted Civil War historian Herman Hattaway, will introduce this compelling story to a new generation of readers.

Johnny Cobb

Johnny Cobb PDF Author: Horace Montgomery
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820335460
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1964, Horace Montgomery's study of the life and career of Johnny Cobb, focuses on his experiences during the Civil War, his romantic relationship with fellow aristocrat Lucy Barrow, and his position after leaving the army as head of the numerous Cobb plantations. Barrow and Cobb corresponded frequently and candidly about their hopes and fears as they experienced the antebellum south's drastic changes during and after the Civil War. Horace Montgomery uses these letters to reveal a personalized and detailed portrait of a Confederate aristocratic family, including their performances in battle, their responses to tragic news from the war, and ultimately their struggle to remain prosperous despite their eventual downfall.

The Confederate Congress

The Confederate Congress PDF Author: Wilfred Buck Yearns
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Study of the Confederate Congress and its relation to the Davis administration and the war effort.

Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War

Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War PDF Author: David Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813025704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A significant voice in a significant debate . . . full of marvelous quotes."--William W. Freehling, University of Kentucky "Shows clearly that the Solid South was not solid at all [and] demonstrates that the war encompassed much more than military strategy and tactics . . . it was fought at home as well as on the battlefield."--Wayne K. Durrill, University of Cincinnati This compelling and engaging book sheds new light on how planter self-interest, government indifference, and the very nature of southern society produced a rising tide of dissent and disaffection among Georgia's plain folk during the Civil War. The authors make extensive use of local newspapers, court records, manuscript collections, and other firsthand accounts to tell a story of latent class resentment that emerged full force under wartime pressures and undermined southern support for the Confederacy. More directly than any previous historians, the authors make clear the connections between the causes of class resentment and their impact. Planters produced far too much cotton and avoided the draft at will. Speculators hoarded scarce goods and brought on spiraling inflation. Government officials turned a blind eye to the infractions of the rich, and were often bribed to do so. Women left to go hungry took matters into their own hands, stealing livestock in rural areas and rioting for food in every major city in Georgia. The hardships of families back home weighed heavily on soldiers in the field, contributing to rampant desertion. Deserters banded together, sometimes with draft dodgers and blacks escaping enslavement, to defend themselves or to go on the offensive against Confederate authorities. Some whites even planned and participated in slave resistance, a joining of forces that previous historians have long dismissed as highly improbable. So violent did Georgia's inner civil war become that one resident commented, "We are fighting each other harder than we ever fought the enemy." This work stresses more forcefully than any before it that plain folk in the Deep South were far from united behind the Confederate war effort. That lack of unity, brought on largely by class resentment, helped to ensure that the Confederacy's cause would, in the end, be lost. David Williams is professor and acting chair of the Department of History at Valdosta State University.

Never Surrender

Never Surrender PDF Author: W. Scott Poole
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820325071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
Near Appomattox, during a cease-fire in the final hours of the Civil War, Confederate general Martin R. Gary harangued his troops to stand fast and not lay down their arms. Stinging the soldiers' home-state pride, Gary reminded them that "South Carolinians never surrender." By focusing on a reactionary hotbed within a notably conservative state--South Carolina's hilly western "upcountry"--W. Scott Poole chronicles the rise of a post-Civil War southern culture of defiance whose vestiges are still among us. The society of the rustic antebellum upcountry, Poole writes, clung to a set of values that emphasized white supremacy, economic independence, masculine honor, evangelical religion, and a rejection of modernity. In response to the Civil War and its aftermath, this amorphous tradition cohered into the Lost Cause myth, by which southerners claimed moral victory despite military defeat. It was a force that would undermine Reconstruction and, as Poole shows in chapters on religion, gender, and politics, weave its way into nearly every dimension of white southern life. The Lost Cause's shadow still looms over the South, Poole argues, in contemporary controversies such as those over the display of the Confederate flag. Never Surrender brings new clarity to the intellectual history of southern conservatism and the South's collective memory of the Civil War.

Rich Man's War

Rich Man's War PDF Author: David Williams
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820340790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Rich Man's War historian David Williams focuses on the Civil War experience of people in the Chattahoochee River Valley of Georgia and Alabama to illustrate how the exploitation of enslaved blacks and poor whites by a planter oligarchy generated overwhelming class conflict across the South, eventually leading to Confederate defeat. This conflict was so clearly highlighted by the perception that the Civil War was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight" that growing numbers of oppressed whites and blacks openly rebelled against Confederate authority, undermining the fight for independence. After the war, however, the upper classes encouraged enmity between freedpeople and poor whites to prevent a class revolution. Trapped by racism and poverty, the poor remained in virtual economic slavery, still dominated by an almost unchanged planter elite. The publication of this book was supported by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission.