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The Confederate Experience Reader: Selected Documents and Essays
The Confederate Experience Reader provides students and professors with the essential materials needed to understand and appreciate the major issues confronting the Southern Republic's brief existence during the American Civil War. This anthology covers the full history of the Confederate experience including the origins of the antebellum South, the rise of southern nationalism, the 1860 election and the subsequent Secession Crisis, the military conflict, and Reconstruction. Drawing from a full range of primary writings that describe the experience of living in the Southern Republic in vivid detail, as well as a careful selection of secondary works by prominent scholars in the field of confederate history, The Confederate Experience Reader allows students to situate the Confederate experience within the larger context of Southern and American history.
- GenresHistory
540 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2007
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August 29, 2017
Although intended for use as a university textbook, this hefty collection has plenty to offer the interested layman.
The book is organized by topic: "The Secession Crisis", "The African American Experience", "Why did the Confederacy Fail?", "Reconstructing the South", and so on. Each of these sections consists of a small selection of primary source documents, followed by a pair of essays/book extracts by modern historians, usually reflecting differing viewpoints on the particular subject under examination.
Given the scope and difficulty of the undertaking, Fowler has done very well, and I recommend his book without hesitation.
Inevitably, there are some shortcomings. I frequently found myself wishing that the sections for primary source materials were larger: for instance, I would rather have skimped elsewhere and gotten the whole Confederate constitution, or at least all of the sections which differ from its 1787 model, rather than a couple of brief extracts.
Most of the contributions by modern historians are good. Some of these writers, inevitably, are members of the "neo-abolitonist" or "neo-radical" school which has come to dominate the field in recent decades, but few get carried away by ideology.
For instance, Randall C. Jimerson, writing on slave loyalty, reflects modern attitudes without sacrificing objectivity (unfortunately, the accompanying piece by Thavolia Glymph is poor). And James M. McPherson, dean of the neo-abolitionists, incisively critiques colleagues who claim low morale, internal dissent, or lack of will were responsible for Confederate defeat, the outcome of the war having actually been the product of the North's superior systems of supply and its "overall strategic genius" (by which he means the "ruthless determination" to wage "total war").
Other particularly noteworthy contributions include Edmund S. Morgan's essay on the role of slavery in the development of Colonial democracy, and Philip Burnham's "The Andersonvilles of the North", on the treatment of prisoners of war in the North, a revelatory survey of a largely unexplored subject. Gardiner H. Shattuck, on religious revivalism in the Confederate army, is completely fascinating.
George Rable weighs in on the recent obsession with Confederate morale, sensibly pointing out that existing evidence is too meagre to justify generalizing about it, and that such evidence as does exist undermines the widespread notion that morale collapsed in 1865.
There are no less than three contributions from Gary W. Gallagher, who never fails to interest. One of these, on Jubal Early and the creation of the "Lost Cause", is especially illuminating.
In my opinion, the weakest part of the book is the section on "Confederate Women". Not only do both essays heavy-handedly impose modern sensibilities on the past, they are too similar in tone and attitude. One would have been sufficient, and it should have been balanced with a piece reflecting a different point of view; perhaps something by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.
The book's final topic is "Remembering the War", and both the primary source selections (mostly news articles) and the essay by Edward T. Lilenthal (of the National Park Service) are pleasant reminders of a time, only a few years back, when mainstream debate about Confederate monuments was rational and informed.
A complete list of the book's contents is available on the Routledge website.
The book is organized by topic: "The Secession Crisis", "The African American Experience", "Why did the Confederacy Fail?", "Reconstructing the South", and so on. Each of these sections consists of a small selection of primary source documents, followed by a pair of essays/book extracts by modern historians, usually reflecting differing viewpoints on the particular subject under examination.
Given the scope and difficulty of the undertaking, Fowler has done very well, and I recommend his book without hesitation.
Inevitably, there are some shortcomings. I frequently found myself wishing that the sections for primary source materials were larger: for instance, I would rather have skimped elsewhere and gotten the whole Confederate constitution, or at least all of the sections which differ from its 1787 model, rather than a couple of brief extracts.
Most of the contributions by modern historians are good. Some of these writers, inevitably, are members of the "neo-abolitonist" or "neo-radical" school which has come to dominate the field in recent decades, but few get carried away by ideology.
For instance, Randall C. Jimerson, writing on slave loyalty, reflects modern attitudes without sacrificing objectivity (unfortunately, the accompanying piece by Thavolia Glymph is poor). And James M. McPherson, dean of the neo-abolitionists, incisively critiques colleagues who claim low morale, internal dissent, or lack of will were responsible for Confederate defeat, the outcome of the war having actually been the product of the North's superior systems of supply and its "overall strategic genius" (by which he means the "ruthless determination" to wage "total war").
Other particularly noteworthy contributions include Edmund S. Morgan's essay on the role of slavery in the development of Colonial democracy, and Philip Burnham's "The Andersonvilles of the North", on the treatment of prisoners of war in the North, a revelatory survey of a largely unexplored subject. Gardiner H. Shattuck, on religious revivalism in the Confederate army, is completely fascinating.
George Rable weighs in on the recent obsession with Confederate morale, sensibly pointing out that existing evidence is too meagre to justify generalizing about it, and that such evidence as does exist undermines the widespread notion that morale collapsed in 1865.
There are no less than three contributions from Gary W. Gallagher, who never fails to interest. One of these, on Jubal Early and the creation of the "Lost Cause", is especially illuminating.
In my opinion, the weakest part of the book is the section on "Confederate Women". Not only do both essays heavy-handedly impose modern sensibilities on the past, they are too similar in tone and attitude. One would have been sufficient, and it should have been balanced with a piece reflecting a different point of view; perhaps something by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.
The book's final topic is "Remembering the War", and both the primary source selections (mostly news articles) and the essay by Edward T. Lilenthal (of the National Park Service) are pleasant reminders of a time, only a few years back, when mainstream debate about Confederate monuments was rational and informed.
A complete list of the book's contents is available on the Routledge website.
Displaying 1 of 1 review