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The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
Why did the Confederacy lose the Civil War? Most historians point to the larger number of Union troops, for example, or the North's greater industrial might. Now, in The South Vs. the South , one of America's leading authorities on the Civil War era offers an entirely new answer to this question.
William Freehling argues that anti-Confederate Southerners--specifically, border state whites and southern blacks--helped cost the Confederacy the war. White men in such border states as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, Freehling points out, were divided in their loyalties--but far more joined the Union army (or simply stayed home) than marched off in Confederate gray. If they had enlisted as rebel troops in the same proportion as white men did farther south, their numbers would have offset all the Confederate casualties during four years of war. In addition, when those states stayed loyal, the vast majority of the South's urban population and industrial capacity remained in Union hands. And many forget, Freehling writes, that the slaves' own decisions led to a series of white decisions (culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation) that turned federal forces into an army of liberation, depriving the South of labor and adding essential troops to the blue ranks.
Whether revising our conception of slavery or of Abraham Lincoln, or establishing the antecedents of Martin Luther King, or analyzing Union military strategy, or uncovering new meanings in what is arguably America's greatest piece of sculpture, Augustus St.-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial , Freehling writes with piercing insight and rhetorical verve. Concise and provocative, The South Vs. the South will forever change the way we view the Civil War.
William Freehling argues that anti-Confederate Southerners--specifically, border state whites and southern blacks--helped cost the Confederacy the war. White men in such border states as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, Freehling points out, were divided in their loyalties--but far more joined the Union army (or simply stayed home) than marched off in Confederate gray. If they had enlisted as rebel troops in the same proportion as white men did farther south, their numbers would have offset all the Confederate casualties during four years of war. In addition, when those states stayed loyal, the vast majority of the South's urban population and industrial capacity remained in Union hands. And many forget, Freehling writes, that the slaves' own decisions led to a series of white decisions (culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation) that turned federal forces into an army of liberation, depriving the South of labor and adding essential troops to the blue ranks.
Whether revising our conception of slavery or of Abraham Lincoln, or establishing the antecedents of Martin Luther King, or analyzing Union military strategy, or uncovering new meanings in what is arguably America's greatest piece of sculpture, Augustus St.-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial , Freehling writes with piercing insight and rhetorical verve. Concise and provocative, The South Vs. the South will forever change the way we view the Civil War.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
William W. Freehling
19 books19 followersWilliam W. Freehling is Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 9, 2009
This is a very interesting and well-reasoned book that looks at the role Southerners played in the Union's victory in the Civil War. The author concentrates on "border state whites," his term for white folks who lived in the Union slave states that bordered the South, such as Kentucky and Maryland. Citizens in those states overwhelmingly chose to serve in the Union army rather than the Confederate army. Those who stayed out of the war proved resistant to Confederate efforts to "revolutionize" their states and rise up against the Union. This added to the Union's already heavy advantage in manpower, not to mention manufacturing, including Baltimore's rail yards.
The author then looks at "anti-Confederate blacks," essentially slaves. Everywhere the Union army went, slaves felt bold enough to risk escape and flee to the nearest bluecoat army. This created massive pressure on a cautious Lincoln to do something about them. This exodus of slaves caused massive damage to the South.
My only complaint is that the book could have been written better. Some passages were a bit obtuse and unclear, and required a second and sometimes third read. But it's worth the effort.
The author then looks at "anti-Confederate blacks," essentially slaves. Everywhere the Union army went, slaves felt bold enough to risk escape and flee to the nearest bluecoat army. This created massive pressure on a cautious Lincoln to do something about them. This exodus of slaves caused massive damage to the South.
My only complaint is that the book could have been written better. Some passages were a bit obtuse and unclear, and required a second and sometimes third read. But it's worth the effort.
May 23, 2013
Freehling’s work largely functions by pointing out the divisions within the South as a whole over the issue of secession and tracing how those divisions conditioned the course of the Civil War. Non-Confederate southerners as Freehling terms them, mainly divide into two catagories: border state whites in Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland who did not support secession, and southern blacks. The political inclinations of the white citizens of border states gave the Union a massive advantage at the outset of the conflict. Union forces did not have to fight their way through the difficult terrain to the south of the Ohio River, nor negotiate the difficulties of an encircled national capital in Washington D.C. Instead, it gained access to the most industrialized areas within the South, including expertise in steamship construction and railroad repair which would prove vital to the war effort of invading armies. Most crucially they yielded manpower resources which would prove crucial to Northern victory, ensuring that Union losses could be replaced, and that the politically difficult project of military recruitment as the war dragged on fell less heavily on Northern states than it might have done. The price for these advantages was the cautious and conservative line toward the prosecution of the war which Lincoln adopted from the spring of 1861 through the summer of 1862. By allowing the secessionists to appear as the antagonists who instigated the war and resisting early calls for emancipation Lincoln was able to bring along the leadership of the northernmost slave states until their support of the Union became firmer in the course of the war.
Freehling’s second main class of southern anti-Confederates, black southerners, made Lincoln’s conciliation of border state whites difficult in the first half of the war. Escaped slaves who sought Union lines created political and legal problems for northern generals, who were compelled by Lincoln’s conservative approach to continue to treat them as a form of property. By the prospect of useful labor runaway slaves offered, by the sympathy they induced in northern companies who disobeyed orders not to admit them to the lines, by the labor which each runaway denied the Confederacy, black southerners pushed Lincoln toward a war of abolition, whether he would or no. Behind Confederate lines, the decision to flee without violence rather than launch an uprising which would have terrified whites in the North and Europe was vital in maintaining political support for the Union. Most importantly however was the capacity for black southerners to serve as soldiers. Like border state whites they lessened the burden of the war on the North. Unlike border state whites, arming southern blacks by the tens and hundreds of thousands made emancipation concrete and irreversible, dispelled racial myths, and ultimately shifted political attitudes in favor of black citizenship.
Freehling’s second main class of southern anti-Confederates, black southerners, made Lincoln’s conciliation of border state whites difficult in the first half of the war. Escaped slaves who sought Union lines created political and legal problems for northern generals, who were compelled by Lincoln’s conservative approach to continue to treat them as a form of property. By the prospect of useful labor runaway slaves offered, by the sympathy they induced in northern companies who disobeyed orders not to admit them to the lines, by the labor which each runaway denied the Confederacy, black southerners pushed Lincoln toward a war of abolition, whether he would or no. Behind Confederate lines, the decision to flee without violence rather than launch an uprising which would have terrified whites in the North and Europe was vital in maintaining political support for the Union. Most importantly however was the capacity for black southerners to serve as soldiers. Like border state whites they lessened the burden of the war on the North. Unlike border state whites, arming southern blacks by the tens and hundreds of thousands made emancipation concrete and irreversible, dispelled racial myths, and ultimately shifted political attitudes in favor of black citizenship.
January 30, 2016
The South vs the South is disappointing if well put together; it is largely focused on the role of slaves during the war, covering the politics of emancipation splendidly. There is almost nothing said of the effects of dissent and rebellion by white farmers against the Confederacy, nor any serious treatment given to southern deserters; aside from slavery, in fact, the only southerners who get a lot of attention are those in the border states, whose apathy is the principle subject. That said, for a work on the politics of emancipation this is superb; it just isn't quite "The South" vs the South.
Related works:
David Williams, Bitterly Divided and A People's History of the Civil War
David Downing, A South Divided
The Free State of Jones
Lincoln's Loyalists
Related works:
David Williams, Bitterly Divided and A People's History of the Civil War
David Downing, A South Divided
The Free State of Jones
Lincoln's Loyalists
October 6, 2009
The come-on in the dust jacket was hyperbole given that the content was merely pedestrian. And the case was not compelling: the case studies did not convince me that interior resistance was especially potent.
December 5, 2013
This is one of the best books on the war. Freehling's argument is that the South lost because it failed to gain the allegiance of the border states and then lost the loyalty of enough whites and slaves that it gave the Union a vital manpower boost. Freehling is a superb writer who makes his case but rarely overstates it.
December 12, 2011
This book was good because it was short. It didn't repeat itself over and over making the same point, but it was concise and an easy read for an academic-type book.
June 12, 2022
My first experience with Freehling came about 15 years ago when I read his two-volume saga about the antebellum South. The Road to Disunion, Vols. 1 and 2 are a tour de force of historical scholarship.
"The South vs. the South" is a less ambitious, but no less important, contribution to our understanding of the South and why it lost the Civil War. Or I should say, why the states that would become the Confederacy lost the Civil War. For there was no one South. Southerners were not unified behind the secessionist cause: 450,000 (!) white and black soldiers from the slaveholding states fought for the Union. Read that again. Those numbers were enough to compensate for every Union casualty and made possible the massive Union encirclement of Lee's army.
The Confederacy received comparatively scant outside help, as relatively few border (Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland) whites fought for Dixie. Virtually no Northerners traveled South to take up arms against the Union. No Northern states seceded. Four Southern states remained in the Union.
Aside from the numbers, geography and industry were also critical. Baltimore was essential for the health of Union railroads. Missouri and Kentucky were the gateways to the Confederacy and command of the Mississippi River.
Freehling's writing sparkles with his witticisms, but it make take the unaccustomed some time to catch on. Even I felt like I was on foot chasing a bicycle for a few chapters before I could catch up and go for the ride. Once you catch the Freehling rhythm, the pages turn.
This book is a synthesis of military and political history. Freehling argues that the North's effective use of its numerical and geographical advantages hastened the end of the Civil War. Those advantages did not make Northern victory inevitable -- Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman still had to do their thing. Blacks had to flee slavery, which they did in enormous numbers once a Union army drew close, to force the politicians and the generals to craft the right policies, to overcome their reluctance to arm black men instead of sending the refugees (escaping slaves) back to their masters.
It is impossible to explain the military without the political and vice versa. For if you are seeking a Lincoln to satisfy your moral outrage at slavery, go elsewhere -- because you do not understand politics. If you are interested in finding the master politician, moving cautiously to keep the border states in the Union, then you will find that Lincoln in these pages.
Still, as Freehling concedes, Lincoln continued to misjudge Southern unionism among Confederates (not Southern unionists) well into the war. This "soft war" approach of gently nudging the secessionists back into the Union with their slaves, failed in 1861 and 1862 as the corpses piled up. Yet once Old Abe finally put his foot down on Jan. 1, 1863, there was no going back to soft war. Hard war to restore the Union would destroy slavery in the process -- out of military necessity. Emancipation would be the rule, not the exception, wherever the Union army crossed into rebel territory. Black soldiers would be welcomed out of military necessity and they would fight in 41 major battles and hundreds of skirmishes.
Although I have some knowledge of the military aspects of the Civil War, this book opened my eyes to the decisive weight of anti-Confederate Southerners to the Union cause. Fascinating, yet depressing: the Civil War remains nothing to celebrate. This war of attrition led to appalling casualties. At Cold Harbor, Grant ordered a series of charges that saw 8,000 of his men felled in eight minutes. Such losses would whittle away that numerical advantage, indeed.
My only bone to pick with Freehling is that he makes no mention of the racial equalitarians who led the Radical Republicans in Congress by the end of the war and who tried to create a more equal Union during Reconstruction. Yes, some Republicans and most Democrats were interested in advancing only a white man's republic free from minoritarian tyranny. Emancipation, in their eyes, could go no further than that.
But those Northern racists did not speak for everyone. The white authors of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, while not morally pure by our standards today, did indeed envision a republic of racial and political equality. They did not fail; their countrymen failed them.
"The South vs. the South" is a less ambitious, but no less important, contribution to our understanding of the South and why it lost the Civil War. Or I should say, why the states that would become the Confederacy lost the Civil War. For there was no one South. Southerners were not unified behind the secessionist cause: 450,000 (!) white and black soldiers from the slaveholding states fought for the Union. Read that again. Those numbers were enough to compensate for every Union casualty and made possible the massive Union encirclement of Lee's army.
The Confederacy received comparatively scant outside help, as relatively few border (Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland) whites fought for Dixie. Virtually no Northerners traveled South to take up arms against the Union. No Northern states seceded. Four Southern states remained in the Union.
Aside from the numbers, geography and industry were also critical. Baltimore was essential for the health of Union railroads. Missouri and Kentucky were the gateways to the Confederacy and command of the Mississippi River.
Freehling's writing sparkles with his witticisms, but it make take the unaccustomed some time to catch on. Even I felt like I was on foot chasing a bicycle for a few chapters before I could catch up and go for the ride. Once you catch the Freehling rhythm, the pages turn.
This book is a synthesis of military and political history. Freehling argues that the North's effective use of its numerical and geographical advantages hastened the end of the Civil War. Those advantages did not make Northern victory inevitable -- Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman still had to do their thing. Blacks had to flee slavery, which they did in enormous numbers once a Union army drew close, to force the politicians and the generals to craft the right policies, to overcome their reluctance to arm black men instead of sending the refugees (escaping slaves) back to their masters.
It is impossible to explain the military without the political and vice versa. For if you are seeking a Lincoln to satisfy your moral outrage at slavery, go elsewhere -- because you do not understand politics. If you are interested in finding the master politician, moving cautiously to keep the border states in the Union, then you will find that Lincoln in these pages.
Still, as Freehling concedes, Lincoln continued to misjudge Southern unionism among Confederates (not Southern unionists) well into the war. This "soft war" approach of gently nudging the secessionists back into the Union with their slaves, failed in 1861 and 1862 as the corpses piled up. Yet once Old Abe finally put his foot down on Jan. 1, 1863, there was no going back to soft war. Hard war to restore the Union would destroy slavery in the process -- out of military necessity. Emancipation would be the rule, not the exception, wherever the Union army crossed into rebel territory. Black soldiers would be welcomed out of military necessity and they would fight in 41 major battles and hundreds of skirmishes.
Although I have some knowledge of the military aspects of the Civil War, this book opened my eyes to the decisive weight of anti-Confederate Southerners to the Union cause. Fascinating, yet depressing: the Civil War remains nothing to celebrate. This war of attrition led to appalling casualties. At Cold Harbor, Grant ordered a series of charges that saw 8,000 of his men felled in eight minutes. Such losses would whittle away that numerical advantage, indeed.
My only bone to pick with Freehling is that he makes no mention of the racial equalitarians who led the Radical Republicans in Congress by the end of the war and who tried to create a more equal Union during Reconstruction. Yes, some Republicans and most Democrats were interested in advancing only a white man's republic free from minoritarian tyranny. Emancipation, in their eyes, could go no further than that.
But those Northern racists did not speak for everyone. The white authors of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, while not morally pure by our standards today, did indeed envision a republic of racial and political equality. They did not fail; their countrymen failed them.
October 31, 2019
This is a fantastic concept in an otherwise dull field, but unfortunately the author veers right into the tropes of civil war writing. Much of this book is mulling over the thoughts and feelings of Lincoln and the generals. The third of the book dedicated to "black anti-confederates" is especially disappointing. Freehling seeks a middle-ground between the Lincoln the Emancipator narrative and the Slaves Freed Themselves story. He calls this Cooperation, but still tells a strong-man history of Lincoln while reducing blacks and slaves to the role of doing what Lincoln hoped they'd do—reducing their agency. In fact, we don't get the names or narratives of any specific black southerns and the author constantly attempts to make "black people did X" points, reducing them to a monolith of predictable behavior. Instead we get accounts of what white people thought about black people. True, he details various battles with black regiments, and how they often made better soldiers than whites in spite of meager training, support, or respect for their lives. But he also qualifies that the only useful resistance slaves did was non-violently run away. Hell, he compares this Cooperation narrative—the necessarily union of blacks and whites to create change—to the civil rights movement. The analogy falls totally flat, unless you believe black people were predictably following the strategizing of Lyndon Johnson.
August 8, 2023
When I saw the 'Free State of Jones' movie, I wondered immediately, was this the only one? This book answers the question: No, not by a long shot. It explains how the Confederacy, from day one, found opposition from half its population. We probably know about slave opposition. But here we learn about all the 'uphill' and 'piney woods' sections of the South, unsuitable for cotton and hence few slaves, where hardscrabble white had their counties 'secede for the secession' and side with the union. If not speaking for entire counties, they waged an ongoing guerrilla war aiding deserters flying the flag of 'rich man's war, poor man's fight. Not all these were pro-black, but several were and worked with escaped slaves. Today the book is a rebuttal to those claiming to teach about slavery and Black history might make white kids 'feel guity.' Not if it's done right. White kids can find white anti-slavocracy heroes aplenty if the teacher digs deep. (There's nothing wrong, either, with our majority nationality feeling some shame or guilt about our past. Such emotions can be an awakening to new solidarity with all the exploited and oppressed. --CarlD, OUL
July 7, 2020
Appears to be a collection of informative and insightful lectures on the theme, but it actually ties together and flows as well as or better than most topic surveys - especially recent academic surveys which, as a rule, stink to high heaven of postmodernism and political agendas.
Freehling notes the effect of white southerners who fought for the Union, and gives them a great deal of the credit for the relatively quick northern victory. But it quickly puts the black southerner front and center, and provides both an account of the important events and a thorough analysis of the ramifications of their participation. There is no doubt that the war could not have been won in the way it was in fact won without black southerners who came into Union lines to help destroy American slavery.
The scale and decisive effect of the actions of southerners - black and white - who choose the Union over the Confederacy receive a careful presentation here. Well worth reading for those interested in the ACW, or in the history of black Americans.
Freehling notes the effect of white southerners who fought for the Union, and gives them a great deal of the credit for the relatively quick northern victory. But it quickly puts the black southerner front and center, and provides both an account of the important events and a thorough analysis of the ramifications of their participation. There is no doubt that the war could not have been won in the way it was in fact won without black southerners who came into Union lines to help destroy American slavery.
The scale and decisive effect of the actions of southerners - black and white - who choose the Union over the Confederacy receive a careful presentation here. Well worth reading for those interested in the ACW, or in the history of black Americans.
August 11, 2020
It was well written but I found myself disappointed with the content. The synopsis on the back made it seem like there was a significant anti-confederate resistance within the south during the Civil War, and having never heard of such a thing I was intrigued. Unfortunately reading the book did not back up this assertion at all, the author seems to stretch and mold events to fit what he was trying to say and the main focus of the book differed from the picture painting on the back cover. It was a good read but probably needed a new title and a new synopsis.
August 4, 2022
Strong argument; weak editing
Freehling makes a strong case that disunion in the South, which was not identical to the Confederacy, aided the Union effort in the Civil War.
I am unsure if it is the Kindle edition (based on the paperback) or not, but numerous typographical errors mar the text. Many singular possessive nouns lack apostrophes, the plural marker for years is often capitalized or replaced with a 5 (such as 1850S or 18505 for 1850s), and "conquor" appeared for "conquer." These errors are distracting, particularly the missing apostrophes.
Freehling makes a strong case that disunion in the South, which was not identical to the Confederacy, aided the Union effort in the Civil War.
I am unsure if it is the Kindle edition (based on the paperback) or not, but numerous typographical errors mar the text. Many singular possessive nouns lack apostrophes, the plural marker for years is often capitalized or replaced with a 5 (such as 1850S or 18505 for 1850s), and "conquor" appeared for "conquer." These errors are distracting, particularly the missing apostrophes.
June 16, 2020
Freehling opened my eyes to the great significance of various divisions among the states where slavery continued as an institution as the Civil War began. The Confederacy had banked on border state adherence that did not materialize. There were different feelings about secession between areas with large black slave populations and predominantly white areas. Ultimately it was slaves voting with their feet as Union forces neared that made the difference. They added military assets to the Union and subtracted them from the Confederacy. The achievement of the war, besides preserving the Union, was emancipation. But the racist attitudes of whites North and South continued to thwart genuine citizen equality.
November 21, 2022
This is an excellent addition to civil war reading. Not an intro book but a fascinating stereo look at the period. Two standout additions are recalling the border south as actually southern, and the unsung but radical agency of slaves in wartime to pressure the unwilling USA government to push for complete destruction of the system. Much to consider. Highly recommend Road to Disunion v1 as a more comprehensive buildup to this.
May 7, 2019
Very informative and is a different take on the Civil War. Anyone interested in learning about the American Civil War must read this book.
April 3, 2021
Great insight onto the resources created and capitalized on by Lincoln, Grant and Sherman to win the war. Dispels many 'Lost Cause' myths.
January 10, 2026
3.5 stars, good perspective of border states and confederate contributions to the Union’s victory.
November 17, 2019
Modern Americans, including many Civil War buffs, have a simple answer to the question “Why did the North win the Civil War?” Here it is: the North overwhelmed the South with superior manpower and resources. God, as Napoleon succinctly put it a half-century earlier, marched with the bigger battalions. The strong defeated the weak. So it goes.
William Freehling finds this answer simplistic to the point of inaccuracy. He argues that the simple-but-wrong explanation of the Union’s victory arises from a misleading framing of the question, which should be “Why did the Union beat the Confederacy?” While the Confederacy overlapped with the South, the two entities were not identical. Many Southerners, white as well as black, proved not only unwilling to support the Confederacy, but determined to aid its adversary. Their resistance to the Confederates’ national project became the principal cause of the Confederacy’s collapse.
THE SOUTH VERSUS THE SOUTH identifies three principal classes of anti-Confederate Southerners. Each contributed both material resources and lives to the Union cause. The non-seceding Border States, like Maryland and Kentucky, sent 200,000 men to the United States’ armed forces, and contributed their industries, centered in some of the Old South’s largest cities (e.g. Baltimore, Louisville), to the Union war effort. In the Confederacy itself, a substantial number of whites refused to break with the Old Union. 100,000 of them, including George Thomas and David Farragut, served in the federal army and navy, while local officials and guerrilla leaders endeavored to secede from the Confederacy. (West Virginia pulled this off; East Tennessee did not).
Perhaps most importantly, Southern African-Americans, the vast majority of them slaves, understood that the Confederacy was fighting for their continued immiseration. Half a million enslaved Southern blacks deprived the rebels of their labor by running away to Union lines. Of the runaways, about one-third (140,000) enlisted in the Union Army and Navy. Abraham Lincoln would describe runaway slaves as one of the principal causes of the federal victory. Certainly it is easy to see how losing one-eighth of its principal workforce would damage the Confederacy’s economy, which Union forces were already crippling with the blockade and the seizure of principal rail centers. Certainly the Confederacy would have done well to promise enslaved African-American men their freedom in return for military service; 140,000 more servicemen would have increased the overall size of Confederate forces by fifteen percent. A government committed to “states’ rights” could have employed slave soldiers. One committed to slavery and white supremacy could never do so.
Freehling makes a persuasive argument. One might counter that even without the Border States, and even with several hundred thousand more men (black and white) enlisted in the Confederate armed forces, the North still had a population and resources superior to the South’s. The Union needed more than superiority, however - given the huge advantage rifles and minie balls gave to defending troops, and given the Union’s need to occupy (not merely fight or blockade) the Confederate states, it needed something like a 2-to-1 advantage. Forced to rely solely on Northern resources and manpower, the Union would have faced far greater economic strains and more draft riots than it did in reality - not to mention the strategic disadvantages that would have accompanied Kentucky and Maryland’s secession. A Union victory, in this case, would have been less likely (in my opinion) than a negotiated peace after a half-dozen years of bloody, grinding warfare. The independent Southern nation that would have emerged after such a conflict would have little resembled the Confederacy of our own reality.
William Freehling finds this answer simplistic to the point of inaccuracy. He argues that the simple-but-wrong explanation of the Union’s victory arises from a misleading framing of the question, which should be “Why did the Union beat the Confederacy?” While the Confederacy overlapped with the South, the two entities were not identical. Many Southerners, white as well as black, proved not only unwilling to support the Confederacy, but determined to aid its adversary. Their resistance to the Confederates’ national project became the principal cause of the Confederacy’s collapse.
THE SOUTH VERSUS THE SOUTH identifies three principal classes of anti-Confederate Southerners. Each contributed both material resources and lives to the Union cause. The non-seceding Border States, like Maryland and Kentucky, sent 200,000 men to the United States’ armed forces, and contributed their industries, centered in some of the Old South’s largest cities (e.g. Baltimore, Louisville), to the Union war effort. In the Confederacy itself, a substantial number of whites refused to break with the Old Union. 100,000 of them, including George Thomas and David Farragut, served in the federal army and navy, while local officials and guerrilla leaders endeavored to secede from the Confederacy. (West Virginia pulled this off; East Tennessee did not).
Perhaps most importantly, Southern African-Americans, the vast majority of them slaves, understood that the Confederacy was fighting for their continued immiseration. Half a million enslaved Southern blacks deprived the rebels of their labor by running away to Union lines. Of the runaways, about one-third (140,000) enlisted in the Union Army and Navy. Abraham Lincoln would describe runaway slaves as one of the principal causes of the federal victory. Certainly it is easy to see how losing one-eighth of its principal workforce would damage the Confederacy’s economy, which Union forces were already crippling with the blockade and the seizure of principal rail centers. Certainly the Confederacy would have done well to promise enslaved African-American men their freedom in return for military service; 140,000 more servicemen would have increased the overall size of Confederate forces by fifteen percent. A government committed to “states’ rights” could have employed slave soldiers. One committed to slavery and white supremacy could never do so.
Freehling makes a persuasive argument. One might counter that even without the Border States, and even with several hundred thousand more men (black and white) enlisted in the Confederate armed forces, the North still had a population and resources superior to the South’s. The Union needed more than superiority, however - given the huge advantage rifles and minie balls gave to defending troops, and given the Union’s need to occupy (not merely fight or blockade) the Confederate states, it needed something like a 2-to-1 advantage. Forced to rely solely on Northern resources and manpower, the Union would have faced far greater economic strains and more draft riots than it did in reality - not to mention the strategic disadvantages that would have accompanied Kentucky and Maryland’s secession. A Union victory, in this case, would have been less likely (in my opinion) than a negotiated peace after a half-dozen years of bloody, grinding warfare. The independent Southern nation that would have emerged after such a conflict would have little resembled the Confederacy of our own reality.
November 25, 2015
This was a very interesting read. The author tries to explain why the South lost the Civil War (something many historians have tried to do because, let's face it: the South had a great start and it really looked like they were going to win). Anyway, Freehling makes the argument that the South lost because they were divided and against each other because of those divisions. Some of this devisions include: slave owners vs. non slave owners, rich vs. poor, master vs. slave, etc. It is very well written and a great argument. I personally think that it can be contributed to the "why did the south lose" question, but I don't think it is the only answer.
May 6, 2009
One of the more compelling books on the Civil War and what ultimately caused Southern secession to fail. Thankfully Freehling avoids painting either Northern forces or Southern forces (or their respective nations) as altruistic or heroic.
April 6, 2007
Who knew, man?
July 7, 2016
One of the best books I've read in a while. It wasn't a bunch of speculation but a well researched account on this part of the Civil War.
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