Last Generation: Young Virginians In Peace, War, And Reunion

Civil War America

by Peter S. Carmichael

Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, Peter S. Carmichael looks closely at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery. He finds them deeply engaged in the political, economic, and cultural forces of their time. Age, he concludes, created special concerns for young men who spent their formative years in the 1850s. Before the Civil War, these young men thought long and hard about Virginia's place as a progressive slave society. They vigorously lobbied for disunion despite opposition from their elders, then served as officers in the Army of Northern Virginia as frontline negotiators with the nonslaveholding rank and file. After the war, however, they quickly shed their Confederate radicalism to pursue the political goals of home rule and New South economic development and reconciliation. Not until the turn of the

Genres: History, Civil War

360 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2005

About the author

Peter S. Carmichael was Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

Reviews

[Jason S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it deviates from its thesis in spots, this is a strong work of history that tells an important story of the 1850s generation and its role in Virginia before during and after the Civil War. Well written and argued...an important book on the Civil War South.

[Beach Reader 73 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Carmichael’s book let me get to know in a personal way some of the various Confederate officers whose names I have come across in my extensive readings about the Civil War. It was consistent with his passion for humanizing the war to his readers. He will be missed.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry, but an interesting discussion of the eliteLast Generation of Virginian Students before, during and after the Civil War.