The Confederacy

"It was by any measure a failure. What began at Fort Sumter as a spirited defense of a homeland and a way of life ended in disaster. The connection between battlefield and home front sapped Confederate strength. More fundamentally, the privileged and overconfident elite went to war on false assumptions: that slavery would be a source of strength, that nonslaveholders would continue to sacrifice for slavery, and that women would accept the changes brought by war without serious complaint. The bid to preserve the proslavery South revealed a society whose nature was at odds with the demands of war." "Paul Escott's The Confederacy: The Slaveholders' Failed Venture offers a unique and multifaceted perspective on the United States' most pivotal and devastating conflict, examining the course of the Civil War and analyzing the perspective of the Southern elite class, which was desperate to preserve the "peculiar institution" of its slave-based economy, yet dependent on ordinary Southerners, slaves, and women to sustain the fight for them." "Against the backdrop of the war's military drama and strategic dilemmas, The Confederacy brings into sharp focus the racial, class, gender, and politic