The Confederate War

Daniel Sutherland

E.[Gallagher's] perceptive and engaging new book maintains that historians have got off track in recent years by attributing Confederate defeat to weakness on the home front rather than to performance on the battlefield.
—New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In a book based on the 1995-1996 Littlefield lectures at the University of Texas at Austin, Gallagher confronts a paradox arising from recent decades of Civil War scholarship. Working back from the South's defeat, historians have developed a picture of a society doomed from the start by a failure of will, lack of national feeling and an inappropriate military strategy. But the Confederacy came close to winning the war at several points. Had the Union flank been turned on the second day at Gettysburg, or had Atlanta not fallen before the 1864 presidential election, argues Gallagher, the war almost certainly would have ended in Southern independence. Gallagher draws on contemporary records to examine the will of the Southern people, their spirit of nationalism and the military strategy of the Confederacy before concluding that the South lost only because it was overwhelmed by superior military and economic force. Gallagher, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University, tends to take his sources too much at face value, though: wartime exhortations may not be the most accurate indicators of true beliefs. Gallagher is at his best when dealing with military strategy, convincingly showing that Southern generals did the best they could. The hole at the center of this work is a reluctance to discuss the formative issue of slavery. While Gallagher often refers to it, he fails to grapple with its implications. Readers will end up convinced that Southerners indeed fought hard for their nation, but will be unclear about what they were so fired up to accomplish. Forty halftones. History Book Club selection. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Historians have often looked backward from the surrender at Appomattox to explain the failure of the Confederacy. They have concluded that the Confederacy's defeat was due mainly to decay from within resulting from internal strife among different factions of Southern society. Gallagher (American history, Pennsylvania State Univ.; editor of Lee the Soldier, LJ 4/15/96) disputes that interpretation. While he concedes that there were disagreements, he points to numerous letters and diaries that support his contention that Confederate society rallied around the Stars and Bars until Appomattox. Popular will gave rise to national sentiment whose morale depended on the battlefield victories won by Lee's army. Only Lee's surrender convinced many that the Confederate cause was indeed lost. The author makes a fine case for a new look at an old argument. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with Civil War collections.Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora

Daniel E. Sutherland

[Gallagher's] perceptive and engaging new book maintains that historians have got off track in recent years by attributing Confederate defeat to weakness on the home front rather than to performance on the battlefield.
— The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

A revisionist examination of the Confederate experience, as much concerned with historians and their methods as with history itself.

"Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than any other segment of white society in US history," frets Gallagher (American History/Penn. State Univ.), "runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate." He's right to worry. Making precisely that argument, his history of Confederate military and civilian experience veers dangerously close to hagiography of an entire culture. Challenging the current historical consensus that lack of will, absence of national unity, and flawed military strategy doomed the Confederacy, Gallagher presents contemporary letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts that rhapsodize about the true grit of rebel soldiers and civilians. To his credit, he resists the urge to backtrack from Appomattox when explaining military failure (as he accuses other historians of doing) and instead puts the Confederate war effort in a larger historical framework—namely the successful rebellion of the American Revolution. He poses a number of intriguing questions for fellow historians, suggesting most notably that scholars ask not why an uprising viewed as "a rich man's war but a poor man's fight" failed, but why so many non-slaveholders fought for so long. But his parade of testimonials to the nobility of the Lost Cause, unchallenged by critical questioning, sticks in the craw. Soldiers' letters, reenlistment figures, and editorials—which all suggest high morale when taken at face value by Gallagher—could easily be viewed as propaganda. At least their bombastic language enlivens an otherwise stiffly formal academic text.

A work of more interest to historians than general readers, and more important for the questions it raises than any it answers.

America's Civil War

The Confederate War is a significant and thought-provoking addition to the current body of Civil War literature. Gallagher has returned the focus of the war to the theater in which it was decided--military operations. In doing do, he demonstrates the enormous human, financial and material investment that white Southerners put into the struggle for independence. Solidly researched and sharply argued, The Confederate War cannot easily be dismissed by the 'internal causes' historians. Consequently, it is likely to rekindle debate among both academics and popularizers, which is all to the good, particularly in the current stifling climate of political.
— Richard F. Welch

America's Civil War Magazine

The Confederate War is a significant and thought-provoking addition to the current body of Civil War literature. Gallagher has returned the focus of the war to the theater in which it was decided—military operations. In doing do, he demonstrates the enormous human, financial and material investment that white Southerners put into the struggle for independence. Solidly researched and sharply argued, The Confederate War cannot easily be dismissed by the 'internal causes' historians. Consequently, it is likely to rekindle debate among both academics and popularizers, which is all to the good, particularly in the current stifling climate of political.
— Richard F. Welch

American Studies in Europe

Gallagher's book challenges the non-military historians to come out from behind the barricades once again.
— Russell Duncan

Booklist

Gallagher's effort will have serious students rejoicing in its persuasive argumentation for believing that battles and armies who indeed have some bearing on the outcomes of war.

Louisiana History

Everyone involved in the continuing debate over the factors behind the South's defeat must read Gallagher's book, and anyone wanting a helpful introduction to it should as well.
— Gaines M. Foster

Nation and Nationalism

The Confederate War is an impressive volume. The arguments which Gallagher employs to support his central thesis are well constructed and quite persuasive. Gallagher also relies on a wide array of Confederate voices from the past to substantiate his case and this makes for an interesting study. Moreover, Gallagher's extensive review of the literature is incisive and most informative. The Confederate War should provide good reading for all students of Confederate nationalism and will generate lively debate among historians of the American Civil War for years to come.
— Bruce Cauthen

New York Times Book Review

[Gallagher's] perceptive and engaging new book maintains that historians have got off track in recent years by attributing Confederate defeat to weakness on the home front rather than to performance on the battlefield. War-weariness, lack of will and ambivalence toward the cause of independence, they say, doomed the South… Gallagher addresses the right issues, asks probing questions and suggests intriguing alternatives.
— Daniel E. Sutherland

Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

An important book… The Confederate War is certain to cause controversy. For Gallagher dares to suggest that, despite, 'moral disapprobation' prevalent in many histories about the conflict over the past half-century, the stark fact remains that 'a majority of white southerners steadfastly supported their nascent republic, and that Confederate arms more than once almost persuaded the North that the price of subduing the rebellious states would be too high'… Using published evidence from Confederate diarists, soldiers, statesmen, and newspapers—evidence which by omission or intent seldom seems to find its way into recent Civil War histories—Gallagher makes a compelling case for Confederate unity. The Confederacy did not fall to pieces after Gettysburg; a 'mass of testimony' suggests that Southerners thought the war winnable until virtually the end… Thorough reassessments of the Confederacy and of the interpretations of it have long been overdue, and Gary W. Gallagher succeeds in his initial attempt to rebalance historical portrayals of the Civil War South.
— B. Anthony Gannon

Reviews in American History

One of the most attractive and ennobling portrayals of the white Confederacy in recent memory. The lavish illustrations (numbering a full forty) and coffee-table 'feel' assures that this beautifully produced and competitively priced volume will have a wide readership outside of the historical profession. Gallagher's own swift prose, clear argument, and richly documented account of white southerners at war can only bolster sales further… It is also safe to say that it will have a major impact on how historians will hereafter frame research on the slaveholding South's suicidal effort to establish its independence… In a growing corpus of work on the wartime South, Gallagher has explored the interactions of war and society and given new legitimacy to a field of military history that will always need to be a part of any general understanding of the 1860s. This work has achieved a substantial measure of authority.
— Robert E. Bonner

Virginia Quarterly Review

Gallagher's work, a perceptive, well-written, and strongly argued series of essays concerning Confederate morale, nationalism, and military strategy, raises serious questions about the prevalent interpretation of why the South lost the Civil War.