The Confederacy: The Slaveholders' Failed Venture

A sharp-edged and revealing account of the transforming struggle for Southern independence and the inherent contradictions that undermined that effort.

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 from the perspective of the Southern elite class, who were 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 political conflicts that helped destabilize the Confederacy from within. Along the way, Escott shows how time and time again, the South's political and economic elite made errors that further weakened a South already facing a Union army with greater numbers and firepower.

Author: Paul Escott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 12/01/2009
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780275994099

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2010
Reference and Research Bk News 05/01/2010 pg. 68

About the Author

Paul D. Escott is Reynolds Professor of History at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, and the author of several books on the South and the Civil War, including Praeger's Military Necessity: Civil-Military Relations in the Confederacy.