Creating an Old South
Creating an Old South

Author: Edward E. Baptist

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-04-03

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0807860034

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Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.

More Generals in Gray
More Generals in Gray

Author: Bruce S. Allardice

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2006-04-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780807131480

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In this masterpiece of research, a splendid supplement to Ezra J. Warner's Generals in Gray, Bruce S. Allardice brings to light a neglected class of officers: the Confederacy's "other" generals -- men who attained their rank outside the usual avenue of appointment by President Jefferson Davis and who had been virtually forgotten as a consequence. Explaining that the process of becoming a general was fraught with politics, lobbying, intrigue, accident, mismanagement, and chance, Allardice identifies six main categories of legitimate claimants to the rank of Confederate General -- two more than historians have traditionally recognized. He presents a substantial biographical sketch of 137 generals not found in Warner's original and a short bibliography of each. For the vast majority, his is the first treatment ever published.

A Forgotten Front
A Forgotten Front

Author: Seth A. Weitz

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2018-06-12

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0817319824

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An examination of the understudied, yet significant role of Florida and its populace during the Civil War. In many respects Florida remains the forgotten state of the Confederacy. Journalist Horace Greeley once referred to Florida in the Civil War as the “smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.” Although it was the third state to secede, Florida’s small population and meager industrial resources made the state of little strategic importance. Because it was the site of only one major battle, it has, with a few exceptions, been overlooked within the field of Civil War studies. During the Civil War, more than fifteen thousand Floridians served the Confederacy, a third of which were lost to combat and disease. The Union also drew the service of another twelve hundred white Floridians and more than a thousand free blacks and escaped slaves. Florida had more than eight thousand miles of coastline to defend, and eventually found itself with Confederates holding the interior and Federals occupying the coasts—a tenuous state of affairs for all. Florida’s substantial Hispanic and Catholic populations shaped wartime history in ways unique from many other states. Florida also served as a valuable supplier of cattle, salt, cotton, and other items to the blockaded South. A Forgotten Front: Florida during the Civil War Era provides a much-needed overview of the Civil War in Florida. Editors Seth A. Weitz and Jonathan C. Sheppard provide insight into a commonly neglected area of Civil War historiography. The essays in this volume examine the most significant military engagements and the guerrilla warfare necessitated by the occupied coastline. Contributors look at the politics of war, beginning with the decade prior to the outbreak of the war through secession and wartime leadership and examine the period through the lenses of race, slavery, women, religion, ethnicity, and historical memory.