Anne Sarah Rubin

The particular value of this book is in the first-person accounts of how Antebellum Southern identity transformed into a Confederate political identity; an amalgamation of nostalgia for the early republic, the region's obsession with personal honor vis-a-vis Yankeedom, and the nervous hope among Confederates that they actually were doing God's will; not to mention the denial over the notion that slavery had anything to do with the conflict. Compared to that the section dealing with the early days of Reconstruction, until the political empowerment of the African-American population sparks massive resistance to the new order, has an almost throwaway quality to it.… (mehr)