“The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865”, by Emory M. Thomas

 

416 pages, Harper Perennial, ISBN-13: 978-0062061027

How you say something is often as important as what you say. Case in point: in The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865, Emory M. Thomas claims that the American Civil War was seen by the Confederates not as a rebellion against a hostile foreign government, but as a continuation of the American Revolution and its ideals. Furthermore, as the War continued, the character of the Southern People and their Government profoundly changed as “Southern” gradually became “Confederate” and the antifederalist foundation of the movement was forever changed and, indeed, subjugated in favor of an ever-more centralized government that trampled on, what were only a few years previous, sacred rights. The self-righteous slaveocracy that had pushed and pulled for secession had done so using the language of the Founders, but the realities of fighting what became an ever-more desperate war of survival turned the decentralized agrarian economy they fought for into a centralized state, the very antithesis of their ideal Jeffersonian democracy dominated by themselves (naturally).

Thomas’ revelations about the workings of the Confederate Nation were a much-needed cure for my ignorance of how the Confederacy really tried to become a people apart. To try to tell the entire four-year experiment in Southern independence in a slim, single volume was an ambitious desire for Thomas to take on in 1979 (although my edition is a reprint from 2011), and so, naturally, compromises were made as what to include and what to leave out. While he does discuss certain battles, campaigns and generals North and South, the war is not really his focus, except where he points out those times when military victory influenced foreign affairs or domestic policies. One interesting point that he makes – one that, I think, is too easily lost – is that while the fire-breathing secessionists led the way in seceding from the Union and in founding the Confederate States of America, it was the moderates who in fact came to the fore and held all the power in the new nation-to-be, even as the ideals that led originally to secession and the founding of the Confederacy were mostly lost as the war progressed.