William Alan Blair

This book tells the story of how Confederate civilians in the Old Dominion struggled to feed not only their stomachs but also their souls. Although demonstrating the ways in which the war created many problems within southern communities, Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 does not support scholars who claim that internal dissent caused the Confederacy's downfall. Instead, it offers a study of the Virginia home front that depicts how the Union army's continued pressure created destruction, hardship, and shortages that left the Confederate public spent and demoralized with the surrender of the army under Robert E. Lee. However, the book does not portray the population as uniformly united in a Lost Cause. Virginians complained a great deal about the management of the war. Such complaints, ironically, may have prolonged the war, for some of the Confederacy's leaders responded by forcing the wealthy to shoulder more of the burden for prosecuting the conflict. Substitution ended, and the men who stayed home became government growers who distributed goods at reduced cost to the poor. But ultimately, as the case is made in Virginia's Private War, none of these efforts could stave off an enemy who strained the resources of Rebel Virginians to the breaking point.

The eight contributors to this volume assess the proclamation by considering not only aspects of the president's decision making, but also events beyond Washington. --from publisher description Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is popularly regarded as a heroic act by a great American president. Widely remembered as the document that ended slavery, the proclamation in fact freed slaves only in the rebellious South (and not in the Border States, where slavery remained legal) and, effectively, only in the parts of the South occupied by the Union. Among historians, questions persist regarding Lincoln's moral conviction and the extent to which the proclamation truly represented a radical stance on the issue of freedom. The proclamation itself remains a misunderstood document because of its complicated history and legalistic prose. The eight essays in this volume enrich our understanding of the proclamation by considering not only aspects of the president's decision making, but also events beyond Washington. The proclamation provides a launching point for new insights on the consequences and legacies of freedom, the engagement of black Americans in their liberation, and the issues of citizenship and rights that were not decided by Lincoln's document. The contributors view the proclamation from a variety of perspectives, including how we remember the ending of slavery both in the United States and in the Atlantic world. Together the essays portray emancipation as a product of many hands, best understood when considering all the various actors, the place, and the time. - Jacket flap.