Description
Book SynopsisA landmark book that sheds invigorating new light on the causes, the course, and the outcomes in Alabama of America's greatest drama and trauma. Based on twenty years of exhaustive research,
Civil War Alabama presents compelling new explanations for how Alabama's white citizens came to take up arms against the federal government.
Trade ReviewNot since Walter Lynwood Fleming's partisan Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (1905) has there been a broad history of this state's Civil War experience. To be sure, there is no dearth of recent books and articles on specific aspects of the war and its vivid personalities and legacies - from the Battle of Mobile Bay to Gen. Josiah Gorgas' herculean efforts to keep the Confederacy in powder and shot - but not one since Fleming has attempted to wrap it all into one package." -
Alabama Review "Exhaustively researched, skillfully compiled, and engagingly written, McIlwain's impressive volume is a service to scholars searching for greater detail and support for their own work, as well as Alabamians hoping to understand exactly how their state could fall into the grip of destructive demagogues and ruinous rebellion." -
H-Net Reviews"
Civil War Alabama is one of the most interesting and provocative studies of a Confederate state that has appeared in recent years. McIlwain presents an impressive amount of fresh research and information that advances a number of striking and controversial interpretations." - George C. Rable, author of
God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War"McIlwain has produced an engaging, often witty, and always informative study of the development of Reconstructionist thought in Alabama. This is a topic that has only recently garnered serious attention, and so McIlwain stands as one of its pioneers." - Ben H. Severance, author of
Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War and
Tennessee's Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Foreword by G. Ward Hubbs
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. Alabama Secedes
- Chapter 1. The "Lawyers' Revolution"
- Chapter 2. "A Leap in the Dark"
- Chapter 3 "There Will Be a Revulsion"
- Part II. The War Begins
- Chapter 4 "Sprinkle Blood in the Face of the People"
- Chapter 5 "Food for Sad and Gloomy Fits"
- Chapter 6 Evil Times
- Part III The Decree of the Nation
- Chapter 7 "Yankeeizing Southerners"
- Chapter 8 "The Struggle of the Masters"
- Part IV The Hard War
- Chapter 9 The Destroying Angels
- Chapter 10 The Reconstructionists
- Chapter 11 The Slaughter Pen
- Chapter 12 The River of Death
- Part V In Search of Peace
- Chapter 13 "God Close This Terrible War"
- Chapter 14 War Eagle!
- Chapter 15 The Horrors of the Black Flag
- Part VI Bowing Down to Mars
- Chapter 16 "Retrograde Movements" and "Backward Advances"
- Chapter 17 Rousseau's Raid
- Chapter 18 The Fall of Mobile Bay and Atlanta
- Part VII The Death Throes of a Rebellion
- Chapter 19 "On the Wrong Side of the Line of Battle"
- Chapter 20 "Rats to Your Holes"
- Chapter 21 "Balls and Parties Are All the Rage"
- Chapter 22 Franklin, Nashville, and Disintegration
- Part VIII "The Holocaust"
- Chapter 23 "Ne-Gotiation" or "Ne-Grotiation"
- Chapter 24 "The Day of Jubilee Am Come!"
- Chapter 25 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
