My forthcoming book, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies, (to see Amazon page, click here), is about Southern people whose identities and actions reflected their deepest commitments to—and dependence upon—community and kinship. It is also about southerners who did not always behave according to type. For example, television, movies, novels, and even mainstream newscasts have long presented us with white southerners who take unusual pride in ancestry, revere military traditions, and glory in the causes of both the American Revolution and Civil War. Black southerners are commonly presented within the historical contexts of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Less often discussed are white southerners who rejected the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy, or the deep ties of kinship that linked whites, blacks, and Native Americans in a world bounded by unequal relations of power.
Regardless of whether one views the South positively or negatively, white Southerners are almost invariably assumed to have supported the Confederate Cause during the Civil War, making that war a chief symbol of white Southern cultural identity. The “proof” for such assumptions is often found in old obituaries, reports of family reunions, or local histories that note the illustrious Confederate service of individual family members. As every courtroom lawyer knows, however, there are the “facts” and there are the “true facts.” The mere publication of family facts does not make them true, nor did enlistment in the Confederate Army prove that one supported the Confederate Cause.
For the past twenty-five years, I have researched Civil War dissenters in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. Here, I expand upon that research. The North Carolina Piedmont, or “Quaker Belt,” the Mississippi Piney Woods, and the “Big Thicket” region of Hardin County, East Texas, form the geographic bases for eight individual essays that span the years 1861-1948. In these essays, you will meet Southern men and women who opposed the Confederacy, who rejected conventional politics and religion, or who refused to accept race-based citizenship. Many fought with force for their beliefs, earning labels for themselves such as renegade, outlaw, radical, or deviant.
In some essays, I combine two or all three of the regions for comparative purposes, or to explore a common theme or story. What connects all of them, however, are themes of community, family, and place. Whether about North Carolina women who protested against Confederate soldiers, or Newt Knight’s efforts to gain compensation from the U.S. Government for having supported the Union, or Texas Unionists who evolved into New South populists and socialists, or the multiracial community in Mississippi that emerged from anti-Confederate collaboration between blacks and whites, each essay features ordinary people whose lives were transformed by their responses to civil war, freedom from slavery, reconstruction of the nation, racial segregation, and the “New South” that arose from the ashes of war.
- NOTE: This introductory page to my forthcoming book will be followed by brief blogs describing each of the book’s essays, and supplying titles and snippets from each. Look for them in the “Long Shadow of the Civil War” category.
This page has the following sub pages.
This is truly fascinating, Vikki. I look forward to the publication of your book. Again, I was beginning to believe I had dreamed my own history until I started to read your blog. Thank you for the twenty five years you have spent researching your subject matter. What I know of my own family’s involvement in the Civil War comes from oral history told to me by my grandmother, my grandmother’s sister, and my grandmother’s cousins. Although many stories were embellished, the core stories proved to be true, and so I have within living memory a record of the past. It is truly refreshing to know that that record is one of many similar records, since, as I told you in an earlier comment, my ancestors were definitely not “conventional” southerners. It’s nice to know that I am not alone, and that there are other renegades out there. Thanks again, Vikki.
Thanks, Sherree. The Long Shadow of the Civil War is my effort to publish the myriad stories about people and families of the South that I found scattered over the years in state and federal records, folklore accounts, and, as in your case, family histories passed down through the years in the form of storytelling. Instead of doing a book about one particular region, I decided to combine all three communities in essays that each focus on a different, but related, topic of the Civil War Era South. This proved a unique way to show how broadly relevant local community stories can be. Hopefully, the more people see their family’s experiences mirrored back, the more they will come forward, as you did, with their own stories. Over time, perhaps our folks won’t seem so unconventional, but simply part of a broad spectrum of human experiences.
Vikki
Vikki, Fascinating! I believe you are correct, that white Southerners are often assumed to have supported the Confederate Cause during the Civil War. I have witnessed that in all my living in the north, and find myself defending some of the issues you raise. I had the privilege of knowing Robert Penn Warren through my father, for they were good friends, and from them learned a little more about the south that was never taught in history books. We need you to write a book for schools to use as they teach American history!
Thanks for your encouragement, Deborah (muttslikeme).
My major goal in writing this book is to see it used in the classroom by teachers who seek to bring truth rather than myth to our understanding of southerners in general and the southern Civil War homefront in particular. The book also takes us well beyond the war to demonstrate its long term effects.
Vikki