Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of AmericaWilliam C. Davis, one of America's best Civil War historians, here offers a definitive portrait of the Confederacy unlike any that has come before. Drawing on decades of writing and research among an unprecedented number of archives, Look Away! tells the story of the Confederate States of America not simply as a military saga (although it is that), but rather as a full portrait of a society and incipient nation. The first history of the Confederacy in decades, the culmination of a great scholar's career, Look Away! combines politics, economics, and social history to set a new standard for its subject. Previous histories have focused on familiar commanders such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but Davis's canvas is much broader. From firebrand politicians like Robert Barnwell Rhett and William L. Yancey, who pushed for secession long before the public supported it; to Dr. Samuel Cartwright, who persuaded many Southerners of the natural inferiority of their slaves; to the women of Richmond, who rioted over bread shortages in 1863, Davis presents a rich new face of the Confederate nation. He recounts familiar stories of battles won and lost, but also little-known economic stories of a desperate government that socialized the salt industry, home-front stories of the rangers and marauders who preyed on their fellow Confederates, and an account of the steady breakdown of law, culminating in near anarchy in some states. Never has the Confederacy been so vividly brought to life as a full society, riven with political and economic conflicts beneath its more loudly publicized military battles. Davis's astonishingly thorough primary research has ranged across the 800-odd newspapers that were in operation during the war, but also across the personal papers of over a hundred Southern leaders and ordinary citizens. He quotes from letters and diaries throughout the narrative, revealing the Confederacy through the words of the Confederates themselves. Like any society, especially in the early stages of nation-building and the devastating stages of warfare, the Confederacy was not one thing but many things to many people. One thing, however, was shared by all: the belief that the South offered a necessary evolution of American democracy. Look Away! offers a dramatic and definitive account of one of America's most searing episodes. |
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
12 | |
35 | |
Visions of Breakers Ahead | 55 |
The Struggle for a Confederate Democracy | 85 |
Men but Not Brothers | 130 |
Law and Disorder | 163 |
Cotton Communism Whiskey Welfare and Salt Socialism | 280 |
The States in Their Sovereignty | 323 |
The Power and the Ignominy in Richmond | 341 |
Growlers Traitors | 365 |
The End? | 401 |
Abbreviations Used in the Source Citations | 429 |
Notes | 430 |
Bibliography | 468 |
Proving Our Loyalty by Starvation | 194 |
We Are Done Gone Up the Spout | 225 |
The Enemy Within | 259 |
Index | 479 |
Other editions - View all
Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America William C. Davis No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Alabama April army August authority began blacks Breckinridge Brown Papers Charleston Cheves citizens civil civilians Clark Cobb command complained Confederacy Confederate Confederate democracy Congress conscription Constitution convention cotton County court Davis's DeBow DeBow's Review declared delegates deserters election enemy fear February February 11 federacy Federal fight Florida force GDAH Georgia Governor Howell Cobb ibid issue January Jefferson Davis John Johnston legislature Lincoln Littleton Washington Louisiana Lubbock Mallory March MDAH Memminger ment military militia Milton Mississippi Montgomery Murrah nation Negroes North November October officers Pendleton Murrah Pettus Pickens planters political president protect Record Group 27 Record Group 301 Richmond Robert Barnwell Rhett seceded secession Senate sent simply slavery slaves soldiers South Carolina Southern Stephens Tennessee Texas Thomas tion Tom Cobb took Toombs Union University of Florida Vance Virginia Volume 57 vote wanted Wigfall William Porcher Miles Yancey Yankees
Popular passages
Page 110 - Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth. that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.
Page 135 - A knowledge of the great primary truth, that the negro is a slave by nature, and can never be happy, industrious, moral or religious, in any other condition than the one he was intended to fill, is of great importance to the theologian, the statesman, and to all those who are at heart seeking to promote his temporal and future welfare.
Page 138 - Every attempt to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service, by cruelty or hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him unprofitable, unmanageable — a vexation and a curse.
Page 99 - We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and Establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.
Page 133 - ... people in the world. When all this is done, if any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good require that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which it was intended for them to occupy in all after time, when their progenitor received the name of Canaan, or "submissive kneebender.
Page 134 - The black blood distributed to the brain chains the mind to ignorance, superstition and barbarism, and bolts the door against civilization, moral culture and religious truth. The compulsory power of the white man, by making the slothful negro take active exercise, puts into active play the lungs, through whose agency the vitalized blood is sent to the brain to give liberty to the mind, and to open the door to intellectual improvement. The...
Page 77 - ... action of the Government from which we have separated, a policy so detrimental to the civilized world, the Northern States included, could not be dictated by even...
Page 30 - No revolution was ever more complete, though bloodless, if you will tamely submit to the destruction of that Constitution and that Union our fathers made. " Our fathers made this a Government for the white man, rejecting the negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.
Page 429 - NA National Archives, Washington, DC NCDAH North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh OR The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
Page 429 - LC Library of Congress, Washington, DC LSU Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge MDAH Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson NA National Archives, Washington...
References to this book
Declarations of Independence: Encyclopedia of American Autonomous and ... James L. Erwin No preview available - 2006 |