![]() ![]() When defeat apparently stalked the slaveholding republic in the spring of 1862 and "their national experiment seemed almost a failure, Confederate Southerners began to respond to their circumstances by redefining themselves-or, more precisely, by defining themselves as a national people." The cruel pressures of war obliged them to "define themselves in deeds. (1) Factors weakening the Confederacy loomed larger than evidence of Rebel persistence or strength in the scholarly literature at that time, but Thomas took seriously the idea of national sentiment in the seceding states. Some of its themes had been present in his earlier The Confederacy as Revolutionary Experience, and together the two books heralded the emergence of a major figure in the field. Thomas's The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 appeared on the historiographical landscape. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |