William Freehling, The South vs. The South. (New York, NY: Oxford University, 2001)
William W. Freehling is an American historian, and Professor of History and Otis A. Singletary Chair in Humanities at the University of Kentucky, and is the author of The Road to Disunion, Volume I: Disunionists at Bay, 1776 – 1854, which won the Owsley Prize. William Freehling's The South vs. The South book is two hundred and thirty-eight pages and divided into ten chapters. The narrative of the Civil War that focuses on the majority of southern white and black, who opposed the Confederacy. Why did the Confederacy lose the Civil War? How anti-Confederates Southerners shaped the sequence of the Civil War? Freehling argues in The South vs. The South book that the Union troops from the South Border States who are whites and Southerner blacks helped cost the Confederacy the war. Also, he argues that the Confederacy lost because it failed to gain the allegiance of the border states (Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland) and then lost the loyalty of enough whites and slaves that it gave the Union a vital manpower boost. The South vs. The South book reveals the great division, even during the Civil War in the Southern States. “Division within the South helped pave the path toward war. The same divisions behind army lines helped turn the war against the slave holders.” (xi) Divisions between pro and anti-confederates, white and black, among the Confederate loyalty, and large groups of white people throughout the South opposed the Confederacy. Freehling said, “In the vast Southern white belt areas with few or no slaves, nonslaveholders felt less brotherhood with slaveholders.” (p. 22) These great divisions contributed to the fall of the Confederacy. Especially the anti-confederates made a very crucial contribution to the union war efforts by contributing manpower and materials that aid the union in its victory. The book demonstrates that the division among white Southerners, specifically in the Border States and the mountainous country in West Virginia and Eastern Tennessee, and black Southerners, especially when Union armies approached, was crucial in leading to the decisive defeat of the Confederacy. (p. 40) According to (Smith) review, “This work helps to redress the balance by highlighting how, far from being a unified region, the border south, upper south and lower south all had their own distinct characters and differing levels of attachment to the Confederate cause.” (p. 40-43) The South vs. The South book also analyzes and explain the economic, political, and moral context that drove Southerners to war and development. The book also covers the politics of emancipation, the role of the slaves and Border State whites. The Southerners, white want to destroy the foundation of the Confederacy, but they rejected voluntary emancipation in part because they feared free blacks. (p.108) Also, without Southern black and whites, the Union could not have defeated the Confederate and won the war. “The eight borders and the Middle South States stood against the new Confederacy when Abraham Lincoln assumed the Presidency,” (p. 40) Black people served in the army and navy during the American Revolution and in the war of 1812, but when free blacks wanted to serve in the Union force voluntarily they weren’t allowed. Even President Abraham Lincoln feared the Border States might secede if he accepted free black men into the military until Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The …show more content…
The South is a very interesting and good analysis book to read for anyone who is interested in history and for those who is studying or interested in the Civil War. It is also a great book for high school or college level students, but it is not an easy book for someone like me who didn’t grow up learning about it from an early age. Unless they have a prior knowledge about the Civil War history. The book is very deep with a lot of information and sometimes it is hard to understand everything that had happened during the Civil War, but it makes a very important contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and what leads to the to the Civil War. I cannot say the book answered all my questions, but I am left with the new insights which I am not familiar