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Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War | 
| Author: David Williams
Publisher: New Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 24585
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1595581081
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.713
EAN: 9781595581082
ASIN: 1595581081
Publication Date: August 1, 2008
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Product Description
From the author of the celebrated A People's History of the Civil War, a new account of the Confederacy's collapse from within.
The American Confederacy, historian David Williams reveals, was in fact fighting two civil wars—an external one that we hear so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness.
From the Confederacy's very beginnings, Williams shows, white southerners were as likely to have opposed secession as supported it, and they undermined the Confederate war effort at nearly every turn. The draft law was nearly impossible to enforce, women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots, and most of the time two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. In just one of many telling examples in this rich and eye-opening narrative history, Williams shows that, if the nearly half-million southerners who served in the Union military had been with the Confederates, the opposing forces would have been evenly matched.
Shattering the myth of wartime southern unity, this riveting new analysis takes on the enduring power of the Confederacy's image and reveals it to be, like the Confederacy itself, a hollow shell.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Real Eye-Opener September 3, 2008
Another nail in the coffin of the Lost Cause, this books shows how little united the Confederacy actually was. Did you know, for example, that half a million Southerners fought for the Union? How about that half of Lee's army had deserted *before* Gettysburg?
Williams is particularly good at throwing light on why the South was so divided. He traces it all, basically, to class war - "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." He shows how planters led the South into secession (and kept the government in their hands to the very end), did their best to stay out of the fight (are you familiar with the 20-slave exemption?), used their muscle to get the poor into the fight (the draft and impressment), and helped starve the new nation (by planting cash crops instead of food and by scamming to government).
The only reason I'm not giving this 5 stars is that a lot of the evidence is very incidental - an editorial here, an incident there, a letter over there. I, personally, would have liked to have seen more numbers. For example, of the 300,000 white Southerners who fought for the Union, how many were from border states, how many from the mountains? I do realize that those numbers might be a little hard to come by. I also feel that the sheer number of incidents the author marshalls are probably more than enough. The cumulative effect really is quite overwhelming.
Another thing the incidental approach was good for (though I'm not sure this was the author's intent) was getting across how awful the war could be for the Unionists (actually, for all concerned). There was very little chivalry involved in the massacres, beating of women, forced marches of Indians, shooting of black prisoners, etc. Seems almost like a tune-up for the reign of terror that would be Reconstruction (check out The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox for that).
 The best Book on the Civil War... August 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Generations of students have been taught that the South lost the Civil War because of the North's superior industry and population. This book suggests another reason: Southerners were largely responsible for defeating the Confederacy.
Prof. David Williams lays out REVISIONIST-upsetting arguments. Because of this book the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.
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