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theangrylawngnome's review
3.0
Overall, I think this work does an excellent job of explaining how "Confederate Nationalism" came into being, and how it actually seemed no great help to the people running the Confederacy. Quite interesting discussions of bread riots virtually across the entire South, how Confeds had to delude themselves into thinking that their slaves loved not only them, but also their condition.
Faust also makes what I would consider a rather controversial argument that the South "threw in the towel," long before they were required to from a military standpoint. Her comparison was the CSA vs. Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries in North Vietnam. She notes that Ho carried on a guerrilla war for almost two full generations, vs. the French, the Japanese and US. Yet he never lacked for followers, and his followers always seemed motivated to fight. She might be right, at least to a degree, but I would consider her comparison failing on several points:
͏͏ None of the opponents Ho faced were based in his own backyard, and I would argue none were nearly as motivated as the Union was to keep the US together.
͏͏ By the end of the Civil War the North was on the verge of assuming a huge technological advantage, had the war continued long enough for the average Northern soldier to be outfitted with repeating rifles. Perhaps things like Gatling guns would also have been available, but repeating rifles vs. muzzle loaders alone would have been slaughter.
͏͏ Important to this issue, and also in a wider sense, Faust seemed to consider the "South" qua South an indivisible whole. And I don't see how a case can be made along these lines. The "Upper South," "Mid-South," and "Lower-South" were certainly different places, and may or may not have even ultimately have had the same interests. Whether slavery was truly dying out in the "Upper South" or not (debatable), the percentage of the total population either enslaved or slave owning was certainly shrinking. This contrasted radically with the Deep South, which had a vastly higher percentage of slaves, and slave-owners who considered themselves virtually an aristocracy, despising the Jacksonian-style democracy popular in the mid and upper south. I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that the North Vietnamese had no such groups with such widely diverging interests.
I'd argue a more valid comparsion -- since it even overlapped a part of the US Civil War -- was the Paraguayan War (link) of 1864-70. By the end of it Paraguay was essentially extinct; and I think Lee and Davis had some sense the same thing would have happened to the South had the war continued.
Eh, long enough, but there's also some interesting stuff about Southern War Profiteers (so much for that crap of Noble Southern Gentlemen), the cultural changes the war brought to the south that would have made any return to something remotely antebellum almost impossible, etc.
Faust also makes what I would consider a rather controversial argument that the South "threw in the towel," long before they were required to from a military standpoint. Her comparison was the CSA vs. Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries in North Vietnam. She notes that Ho carried on a guerrilla war for almost two full generations, vs. the French, the Japanese and US. Yet he never lacked for followers, and his followers always seemed motivated to fight. She might be right, at least to a degree, but I would consider her comparison failing on several points:
͏͏ None of the opponents Ho faced were based in his own backyard, and I would argue none were nearly as motivated as the Union was to keep the US together.
͏͏ By the end of the Civil War the North was on the verge of assuming a huge technological advantage, had the war continued long enough for the average Northern soldier to be outfitted with repeating rifles. Perhaps things like Gatling guns would also have been available, but repeating rifles vs. muzzle loaders alone would have been slaughter.
͏͏ Important to this issue, and also in a wider sense, Faust seemed to consider the "South" qua South an indivisible whole. And I don't see how a case can be made along these lines. The "Upper South," "Mid-South," and "Lower-South" were certainly different places, and may or may not have even ultimately have had the same interests. Whether slavery was truly dying out in the "Upper South" or not (debatable), the percentage of the total population either enslaved or slave owning was certainly shrinking. This contrasted radically with the Deep South, which had a vastly higher percentage of slaves, and slave-owners who considered themselves virtually an aristocracy, despising the Jacksonian-style democracy popular in the mid and upper south. I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that the North Vietnamese had no such groups with such widely diverging interests.
I'd argue a more valid comparsion -- since it even overlapped a part of the US Civil War -- was the Paraguayan War (link) of 1864-70. By the end of it Paraguay was essentially extinct; and I think Lee and Davis had some sense the same thing would have happened to the South had the war continued.
Eh, long enough, but there's also some interesting stuff about Southern War Profiteers (so much for that crap of Noble Southern Gentlemen), the cultural changes the war brought to the south that would have made any return to something remotely antebellum almost impossible, etc.
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