The Long Shadow of the Civil War

by Bynum, Victoria E.

• ISBN13: 9780807879092
• ISBN10: 0807879096
• Edition: Large
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

InThe Long Shadow of the Civil War, Victoria Bynum relates uncommon narratives about common Southern folks who fought not with the Confederacy, but against it. Focusing on regions in three Southern states--North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas--Bynum introduces Unionist supporters, guerrilla soldiers, defiant women, socialists, populists, free blacks, and large interracial kin groups that belie stereotypes of the South and of Southerners as uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause. Examining regions within the South where the inner civil wars of deadly physical conflict and intense political debate continued well into the era of Reconstruction and beyond, Bynum explores three central questions. How prevalent was support for the Union among ordinary Southerners during the Civil War? How did Southern Unionists and freedpeople experience both the Union's victory and the emancipation of slaves during and after Reconstruction? And what were the legacies of the Civil War--and Reconstruction--for relations among classes and races and between the sexes, both then and now? Centered on the concepts of place, family, and community, Bynum's insightful and carefully documented work effectively counters the idea of a unified South caught in the grip of the Lost Cause. InThe Long Shadow of the Civil War, Victoria Bynum relates uncommon narratives about common Southern folks who fought not with the Confederacy, but against it. Focusing on regions in three Southern states--North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas--Bynum introduces Unionist supporters, guerrilla soldiers, defiant women, socialists, populists, free blacks, and large interracial kin groups that belie stereotypes of the South and of Southerners as uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause. Examining regions within the South where the inner civil wars of deadly physical conflict and intense political debate continued well into the era of Reconstruction and beyond, Bynum explores three central questions. How prevalent was support for the Union among ordinary Southerners during the Civil War? How did Southern Unionists and freedpeople experience both the Union's victory and the emancipation of slaves during and after Reconstruction? And what were the legacies of the Civil War--and Reconstruction--for relations among classes and races and between the sexes, both then and now? Centered on the concepts of place, family, and community, Bynum's insightful and carefully documented work effectively counters the idea of a unified South caught in the grip of the Lost Cause.

Author Biography

Victoria E. Bynum is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history at Texas State University, San Marcos. She is author of The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War and Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. iii
Introduction: Kinship, Community, and place in The old and the new South	p. 1
Home Front	p. 26
Guerrilla wars: Plain Folk Resistance to the Confederacy	p. 32
Occupied at Home: Women Confront Confederate Forces in North Carolina's Quaker Belt	p. 66
Reconstruction and beyond	p. 100
Disordered Communities: Freedpeople, Poor Whites, and "Mixed Blood" Families in Reconstruction North Carolina	p. 106
Fighting a Losing Battle: Newt Knight Versus the U.S. Court of Claims, 1870-1900	p. 141
Legacies	p. 184
Civil War Unionists as New South Radicals: Mississippi and Texas, 1865-1920	p. 190
Negotiating Boundaries of Race and Gender in Jim Crow Mississippi: The Women of the Knight Family	p. 222
Epilogue: Fathers and Sons	p. 259
Notes	p. 283
Bibliography	p. 391
Acknowledgments	p. 435
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