William W. Freehling. The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xv + 238 pp. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-513027-0.

Reviewed by Christine Dee (History of American Civilization, Harvard University)
Published on H-South (February, 2002)

Confederate Losses and Union Gains: New Perspectives on Southerners and the Civil War

Confederate Losses and Union Gains: New Perspectives on Southerners and the Civil War

William Freehling's The South vs. The South is an innovative narrative of the Civil War that focuses on the vast number of southerners--both white and black--who opposed the Confederacy. These "anti-Confederates," as Freehling terms Border State whites and slaves in the Confederacy, composed half of the southern population and were crucial to Union victory. By dividing the southern home front, by weakening the Confederacy militarily, and by contributing manpower and material to the Union, anti-Confederates made a crucial contribution to the Union war effort, hastening the end of the war and aiding the Union in its victory.

Building on the social and economic diversity of the South he documented in The Road to Disunion, Freehling suggests that anti-Confederates derived their strength from the weakness of slavery in the Border South. While slavery mired the Lower South in an agricultural economy and stunted population growth, its weak hold in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri allowed the Border South to follow a different economic path, one that featured industrial development and sustained population increase. At the same time, the Border South, especially its cities, encouraged slaves to flee from the Deep South. During the war, the exodus continued, aided by Union policies under which blacks garrisoned military posts. As Freehling points out, black soldiers were crucial in the western theater of the war, providing manpower that enabled both Grant and Sherman to succeed in the east.

In arguing that anti-Confederate southerners played a central role in Confederate defeat, Freehling shifts historical debate to ground that is at once familiar and novel. Historians such as Drew Gilpin Faust and Paul Escott have identified internal disaffection as the primary cause of Confederate defeat while Gary Gallagher has suggested that whites in the Confederacy maintained their support for the government even as military losses ended the war.[1] The South vs. the South expands the scope of inquiry, looking beyond internal fissures within the Confederacy to the divisions in broader southern society. In Freehling's telling, anti-Confederate whites undermined the Confederacy by remaining outside the nation while slaves sapped Confederate unity from within and, once enlisted into the Union Army, from without. Together, both groups guaranteed that the Union would have more men for the army, a greater industrial capacity, and ultimately less territory to conquer while denying the Confederacy the same benefits. The Confederacy lost, Freehling suggests, largely because anti-Confederates waged a war against Confederate southerners (p. 201).

The South vs. the South progresses through the war chronologically, fulfilling Freehling's call to reintegrate narrative into historical scholarship.[2] By centering his analysis thematically on the divisions between southerners and their impact on the war, Freehling illuminates such important issues as the conflicts between free and slave labor, how white racism permeated both the North and the South, Lincoln's advance towards emancipation, the collaboration between slaves and Union soldiers in bringing about emancipation, and Americans' persistent suspicion of centralized government. In broad strokes, the author depicts the interplay between northern and southern home fronts, the relationship between political and military developments, and how both were influenced by anti-Confederate southerners.

Concerning fugitive slaves, Freehling suggests their nonviolent resistance undermined slavery before the war, especially in the Border States. During the war, they were agents in their own emancipation, the author maintains, successfully negotiating Northern whites' desire to destroy the cornerstone of the Confederacy and whites' fear of black violence. Blacks, by assuming the roles of "the nonviolent runaway and cooperative soldiers," played a significant part in anti-Confederate efforts (pp. 25-7, 134-5). The work also succeeds in casting well-known events of the war in a new light, including the 54th Massachusetts Regiment's assault on Fort Wagner, Grant's siege of Vicksburg, and the Massacre at Fort Pillow. Moreover, by measuring the role anti-Confederates played in the war, Freehling reminds us of the importance of the western theater in both emancipation and the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.

In its appeal to both scholars and a broader audience, The South vs. the South generally succeeds in providing something for everyone: a new paradigm for understanding Confederate defeat; a treatment of the role the Border South played in the war; the consideration of blacks as political and military agents in Union victory; a revisiting of legendary wartime battles and figures in a compelling storyline. Its broad appeal, however, also contributes to its major shortcoming. In striving a pithy and compelling narrative, Freehling's prose is at times awkward and occasionally tasteless. We learn, for example, that ordering Union troops through Baltimore was a mistake by Lincoln's administration and that the neutral city "vomited all over the mistake and then with nothing left in its stomach, went back to trading with the North" (p. 50). Repeatedly we read that Lincoln issued "no papal bulls against comets" (pp. 123, 124). Moreover, the description of Patrick Cleburne as "an Irish anomaly" for giving up alcohol reads as a bigoted generalization, as does his reference to Cleburne as "a crony with no blarney" (pp. 189). Found in the midst of otherwise engaging prose, such statements detract from the author's significant insights.

The South vs. the South is a work of substance and creativity. Its argument that divisions within southern society, specifically between Confederates and anti-Confederates, advanced the Union war effort and hastened Confederate defeat is persuasive, strengthening historians' claims that the outcome of the Civil War hinged more on political and social conditions than on military campaigns. The broad and sweeping narrative also suggests that more work should be done to detail the role that borderlands--those places not easily characterized by distinctions between North and South--played in shaping the war. Freehling's integration of state and national developments also suggests the need to integrate the growing number of home front studies into larger interpretations that will illuminate the regional, economic, and political diversity that divided a nation in war and continued to shape its future in peace.

Notes

1. Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998); Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978); Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

2. William W. Freehling, The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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Citation: Christine Dee. Review of Freehling, William W., The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. H-South, H-Net Reviews. February, 2002.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5905

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