| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion. By Peter S. Carmichael. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xvi, 343 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8078-2948-X.)
This carefully argued study traces the intellectual history of part of the generation of Virginians who led the state's secession and served eagerly in the Confederate army. After the war, however, these men embraced reconciliation and became enthusiastic spokesmen for the New South gospel of industrialization. It is that seemingly strange journey that Peter S. Carmichael seeks to explain. In the process, he contributes significantly to ongoing debates about southern identity, secession, and social, cultural, and ideological continuity across the tumultuous years of Civil War and Reconstruction.	1
Carmichael's "last generation" consists of men born between 1831 and 1843 (his sample is 121 men). They came of age under slavery, and nearly all were slave owners, although many of them struggled financially before the war. Most of his subjects also attended universities, "did not run for or hold office," were not heads of household in 1861, and in occupation "most likely a lawyer, teacher, or student" (p. 7). These qualities, of course, made them unusual among antebellum southern men, particularly the region's leadership class. Carmichael uses any written evidence they left behind, including letters, diaries, and most interestingly, college papers and theses, to piece together their collective ideology.	. . .

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