| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Higher Duty: Desertion among Georgia Troops during the Civil War. By Mark A. Weitz. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. x, 227 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-8032-4791-5.)

Mark A. Weitz's A Higher Duty is an important contribution to the study of desertion in the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Historians have long debated whether Confederate desertion was a reflection of war weariness, a lack of tenacity or courage, an expression of class conflict, frustration with harsh war measures, or an indication of stillborn nationalism. 1

Drawing upon the little-known "Register of Confederate Deserters" at the National Archives, Weitz identified 3,368 Georgians who deserted to the Union army and took its oath of allegiance between 1863 and 1865. Using the 1860 census, Weitz pinpoints the geographical origins of the Georgia deserters and their socioeconomic backgrounds. Weitz notes that desertion was particularly heavy in late 1863 and into the first half of 1864. Most deserters, overwhelmingly enlisted men, hailed from the up-country and upper Piedmont regions of the state. . . .

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