| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility. By Jason Phillips. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. xii, 257 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-2836-2.)
In Diehard Rebels, Jason Phillips argues that instead of asking what Confederate soldiers fought for, we must ask, why did they fight on? His answer is the "diehard rebels," soldiers who fought until the bitter end and who took their notions of invincibility into the Lost Cause. Based on his reading of Confederate soldiers' letters and diaries from 1863–1865, Phillips argues that "three factors shaped Confederate notions of invincibility: the environment of the war, the qualities of white southern culture, and the mechanics of group psychology" (p. 187). That argument is an important addition to work by Gerald F. Linderman and James M. McPherson on soldiers' motivations.	1
In five tightly argued chapters, Phillips deals with religion, abstractions of the enemy, soldiers' confidence despite their surroundings, perceptions of the distant war, and the experience of surrender and its consequences. Expanding on Edward L. Ayers's ideas of "deep contingency"—that events shaped soldiers' perceptions of the conflict at the same time as their "hopes and beliefs gave magnitude and meaning to events" (p. 126)—Phillips provides a fresh perspective on the minds of the stubborn Confederate soldier.	. . .

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