| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David Williams. Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, in association with the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. 1998. Pp. xiv, 288. $34.95.

David Williams's monograph is the latest addition to a growing body of literature within Civil War historiography: a regional study that concludes that the Confederacy lost the Civil War because of internal conflict. Well written and forcefully argued, Williams's book is compelling reading. According to Williams, most small farmers and landless tenants of the Lower Chattahoochie Valley of Georgia and Alabama had a deep and abiding distrust of planters. Well before the war, most poorer whites had grown to despise their wealthy neighbors, viewing them as arrogant, self-serving, and utterly opposed to their democratic yearnings. During the secession crisis, these plain folk became even more leery of planters' motives but found themselves unable to stop the flow of events. When war erupted, they may have supported the Confederacy, but their commitment was weak. According to Williams, most poorer white men joined the Confederate Army because community leaders compelled them to do so or because they hoped that military service might help them to advance out of their miserable lot in life. Lacking an ideological commitment, their enthusiasm for war proved transitory. By 1862, many had become disenchanted with military service because of the poor rations, horrible camp conditions, abusive treatment of officers, and the very real prospect that they might die for a cause that they did not really support. By 1863, Williams tells us, "thousands" began to flee the Confederacy as deserters. Thousands more wanted to join them, but they feared the consequence—execution—if caught. By the end of the war, Williams asserts, most common soldiers fought without enthusiasm or purpose. . . .

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