| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark A. Weitz. More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2005. Pp. xix, 346. $49.95.

Since the 1970s, the scholarly debate on the Confederacy has centered on whether or not white southerners created a unifying nationalist ideology. Considering that the Confederacy mobilized seventy-five to eighty-five percent of its available draft-age white military population, that at least 258,000 men died during the war and another 200,000 were wounded, it is probably safe to conclude that an ideological and political consensus existed and was sustained among white southerners for much of the war. It is true that ideological and emotional commitments were extraordinarily diverse among white southerners, and morale waxed and waned during the course of the war according to a host of variables. Gyrations in sentiment and feeling, however, should not prevent us from recognizing the obvious: most Confederates, even when they were tired of the war and unhappy with the Confederate government, rejected reunion, knowing full well that capitulation would destroy their beloved slave society. The time has come, moreover, for Confederate history to move beyond the restrictive question as to whether southern whites possessed sufficient nationalism or not to meet the demands of war. Unfortunately, Mark A. Weitz contributes little to this tired debate. Throughout his book he piles untenable generalizations and strident assertions upon hardened historiographical battle lines. Weitz does not expand our understanding of why men deserted, nor does he provide new insights into how this phenomenon contributed to the Confederacy's demise.

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