A Rich Man's War, A Poor Man's Fight: Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army / Edition 1

by Bessie Martin, Mark A. Weitz

Overview

This book argues that Confederate soldiers left their posts in significant numbers due largely to the prevalence of poverty on the home front.

At the start of the Civil War in 1861, many men in Alabama enthusiastically enlisted. After these husbands, fathers, and brothers-all family breadwinners-marched off to duty, the number of indigent families in the state began to rise dramatically. Inflation, lack of transportation, a drastically decreased labor force, war taxes, and enemy invasion all created an increasingly desperate economic situation, especially in less affluent northern and southeastern sections of the state. In some places, women and children were reported to be near starvation, bread riots erupted, and begging was common.

As soldiers became more and more distressed about these developments at home, waves of desertions occurred. Even social relief efforts made by state and local governments in the form of the Military Aid Society, the Samaritan Society, and the Citizen’s Relief Association did little to deter the cyclical exodus of fighting men from Confederate units. Southern leaders considered desertion the chief cause of serious military defeats, including those at Atlanta and Gettysburg. Desertions certainly weakened the manpower of the Confederacy and lowered the morale of its people.

Bessie Martin’s well-researched study sheds light on the complex nature of desertions by Alabama troops and provides valuable statistical and bibliographic information for contemporary researchers. It will be welcomed anew by Civil War historians and enthusiasts.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817350109
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	04/02/2003
Series:	Library of Alabama Classics
Edition description:	First Edition, First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Born in Marion, Alabama, in 1891,Bessie Martin received both her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. She returned to Alabama and taught at Judson College.

Mark A. Weitz is Assistant Professor of History at Auburn University Montgomery and author of A Higher Duty: Desertion among Georgia Troops during the American Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

"An admirable piece of research, thorough, exhaustive, and painstaking.”

—American Historical Review

“An admirable piece of research, thorough, exhaustive, and painstaking.”
—American Historical Review
 

“[In] this scholarly and objective study of great interest and value, we see the romantic illusion of the pre-war decade, the bluster of the fire-eaters . . . being paid for in the disillusion which followed the easy triumph of the first few months. . . . Instead of regular pay, food, clothing, and unselfish leadership, the rank and file were given rhetoric and general orders.”
—Times (London) Literary Supplement
 


"[In] this scholarly and objective study of great interest and value, we see the romantic illusion of the pre-war decade, the bluster of the fire-eaters . . . being paid for in the disillusion which followed the easy triumph of the first few months. . . . Instead of regular pay, food, clothing, and unselfish leadership, the rank and file were given rhetoric and general orders.”
—Times (London) Literary Supplement

From the Publisher