Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South
In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War.

Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.
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Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South
In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War.

Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.
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Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South

Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South

by R. Douglas Hurt
Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South

Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South

by R. Douglas Hurt

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Overview

In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War.

Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469620015
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 03/02/2015
Series: Civil War America
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 364
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

R. Douglas Hurt is professor and head of the department of history at Purdue University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In a memorable and massively researched book, R. Douglas Hurt sheds new light on agriculture in the Civil War. He brings this aspect of history into much sharper focus, resituating the analysis within an agrarian context, something from which historians unfamiliar with such terrain will undoubtedly benefit. It stands to make an important contribution to agricultural history and will provide Civil War historians interested in the social and economic factors associated with the Confederacy's defeat with a deeper and richer context.—Jeannie M. Whayne, University of Arkansas

Jeannie M. Whayne University of Arkansas

In a memorable and massively researched book, R. Douglas Hurt sheds new light on agriculture in the Civil War. He brings this aspect of history into much sharper focus, resituating the analysis within an agrarian context, something from which historians unfamiliar with such terrain will undoubtedly benefit. It stands to make an important contribution to agricultural history and will provide Civil War historians interested in the social and economic factors associated with the Confederacy's defeat with a deeper and richer context.

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