Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848–1865 by Paul Quigley (review)

Historians have spent the better part of fifty years considering and reconsidering the essential nature, development, and function of nationalism in the short-lived Confederacy. From Potter, Thomas, and Faust to Gallagher, Rubin, and Bernath, scholars have typically struggled to agree on even a definition of the term “nationalism,” let alone on its origins or quantification. But a recurring question has almost always lurked at the heart of such inquiry: what decisive effect did Confederate nationalism—or a substantial lack thereof—have on the outcome of America’s bloodiest conflict? Consensus on this matter has been elusive to say the least.

In Shifting Grounds, Paul Quigley wisely eschews this often contentious side debate—one that has ensnared many a well-intentioned historian. By his own admission, Quigley is not interested in delineating a fatal lynchpin deep within the roots of Confederate nationalism or deciphering why some fanatical Confederates fought on in the face of depleted morale and nearly unthinkable losses. Instead, Quigley explores how white southerners of the Civil War era understood and made sense of their own conflicted loyalties to state, region, and nation.

The first half of the book addresses the period that began in 1848 and ended with the advent of the Confederate nation-state. Quigley makes abundantly clear that the Confederacy was not an inevitable outcome—nor was undivided support for the secessionist cause. He asserts that the Fourth of July functioned as a sort of “national Sabbath” through which Americans openly expressed their understandings of citizenship, exceptionalism, federalism, and sectional identity (38). Quigley argues that before the Civil War most white Americans viewed the United States as an exemplary civic model for the rest of the oppressed world to follow. And revolutionary movements across the Atlantic—in Hungary, Ireland, Poland, and elsewhere—afforded Americans the opportunity to reminisce about the glory days of the Revolution and to tout their self-perceived exceptionalism. Despite outward expressions of patriotic sentiment, Quigley notes that federalism represented a ticking bomb in the story of American nationalism. As the first secession crisis and war in Mexico gave way to John Brown’s botched raid at Harper’s Ferry, southern slaveholders grew increasingly defensive of their human chattel. Subsequent debates over federal power and slavery shone a spotlight on personal loyalties rapidly becoming less reconcilable between state and nation.

The ground was shifting beneath the feet of white Americans. Southern radicals like William Yancey, Edmund Ruffin, and Robert Barnwell Rhett viewed these changes to the political and cultural landscape of the United States with great apprehension. The staunchest defenders of slavery took any insult to the peculiar institution as a personal indignity; over time, they understood northern abolitionism as an enemy laying waste not only to their honor but to the pillars of southern society itself: racial inequality, patriarchy, and slave labor. In turn, radicals tried to blueprint a regional identity for the South that, in keeping with popular notions of romantic nationalism, might have legitimized their case for secession on the basis of a shared cultural identity. Secession did not constitute a referendum on American nationalism; rather, it highlighted the degree to which bonds of nationalism had always been conditional and artificially constructed.

Quigley is especially concerned with questions of identity and legitimacy. To what extent could an individual southerner consciously shift between competing strains of nationalism, and what responsibilities of citizenship did allegiances at the local, state, and national levels actually entail? How might the fledgling Confederate government gain much-needed acknowledgment from European onlookers—or maybe even accreditation enough to enlist the aid of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy? And how did rank-and-file Confederates convince themselves that the Confederacy, for which so much of their blood had been spilled, was worthy of their collective sacrifice? For many, this question of identity and belonging followed them into the New South. Their memories of an idealized Confederate nation influenced the production of powerful Lost...