The Confederate Heartland: Military and Civilian Morale in the Western Confederacy by Bradley R. Clampitt (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SPRING 2012 95 states. The narrative ends with the following enigmatic sentence: “With his assassination, Abraham Lincoln at last was free of involvement in the affairs of the most troublesome state in the Union [Missouri], a freedom that he would undoubtedly have relished” (349). Lincoln’s complicated interaction with the border states merits serious scholarly attention. However, without the fruit of extensive research in manuscript collections and with the omission of West Virginia from the analysis, Abraham Lincoln and the Border States misses an opportunity to illuminate more fully this important subject. The result is an interesting narrative that could have been much more. Daniel W. Stowell The Papers of Abraham Lincoln The Confederate Heartland: Military and Civilian Morale in the Western Confederacy Bradley R. Clampitt Bradley Clampitt’s The Confederate Heartland explores questions of morale, nationalism, and defeatism in the Confederate western theatre by studying military and civilian responses to repeated losses in three states— Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee—that he defines as the “heartland” of the Confederacy. Clampitt focuses on the troubled years of 1864 and 1865 to determine how Confederate soldiers and civilians reacted to the crippling defeats their nation suffered. His concentration on the western Confederacy illuminates an aspect of Civil War history that has often taken a back seat to the more analyzed eastern theatre. Clampitt’s approach and conclusions add significantly to the scholarship of the war, most notably his contention that the isolation of the three “heartland” states helped forge a separate Confederate identity. In addition, Clampitt’s assertion that military and civilian attachment to their Confederate identity did not diminish but instead deepened as the war drew to a close is of particular note. The Confederate Heartland deftly assesses larger issues of western Confederate confidence while tracing individual stories and anecdotes to give a personal face to the meaning of military and civilian morale. Clampitt tells his story chronologically, offering a simple but clever way to highlight the changing mood of the Confederate population. Bradley R. Clampitt. The Confederate Heartland: Military and Civilian Morale in the Western Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. 256 pp. ISBN: 9780807139950 (cloth), $39.95. BOOK REVIEWS 96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Rather than organizing the book into chapters that deal exclusively with military or civilian subjects , Clampitt examines the reactions of both groups side-by-side and month-by-month. This decision strengthens his arguments by underscoring the intertwined relationship between military and civilian personnel, and how their interactions affected one another. Moreover, Clampitt’s chronological examination enables him to impart a sense of change over time. In the early chapters, Clampitt’s Confederates employ optimistic language even when they lived in “Yankee” occupied territories. But as the war progressed and the likelihood of victory waned, the mood of Confederates changed. Clampitt demonstrates that military personnel and civilians continued to expect victory even in the last months of the war, though their tone and enthusiasm darkened. Beyond simply detailing the road from victory to defeat, Clampitt explores the nature of Confederate nationalism in the western theater. Civil War historians now accept the presence of Confederate nationalism—even while disagreeing on its significance—but Clampitt offers somethingnew :anassessmentoftheroleofConfederate nationalism in the last two years of the war. Since Clampitt examines some of the most important if forgotten regions of the Confederacy, he has the opportunity to extend our knowledge considerably . He notes, for example, that Confederates’ belief in their impending victory shifted slowly but surely into far more complicated emotions as the war progressed. Rather than engaging in defeatist language, white western Confederates embraced a more violent and hateful method of coping, directing their growing antagonism at Union soldiers and the entire northern war effort. Clampitt describes this hardening of attitudes as evidence of Confederate nationalism, even if most westerners rarely recognized it as such. The national and regional implications for this argument are significant. Civil War historians argue that the Confederacy, for various reasons, possessed inconsistent nationalist tendencies. Clampitt’s regional study validates this conclusion, revealing that by late in the war the heartland’s shared hatred of the northern occupiers constituted a unique form of Confederate nationalism. Clampitt’s introduction briefly surveys...