Confederate Homefront: Montgomery During the Civil War (review)

l66CIVIL WAR HISTORY Confederate Homefront: Montgomery During the Civil War. By William Warren Rogers Jr. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 156. $29-95) Reviewers are supposed to be critical. If this is not the case here, that's because there is not much to criticize about Confederate Homefront. So, like Brutus, I come not to bury Rogers but to praise him (for the most part). Thoroughly researched, weU-written (and it is an easy and an enjoyable read), and ably produced and edited (no typos or serious errorsjumped offthe page), this excellent study fiUs an important void in Confederate history. While Montgomery as the temporary capital of the CSA has received due attention by WilUam C. Davis, the history of the city (really, town is more like it) for the rest of the Civil War has not been fuUy told. Beginning with a sketch of Montgomery on the eve of the Civil War, Rogers proceeds topically and chronologically to depict life in Montgomery in its progress from provisional capital to miUtary outpost to important transportation and hospital center and finally to its surrender and occupation in 1865. In concise chapters, he not only explains the big questions of why Montgomery became the early center for the Confederacy and why the permanent capital was removed to Richmond, but also relates the course ofthe war and its increasingly devastating economic impact upon the people (white and black and men and women) and government of Montgomery. Along the way and at each stage of development, Rogers pauses to chart daily Ufe as weU—including the good, the bad, and the ugly (apologies to CUnt Eastwood here). While many arts and entertainments were available (and these are covered in detail), as were numerous churches (Montgomerians then were and now are very reUgious)—so too were the bars and brothels and an underclass of whites and blacks who constantly created problems for the local authorities. The treatment here is fair and objective with all segments of Montgomery society being represented and analyzed except for Jewish residents (for which there is no Usting in the index either). That Montgomery was segregated by class as well as race and that it was patriarchal should not excite surprise. Having studied the antebellum history of Augusta, Georgia, I can vouch for the book's claim as being a microcosm of Southern life. Accompanying photographs and maps complement the volume with the latter being very useful in locating the major landmarks and providing the reader with a sense oflocation. While some sources are not included in the bibliography (to be found in The Women 's War in the South), my major criticism is Rogers's treatment of secession itself. If Montgomerians supported the Confederacy almost unanimously and until the end, which loyalty is a central theme of the book, the reason for this may have been the revolutionary republicanism that Jefferson Davis and other Confederates constantly invoked, rather than the issues of slavery and race that inform Rogers's viewpoint and that of historical establishment in general , on this point, Rogers could have benefitted from the recent works ofJames BOOK REVIEWS167 M. McPherson, George C. Rabie (his political study of the Confederacy), Marshall De Rosa, Eugene D. Genovese, and especially Michael Morrison's Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse ofManifest Destiny and the Coming ofthe Civil War (1977), which offer some new perspectives about the South, secession, and the origins of the Civil War. W. Kirk Wood Alabama State University Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870. By W. Todd Grace. (Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press, 1999. Pp. xviii, 218. $28.00.) MountainPartisans: Guerrilla Warfare in theSouthernAppalachians, 1861-1865. By Sean Michael O'Brien. (Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 221. $35.00.) Do not be fooled by the similarity in titles. Mountain Rebels and Mountain Partisans both explore neglected aspects of the Civil War, and they share at times the same geographical perspective, but they have Utile else in common. Historians of the war in East Tennessee eagerly have awaited publication of W. Todd Grace's Mountain Rebels since 1992, when he completed the doctoral dissertation from which this book is derived...