Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 (review)

Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865. By William Blair (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 205 pp. $32.50

Virginia's Private War is one of the best books about the Confederate homefront to appear in recent years. After reading this insightful, well-written volume, students of this era will have a much harder time defending one of the oldest chestnuts in Civil War historiography, that the South went down to defeat because the civilian population lacked the will to win.

Not so, Blair insists: "Virginians did not lose because of failed nationalism or internal conflicts. Their sense of purpose remained strong enough to win until the winter of 1864-1865, when the pressure of the Union army and the lack of resources finally took their toll on the spirits of all but the heartiest souls" (4). To make his case, Blair focuses on four key elements in the debate about Confederate morale: conscription, desertion, privation, and impressment. He follows these issues through the war years in four chronological chapters that constitute the heart of the book. He also selects three counties for in-depth study--Campbell (the principal city of which is Lynchburg), Albemarle (where Charlottesville and the University of Virginia are located), and Augusta (county seat, Staunton).

On both the state-wide and the local level, Blair finds a similar pattern. "People accepted hardships and loss of liberty as long as they were convinced of the necessity and could see that most shared the suffering" (53). Indeed, the mobilization and commitment of manpower and resources reached staggering proportions as the struggle dragged on. Before the war was over, 80 percent of the state's male population of military age (seventeen to fifty) either went into the army or worked in industries serving the war effort. According to Blair, a conflict that began in Virginia as a rich man's war and a poor man's fight was transformed by several key political decisions: legislation passed by the Confederate Congress in December 1863 that revoked the right to hire substitutes; Congressional imposition of impressment in 1863; and a follow-up bill in early 1864 requiring local farmers to sell food to soldiers' families at less than market prices. These measures--"striking achievements" in the author's view (104)--"distributed the pain among various classes" more equitably (106), reduced privation on the homefront, and helped check desertion among veteran soldiers. In the end, however, the South was overwhelmed on the battlefield. One of Blair's purposes is "to restore the importance of military events to the question of Confederate defeat" (8-9).

Blair's research and analysis are not without their shortcomings. He acknowledges that he "could find only scattered testimony from either the poor or families of soldiers about the perception of the relief measures adopted by local, state, and Confederate authorities" (9), and he admits that Virginia's experience may not speak for the rest of the South. Nevertheless, he has produced an important, challenging, and innovative study. Civil War scholarship could use more of the fresh thinking that Blair displays on page after page of this valuable book.

Charles Dew
Williams College

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