The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (review)

Peter S. Carmichael has written a deeply researched and well-argued book describing the intellectual and experiential bonds that tied together the "last generation" of men in Virginia who "came of age in the 1850s" (p. 6). Using the writings left by 121 young white men, Carmichael seeks to undermine the popular image of upper-class young white male Southerners before the war as "lazy, immoral, and hotheaded" (p. 6). Instead he finds well-educated young men who shared and articulated eight common concerns: the decline of Virginia after the passing of the Revolutionary War generation; the necessity and inherent benefits of "Progress"; the retarding effects on the Commonwealth of the dominance of the "old fogys;" the difficulties in acquiring property and an estate in the 1850s; the Southern tendency to elevate the image of the "Cavalier" at the expense of the more practical and moral Christian gentleman; the absolute merit of ambition tempered by faith; the need for more and better education for all white Southerners; and the Northern exploitation of the South. This list merely highlights the topics that Carmichael vigorously pursues in his first five chapters.

All these concerns underlie the response of the "last generation" to secession and war. Though most men in this study favored John Bell in the 1860 presidential election, almost to a man they became ardent secessionists by February 1861, angered by "specific political acts committed by the Republican administration and the perceived passiveness of Virginia's secession convention" (p. 147).

In turn, they would become loyal and hard-fighting Confederate officers, holding on to their beliefs in the virtue of bravery, individual responsibility to other soldiers, and the "cause" until the very end. While acknowledging the fact that they had much to lose by the defeat of the Confederacy, Carmichael emphasizes that many of these men saw "themselves as Christian and Confederate soldiers, fighting for both religious and political liberty" (p. 180). This potent mixture of faith, devotion to the "cause," ambition, and fear gave them great fortitude, but also made their adjustment to life in the defeated, devastated South that much harder.

In his last, most tantalizing chapter, Carmichael begins to chart the contours of the ironic path some members of this generation made by the turn of the new century. Thwarted in their dream of producing the new South they sought, they in turn became "old fogys," losing themselves "in a golden age of history that never existed in the Commonwealth" (p. 235).

A few criticisms must be raised. First, the title is deceptive, because the book's subjects are solely male, which is only half of the "last generation." Secondly, the author explains why he carried the story beyond the war, but giving that story only one chapter highlights the disparity between its brevity and the richness of the first half of the book. Lastly, the sample is a good size, but if the argument is to be extended to the entire Confederacy, then it would be necessary to include writings from other Southerners outside of Virginia.

In sum, this well-written and sensitively argued study should be required reading for all scholars of Southern history and the Civil War.