Why the South Lost the Civil War - (Brown Thrasher Books) by Richard E Beringer & Herman Hattaway & Archer Jones & William N Still (Paperback)

About the Book

Four historians consider the popularly held explanations for southern defeat--state-rights disputes, inadequate military supply and strategy, and the Union blockade--undergirding their discussion with a chronological account of the war's progress.

Book Synopsis

In this widely heralded book first published in 1986, four historians consider the popularly held explanations for southern defeat--state-rights disputes, inadequate military supply and strategy, and the Union blockade--undergirding their discussion with a chronological account of the war's progress. In the end, the authors find that the South lacked the will to win, that weak Confederate nationalism and the strength of a peculiar brand of evangelical Protestantism sapped the South's ability to continue a war that was not yet lost on the field.

From the Back Cover

More than one hundred years after the South's surrender at Appomattox, Civil War battles rage on. Beyond the largely settled question of who lost and who won, dissension remains about how and why the war concluded as it did.

Review Quotes

[The authors] show that the Southern states were not united around a single leader or cause. . . . In the end, they discovered that God did not wear gray.

--New York Times

Should be required reading for anyone interested in the Confederate experiment. Its superb analysis of the previous literature, including respectful disagreement with many of the conclusions of Owsley, McWhiney, Jamieson and other prominent historians, makes it an ideal starting point for any discussion of Confederate defeat.

--Dallas Times-Herald

The most comprehensive, sophisticated, and well-informed [book on this subject] I have ever read.

--New York Review of Books

About the Author

Richard E. Beringer (Author)
RICHARD E. BERINGER is a professor of history at the University of North Dakota and the coeditor of a volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis.

Herman Hattaway (Author)
HERMAN HATTAWAY is a professor of history at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and coauthor, with Archer Jones, of How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War.

Archer Jones (Author)
ARCHER JONES is emeritus professor of history and former dean at North Dakota State University.

William N. Still Jr. (Author)
WILLIAM N. STILL JR. is a professor of history at East Carolina University and the author of several books, including Odyssey in Gray: A Diary of Confederate Service, 1863-1865.