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20 - Confederate Politics

from Part IV - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Paul D. Escott
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

Few expected the contentious, disruptive politics that dominated the Confederacy. In the first exciting days of independence, Southern leaders looked forward to a purified, harmonious government. Liberated at last, they said, from unconstitutional aggressions and the pollution of Northern parties and demagogues, the Confederate government had a bright future. Even Jefferson Davis, the newly chosen president, who was more realistic than most, proclaimed a new era based on the ties uniting all whites in a slaveholding society. “It is joyous to look around upon a people united in heart,” he declared as he took up his duties.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 414 - 435
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Alexander, Thomas B. and Beringer, Richard E., The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress: A Study of the Influence of Member Characteristics upon Legislative Voting Behavior, 1861–1865 (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Blair, William A. Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Edwards, Laura. A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Escott, Paul D. The Confederacy: The Slaveholders’ Failed Venture (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010).Google Scholar
Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Martis, Kenneth C. The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).Google Scholar
McCurry, Stephanie. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Neely, Mark E. Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Rable, George. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).Google Scholar

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