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Alabamians in Blue Christopher M. Rein

Alabamians in Blue By Christopher M. Rein

Alabamians in Blue by Christopher M. Rein


Summary

Offers an in-depth examination of Alabama's black and white Union soldiers and their contributions to the eventual success of the Union army. Christopher Rein contends that the state's anti-Confederate residents tendered an important service to the North, primarily by collecting intelligence and protecting logistical infrastructure.

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Alabamians in Blue Summary

Alabamians in Blue: Freedmen, Unionists, and the Civil War in the Cotton State by Christopher M. Rein

Alabamians in Blue offers an in-depth scholarly examination of Alabama's black and white Union soldiers and their contributions to the eventual success of the Union army in the western theater. Christopher M. Rein contends that the state's anti-Confederate residents tendered an important service to the North, primarily by collecting intelligence and protecting logistical infrastructure. He highlights an underappreciated period of biracial cooperation, underwritten by massive support from the federal government. Providing a broad synthesis, Rein's study demonstrates that southern dissenters were not passive victims but rather active participants in their own liberation.

Ecological factors, including agricultural collapse under levies from both armies, may have provided the initial impetus for Union enlistment. Federal pillaging inflicted further heavy destruction on plantation agriculture. The breakdown in basic subsistence that ensued pushed Alabama's freedmen and Unionists into federal camps in garrison cities in search of relief and the opportunity for revenge. Once in uniform, Alabama's Union soldiers served alongside northern regiments and frustrated Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest's attempts to interrupt the Union supply efforts in the 1864 Atlanta campaign, which led to the collapse of Confederate arms in the western theater and the eventual Union victory. Rein describes a hybrid warfare of simultaneous conventional and guerilla battles, where each significantly influenced the other. He concludes that the conventional conflict both prompted and eventually ended the internecine warfare that largely marked the state's experience of the war.

A comprehensive analysis of military, social, and environmental history, Alabamians in Blue uncovers a past of biracial cooperation in the American South, and in Alabama in particular, that postwar adherents to the Myth of the Lost Cause have successfully suppressed until now.

Additional information

CIN0807170666VG
9780807170663
0807170666
Alabamians in Blue: Freedmen, Unionists, and the Civil War in the Cotton State by Christopher M. Rein
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Louisiana State University Press
20190515
312
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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