Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Joseph T. Glatthaar, "General Lee's Army"





Glatthaar confronts these findings early in his narrative.












Glatthaar concludes his point:





Anonymous said...

History is certainly written by the victor.

c0c0b33f said...

very interesting, but i'm not sure what the math used here is supposed to represent. simply adding soldiers who both served in the csa and either lived or worked with/for a slave owner doesn't represent how these people may have felt about slavery at all. the author seems to warn against what conclusions can be drawn, then proceeds to draw them (with the help of the reviewer).

Jeremy said...

I recently finished reading this book as well. It is critically important in understanding the link between the CSA volunteers and slavery. As to the comment that the data doesn't show how the soldiers actually felt about slavery, Glatthaar quotes many, many soldiers who make it very clear where they stand on the issue. So much to the point that one volunteer even turned his racial language to Union soldiers, describing them as an "ungodly, fanatical, depraved Yankee race."

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is not only possible, but quite probable that the number who owned slaves overlaps witht he humber who lived with parents who owned slaves. It is an inaccurate assumption that these percentages can be added together.

The true story that is often not told is that these statistics do not reveal the differences between the hearts of northern and southern citizens. Many in the South did not agree with slavery but the economy was based on it.

In the North slavery only ceased to exsit because it was not economically viable in industrialized communities. In fact, most of those states had passed laws that made it illegal for free blacks to live there. The narative that southerners were racists and norhterners were not is completely unfactual.

Anonymous said...

Wow--such sloppy statistics. No wonder real scientists, as in the "hard sciences," look down their noses at "social scientists".