The Creation of Confederate Nationalism

Argues that coming to a fuller understanding of southern thought during the Civil War period offers a valuable refraction of the essential assumptions on which the Old South and the Confederacy were built. Drew Gilpin Faust shows the benefits of exploring Confederate nationalism “as the South's commentary upon itself. For decades, historians have debated the meaning and significance of Confederate nationalism and the role it played in the outcome of the Civil War. Yet they have paid little attention to the actual development and content of this Confederate ideology. In The Creation of Confederate Nationalism, Drew Gilpin Faust argues that coming to a fuller understanding of southern thought during the Civil War period offers a valuable refraction of the essential assumptions on which the Old South and the Confederacy were built. She shows the benefits of exploring Confederate nationalism ""as the South's commentary upon itself, as its effort to represent southern culture to the world at large, to history, and perhaps most revealingly, to its own people.

Analyzes the role Confederate nationalism played in the outcome of the Civil War and demonstrates how it changed and eventually defeated the social and political order it had been created to preserve