| Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia Contributor(s): Wetherington, Mark V. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1469615207 ISBN-13: 9781469615202 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $57.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877) - History | United States - State & Local - South (al,ar,fl,ga,ky,la,ms,nc,sc,tn,va,wv) - History | United States - 19th Century |
| Dewey: 975.803 |
| LCCN: 2005006284 |
| Series: Civil War America |
| Physical Information: 0.89" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.34 lbs) 400 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Topical - Civil War - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Cultural Region - Deep South - Cultural Region - South - Geographic Orientation - Georgia - Cultural Region - Southeast U.S. |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In an examination of the effects of the Civil War on the rural Southern home front, Mark V. Wetherington looks closely at the experiences of white "plain folk--mostly yeoman farmers and craftspeople--in the wiregrass region of southern Georgia before, during, and after the war. Although previous scholars have argued that common people in the South fought the battles of the region's elites, Wetherington contends that the plain folk in this Georgia region fought for their own self-interest. Plain folk, whose communities were outside areas in which slaves were the majority of the population, feared black emancipation would allow former slaves to move from cotton plantations to subsistence areas like their piney woods communities. Thus, they favored secession, defended their way of life by fighting in the Confederate army, and kept the antebellum patriarchy intact in their home communities. Unable by late 1864 to sustain a two-front war in Virginia and at home, surviving veterans took their fight to the local political arena, where they used paramilitary tactics and ritual violence to defeat freedpeople and their white Republican allies, preserving a white patriarchy that relied on ex-Confederate officers for a new generation of leadership. |
Contributor Bio(s): Wetherington, Mark V.: - Mark V. Wetherington is director of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, and author of the award-winning The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910. |