Home Guard and the Homefront

[YankRI]

Friends,

I saw Cold Mountain last night and like many of you, enjoyed it very much. One thing that the movie did for me was awaken a curiosity about the homefront in the South. Can anyone recommend a book or two of note that gives a proper account of the travails encountered by the folks back home in the Confederate states? I never gave that aspect of the war much thought growing up here in New England but am looking to rectify that deficiency in my learning.

Sincerely,

[1stMaine]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Comrade,
there's a trilogy of books out there about the war in North Carolina, and I'll try and locate the author and titles this week. My local library has them. I remmber reading them a couple years ago and the research was very well done. They were also surprisingly readable. One of them dealt with bushwhackers and the problems faced in NC by the folks at home. deserters of both armies were little more than marauding gangs, and at one time there was a serious proposal to mount a joint US/CS expedition into the area to clean house. It was that bad for all concerned.
If anyone else remembers the author and/or titles, feel free to post them.
respects,

[Delhi Rangers]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Friends,

I saw Cold Mountain last night and like many of you, enjoyed it very much. One thing that the movie did for me was awaken a curiosity about the homefront in the South. Can anyone recommend a book or two of note that gives a proper account of the travails encountered by the folks back home in the Confederate states? I never gave that aspect of the war much thought growing up here in New England but am looking to rectify that deficiency in my learning.

Sincerely,

Dear Sir:
A book that you might want to read that would provide some insight to what happened on the homefront is: Inside War: The Guerilla Conflick in Missouri During The American Civil War by Michael Fellman. This is a good book that I have read myself.


Hopes This Helps

Johnny Pullen
Delhi Rangers

[Jack Booda]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Tim: the trilogy is called "The Civil War in North Carolina" Series and is by William R. Trotter. Volume 1 deals with the Piedmont, Volume 3 with the Coast.

Volume 2- Bushwackers: The Civil War in North Carolina - The Mountains, is probably the one you're thinking of for Michael Jolin.

All are available at Barnes and Noble, and probably many other places. :)

BTW, there also seems to be a lot of recent info on loyalism in East Tennessee which you may find interesting.

[Tom Ezell]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Friends,

I saw Cold Mountain last night and like many of you, enjoyed it very much. One thing that the movie did for me was awaken a curiosity about the homefront in the South. Can anyone recommend a book or two of note that gives a proper account of the travails encountered by the folks back home in the Confederate states? I never gave that aspect of the war much thought growing up here in New England but am looking to rectify that deficiency in my learning.

Sincerely,

Keeping in mind that Cold Mountain is as much about the Civil War as O Brother Where Art Thou? is about country music, two good references on the Confederate Homefront and rear area security is Kenneth Radley's Rebel Watchdog: The Confederate States Army Provost Guard, and William C. Davis' Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America.

[markj]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Hi,

Here's another one: "War at Every Door" (1997):

http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-226.html

It discusses partisan politics and warfare in East Tennessee during and immediately after the war.

Regards,

Mark Jaeger

[RelicRoomGuy]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Bell Wiley did one called "Common People of the Confederacy"; it's out of print, but interlibrary loan ought to be able to find it for you.

"Mountain Partisans" by Sean Michael O'Brien is more recent (still on Amazon, I think) and introduced me to the ugly guerilla actions OUTSIDE the notorious Missouri/Kansas area...

[KarinTimour]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront

Dear Mr. Jolin:

I'm joining this discussion a bit late in the game. I was very interested to see the wealth of resources regarding home guard activity posted by others. I don't know how much your interest is in solely home guard research, but if you would like a concise, readable introduction to the Southern homefront, I'd recommend the following books. I should also mention that my preference is on first-person accounts -- and even the secondary books that I have listed are largely made up of long excerpts from first person memoirs and diaries:

1. Drew Gilpin Faust's "Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War" (ISBN 0-679-78104-8). It is only 257 pages long, won several prizes for history the year it was published and gives a very comprehensive view of everyday women's lives in a secondary format, but with a lot of first person excerpts from diaries and memoirs.

2. Marilyn Mayer Culpepper's "Trials and Triumphs: The Women of the American Civil War" (ISBN: 0-87013-368-3). This book "compares and contrasts" the experiences of Northern and Southern women, but it does it almost completely by cutting and pasting long diary and memoir excerpts. Extremely readable -- I regularly run through it for details, and my copy resembles a hedgehog who rolled in a scrap paper pile, as it bristles with post-it notes.

3. Kathryn Jones as put together several compilations that are solely multiple page diary excerpts -- her most well known is "Heroines of Dixie" (ISBN 0-8317-1005-5) though she has also put together "Ladies of Richmond," and "When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the 'Great March'". Much of her work was published in the 1960s and I suspect was one of the inspirations for the "Documenting the American South" website at the University of North Carolina. She is owed great honor as through her reprinting of excerpts from the diaries published immediately post-war, she has kept many women's stories from fading into the mists of history.

4. Which brings up another point -- by doing a search on the "Documenting the American South" website (www.docsouth.unc.edu) you can read on-line many, many different accounts of life in the South during the war, most of them out of print. I'm sure a search on "home guard" would bring up a wealth of sources.

5. "The Womens' War in the South" edited by Charles Waugh and Martin Greenberg (ISBN 1-58182-021-6) is another compliation of essays and individual academic papers, each on a different Southern Woman's experiences, all with very long quotations from her written diaries or memoirs.
published diaries that has more marked up post-it notes than
[QUOTE=RelicRoomGuy]Bell Wiley did one called "Common People of the Confederacy"; it's out of print, but interlibrary loan ought to be able to find it for you.

6. "The War the Women Lived: Female Voices from the American South" by Walter Sullivan (ISBN: 1-879941-30-9) is another collection of long diary excerpts, very enjoyable.

Mr. Long mentioned the book by Bell Wiley, I think he might have gotten the title wrong -- I suspect it is "Plain People of the Confederacy." I'd never heard of it before his mention of it, and I've not yet read it. Judging by Bell Wiley's other work, I'm sure it's fascinating.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[DougCooper]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront - Try this one

have not read it but it looks promising based on these reviews. We are going to consult it for our Florida Home Guard impression.

Rose Cottage Chronicles: Civil War Letters of the Bryant-Stephens Families of North Florida
by Arch Fredric Blakey (Editor), Ann S. Lainhart (Editor), Winston Bryant Stephens (Editor)

Product Details

Hardcover: 416 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.48 x 9.53 x 6.58
Publisher: University Press of Florida; (May 1998)
ISBN: 0813015502


Rare Look At Confederate Florida, March 22, 2000
Reviewer: John Y. Roberts from Newport News, Va.
Very good book about life in Florida during the War Between the States. Not the stuff of generals or other "important people", these are the chronicles of normal people during that period and gives an excellent insight into what life was really like in rural north Florida during the war. It is refreshing to see this aspect of the war published and it is invaluable to the serious student of the war who wishes to explore the conflict on the frontiers, far from the more researched and reported theaters closer to Washington and Richmond. By reading the letters of the participants and their families, you are almost transformed and taken back to live among them. An excellent book.

Scarlett and Rhett- meet Tivie and Winston!!!!!, November 11, 1998
Reviewer: A reader from peabody, ma
Based on over 1000 letters still surviving from over 135 years ago. What we are given is a window through which we can look at life as it was for a young married couple almost 140 years ago. We share their joy and delight at their marriage; we rejoice at the birth of their first child. We share their pain and longing as the war separates them. We feel the terror and the horror of a young woman as the Yankees approach her home. We share her anguish as she learns of the death of her beloved husband. Seldom have I read a book that transported me so completely to another time and place as Rose Cottage Chronicles did- one feels like you are there peering over their shoulders as they struggle to survive the hardships caused by the Civil War. For its painstaking attention to detail,its historical accuracy, and its readability, this book is a TREASURE!! Anyone with an interest in the Civil War or what daily life was like back then would enjoy reading Rose Cottage Chronicles.

[KentuckyReb]

Re: Home Guard and the Homefront - Try this one

There was a 'historical fiction'-type series (kinda like Allan W. Eckert but not as good)written as well. Seem to recall that the author had quite a bias in favor of E. Tennessee/W. NC loyalists. No, that's not just me talking, it's something he says himself in the preface as sort of a caveat to anyone expecting to find the subject treated with impartiality. It was... an okay set as I recall. Can't remember if it was a duology or a trilogy. Umm... I remember one character having an ongoing battle with alcohol. Sort of an antihero. I think he was a deserter. The other characters are kinda murky... been a while since I read it. Parson Brownlow, I think, might have had a treatment as a 'supporting character'. Lots of bridge-burnin' and hangin' folks and all that wonderful stuff. I think it was (maybe) called the 'Mountain War' series. Not recommending it for its authenticity (although it may have been very good--like I said, I had forgotten all about it until I read this thread), but I seem to recall it making pretty good 'burger and fries' type reading. I don't suppose anybody else recalls these books? (Edit--Just found 'em on Google. Cameron Judd, 'The Mountain War Trilogy'.)