Monday, July 7, 2014

To Live and Die in Dixie

There are a lot of books with that title, but the one I am keen on is David Ross Zimring's upcoming To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought for the Confederacy (UT Press, Dec '14, and yes, don't look at the price). The webpage hasn't been filled in yet, but you can find the full description, excerpted below, in the catalog. To my knowledge, this is the first serious demographical analysis based study of the almost 350,000 native northerners residing in the southern states according to the 1860 census.

From the publisher:
Focusing on a representative sample of emigrants, Zimring identifies two subgroups: “adoptive southerners,” individuals born and raised in a state above the Mason-Dixon line but who but did not necessarily join the Confederacy after they moved south, and “northern Confederates,” emigrants who sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. After analyzing statistical data on states of origin, age, education, decade of migration, and, most important, the reasons why these individuals embarked for the South in the first place, Zimring goes on to explore the prewar lives of adoptive southerners, the adaptations they made with regard to slavery, and the factors that influenced their allegiances during the secession crisis. He also analyzes their contributions to the Confederate military and home front, the emergence of their Confederate identities and nationalism, their experiences as prisoners of war in the North, and the reactions they elicited from native southerners.

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