Virginia's Private War

Providing a close study of the home front in the Confederacy, William Blair offers a significant contribution to our understanding of the Confederate defeat. He challenges the dominant assumption that internal stresses and conflicts, particularly in reference to class and race, undermined the Confederacy. Rather, he shows that for most of the South the centripetal forces of Confederate nationalism and defense of home and hearth against an invading enemy were far more powerful. Internal problems, including dissent, wracked the state of Virginia, yet these private wars actually helped prolong the conflict as they forced authorities to turn the war into more of a rich man's fight.