Colin Edward Woodward. Marching Masters

Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War offers a meticulous depiction of the role of slavery in the Confederate armed forces during the Civil War. Singlehandedly, this book effectively reveals that slavery comprised an essential component of white southerners’ identity even as the Confederate States of America experimented with something approaching unconventional warfare. At the same time, slavery shaped Confederate military strategy as leaders sought to manipulate impressment and planter patriotism to raise an adequate number of slave laborers. Colin Edward Woodward analyzed thousands of letters to reach the conclusion “that even men who were not explicitly proslavery in 1861 feared what abolitionism meant for Southern ‘rights’ and ‘institutions’” (6). Woodward arranges the chapters thematically while paying close attention to the chronology of the war within and between chapters. In an example of first-rate writing, the author begins the introduction with a brief depiction of the Confederates’ massacre of African American troops at the Battle of the Crater, and saves the thorough analysis for chapter 6. The introduction includes an impressive discussion of Civil War historiography. In the 1990s, professional historians began to study why Civil War soldiers fought in the conflict. Chandra Manning and several other historians have concluded that northerners and southerners fought over slavery. Woodward contributes to this recent historiography by examining how Confederate soldiers, including privates and officers, viewed slavery.

Abolitionism · Ancient history · Art · Battle · Depiction · Historiography · Literature · Patriotism · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · White (mutation) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies