Agriculture and the Confederacy - Civil War America by R Douglas Hurt Paperback

About the Book

"In this comprehensive and innovative Civil War history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America, the backbone of the Southern economy, which, alongside military strength, Southerners believed would ensure their independence. In a sweeping study of agricultural production and government policy, Hurt connects the disintegration of Southern agriculture with the region's waning power, while giving voice to the farmers and planters in the Eastern and Western Confederacy"--

Book Synopsis

In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners -- faced with hunger and privation throughout the region -- ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War.

Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.

Review Quotes

"A must-read for anyone interested in southern agricultural policy and an important component for a full comprehension of the reasons for Confederate defeat." -- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"A significant contribution to our understanding of both the problems plaguing southern agriculture and the reasons for the Confederacy's defeat." -- Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"A tremendous achievement and a must-read for scholars of the Confederacy." -- American Nineteenth Century History

"An excellent study of an important but generally neglected aspect of the Civil War." -- Journal of American History

"An important addition to the historiography of the Civil War and the Confederacy. . . . A useful book for students of postbellum southern agriculture." -- -North Carolina Historical Review

"An important book...Sure to stimulate additional scholarship on agriculture during the war." -- Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

"An important study of Southern agriculture that decisively establishes its subject's critical importance for both the course and ultimate outcome of the Confederacy's war efforts. . . . It belongs on the shelves of all Civil War scholars."--Journal of the Civil War Era

"Brilliant analysis. . . . After reading this masterful volume, Civil War scholars will need to reconsider and rewrite the history of the Confederacy" -- Journal of Southern History

"Highly recommended." -- CHOICE