Marching Masters (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

The Confederate army went to war to defend a nation of slaveholding
states, and although men rushed to recruiting stations for many reasons, they understood that
the fundamental political issue at stake in the conflict was the future of slavery. Most
Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders themselves, but they were products of the largest and
most prosperous slaveholding civilization the world had ever seen, and they sought to maintain
clear divisions between black and white, master and servant, free and slave.

In Marching Masters Colin Woodward explores not only the importance
of slavery in the minds of Confederate soldiers but also its effects on military policy and
decision making. Beyond showing how essential the defense of slavery was in motivating
Confederate troops to fight, Woodward examines the Rebels’ persistent belief in the need
to defend slavery and deploy it militarily as the war raged on. Slavery proved essential to the
Confederate war machine, and Rebels strove to protect it just as they did Southern cities,
towns, and railroads. Slaves served by the tens of thousands in the Southern armies—never
as soldiers, but as menial laborers who cooked meals, washed horses, and dug ditches. By
following Rebel troops' continued adherence to notions of white supremacy into the
Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, the book carries the story beyond the Confederacy’s
surrender.

Drawing upon hundreds of soldiers’ letters, diaries, and
memoirs, Marching Masters combines the latest social and military history in
its compelling examination of the last bloody years of slavery in the United
States.