| Most Americans think of the Civil War as a series of dramatic clashes between massivearmies led by romantic-seeming leaders. But in the Appalachian communities of North Georgia,things were very different. Focusing on Fannin and Lumpkin counties in the Blue Ridge Mountainsalong Georgia's northern border, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the MountainSouth argues for a more localized, idiosyncratic understanding of this momentous period in ournation's history. The book reveals that, for many participants, this war was fought less forabstract ideological causes than for reasons tied to home, family, friends, andcommunity.Making use of a large trove of letters, diaries, interviews, governmentdocuments, and sociological data, Jonathan Dean Sarris brings to life a previously obscured versionof our nation's most divisive and destructive war. From the outset, the prospect of secessionand war divided Georgia's mountain communities along the lines of race and religion, and waritself only heightened these tensions. As the Confederate government began to draft men into thearmy and seize supplies from farmers, many mountaineers became more disaffected still. They bandedtogether in armed squads, fighting off Confederate soldiers, state militia, and their ownpro-Confederate neighbors. A local civil war ensued, with each side seeing the other as a threatto law, order, and community itself. In this very personal conflict, both factions came todehumanize their enemies and use methods that shocked even seasoned soldiers with their savagery. But when the war was over in 1865, each faction sought to sanitize the past and integrate itsstories into the national myths later popularized about the Civil War. By arguing that the reasonfor choosing sides had more to do with local concerns than with competing ideologies or social orpolitical visions, Sarris adds a much-needed complication to the question of why men fought inthe Civil War. |
