Private Confederacies

"This book rests at the intersection of our Civil War, Southern studies, and gender studies lists. Broomall seeks to understand how the experiences of the war, Emancipation, and Reconstruction shaped ex-Confederate men, and more generally, white masculinity in the South. Scholars of antebellum southern masculinity among middle and upper class whites have persuasively argued that these men embraced Christian gentility and engaged a vibrant intellectual culture while commanding themselves and their feelings with a firm hand. This bolstered an atmosphere of competition, erected barriers between men, and maintained a white social order. But the crisis of the Civil War forced the reconfiguration of antebellum behavior and expression as witnessed in white southern men's gender identities and manifestations of emotion"--