"It is the central argument of this study that the primary cause of waning loyalty was the failure of the Davis administration to respond to the problems of the common people, who were the backbone of Confederacy...War burdened the common people, who often had a hard life at best, with tremendous additional difficulties. Volunteering and conscription robbed one-man farms of their main source of labor, while shortages, rampant inflation, and profiteering increased the problems of the women and children left behind....To these needs Jefferson Davis failed to respond...As a result, a growing number of the common people of the South quietly withdrew their support from the government or left armies" (x-xi).

"...Economic difficulties for the ordinary southern citizen arose at an early date due to the war’s powerful impact on civilian life. With astonishing rapidity many items of everyday use appreciated in price and became unattainable or dearly purchased luxuries. As one newspaper in upland South Carolina described the situation, salt was ‘high and hard to get,’ oats at $1 ‘and on the rise,’ eggs scarce, and ‘shoes and hats...away up yonder’" (104).

"...For thousands of southern families, the most crucial problem was the loss of one man: the husband, father, and breadwinner ....Nonslaveholding families confronted a severe shortage of labor....A tone of desperation crept into many of these pleas for the exemption or discharge of the family provider, as it did in a letter from Elizabeth Leeson to Secretary of War Seddon in July, 1863: ‘I ask in the name of humanity to discharge my husband he is not able to do your government much good and he might do his children some good and thare is no use in keeping a man thare to kill him and leave widows and poore little orphen children to suffer while the rich has aplenty to work for them...my poor children have no home nor no Father’" (107-8).

"...The destruction of property which frequently accompanied the encampment of troops proved costly and galling to ordinary southerners. Soldiers ruined crops, slaughtered animals, and tore up fencing and dismantled outbuilding in order to obtain firewood...the Richmond Enquirer reported in August, 1862, ‘We often hear persons say, ‘The Yankees cannot do us any more harm than our own soldiers have done.’...These kind of bitter experiences caused the Confederate government to lose the loyalty and support of many of its poorest citizens...These common citizens felt that while they owed the duty of military service to the government, the Confederacy also owed them the right to live" (111-2).

"...The feeling that all classes were not sharing equally in the sacrifices of the war and that rich slaveholders were escaping their burdens turned many small farmers and nonslaveholders away from the Richmond government (113)...The adoption of conscription in 1862 exacerbated this problem rather than relieving it...Perhaps the common people would have accepted this system if the government had administered it with rigid equity, but examples of favoritism abounded in every community, and the system itself allowed a method of escape from military service for any man with sufficient means...One of the greatest causes of discontent was the system of substitution...Under conscription the War Department allowed men to furnish substitutes, who agreed to serve in place of others for a price...In any case the large number of substitutes constituted what Bell Wiley has called ‘a shameful reflection on patriotism’" (116-8).

"...The Congress...in 1862, authorized the exemption of one white man for every twenty Negroes under his control. Almost immediately this statute...created resentment among the Confederacy’s small farmers. One congressman warned the government that ‘never did a law meet with more universal odium...Its influence upon the poor is most calamitous, and has awakened a spirit and elicited a discussion of which we may safely predict the most unfortunate results" (120).

"...Thus class resentments turned many southerners away from the Confederacy. One of the most damaging ways in which southerners withdrew their support from the new nation was to leave the armies...Many...factors, such as tedium of camp life, resentment of discipline, failure to receive pay and equipment, and poor medical care, contributed to desertions, but in a large number of cases concern for one’s family was paramount...Despairing letters from home played catalytic role in inducing soldiers to desert....In an intradepartmental communication of July 25, 1863, the assistant secretary of war, John A. Campbell,...estimated that 40,000 to 50,000 men were AWOL and that as many as 100,000 were evading duty in some manner" (125-6).

"...By far the most convincing evidence of the common people’s alienation from their government and its cause, however, was the steady growth of disaffected areas...The majority of the population in these areas had reached its limit of endurance and hoped to relieve its suffering by ceasing to cooperate with the central government...Not only did such obstruction remove human and material resources from the war effort, but it also depressed morale in other parts of the South" (129).

"...By 1863 this combination of declining morale and growing disaffection had become President Davis’ number one domestic problem. The key to this grave situation was governmental action – bold, decisive governmental action in the form of concrete, practical steps to relieve the suffering of the people (134)...Since Jefferson Davis ruled out direct and highly visible intervention in the economy, there were few measures the central government could take (148)....Measures to aid the common people usually came as an afterthought if at all. Never did the administration adopt a major policy based on the need to win the affections and loyalty of the yeoman on whom the Confederacy ultimately depended" (151).