• Gallagher asserts that traditional scholarship has concentrated too heavily on the evidence of Confederate discontent and misconstrued it as abandonment. Instead, he highlights evidence for substantial white Confederate support and makes the distinction between frustration and abandonment.

"All too aware that the Confederacy failed in its bid for independence, many historians have worked backward from Appomattox to explain that failure. They argue that Confederates lacked sufficient will to win the war, never developed a strong collective national identity, and pursued a flawed strategy that wasted precious manpower. Often lost is the fact that a majority of white southerners steadfastly supported their nascent republic, and that Conferederate arms more than once almost persuaded the North that the price of subduing the rebellious states would be too high" (3).

"...Letters, diaries and newspapers reveal a widespread expectation of Confederate success and tenacious popular will rooted in a sense of national community...A substantial portion of the Confederate people identified strongly with their southern republic (5)...A Georgian in Lee’s army...echoed...feelings of national loyalty. ‘...I cannot be but content with my fate, although it be, indeed, a cruel one,’ affirmed Daniel Pope. ‘I am determined to do anything and everything I can for my country...If it should be my misfortune to fall in this glorious struggle, I hope that I shall go believing that I have contributed my mite...to the great boon of freedom’" (7-8).

"...I suggest that scholarly preoccupation with the admittedly substantial evidence of discontent in the Confederacy has cast into the shadows the actions and attitudes of the majority of white southerners who have supported the war" (12).

"...Young slaveholding officers who had matured during the 1850s stood out as perhaps the most highly nationalistic component of the Army of Northern Virginia. Through battlefield victories, reenlistments, and letters to the homefront, the officers and men of Lee’s army served as an engine propelling national loyalty among civilians and soldiers throughout the Confederacy" (63).

"...As always, the paucity of testimony from the yeomanry and from poorer Confederates frustrates efforts to speak confidently about them – although the steadfast military service of scores of thousands of men from those groups certainly implies impressive ties to their country. Members of the slaveholding class left a far richer literary legacy, which, together with testimony from nonslaveholders and the actions of men and women from all ranks of society...suggests widespread and tenacious devotion to the Confederate nation" (72).

"...Physical privation and the loss of loved ones in the military often reinforced rather than eroded loyalty to the Confederacy...A number of Confederate soldiers...cut short their furloughs because women ‘won’t let a man capable of carrying and handling a rifle stay round home. If he can walk, he must be off’" (78),

"...[A] thirteen-year-old daughter took to heart [her father’s] injunctions to place national welfare above personal consideration. ‘How I do wish dear Papa could be with us,’ she wrote in mid-June 1864, ‘although I would not like him to leave the army now. Of course we feel anxious about him, but I trust to ‘him who doeth all things right’" (81).

"...Nothing better illustrated the existence of national loyalty than the debate over Confederate emancipation...That white southerners chose to discuss the issue at all reveals an attachment to the idea of an independent Confederacy so strong they were willing to tamper, at least to a degree, with their basic social structure (81)...The prospect of slaves in Confederate uniforms certainly did provoke angry criticism from the slaveholding community, but many of these critics nonetheless remained intensely loyal to the Confederacy..." (84).

"...Although far less frequently discussed by historians than the negative effect of desperate letters reaching soldiers from their families, men in the army employed various strategies to promote support for the Confederacy on the home front. Knowing that their morale generally remained higher than that of civilians, soldiers touted the army’s confidence to family and friends while on furlough" (92).

"...Civilians across the Confederacy characterized re-enlistments as uplifting manifestations of loyalty to the Confederacy.... ‘The whole army is animated with the brightest & most determined spirit,’ recorded the South Carolinian, ‘and almost everywhere the soldiers are re-enlisting unanimously, by companies, regiment, or brigades for the war (& one body added) even if it lasts 40 years’" (94-5).

"...Throughout the war, young officers urged fellow Confederates to treat setbacks as no more than temporary obstacles on the path to independence.... Rather than give in to despair, Ellen [soldier’s wife] should prepare for even greater privations and hardship with the thought that ‘Surely all true Southrons would prefer anything to submission’" (106).

"...Men...held a dogged expectation of Confederate success until the very end, doing their best to inspirit those who wavered" (106).

"...[Young officers in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia] almost certainly ranked among the staunchest Confederate nationalists...They also did their best through letters and by personal example in combat to inspire other inside and outside the military" (110).