The consequences of Confederate citizenship : the Civil War correspondence of Alabama's Pickens family / edited, with commentary and notes, by Henry M. McKiven Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pickens (Family :, 1817- : Greene County, Ala.), author.

Contributor:

McKiven, Henry M., editor, writer of added commentary.

Series:

Conflicting worlds

Conflicting worlds: new dimensions of the American Civil War

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Group identity--Confederate States of America.

Group identity.

Plantation owners--Alabama--Greene County--Correspondence.

Plantation owners.

Rich people--Alabama--Greene County--Correspondence.

Rich people.

Pickens family--Correspondence.

Pickens family.

Confederate States of America. Army. Alabama Infantry Regiment, 5th. Company D--Military life.

Confederate States of America.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Personal narratives, Confederate.

United States.

Genre:

personal correspondence.

Personal correspondence.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

vi, 309 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"'The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship' is a collection of Civil War correspondence from the affluent Pickens family of Greene County, Alabama. Unlike nearly all published correspondence collections from the era, which generally include only letters written home from soldiers in the field, the Pickens family letters include those written on the homefront in Alabama as well as those penned by family members serving in the Army of Northern Virginia. Having both sides of the correspondence provides rare insight into the mutual dependence of family on the homefront and kin at war to sustain the morale and foster the formation of Confederate national identity. Expertly edited, annotated, and contextualized by historian Henry McKiven Jr., the correspondence illuminates several issues that will interest scholars and general readers alike. The letters between Mary Gaillard Pickens, a widow, and her two sons in Lee's army reveal the challenges she faced managing three plantations with at least two hundred enslaved people while struggling with anxiety and despondency brought on by fear that her boys would die in the war. The dispatches from her sons, Samuel and James Pickens, former students at the University of Virginia, offer insight into camp life and military matters but are more valuable for what they reveal about their emotional struggle to maintain a commitment to the Confederacy. That struggle is especially apparent in the letters James wrote from Virginia in 1864, as the war turned decidedly against the South. Mary Pickens, James's and Samuel's sister, also wrote them regularly. Mary's correspondence, among other things, reveals much about her relationship with her fiancé, a Confederate soldier in the field, suggesting how the war transformed elite courtship conventions. Mary's letters also show how she and her family grappled with the emotionally devastating impact of the death of her husband-to-be, which plunged Mary into a deep depression and protracted struggle to find meaning in the overwhelming emotional toll the war exacted. Despite their hardships, the story of the Pickens family is not one of material deprivation. Unlike their poorer neighbors, they never suffered from food and other shortages during the war. Nevertheless, as the letters attest, apprehension, dread, and despair were a constant in their lives. As McKiven reveals, that emotional burden did not tear the family apart but instead bound it together in defense of a way of life dependent upon the labor of enslaved people through the shared sacrifice of sons, brothers, and would-be-husbands. Indeed, throughout most of the war, sacrifice for the Pickens family became a source of their national identity and cohesion rather than a detriment. By 1865, the bonds of Confederate citizenship rapidly broke for many of the Pickens family's less well-off comrades, who increasingly gave up and went home to their struggling families. Like many southern elites, the Pickens clan continued to grasp flickering hopes for victory until the bitter end, believing that somehow the Confederacy and the world they had known before the war would survive and ultimately flourish"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Origins

Secession and war: January-June 1861

Loyal Confederates, reluctant soldiers: April-June 1862

Maintaining the ties that bind: November 1862-March 1863

Reckoning with the cost of war: April-July 1863

Defeat, despair, and renewal: July-December 1863

The government demands more: January-May 1864

The shadow of death: May-December 1864

The end: January-June 1865.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Consequences of Confederate citizenship

ISBN:

9780807183670

0807183679

OCLC:

1493516963

Publisher Number:

90101684373