Victims - a True Story About the Civil War
Victims: A True Story of the Civil War
Brian A. Geil
MILS 5020
Social Factors of The Civil War This book follows differing social structures within The Confederate States of America and how those clashing cultures led to multiple changes of strategy in the mountain regions of the Confederacy. All of these combined factors led to multiple tragic events within the Confederacy. The main social groups that are discussed in the book are Rural and Urban Confederates, Confederate Mountaineers, and Unionist. It is important to understand each of the different social groups before a full social analysis can be conducted. Once the social aspect of the mountain regions is understood, the specific strategies used by both the Union and the Confederacy can be discussed.
Mountaineers
Mountaineers live a very specific lifestyle; a lifestyle very separate and removed from the rest of the country, regardless of whether they fell into the North or the South. People of the mountains weren’t mountaineers simply because they lived in the mountains. They were mountaineers because they were born there, their parents were born there, and their ancestors were born there. They spent everyday in the land that they lived on; they gave all they had to the land and in return the land gave all it had to them. One woman was observed to have “put [her] child down on the ground, and . . . leaned over and spoke . . . to her child: ‘This is your land and it’s time you started getting to know it.’” At a time with limited technology, mountaineers were very secluded in the mountains. They were very loyal to each other and were very slow to changed due to the seclusion. However it was simply that they were slow to change, it was more specifically that they were resistant to change and opposed it fiercely. It was very rare for them to own slaves. Include this with the very unique culture of the mountains and the result is a group of southerners that, as a group, do not readily identify with the
Brian A. Geil
MILS 5020
Social Factors of The Civil War This book follows differing social structures within The Confederate States of America and how those clashing cultures led to multiple changes of strategy in the mountain regions of the Confederacy. All of these combined factors led to multiple tragic events within the Confederacy. The main social groups that are discussed in the book are Rural and Urban Confederates, Confederate Mountaineers, and Unionist. It is important to understand each of the different social groups before a full social analysis can be conducted. Once the social aspect of the mountain regions is understood, the specific strategies used by both the Union and the Confederacy can be discussed.
Mountaineers
Mountaineers live a very specific lifestyle; a lifestyle very separate and removed from the rest of the country, regardless of whether they fell into the North or the South. People of the mountains weren’t mountaineers simply because they lived in the mountains. They were mountaineers because they were born there, their parents were born there, and their ancestors were born there. They spent everyday in the land that they lived on; they gave all they had to the land and in return the land gave all it had to them. One woman was observed to have “put [her] child down on the ground, and . . . leaned over and spoke . . . to her child: ‘This is your land and it’s time you started getting to know it.’” At a time with limited technology, mountaineers were very secluded in the mountains. They were very loyal to each other and were very slow to changed due to the seclusion. However it was simply that they were slow to change, it was more specifically that they were resistant to change and opposed it fiercely. It was very rare for them to own slaves. Include this with the very unique culture of the mountains and the result is a group of southerners that, as a group, do not readily identify with the