Freehling, William W. the South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. Book Review

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Freehling, William W. The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 238 pages. William W. Freehling is an American historian, and Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. Lots of his work appeared in The New York Review of Books. The South vs. The South was published in 2001 by Oxford University Press, USA. The Civil War is a vast and rich topic that was often shortened. Those shortcuts conducted to a miscomprehension of the events and a lack of information. The South vs. The South analyze and explain the political, economical and moral context that drove Southerners to war and it development. The author argues that this context and the fact that many southerners were against the Secession. “Why did the Confederacy lose the civil war?”; the book revolve on this question and the author is giving lots of information for a better comprehension. The book is also well illustrated with numbers of photos, diagrams and maps which complement the author’s writing. On the first part of the book (3), William W. Freehling is explaining the political context and the social structure of the US before the Secession, and so the Civil War, and the reasons that Civil War occurred. In the second part of the book (47), Freehling explicate the role of the white southerners who were against the Confederation and their role in the Secession Crisis. At that time, Southerners were divided; the Middle South and the Border peoples weren’t so predisposed to Secede. He also explains the event of Fort Sumter in South Carolina (symbolic place of the Independence) which set off the Civil War in April 1861. In the third part of his analyze (83), the author make a point on the role of the Black southerners who opposed the Confederacy and sides White

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