Presents a pro-South, pro-state rights, pro-slavery, anti-Republican Party, and anti-Abraham Lincoln view of the Civil War.

Samuel A'Court Ashe was a Confederate infantry captain in the War Between the States and celebrated editor, historian, and North Carolina legislator. He was the last surviving commissioned officer of the Confederate States Army. In this little book, he gives a helpful overview of such subjects as the slave trade and Southern slavery, State sovereignty, the causes of secession, Abraham Lincoln's violations of the Constitution and usurpation of power, and more.

We have for years needed a serious, scholarly, readable work on the Confederate nation that rounds up modem scholarship and offers a fresh and detached view of the whole subject. This work fills that order admirably ... [Thomas] sensibly and deftly integrates the course of Southern military fortunes with the concerns that shaped them and were shaped by them. In doing so he also manages to convey a sense of how the war itself deteriorated from something spirited and gallant to something base and mean and modern on both sides.

Southerners whose communities were invaded by the Union army during the Civil War endured a profoundly painful ordeal. For most, the coming of the Yankees was a nightmare become real; for some, it was the answer to a prayer. But for all, Stephen Ash argues, invasion and occupation were essential parts of the experience of defeat that helped shape the Southern postwar mentality. When the Yankees Came is the first comprehensive study of the occupied South, bringing to light a wealth of new information about the Southern home front. Examining events from a dual perspective to show how occupation affected the invading forces as well as the indigenous population, Ash concludes that as Federal war aims evolved, the occupation gradually became more repressive. But increased brutality on the part of the Northern army resulted in more determined resistance from white Southerners - a situation that parallels the experience of many other conquering forces. Finally, Ash shows that conflicts between Confederate citizens and Yankee invaders were not the only ones that marked the experience of the occupied South. Internal clashes pitted Southerners against one another along lines of class, race, and politics: plain folk vs. aristocrats, slaves vs. owners, and unionists vs. secessionists.