Georgians, like all Americans, experienced the Civil War in a variety of ways. Through selected articles drawn from the New Georgia Encyclopedia (www.georgiaencyclopedia.org), this collection chronicles the diversity of Georgia's Civil War experience and reflects the most current scholarship in terms of how the Civil War has come to be studied, documented, and analyzed. The Atlanta campaign and Sherman's March to the Sea changed the course of the war in 1864, in terms both of the upheaval and destruction inflicted on the state and the life span of the Confederacy. While the dramatic events of 1864 are fully documented, this companion gives equal coverage to the many other aspects of the war--naval encounters and guerrilla warfare, prisons and hospitals, factories and plantations, politics and policies-- all of which provided critical support to the Confederacy's war effort. The book also explores home-front conditions in depth, with an emphasis on emancipation, dissent, Unionism, and the experience and activity of African Americans and women. Historians today are far more conscious of how memory--as public commemoration, individual reminiscence, historic preservation, and literary and cinematic depictions--has shaped the war's multiple meanings. Nowhere is this legacy more varied or more pronounced than in Georgia, and a substantial part of this companion explores the many ways in which Georgians have interpreted the war experience for themselves and others over the past 150 years. At the outset of the sesquicentennial these new historical perspectives allow us to appreciate the Civil War as a complex and multifaceted experience for Georgians and for all southerners. A Project of the New Georgia Encyclopedia; Published in Association with the Georgia Humanities Council and the University System of Georgia/GALILEO.

Darling, I never wanted to gow home as bad in my life as I doo now and if they don’t give mee a furlow I am going any how. Written in December 1862 by Private Wright Vinson in Tennessee to his wife, Christiana, in Georgia, these lines go to the heart of why Scott Walker wrote this history of the Fifty-seventh Georgia Infantry, a unit of the famed Mercer’s Brigade. All but a few members of the Fifty-seventh lived within a close radius of eighty miles from each other. More than just an account of their military engagements, this is a collective biography of a close-knit group. Relatives and neighbors served and died side by side in the Fifty-seventh, and Walker excels at showing how family ties, friendships, and other intimate dynamics played out in wartime settings. Humane but not sentimental, the history abounds in episodes of real feeling: a starving soldier’s theft of a pie; another’s open confession, in a letter to his wife, that he may desert; a slave’s travails as a camp orderly. Drawing on memoirs and a trove of unpublished letters and diaries, Walker follows the soldiers of the Fifty-seventh as they push far into Unionist Kentucky, starve at the siege of Vicksburg, guard Union prisoners at the Andersonville stockade, defend Atlanta from Sherman, and more. Hardened fighters who would wish hell on an incompetent superior but break down at the sight of a dying Yankee, these are real people, as rarely seen in other Civil War histories.

In January 1861 a state convention voted by a narrow margin to secede from the Union. In this popular treatment of the Civil War in Georgia, F. N. Boney tells the story of how the strain of this modern, total war relentlessly ravaged the state's resources and weakened its resolve to fight for the Confederate cause. Heavy casualties on the battlefield and accelerating inflation on the home front combined to undermine the morale of the Confederacy and the citizens of Georgia. Narrating Sherman's pivotal capture of Atlanta on 2 September 1864 and his crushing march to the sea, which ended with the fall of Savannah in late December, Boney recounts how the Confederacy's slow death affected the psyches of Georgians black and white. In the process, Boney shows how rebel Georgia gradually overcame its grief and was eventually reunited with the north in a national reconciliation.

The Civil War was arguably the watershed event in the history of the United States, forever changing the nature of the Republic and the relationship of individuals to their government. The war ended slavery and initiated the long road toward racial equality. The United States now stands at the sesquicentennial of that event, and its citizens attempt to arrive at an understanding of what that event meant to the past, present, and future of the nation. Few states had a greater impact on the outcome of the nation⿿s greatest calamity than Georgia. Georgia provided 125,000 soldiers for the Confederacy as well as thousands more for the Union cause. Also, many of the Confederacy⿿s most influential military and civilian leaders hailed from the state. Georgia was vital to the Confederate war effort because of its agricultural and industrial output. The Confederacy had little hope of winning without the farms and shops of the state. Moreover, the state was critical to the Southern infrastructure because of the river and rail links that crossed it and connected the western Confederacy to the eastern half. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the war was arguably decided in North Georgia with the Atlanta Campaign and Lincoln⿿s subsequent reelection. This campaign was the last forlorn hope for the Southern Republic and the Union⿿s greatest triumph. Despite the state⿿s importance to the Confederacy and the war⿿s ultimate outcome, not enough has been written concerning Georgia⿿s experience during those turbulent years. The essays in this volume attempt to redress this dearth of scholarship. They present a mosaic of events, places, and people, exploring the impact of the war on Georgia and its residents and demonstrating the importance of the state to the outcome of the Civil War.

Published in 1953, Confederate Georgia describes life in Georgia during the Civil War. T. Conn Bryan presents the political, military, economic, and social aspects of life, including secession, preparations for war, industry and transportation, wartime finance, desertion and disloyalty, women in the conflict, social life and diversions, the press and literary pursuits, education, and religion. Although Georgia's relations with the Confederate government are fully treated, the main emphasis is on activities within the state. Numerous quotations from letters, diaries, and other source materials give a personalized view of the war and capture the spirit of the times.

This book addresses the most important issues associated with Confederate desertion. How many soldiers actually deserted, when did they desert, and why? What does Confederate desertion say about Confederate nationalism and the war effort? Mark A. Weitz has taken his argument beyond the obvious reasons for desertion?that war is a horrific and cruel experience?and examined the emotional and psychological reasons that might induce a soldier to desert. Just as loyalty to his fellow soldiers might influence a man to charge into a hail of lead, loyalty to his wife and family could also lead him to risk a firing squad in order to return home.