Even Mississippi textbooks rarely mention the part Mississippi men and women played in World War I. Mississippians in the Great War presents in their own words the story of Mississippians and their roles. This body of work divides into five sections, each associated with crucial dates of American action. Comments relating to various military actions are interspersed throughout to give the reader a context of the wide variety of experiences. Additionally, where possible, Anne L. Webster provides information on the soldier or sailor to show what became of him after his service. Webster examined newspapers from all corners of the state for “letters home,” most appearing in newspapers from Natchez, Greenville, and Pontotoc. The authors of the letters gathered here are from soldiers, aviators, sailors, and relief workers engaged in the service of their country. Letter writing skills varied from citizens of minimal literacy to those who would later become published authors and journalists. These letters reflect the experiences of green, young Mississippians as they endured training camp, voyaged across the Atlantic to France, and participated in horrific battles leaving some scarred for life. To round out the picture, Webster includes correspondence from nurses and YMCA workers who describe drills, uniforms, parades, and celebrations.

In Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front, Timothy B. Smith examines Mississippi's Civil War defeat by both outside and inside forces. From without, the Union army dismantled the state's political system, infrastructure, economy, and fighting capability. The state saw extensive military operations, destruction, and bloodshed within her borders. One of the most frightful and extended sieges of the war ended in a crucial Confederate defeat at Vicksburg, the capstone to a tremendous Union campaign. As Confederate forces and Mississippi became overwhelmed militarily, the populace's morale began to crumble. Realizing that the enemy could roll unchecked over the state, civilians, Smith argues, began to lose the will to continue the struggle. Many white Confederates chose to return to the Union rather than see continued destruction in the name of a victory that seemed ever more improbable. When the tide turned, Unionists and African Americans boldly stepped up their endeavors. The result, Smith finds, was a state vanquished and destined to endure suffering far into its future. The first examination of the state's Civil War home front in seventy years, this book tells the story of all classes of Mississippians during the war, focusing new light on previously neglected groups such as women and African Americans. The result is a revelation of the heart of a populace facing the devastating impact of total war.

From the first Union attack on Vicksburg in the spring of 1862 through Benjamin Grierson's last raid through Mississippi in late 1864 and early 1865, this book traces the campaigns, fighting, and causes and effects of armed conflict in central and North Mississippi, where major campaigns were waged and fighting occurred.

"The words of these common soldiers fighting in one of the most notable units in the Army of Northern Virginia will fascinate both civil war buffs and historians.".

“This epic account is as thrilling and fast-paced as the raid itself and will quickly rival, if not surpass, Dee Brown’s Grierson’s Raid as the standard.” —Terrence J. Winschel, historian (ret.), Vicksburg National Military Park Winner, Operational/Battle History, Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award Winner, Fletcher Pratt Literary Award, Civil War Round Table of New York There were other simultaneous operations to distract Confederate attention from the real threat posed by U. S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Benjamin Grierson’s operation, however, mainly conducted with two Illinois cavalry regiments, has become the most famous, and for good reason: For 16 days (April 17 to May 2) Grierson led Confederate pursuers on a high-stakes chase through the entire state of Mississippi, entering the northern border with Tennessee and exiting its southern border with Louisiana. Throughout, he displayed outstanding leadership and cunning, destroyed railroad tracks, burned trestles and bridges, freed slaves, and created as much damage and chaos as possible. Grierson’s Raid broke a vital Confederate rail line at Newton Station that supplied Vicksburg and, perhaps most importantly, consumed the attention of the Confederate high command. While Confederate Lt. Gen. John Pemberton at Vicksburg and other Southern leaders looked in the wrong directions, Grant moved his entire Army of the Tennessee across the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, spelling the doom of that city, the Confederate chances of holding the river, and perhaps the Confederacy itself. Based upon years of research and presented in gripping, fast-paced prose, Timothy B. Smith’s The Real Horse Soldiers captures the high drama and tension of the 1863 horse soldiers in a modern, comprehensive, academic study. Readers will find it fills a wide void in Civil War literature.

Winner of the 2018 Eudora Welty Prize When the United States entered World War I, parts of the country had developed industries, urban cultures, and democratic political systems, but the South lagged behind, remaining an impoverished, agriculture region. Despite New South boosterism, the culture of the early twentieth-century South was comparatively artistically arid. Yet, southern writers dominated the literary marketplace by the 1920s and 1930s. World War I brought southerners into contact with modernity before the South fully modernized. This shortfall created an inherent tension between the region's existing agricultural social structure and the processes of modernization, leading to distal modernism, a form of writing that combines elements of modernism to depict non-modern social structures. Critics have struggled to formulate explanations for the eruption of modern southern literature, sometimes called the Southern Renaissance. Pinpointing World War I as the catalyst, David A. Davis argues southern modernism was not a self-generating outburst of writing, but a response to the disruptions modernity generated in the region. In World War I and Southern Modernism, Davis examines dozens of works of literature by writers, including William Faulkner, Ellen Glasgow, and Claude McKay, that depict the South during the war. Topics explored in the book include contact between the North and the South, southerners who served in combat, and the developing southern economy. Davis also provides a new lens for this argument, taking a closer look at African Americans in the military and changing gender roles.