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Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front. Edited by Daniel E. Sutherland. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999. viii, 250 pp. $32.00 cloth; $20.00 paper.
THE eleven essays collected by Daniel Sutherland in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front advance the recent historiographical trend of documenting a catastrophic inner civil war that raged behind the lines in the Confederacy. Linked thematically by their focus on southern unionism, dissent, or community infighting, each of the essays reveals a Confederacy reeling under internal discord and collapsing from within. From the Texas borderlands and the plantation districts of Louisiana to the backcountry of Georgia and the urban areas of Virginia, the anthology shows the southern home front was deeply fractured by inextricably divided loyalties.
Several of the studies suggest why such division existed. Jonathan Sarris's examination of guerrilla warfare and extralegal violence in Lumpkin County, Georgia, narrates how secessionists, unionists, and deserters each...