“Victoria Ott offers a fresh look at the Civil War by exploring how common soldiers and their families abandoned the Confederate cause without forsaking the values of slavery and racial supremacy. It is a major contribution to the understanding of gender and class in the last days of the doomed Confederacy.”
—Michael W. Fitzgerald, author of
Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South
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The Failure of Our Fathers shows the centrality of family for understanding the experiences of common whites in Alabama during the Confederate era. Here the voices of ordinary men and women reveal both the persistence and anguish of families in the midst of war and ruin. Through the use of a wide range of both private and official sources—including diaries, letters, court records, and divorce petitions—Ott documents the often wrenching experiences of these Alabama families. The tensions between the demands of loyalty to family and loyalty to the Confederacy play out amid changing family dynamics, the travails of military life, enduring religious faith, and the failures of both the state and Confederate governments.”
—George C. Rable, University of Alabama, Emeritus and author of
Damn Yankees! Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South
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“Victoria Ott locates the family and its pervasive gender roles at the heart of non-elite white Alabamians’ Confederate experience, from the masculine rush to enlist in 1861 to the widespread disillusionment and class resentments of the war’s final years. Deftly continuing the story into Reconstruction, Ott identifies an abiding class consciousness that helps explain much about the state’s tumultuous postwar history. This is a significant achievement that will enrich both Alabama and Civil War scholars.”
—Kenneth W. Noe, author of The Howling Storm: Climate, Weather, and the American Civil War
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