Review by Choice Review
No other work has explored the experience of slaves under the Confederacy so completely or thoroughly as Mohr's thoroughly researched study. He shows how the deepening sectional crisis between Harper's Ferry and secession heightened the anxieties of white Georgians and led them to tighten severely the bonds of servitude. He then demonstrates how both the federal troops along Georgia's coast and the Confederate war effort directly and indirectly undermined the constraints of slavery in industry, in cities, and in rural areas. The coercive power of whites and the capacity of whites to fulfill the obligations of their paternalism were lessened, while opportunities and the capacity of blacks to enhance their own relative position increased. These changes reinforced the religiously motivated efforts of some whites to bring ``ameliorative reform'' to slavery, i.e., reform promoted within the confines of Confederate orthodoxy on race and slavery. Mohr shows how this coupling of Confederate necessity and virtue led the way toward last-minute plans for Confederate emancipation and black enlistment. Readers may wonder whether whites, uncoerced, would have tolerated in peace most of the changes in slavery that they endured in the exigencies of war. In studying slavery under strain, however, Mohr illuminates well important dimensions of the ambiguity in southern racial ideology and practice. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above.-C.L. Flynn Jr., Washington and Jefferson College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
