Overview
Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty during America's greatest rift. The extent of southern loyalty to the Confederate States of America has remained a subject of historical contention that has resulted in two conflicting conclusions: one, southern patriotism was either strong enough to carry the Confederacy to the brink of victory, or two, it was so weak that the Confederacy was doomed to crumble from internal discord. Mississippi, the home state of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, should have been a hotbed of Confederate patriotism. The reality was much more complicated. Ruminski breaks the weak/strong loyalty impasse by looking at how people from different backgrounds--women and men, white and black, enslaved and free, rich and poor--negotiated the shifting contours of loyalty in a state where Union occupation turned everyday activities into potential tests of patriotism. While the Confederate government demanded total national loyalty from its citizenry, this study focuses on wartime activities such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. Ruminski also probes the relationship between race and loyalty to indicate how an internal war between slaves and slaveholders defined Mississippi's social development well into the twentieth century.
Full Product Details
Author: Jarret Ruminski
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.70cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.437kg
ISBN: 9781496830791
ISBN 10: 1496830792
Pages: 305
Publication Date: 21 October 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
The Limits of Loyalty is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Mississippians' experiences in the Civil War.--Heidi Amelia-Anne Weber, SUNY Orange The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXXV, No. 2, May 2019
The Limits of Loyalty is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Mississippians' experiences in the Civil War.--Heidi Amelia-Anne Weber, SUNY Orange Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXXV, No. 2, May 2019 What makes The Limits of Loyalty a worthwhile contribution to the literature on the Civil War is the fine-grained insights it offers about the complex, contradictory, flawed, and therefore deeply human reaction of common people to a cataclysm that changed their lives. . . . Jarret Ruminski makes it clear that when seen through the eyes of ordinary people, war looks like nothing more than chaos, conflicts that throw up impossible choices and agonizing decisions. For this reason alone, Ruminski's book is well worth the time of any Civil War historian. It should stand the test of time.--Erik Mathisen Civil War Book Review
Author Information
Jarret Ruminski is a freelance writer, researcher, and consultant. His work has appeared in the Journal of the Civil War Era. He writes regularly about history, politics, and culture at www.thatdevilhistory.com.
