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The Story of the Confederacy
In his foreword to the book, the distinguished historian Douglas Southall Freeman praises this as "the one book with which to begin one's study of the period it covers and the book to which to return when everything else on the subject has been read."
514 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1931
About the author
Robert Selph Henry
27 books3 followersColonel Robert Selph Henry (October 20, 1889 – August 19, 1970) was an American lawyer, railroad executive and historian. He was an executive of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway from 1921 to 1934, and the Vice President of the Association of American Railroads from 1934 to 1958. He was the author of several books about the history of the Southern United States, including the American Civil War and the Mexican–American War, as well as railroads. He was the 1957 president of the Southern Historical Association. A veteran of World War I, he was a reservist until his 1952 retirement as a colonel.
He died on August 19, 1970 in Alexandria, Virginia, and he was buried in Nashville.
He died on August 19, 1970 in Alexandria, Virginia, and he was buried in Nashville.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 11, 2022
Published in 1931, Robert Selph Henry's "The Story of the Confederacy" was one of the earliest books written on the conflict, from either either Northern, or Southern, perspective to integrate all of the then known existing evidence and research material into the analysis of the topic. The result is likely the first truly cohesive, definitive, work on the story of the Confederate States of America to have been published.
Right away Henry does something that should surprise those who would automatically denounce the book as a mere "Lost Cause" screed: Henry's assertion that the causes of the War had at their roots the basic element of slavery, is something that is now understood to be fundamental to understand.
However, due to modern political ideologies warping the study, analysis, and comprehension of history, saying so leaves unsaid much of the nuance surrounding the issue that Henry manages to eloquently portray in only a handful of pages in the opening chapter.
Slavery was the economic engine of the South, and without it, the Southern economy would collapse, and so too would their ability to remain a political power bloc, promoting the interests of their region, within the Congress in Washington. Despite the fact that the emancipation movement began in the South, the perception that New England agitators were utilizing calls for abolition to purposefully both bankrupt the South (leaving her incapable of economically challenging New England domination of the continent), and of fomenting a slave rebellion to wash the South in blood (the terrible war in Saint Domingue/Haiti, between the rebelling slaves, and the French, left a lasting impression on the South, one which colored their reactions to abolition, and slavery as a issue in general) meant that Southern voices for abolition, voices which began the call in the first place, died out over time.
As Henry points out, this caused both regions to fundamentally misunderstand each other, and to refuse to listen to the points the other made philosophically. Bitterness, the next step in the heating process of emotionalism, blinded and deafened both sides to each other. Despite Lincoln himself making very clear (including urging the passing of the Corwin Amendment) that he had no intention of changing the Southern 'peculiar institution' so convinced were Southerners of the wicked intentions of the North, vis a vis New England, that a regional divorce was an inevitability.
*****
Few nations have ever gone to war less prepared for it than the Confederate States of America. And yet, for a little over four years, the South, woefully outgunned, outmassed, and without the ability to command her own expansive shorelines, still managed to put up one of the most remarkable, perhaps the remarkable, resistances in American military history.
Henry's narrative, and analysis of The War, considering this is a 91 year old book at the time of review, is not fundamentally dissimilar from more modern, supposedly groundbreaking, narratives written within the last fifteen years or so. The Southern strategy of defending everything, due to political necessity, and of relying upon earning European diplomatic recognition of her own sovereignty, doomed the Confederacy from the outset. Both Frederick the Great, and Napoleon, have cautioned in their own maxims that he who defends everywhere, defends nowhere.
This meant that the Confederate war effort was invariably, fatally fated to be one of defensive operations, across a vast territorial expanse, greater than the whole of Europe, with a mere fraction of the manpower, and industrial, and economic, power to support such an enterprise. Federal naval passages of the South's riverways provided convenient strategic avenues of invasion into the Confederate heartland. And Southern efforts to defend as much as possible meant that their ability to concentrate enough force to launch concerted strategic counteroffensives was rare indeed.
Henry makes a good case that the Confederacy flood tide was not the more famous Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, but rather the late summer, early autumn of 1862. Here Confederate armies from as far afield as Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia launched concerted, brilliantly conducted, strategic counteroffensives that, for a time, pushed the Federals onto their backfoot, and exerted enough political pressure upon the already taut faultlines within Northern society, that the South, here, saw her best, and possibly last, hope for winning independence.
However, alas, it was not meant to be.
By the full onset of the winter of 1862-63, despite victories in Mississippi and Virginia, and bashing the Army of the Cumberland into a six month stalemate in Tennessee, the writing was on the wall for the Confederacy. With her diplomatic efforts always hampered by her, entirely emotional, attachment to the issue of slavery, and of the Northern ability to withstand the truly awful price being exacted in blood that the South was making her pay for her own subjugation (despite cracking, and severely bending under the terrible strain, Northern will never did, entirely, break. Though it did come close on numerous occasions), the Confederacy was never able to score a European diplomatic breakthrough.
As a consequence, after Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania, and the fall of Vicksburg, it really was only a matter of time. Even then, the South, fighting so desperately, and amazingly skilfully, in 1864, despite the odds, made the North bleed so profusely, and shook them to their very souls so severely, that they still came close to scoring a political win with an exhausted, exasperated North. However, this argument, that a McClellan 1864 Presidential election would have automatically meant peace for the South, falls a tad flat when one realizes that Little Mac himself vowed to continue the War, just with slightly different methodologies, if elected.
While Henry may go a tad too far in his views of the inevitably of Southern defeat (in war, everything is reliant upon contingency and the variations of human agency and free will, not technocratic number crunching and statistical analysis, after all), he does make a fine case, one which still holds after nearly a century, that by the spring of 1864, the issue was no longer truly in doubt.
Beautifully written, concise, but thorough, Henry's account of the Confederacy is simply sublime. Even a hundred years later, or thereabouts, it's hardly been bested, and only rarely matched. Covering the events of the war, as well the home front, the halls of power, and the diplomatic game, Henry attempts, and largely succeeds, in covering the entirety of the story. While he does omit some stories that could have been told, possibly for length and ease of digestion, as well as committing the still oft conducted sin of largely, but not entirely, ignoring the Trans-Mississippi theater, Henry did a fantastic job of covering the entirety of the massive, Continental wide, conflict.
Not neglecting any of the major theaters, and giving equal weight to the West as well as the East, and not just focusing on Lee and his boys, Henry gives the Confederacy in totality her due. And does so while honoring the courage, sacrifices, and bravery, of her Northern foes.
Despite being roughly a century old, this is, still, one of the better single volume works on The War Between the States.
Very highly recommended.
Right away Henry does something that should surprise those who would automatically denounce the book as a mere "Lost Cause" screed: Henry's assertion that the causes of the War had at their roots the basic element of slavery, is something that is now understood to be fundamental to understand.
However, due to modern political ideologies warping the study, analysis, and comprehension of history, saying so leaves unsaid much of the nuance surrounding the issue that Henry manages to eloquently portray in only a handful of pages in the opening chapter.
Slavery was the economic engine of the South, and without it, the Southern economy would collapse, and so too would their ability to remain a political power bloc, promoting the interests of their region, within the Congress in Washington. Despite the fact that the emancipation movement began in the South, the perception that New England agitators were utilizing calls for abolition to purposefully both bankrupt the South (leaving her incapable of economically challenging New England domination of the continent), and of fomenting a slave rebellion to wash the South in blood (the terrible war in Saint Domingue/Haiti, between the rebelling slaves, and the French, left a lasting impression on the South, one which colored their reactions to abolition, and slavery as a issue in general) meant that Southern voices for abolition, voices which began the call in the first place, died out over time.
As Henry points out, this caused both regions to fundamentally misunderstand each other, and to refuse to listen to the points the other made philosophically. Bitterness, the next step in the heating process of emotionalism, blinded and deafened both sides to each other. Despite Lincoln himself making very clear (including urging the passing of the Corwin Amendment) that he had no intention of changing the Southern 'peculiar institution' so convinced were Southerners of the wicked intentions of the North, vis a vis New England, that a regional divorce was an inevitability.
*****
Few nations have ever gone to war less prepared for it than the Confederate States of America. And yet, for a little over four years, the South, woefully outgunned, outmassed, and without the ability to command her own expansive shorelines, still managed to put up one of the most remarkable, perhaps the remarkable, resistances in American military history.
Henry's narrative, and analysis of The War, considering this is a 91 year old book at the time of review, is not fundamentally dissimilar from more modern, supposedly groundbreaking, narratives written within the last fifteen years or so. The Southern strategy of defending everything, due to political necessity, and of relying upon earning European diplomatic recognition of her own sovereignty, doomed the Confederacy from the outset. Both Frederick the Great, and Napoleon, have cautioned in their own maxims that he who defends everywhere, defends nowhere.
This meant that the Confederate war effort was invariably, fatally fated to be one of defensive operations, across a vast territorial expanse, greater than the whole of Europe, with a mere fraction of the manpower, and industrial, and economic, power to support such an enterprise. Federal naval passages of the South's riverways provided convenient strategic avenues of invasion into the Confederate heartland. And Southern efforts to defend as much as possible meant that their ability to concentrate enough force to launch concerted strategic counteroffensives was rare indeed.
Henry makes a good case that the Confederacy flood tide was not the more famous Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, but rather the late summer, early autumn of 1862. Here Confederate armies from as far afield as Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia launched concerted, brilliantly conducted, strategic counteroffensives that, for a time, pushed the Federals onto their backfoot, and exerted enough political pressure upon the already taut faultlines within Northern society, that the South, here, saw her best, and possibly last, hope for winning independence.
However, alas, it was not meant to be.
By the full onset of the winter of 1862-63, despite victories in Mississippi and Virginia, and bashing the Army of the Cumberland into a six month stalemate in Tennessee, the writing was on the wall for the Confederacy. With her diplomatic efforts always hampered by her, entirely emotional, attachment to the issue of slavery, and of the Northern ability to withstand the truly awful price being exacted in blood that the South was making her pay for her own subjugation (despite cracking, and severely bending under the terrible strain, Northern will never did, entirely, break. Though it did come close on numerous occasions), the Confederacy was never able to score a European diplomatic breakthrough.
As a consequence, after Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania, and the fall of Vicksburg, it really was only a matter of time. Even then, the South, fighting so desperately, and amazingly skilfully, in 1864, despite the odds, made the North bleed so profusely, and shook them to their very souls so severely, that they still came close to scoring a political win with an exhausted, exasperated North. However, this argument, that a McClellan 1864 Presidential election would have automatically meant peace for the South, falls a tad flat when one realizes that Little Mac himself vowed to continue the War, just with slightly different methodologies, if elected.
While Henry may go a tad too far in his views of the inevitably of Southern defeat (in war, everything is reliant upon contingency and the variations of human agency and free will, not technocratic number crunching and statistical analysis, after all), he does make a fine case, one which still holds after nearly a century, that by the spring of 1864, the issue was no longer truly in doubt.
Beautifully written, concise, but thorough, Henry's account of the Confederacy is simply sublime. Even a hundred years later, or thereabouts, it's hardly been bested, and only rarely matched. Covering the events of the war, as well the home front, the halls of power, and the diplomatic game, Henry attempts, and largely succeeds, in covering the entirety of the story. While he does omit some stories that could have been told, possibly for length and ease of digestion, as well as committing the still oft conducted sin of largely, but not entirely, ignoring the Trans-Mississippi theater, Henry did a fantastic job of covering the entirety of the massive, Continental wide, conflict.
Not neglecting any of the major theaters, and giving equal weight to the West as well as the East, and not just focusing on Lee and his boys, Henry gives the Confederacy in totality her due. And does so while honoring the courage, sacrifices, and bravery, of her Northern foes.
Despite being roughly a century old, this is, still, one of the better single volume works on The War Between the States.
Very highly recommended.
August 23, 2013
If you're only going to read one book about the Civil War, I suggest this one.
December 7, 2020
Excellent history of the Confederacy from the political, logistical, and war fighting points of view. When Douglas Southhall Freeman writes the forward you know it's a good read.
April 5, 2021
WELL WRITTEN BALANCED FROM SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT WITOUT BEING SELF JUSTIFYING.
3.75 / 5.0
3.75 / 5.0
November 21, 2014
This work starts with a brief lead in into the American Civil War by an overall rendition of its progress in short form as seen from the Southern viewpoint. It covers both military and diplomatic actions involving the Confederate States of America.
August 1, 2019
This book is way too biased towards the Confederacy--at one point the author praises the antebellum South as a model of ideal race relations, which made me choke a little when I read it--but in technical terms it is well-written, and it presents a good, thorough account of the war.
March 16, 2014
This was really a great book. Very good battle details, and a excellent introduction on the cause of the War. Recommended!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews