The South Vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War

Rating:
Summary: The Union's Southern Soldiers
Review: Sometimes, people need to be reminded of the basics. pnotley of Canada thinks it's obvious that the Border States didn't secede, but I never saw a Civil War volume before that made the simple point that more Southerners fought with the Federal Army and Navy than the entire Union death toll.
Meanwhile, 'a reader' from Mobile thinks that Kentucky and Missouri joined the Confederacy! This is another example of people needing to be reminded of the obvious: despite the propoganda of the times, it wasn't KY and MO that seceded, it was their governors, plus a minority of the legislators. Nor is it true that Maryland would have seceded if Lincoln hadn't arrested Maryland legislators. The disloyal ones were arrested after the state made the decision to stay in the Union.

If you can bear to have illusions punctured, Freehling's book is filled with fascinating facts on Lincoln's racism, the reluctance of the Union to free slaves, and the way the unsucessful war against secession became a succesful war against both secession and slavery.

Recommended.