Rating: 
Summary: A Weak Attempt at Re-Revisionism
Review: This book is an ultimately unsatisfying attempt to rebut the rather substantial literature on disaffection, disloyalty, desertion, demoralization, and Unionism in the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Gallagher does this by selecting weak points of various historian's arguments (without engaging their strong points), focusing on particularly weak books, and making various special pleadings. Although he occasionally makes very valid points, in the end, his arguments are very weak. Providing quotations from people who supported the Confederacy in no way diminishes the fact that many other people were disenchanted with it. In the end, Gallagher's attempt to stem the historiographical tide will be seen to have been unsuccessful.
Rating: 
Summary: The Confederate War
Review: This is an interesting study, really more of an essay than a fully-fledged work of research. It asks relevant questions of other current scholarship and proposes topics for further study.Gallagher's thesis is essentially that the South did not, as some scholars have proposed, lose the war because of a lack of will to fight, but because of military defeats. I found his thesis, and his criticisms of the lack-of-will scholarship, convincing. However, I did find some elements of Gallagher's argument questionable. He gives the Army of Northern Virginia an absolutely central role. What about other Confederate armies, in which many men suffered under much worse leadership? And Gallagher pretty much chooses not to discuss the existence of substantial numbers of people in the Southern mountains who never supported the Confederacy at all. Nevertheless, the question which Gallagher proposes for future study -- why did so many people support the Confederacy for so long and at such cost -- I think is a vital one, and I hope to see it addressed.
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