Stephanie mccurry biography

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June 2010

Confederate Reckoning

Historian Stephanie McCurry tells how women and slaves drove old Dixie down.

Peter Nichols

When the Confederate States of America seceded from the Union in 1861, its founding fathers reckoned that they could build a nation and fight a war while uniting the Southern population behind their cause.

Most of “the people” were not consulted on the wisdom of their project. What the C.S.A. architects did not reckon on was that the disenfranchised majority—white women and slaves—would become a force to be reckoned with.

The reckoning that arrived in slow motion over the next four years came not simply because the Confederacy was defeated militarily by outside enemies but also because of internal resistance and outright rebellion from its own people, those assumed to be politically insignificant or mere “property.” That is the main thesis of history Professor Stephanie McCurry’s new book, Confederate Reck