Emory Thomas: Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience - Book Report/Review Example

The obnoxious attitudes of the Northerners were radically responded by the Southerners led by Jefferson Davis, the first President of the Confederate and which led to the civil war in the nation. Even though the South had to surrender to the North, the book portrays the noble reasons of the Southerners against the North. The book, The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, proposes the thesis that the revolution became an experience to the Southerners both external and internal. Thus it has become a major work unveiling the experience of the southerners in the war.

Emory Thomas establishes his thesis well in his book taking a succession of incidents from the beginning of the secession to its final subjugation before the Northerners. The book is, therefore, divided into seven chapters paralleling the seven states of the South which formed the Confederate States in 1860. These chapters plunge into the revolutionary nature of the Confederate movement of the South. The Confederate movement in the Southern America depicts their identity of the Old South. Their identity in the areas of military, individualism, agriculture, and state rights were highly threatened by the involvement of the Northerners who wanted to establish Parliamentary usurpations. . The Southerners lost their power with the Republican Party caused much havoc to them and so the measures taken by the North in terms of state rights and slavery were beyond the imagination of the landowners in the South.

The book asserts the rights of the Southerners and their fight to regain the status quo of the Southern way of life. The author states that the generation of Jefferson had struck a blow for home rule in order to conserve the rights and liberties of the Englishmen. The Southerners considered the revolution as the war for rights just like the war of Independence in 1775. According to them both the revolutions sought for the independence and attempted to change the political structure of the existing period.

The revolution of the southerners was to conserve their rights rather than to create new ones (Thomas1). The leaders like Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens asserted that the state rights were the fundamental issue behind the revolution. The state rights was considered as a doctrine of the Southerners and so when the Republican Party supported by the Northerners set hindrance on the state rights, it was a blow on their cornerstone of the way of life. This is well explained in the book with ample evidences taking the readers to plunge into the real issues connected with the revolution.

Emory Thomas in every way has tried to reinstate the revolution for the favor of the Southerners. The author tells his intention in the preface of the book, “The time has come to take a long look at the Confederate experience- to view it for what it was, a revolution whose scope and ultimate tragedy is still manifest far beyond the American South” (Thomas xix) He states that the Southerners