In The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (1970) and The Confederate Nation (1979), Emory Thomas redefined the field of Civil War history and reconceptualized the Confederacy as a unique entity fighting a war for survival. Inside the Confederate Nation honors his enormous contributions to the field with fresh interpretations of all aspects of Confederate life—nationalism and identity, family and gender, battlefront and home front, race, and postwar legacies and memories. Many of the volume's twenty essays focus on individuals, households, communities, and particular regions of the South, highlighting the sheer variety of circumstances southerners faced over the course of the war. Other chapters explore the public and private dilemmas faced by diplomats, policy makers, journalists, and soldiers within the new nation. All of the essays attempt to explain the place of southerners within the Confederacy, how they came to see themselves and others differently because of secession, and the disparities between their expectations and reality.

Lesley J. Gordon is the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama. She is the author of General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend, and coeditor of Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas.

John C. Inscoe is the author, editor, or coeditor of eight books, including The Heart of Confederate Appalachia; Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South; and Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation. He is a professor of history at the University of Georgia.