Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War

Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War. By Colin Edward Woodward. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014. Pp. x, 286. Acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $39.50.)

Colin Woodward in Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War argues that historians have not adequately analyzed how members of the Confederate army viewed slavery and race. He seeks to fill that void. Whereas most scholars have acknowledged that slavery and racism played a role in motivating men to fight for the Confederacy, Woodward insists that protecting slavery as a viable, profitable system of labor and maintaining racial control over the South's black population formed the very foundation of why white southerners fought, though three-quarters of white southern families did not own any slaves. In eight chapters, Woodward covers a wide range of topics, from how Confederate soldiers and officers viewed slavery at the war's start, to issues of slave impressment, slaves serving in Confederate camps, and responses to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's use of black troops. Woodward also considers the contentious issues of...