The Civil War yet looms as the greatest defining moment in Southern history. As an attempt to establish a separate North American nation based upon a unique slaveholding culture, it was a statement to the world that Southerners were different. Yet, if you had asked many of the gray soldiers who fought for four agonizing years what they were fighting for, the answer most likely would have been a conventional one: "to defend our homes and our freedom."

It was a matter of conditioned perspective: what they saw and read, what they knew and perceived, how they were raised and taught. To "live and die in Dixie" meant a commitment of the soul and spirit. The poorest yeoman farmer and the aristocratic planter could claim a common ideological heritage-- that of Southern efficacy. Many Southerners of the 1860s were independent-minded, "can do" people. They believed in their ability to accomplish, persevere, and shape their existence. Above all else they were confident of their ability to fight a war of independence and win. Essentially, it was a superior attitude held in common, based upon the long-standing and proven self-reliance of a people who had overcome much adversity to establish a flourishing civilization of immense pride, prosperity, and success. That Southern culture ran counter to emerging trends of industrialization and social equality seemed to matter but little to many. That culture was perceived to be self-determined, and a bold and resourceful Southern spirit had always served the South well in periods of change.

Secession itself involved larger questions of mental excellence; of attitudes, and the will to win based upon a thriving and superior personal military capacity derived from a largely outdoors-based, self-reliant lifestyle. In simplest terms, the South was better -- if not in the physical means to wage war (materiel and manpower), then at least in what many Southerners perceived as the more important arenas of willpower and personal fighting capacity. This is why even to this day many Southerners are raised in the shadow of a defiant spirit, and in the tradition that "the South shall rise again." The vestiges of Southern pride are prevalent today in the South's lingering flag and heritage controversies, Civil War reenactment groups, and still-persistent sense of regional identity. Thus the mental side of the Civil War era holds an enormous fascination and latent importance, more than 130 years after the physical events.

Despite the title Southern Invincibility, this is a book more concerned with "why" than with analyzing a culture. Why the Southern soldiers fought so long and well. Why they thought they could win. Why the enormous effort, even in the face of imminent defeat. Why, long after total defeat, much of the pride and passion aroused by the war still remained deeply rooted in the South. These are themes of profound interest and meaning so long as the South is regarded as possessing a distinct culture in America.

The attitudes of Southerners caught up in a vicious war of enormous personal anguish and profound impact reveal much about the American experience as a whole. Moreover, the collective thoughts of both its soldiers and civilians were the binding influence that ultimately controlled the South's war effort.

If an analysis of the thinking of many people involved in the cataclysmic crisis of civil war is necessarily imperfect in its belated and fragmentary interpretation, it is nonetheless relevant to a better understanding of the critical human behavior that shapes our destiny. This book is predicated upon common sense more than upon any pet scholarly theory, and is written on a framework of logic.

Whatever the root elements or impetus of the conflict, it is certain that the Civil War evoked strong emotions. Moreover, these emotions played a crucial part in many personal actions. In a broader sphere, the soldiers' feelings produced consensus attitudes that changed the war itself.

How each man coped with the elation of common success and the depression of repeated failure mattered much in the waging of the war. It made a difference in performance, and ultimately in the relative hope of success -- often a defining criterion for the out-manned and underequipped South as it continued to fight.

That attitudes constantly changed, on sometimes a daily, hourly, or even more minute basis, presents a difficulty in assessing a generalized chronological portrayal of the Confederate soldiers' thinking. Yet various trends or common attitude shifts are easily discernible from the hundreds of letters, diaries, journals, and published contemporary accounts. The way Southern soldiers thought as expressed by their own contemporaneously recorded words not only provides insight but sketches the mental dilemmas common to mankind in severe crisis.

Nearly everyone can cope with success; it generally provides reassurance, self-satisfaction, and further incentive. Yet to voluntarily endure repeated defeat is not only a test of one's mettle, but a crisis in endeavor -- it cuts at the very basis of a soldier's continued discipline and good performance.

The Southerner's status as a significant entity, viewed either as mid-nineteenth-century-America's societal norm or as an exception, may be argued endlessly pro and con. Yet, aside from considerations that agriculture or the industrial revolution was tipping the nation's scales in 1861, once the war began, what counted the most were each Southerner's own perceptions.

If the average Southern fighting man initially felt superior to his enemy, how did these feelings measure up in the face of actual battlefield experiences? Indeed, what did the soldiers and others believe and later say, as the harsh and bitter specter of defeat drew near?

Here then is my humble attempt to better explain what they were thinking, and why, and also to touch your emotions. This book is thus dedicated to you, that you may better perceive the essence of what it truly was and is all about: the strong feelings within us that compel our most significant actions.

-- Wiley Sword,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
1999