Garibaldi in the Land of Cotton

Abstract

It can be difficult to take Confederate nationhood seriously. Born out of fear of Northern interference with their peculiar institution, the Confederacy was riven by divisions, had a deliberately weak central government, lasted less than five years, and failed to gain diplomatic recognition from a single country. Most importantly, because the North prevailed, so too did Abraham Lincoln’s claim that the states in rebellion never actually left the United States. Because states had neither the right nor the ability under the Constitution to secede, a southern nation was an impossibility. Had the South won the war, of course, this argument would have been irrelevant. But the South did not win, thus it was not, and could never have been, its own nation. Ann Tucker’s monograph, Newest Born of Nations, attempts to return contingency to the question of Confederate nationalism by reminding readers that revolution seemed far more likely in...