The Limits of Loyalty
Ordinary People in Civil War Mississippi
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Narrated by:
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Dave Arlington
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By:
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Jarret Ruminski
About this listen
Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi, to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty, during America's greatest rift. The extent of southern loyalty to the Confederate States of America has remained a subject of historical contention that has resulted in two conflicting conclusions: One, southern patriotism was either strong enough to carry the Confederacy to the brink of victory; or two, it was so weak that the Confederacy was doomed to crumble from internal discord. Mississippi, the home state of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, should have been a hotbed of Confederate patriotism. The reality was much more complicated.
Ruminski breaks the weak/strong loyalty impasse, by looking at how people from different backgrounds - women and men, white and black, enslaved and free, rich and poor - negotiated the shifting contours of loyalty, in a state where Union occupation turned everyday activities into potential tests of patriotism. While the Confederate government demanded total, national loyalty from its citizenry, this study focuses on wartime activities - such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army - to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. Ruminski also probes the relationship between race and loyalty, to indicate how an internal war between slaves and slaveholders defined Mississippi's social development, well into the 20th century.
The book is published by University Press of Mississippi. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
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Story
This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America has justly been called a classic.
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The textbook you should have had in high school.
- By Saleh on 05-06-18
By: W. E. B. Du Bois, and others
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Freedom National
- The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
- By: James Oakes
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The consensus view of the Civil War - that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory - dies here. James Oakes’s groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle. In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines.
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An Excellent Book on an Important and little understood subject
- By Dee M on 12-22-22
By: James Oakes
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Dawn of Detroit
- A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.
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Great!
- By Melissa Eisner on 05-30-18
By: Tiya Miles
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The War Before the War
- Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
- By: Andrew Delbanco
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights.
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Great promise greater disappointment
- By Amazon Customer on 12-09-18
By: Andrew Delbanco
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Toussaint Louverture
- A Revolutionary Life
- By: Philippe Girard
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Philippe Girard shows how Toussaint Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman into revolutionary hero as the mastermind of the bloody slave revolt of 1791. By 1801, Louverture was governor of the colony where he had once been a slave. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the colonial elite ended in despair: he spent the last year of his life in a French prison cell. His example nevertheless inspired anticolonial and Black nationalist movements well into the 20th century.
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very powerful story
- By jim on 01-06-17
By: Philippe Girard
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The Counter-Revolution of 1776
- Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
- By: Gerald Horne
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.
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A revelation, a paradigm shift and a new view
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 03-28-18
By: Gerald Horne
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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A Colony Sprung from Hell
- Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744-1794
- By: Daniel P. Barr
- Narrated by: Michael Kazalski
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The early settlement of the region around Pittsburgh was characterized by a messy collision of personal, provincial, national, and imperial interests. Driven by the efforts of Europeans, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Indians, almost everyone attempted to manipulate the clouded political jurisdiction of the region. A Colony Sprung from Hell traces this complex struggle. The events and episodes that make up the story highlight the difficulties of creating and consolidating authority along the frontier.
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These places have names.
- By Scott A. Yerecic on 01-13-17
By: Daniel P. Barr
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Confederate Reckoning
- Power and Politics in the Civil War South
- By: Stephanie McCurry
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.
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Good view of the confederate inner workings.
- By Amazonian on 08-10-22
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The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
- By: Theda Perdue, Michael Green
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historians Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green paint a moving portrait of the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite protests from statesmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, a dubious 1838 treaty drove 17,000 mostly Christian Cherokee from their lush Appalachian homeland to barren plains beyond the Mississippi. For 4,000, this brutal forced march lead only to their deaths.
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Great audio book
- By Steve on 03-23-08
By: Theda Perdue, and others
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America Aflame
- How the Civil War Created a Nation
- By: David Goldfield
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 27 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In this spellbinding new history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Where past scholars have interpreted the war as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatest failure: the result of a breakdown caused by the infusion of evangelical religion into the public sphere.
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Great and indepth
- By Kindle Customer on 06-02-14
By: David Goldfield