Confederate Reckoning

Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South is a non-fiction history published in 2010 about how and why the Confederacy failed to survive in the US Civil War because of its own dependence on enslavement and other political and social values and developments, especially involving women, enslaved people, and poor white farmers. Its author, Stephanie McCurry, is a US historian currently teaching at Columbia University and specializing in the US Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Confederate Reckoning was highly praised upon its publication. In addition to receiving several awards, including the Avery O. Craven Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Willie Lee Rose Prize, and the Merle Curti Award, the book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

This guide refers to the first edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss enslavement and racism.

Summary

Confederate Reckoning begins around the time of Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, when the Southern states began debating secession from the United States. Though they thought of their efforts as a restoration of the original republic of the United States, McCurry argues, the architects of what would become the Confederate States of America (CSA) sought to forge “a modern proslavery and antidemocratic state, dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal” (1).