Of the one hundred thousand Southerners who donned Federal uniforms during the Civil War, more than forty thousand were Tennesseeans. Not surprisingly, most came from the Appalachian counties of East Tennessee but not all. A Middle Tennessean named Marcus Woodcock, not yet nineteen when the war began, was among the exceptions.
A Southern Boy in Blue is Woodcock's own account of his experiences during the war. After joining the 9th Kentucky Infantry, Woodcock barely missed the battle of Shiloh a bout of measles kept him from the front lines but he went on to see action at Stones River,...

After the feverish mobilization of secession had faded, why did Southern men join the Confederate army? Kenneth Noe examines the motives and subsequent performance of "later enlisters." He offers a nuanced view of men who have often been cast as less patriotic and less committed to the cause, rekindling the debate over who these later enlistees were, why they joined, and why they stayed and fought.

Noe refutes the claim that later enlisters were more likely to desert or perform poorly in battle and reassesses the argument that they were less ideologically savvy than their...

After the feverish mobilization of secession had faded, why did Southern men join the Confederate army? Kenneth Noe examines the motives and subsequent performance of "later enlisters." He offers a nuanced view of men who have often been cast as less patriotic and less committed to the cause, rekindling the debate over who these later enlistees were, why they joined, and why they stayed and fought.

Noe refutes the claim that later enlisters were more likely to desert or perform poorly in battle and reassesses the argument that they were less ideologically savvy than their...