The Yellowhammer War
320 pages, 6 x 9
2 B&W figures - 2 maps
Paperback
Release Date:03 Dec 2019
ISBN:9780817320553
The Yellowhammer War
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama
Edited by Kenneth W. Noe
University of Alabama Press
Published to mark the Civil War sesquicentennial, The Yellowhammer War collects new essays on Alabama’s role in, and experience of, the bloody national conflict and its aftermath.
During the first winter of the war, Confederate soldiers derided the men of an Alabama Confederate unit for their yellow-trimmed uniforms that allegedly resembled the plumage of the yellow-shafted flicker or “yellowhammer” (now the Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, and the state bird of Alabama). The soldiers’ nickname, “Yellowhammers,” came from this epithet. After the war, Alabama veterans proudly wore yellowhammer feathers in their hats or lapels when attending reunions. Celebrations throughout the state have often expanded on that pageantry and glorified the figures, events, and battles of the Civil War with sometimes dubious attention to historical fact and little awareness of those who supported, resisted, or tolerated the war off the battlefield.
Many books about Alabama’s role in the Civil War have focused serious attention on the military and political history of the war. The Yellowhammer War likewise examines the military and political history of Alabama’s Civil War contributions, but it also covers areas of study usually neglected by centennial scholars, such as race, women, the home front, and Reconstruction. From Patricia A. Hoskins’s look at Jews in Alabama during the Civil War and Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño’s examination of white women’s attitudes during secession to Harriet E. Amos Doss’s study of the reaction of Alabamians to Lincoln’s Assassination and Jason J. Battles’s essay on the Freedman’s Bureau, readers are treated to a broader canvas of topics on the Civil War and the state.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jason J. Battles / Lonnie A. Burnett / Harriet E. Amos Doss / Bertis English / Michael W. Fitzgerald / Jennifer Lynn Gross / Patricia A. Hoskins / Kenneth W. Noe / Victoria E. Ott / Terry L. Seip / Ben H. Severance / Kristopher A. Teters / Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño / Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins / Brian Steel Wills
Published in Cooperation with the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South
During the first winter of the war, Confederate soldiers derided the men of an Alabama Confederate unit for their yellow-trimmed uniforms that allegedly resembled the plumage of the yellow-shafted flicker or “yellowhammer” (now the Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, and the state bird of Alabama). The soldiers’ nickname, “Yellowhammers,” came from this epithet. After the war, Alabama veterans proudly wore yellowhammer feathers in their hats or lapels when attending reunions. Celebrations throughout the state have often expanded on that pageantry and glorified the figures, events, and battles of the Civil War with sometimes dubious attention to historical fact and little awareness of those who supported, resisted, or tolerated the war off the battlefield.
Many books about Alabama’s role in the Civil War have focused serious attention on the military and political history of the war. The Yellowhammer War likewise examines the military and political history of Alabama’s Civil War contributions, but it also covers areas of study usually neglected by centennial scholars, such as race, women, the home front, and Reconstruction. From Patricia A. Hoskins’s look at Jews in Alabama during the Civil War and Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño’s examination of white women’s attitudes during secession to Harriet E. Amos Doss’s study of the reaction of Alabamians to Lincoln’s Assassination and Jason J. Battles’s essay on the Freedman’s Bureau, readers are treated to a broader canvas of topics on the Civil War and the state.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jason J. Battles / Lonnie A. Burnett / Harriet E. Amos Doss / Bertis English / Michael W. Fitzgerald / Jennifer Lynn Gross / Patricia A. Hoskins / Kenneth W. Noe / Victoria E. Ott / Terry L. Seip / Ben H. Severance / Kristopher A. Teters / Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño / Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins / Brian Steel Wills
Published in Cooperation with the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South
This volume features fourteen excellent essays, replete with full endnotes, by talented scholars who together present a sharp and challenging picture of Alabama during the Civil War era. The product of impressive organizational skill by its editor, Kenneth Noe of Auburn University, the book probes crucial aspects of secession, war, and Reconstruction. Noe’s introduction—a valuable essay in itself—gives a clear overview of basic themes while also introducing the essays and placing them in their proper historiographical contexts.'
—Civil War Book Review
'[...] respected scholar Kenneth Noe succeeds admirably in pulling together fourteen essays that trace the conflct from the election of 1860 to late-Reconstruction black churches. The Yellowhammer War—a name derived from the similarity between the state's yellow woodpeckers and buttery-trimmed uniforms worn by the 4th Alabama Cavalry—should long stand as the most complete accoutn of Alabama durign those turbulent years.'
—Historian magazine
This volume makes a strong contribution to Alabama history and to the Civil War sesquicentennial.’
—George C. Rable, award-winning author of Fredericksburg!Fredericksburg! and God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War
'...the footnotes are a gold mine for the devoted Civil War scholar.'
—Mobile Bay magazine
‘Noe’s book certainly makes significant contributions to the field, not only in advancing the history of Alabama, but in the broader connections the work makes in regard to Civil War history. Noe’s edited volume is a perfect example of incorporating fresh concepts and research into an old genre, and presenting to the reader enjoyable and informative essays that will cause historians to rethink Alabama’s place in both the war and Reconstruction.’
—Jonathan C. Sheppard, author of By the Noble Daring of Her Sons: The Florida Brigade of the Army of Tennessee
Kenneth W. Noe is Alumni Professor and Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn University and author of several books, including Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army after 1861 and Southwest Virginia’s Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis in the Civil War Era.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Kenneth W. Noe
1. Precipitating a Revolution: Alabama's Democracyin the Election of 1860 by Lonnie A. Burnett
2. "The Aggressions of the North Can Be Borne No Longer": White Alabamian Women during the Secession Crisis and Outbreak of War by Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño
3. Confederate Alabama's Finest Hour: The Battle of Salem Church, May 3, 1863 by Ben H. Severance
4. The Confederate Sun Sets on Selma: Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Defense of Alabama in 1865 by Brian Steel Wills
5. Fighting for the Cause? An Examination of the Motivations of Alabama’s Confederate Soldiers from a Class Perspective by Kristopher A. Teters
6. Voices from the Margins: Non-Elites in Confederate Alabama by Victoria E. Ott
7. Augusta Jane Evans: Alabama's Confederate Macaria by Jennifer Lynn Gross
8. "The Best Southern Patriots": Jews in Alabama during the Civil War by Patricia A. Hoskins
9. Every Man Should Consider His Own Conscience: Black and White Alabamians' Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Harriet E. Amos Doss
10. Alabama's Reconstruction after 150 Years by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins
11. Of Ambition and Enterprise: The Making of Carpetbagger George E. Spencer by Terry L. Seip
12. "He Was Always Preaching the Union": The Wartime Origins of White Republicanism during Reconstruction by Michael W. Fitzgerald
13. Labor, Law, and the Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama, 1865<n>1867 by Jason J. Battles
14. Freedom's Church: Sociocultural Construction, Reconstruction, and Post-Reconstruction in Perry County, Alabama's African American Churches by Bertis English
Suggestions for Further Reading
Contributors
Index
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