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In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War. Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.
This book provides a perspective into the past that few students and historians of the Civil War have considered: agriculture during the Civil War as a key element of power. The Civil War revolutionized the agricultural labor system in the South, and it had dramatic effects on farm labor in the North relating to technology. Agriculture also was an element of power for both sides during the Civil War—one that is often overlooked in traditional studies of the conflict. R. Douglas Hurt argues that Southerners viewed the agricultural productivity of their region as an element of power that would enable them to win the war, while Northern farmers considered their productivity not only an economic benefit to the Union and enhancement of their personal fortunes but also an advantage that would help bring the South back into the Union. This study examines the effects of the Civil War on agriculture for both the Union and the Confederacy from 1860 to 1865, emphasizing how agriculture directly related to the war effort in each region—for example, the efforts made to produce more food for military and civilian populations; attempts to limit cotton production; cotton as a diplomatic tool; the work of women in the fields; slavery as a key agricultural resource; livestock production; experiments to produce cotton, tobacco, and sugar in the North; and the adoption of new implements.