num_pages: 360
description: Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, Peter S. Carmichael looks closely at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery. He finds them deeply engaged in the political, economic, and cultural forces of their time. Age, he concludes, created special concerns for young men who spent their formative years in the 1850s. Before the Civil War, these young men thought long and hard about Virginia's place as a progressive slave society. They vigorously lobbied for disunion despite opposition from their elders, then served as officers in the Army of Northern Virginia as frontline negotiators with the nonslaveholding rank and file. After the war, however, they quickly shed their Confederate radicalism to pursue the political goals of home rule and New South economic development and reconciliation. Not until the turn of the
language: English
title: Last Generation: Young Virginians In Peace, War, And Reunion
titlecomplete: Last Generation: Young Virginians In Peace, War, And Reunion (CIVIL WAR AMERICA)
genres: History, Civil War
ratings_count: 19
series: Civil War America
publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr