Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860-1870

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1988, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed marks a significant advance in the social history of the American Civil War--an approach exemplified and extended in Ash's later work and that of other leading Civil War scholars. For the new edition, Ash has written a preface that takes into account the advance of Civil War historiography since the book's original appearance. This preface cites subsequent studies focusing not only on race and class but also on women and gender relations, the significance of partisan politics in shaping the course of secession in Tennessee and other upper-South states, the economic forces at work, the influence of republican ideology, and the investigation of the degree to which slaves were active agents in their own emancipation.