Power and Politics in the Civil War South with Stephanie McCurry


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It was a real pleasure to welcome Dr. Stephanie McCurry to the show to help me celebrate the 100th episode of The Rogue Historian Podcast (yay!) and to discuss her excellent book, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South. Stephanie is Professor of History at Columbia University and specializes in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the 19th-century United States, the American South, and the history of women and gender.   She is the author of three books including Confederate Reckoning (2010) and most recently, Women’s War:  Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War  (2019).  She is currently writing a book on Reconstruction.  Stephanie was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  She has two children and lives in New York City.  You can follow her on twitter @smccurry3 and see her work and events at stephaniemccurry.com.

I’ve been looking forward to having Stephanie on for some time now…listeners will note that her books keep coming up in conversation, so I am really happy to go to the source! We discuss:

  • The motivation behind the writing of Confederate Reckoning

  • Confederate nationhood and what that means in the context of nationalism

  • The Confederate Constitution

  • State rights rhetoric and the realities of living in the Confederate nation

  • The political dispossession of yeoman white women and enslaved people

  • Those with no access to traditional political power who get all political anyway

  • Shaping Confederate policy

  • The military question - was the war won and lost on the battlefield alone?

  • Social media and the historian’s role

Have a listen…

Of course you’ll want to pick up a copy of the book and keep the convo going…

Be sure to follow Stephanie on twitter @smccurry3 and check out all the other stuff at stephaniemccurry.com. AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.

With compliments,

Keith