Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860-1870: War and Peace in the Upper South

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. Winner of the Tennessee History Book Award and named by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book, it examines the Civil War in Middle Tennessee in light of conflict between African Americans and whites, the decline of institutions (churches, schools, courts), and economic disruption. Ash provides a rich description of how a prosperous section of Tennessee descended into devastating internal warfare that in some respects continued for years after the war. 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.