The Making of a Confederate: Walter Lenoir's Civil War (New Narratives in American History) | 
 enlarge | Author: William L. Barney
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 545225
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.7 x 0.6
ISBN: 0195314344
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7456092
EAN: 9780195314342
ASIN: 0195314344
Publication Date: July 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Despite the advances of the civil rights movement, many white southerners cling to the faded glory of a romanticized Confederate past. In The Making of a Confederate, William L. Barney focuses on the life of one man, Walter Lenoir of North Carolina, to examine the origins of southern white identity alongside its myriad ambiguities and complexities.
Born into a wealthy slaveholding family, Lenoir abhorred the institution, opposed secession, and planned to leave his family to move to Minnesota, in the free North. But when the war erupted in 1860, Lenoir found another escape route--he joined the Confederate army, an experience that would radically transform his ideals. After the war, Lenoir, like many others, embraced the cult of the Lost Cause, refashioning his memory and beliefs in an attempt to make sense of the war, its causes, and its consequences. While some Southerners sank into depression, aligned with the victors, or fiercely opposed the new order, Lenoir withdrew to his acreage in the North Carolina mountains. There, he pursued his own vision of the South's future, one that called for greater self-sufficiency and a more efficient use of the land.
For Lenoir and many fellow Confederates, the war never really ended. As he tells this compelling story, Barney offers new insights into the ways that (selective) memory informs history; through Lenoir's life, readers learn how individual choices can transform abstract historical processes into concrete actions.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Superb and Subtle History October 1, 2008
I'm astonished that a previous reviewer attacked the book because the author does not approve of slave owning. He doesn't. Who does? Neither did the Lenoir family members, who did own slaves. William Barney carefully shows how Walter Lenoir himself hated to punish his slaves but did it anyway to set an example for the other slaves, and how Lenoir like many other Southerners of his time, despised slavery but depended on it. To him, it was evil but necessary. The war itself and its aftermath is what turned Lenoir into a confederate, and Barney traces that change in thought and attitude subtly in clear,enjoyable prose. The book is a beautiful portrait to a troubled and in many ways admirable man and his times.
Walter Lenior's Civil War September 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This small book intelligently uses the letters and records of Walter Lenoir to explain the impact of the Civil War and its aftermath in the western mountains of North Carolina. It also illustrates that support for slavery and secession wasn't universal even among slave-owning elites such as Lenoir, but that Lincoln's call for troops drove Lenoir and others like him into the position of defending their state and the South, while their experiences of the war itself made them confederates thereafter. The author's own values can sometimes intrude too much, but that aside this is a well-written and insightful biography. If, like me, you are interested in the civil war's impact on the southern population and/or interested in western North Carolina, you will enjoy this easy-to-read book
 Readable, but March 20, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Making of a Confederate: Walter Lenoir's Civil War (New Narratives in American History)
Good Read, but upon finishing the Introduction I became fully aware that the author was very much against any Southern slave owner identified in his research. You have to watch or he sneaks in his little jabs of self righteous contempt regarding the punishments given to the slaves of the subject family so very long ago.
Of course, being a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina it was to be expected!
Research appeared excellent for the subject matter.
The Making of a Confederate Walter Lenoir's Civil War December 11, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book.Although it teaches us much about history, it is well written and reads like a novel.
I must admit that Walter Lenoir is an ancestor of mine but I still highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning and reading about the Civil war.
It is a EXCELLENT book!!!
Kudos to the author.
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