Grad - Mathisen

Abstract

Few problems in modern politics are as complicated as the ambiguous obligations which link citizens to states. As part of a project that examines the history of political allegiance in the United States and, in particular, the formation of Union and Confederate states in Mississippi during the Civil War, this paper looks more closely at the ways in which the Confederate state made citizens out of the soldiers who served in that nation’s national army. By examining the experiences of soldiers and their expectations of service and sacrifice, this paper focuses attention on how the Confederate state attempted to expand its authority by turning army camps into “schools of citizenship,” which redirected older habits of obligation among white southerners. As I argue, this process dissolved bonds of local allegiance among and between whites in counties throughout the American South and revolved them around the national government. In so doing, the Confederacy affected a profound transformation in the way a rural people understood the power of the state and their relationship with it.