Dig a little deeper in the well: A review of Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates who joined the Army after 1861

For the past six years, I’ve asked myself, “Why would someone leave a nice state like Iowa and serve the Confederacy?”  Seeking insights, I read James M. McPherson’s masterful book, For Cause and Comrades:  Why Men Fought in the Civil War.

McPherson and other historians have focused on men who enlisted in 1861.   Historian Kenneth W. Noe gives a richer, fuller, and more nuanced picture in Reluctant Rebels:  The Confederates who joined the Army after 1861.

reluctant-rebels-by-kenneth-noe-cover-photo

When Noe looked at the body of Civil War literature, he asked the following questions:

Where were the conscripts? … Where were the deserters?  Where were the men who broke and ran away?  Where were the garrison troops and backwater outfits?  For that matter, where were the reluctant Rebels, the men who waited months or years before enlisting?

Noe added:

Scholars and general readers alike would never truly understand the full range of the soldier experience, I suggested, until all those men found their historians, too.

Almost one-fourth (22.5%) of all Confederate troops enlisted after 1861.  If you add conscripts (15%) and substitutes (9%), almost half of all Confederate soldiers entered the Confederate service after 1861.

Defying stereotypes

Noe states in his introduction:

While they were not so different than other soldiers – and those similarities as well as differences will be delineated in the pages that follow – later-enlisting Confederates ultimately defy stereotyping and must be met on their own ground.  Doing so offers a fuller portrait of them and all Confederate soldiers.

In Reluctant Rebels, Noe explores “the reasons that compelled most of those ‘later enlisters’ … to stay at home initially only to join up later on.”  He also considers “the factors that kept them in the ranks and emboldened them in combat.”

Noe draws upon a sample of 320 later-enlisting Confederate soldiers.   He interweaves his analysis with the positions of Civil War scholars, including Bell Wiley, James M. McPherson, Gerald Linderman, Randall Jimerson, and Chandra Manning.

A sampling of surprises

Author Noe surprised me several times in Reluctant Rebels.  For instance, regarding slavery, he states the following:

 Later scholars maintain in sum that Johnny Rebs enlisted, remained in the ranks, and fought battles to preserve legal slavery.  They also admit that such an interpretation requires a degree of historical interpretation and literary deconstruction, for relatively few of the soldiers they studied wrote blatantly about fighting to preserve slavery.

On the subject of substitute soldiers, the author writes:

Despite the expected public shame associated with hiring a substitute, the market for such proxies in the Confederacy exploded overnight as men swallowed both the vaunted Southern honor historians wax eloquently about and their reputations.

Ultimate problem

I found the following insight to be compelling:

Part of the Confederacy’s ultimate problem was that the thin gray line of white men the South called up in the war’s second year and beyond always were too few in number, too old, too divided in heart and soul, and physically not always up to the task before them.  Later enlisters could and would fill the ranks and kill in combat, but many of them could not always march and fight as well as their new nation needed them to do.

As the Gospels surely reminded some of them during their trials, ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’  Lacking sufficient manpower both in terms of quality and quantity, the thin gray line of later enlisters proved insufficient, and the Confederacy yielded at last.

My recommendation

Reluctant Rebels is insightful, persuasive, and peppered with captivating quotes.   To his credit, author Noe admits the limitations of his research, and he gives solid reasoning to support his conclusions.

In short, I found Noe’s book to be well worth reading.

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Thank you for reading my blog!  Please leave any comments below.

David Connon

David Connon has spent nearly two decades researching dissenters in Iowa: Grinnell residents who helped on the Underground Railroad, and their polar opposites, Iowa Confederates. He shares some of these stories with audiences across the state through the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. He worked as an interpreter at Living History Farms for eleven seasons. Connon is a member of Sons of Union Veterans, an associate member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, and a member of the Des Moines Civil War Round Table. His articles have appeared in Iowa Heritage Illustrated, Iowa History Journal, Illinois Magazine, and local newspapers in both states.

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. You have piqued my interest. Sounds like a very interesting read.

    1. Thank you, Dennis. Space didn’t permit me to mention other surprising insights from Reluctant Rebels. If you read it, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

  2. Sounds like I have a new book to read. Thank you for making me aware of this work.

    1. Hi, Dick. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for reading my blog!

  3. Saying that the first Confederates enlisted had “more skin in the game” than later entrants seems an easily defensible conclusion. I’d be very interested to see a statistical breakdown of the general reasons for later entrants. Were they constrained by parental prohibitions, obligated to see their wives through a pregnancy, unavailable because of business or career constraints, or some other compelling reasons? And what would we (dis)qualify as other, less than compelling reasons?

    Surely many of the earliest soldiers on both sides had conflicts with blood relatives, especially wives and parents, about enlisting. How soon were those conflicts resolved as the decision to enlist among Confederates? Among the later entrants, how much of that decision was (less than permanent) deference to family wishes? These are fascinating questions, all. Thanks for the alert to this book, David!

    1. Hi, Steve. Thank you for sharing fascinating questions! They touch upon various aspects of our common humanity. Thanks, too, for reading my blog!

  4. Great review and insight. I really liked “For Cause & Comrades” and I’ll definitely add “Reluctant Rebels” to my reading list!

    1. Hi, Sarah. Thank you for your kind comments.

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