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Historical research and scholarship remind me of putting up fence posts the old-fashioned way.  Gripping a post-hole-digger, a person presses down, making it bite into the soil.

Repeated turns strain the pectoral muscles, shoulder muscles, biceps, triceps, wrists, and hands.  Next comes pounding a fence post into the hole, digging a new hole, and repeating the process.

Historian David Ross Zimring has added a new fence post with To Live and Die in Dixie:  Native Northerners who Fought for the Confederacy (Knoxville, 2014).    Zimring identifies 303 men and women, born in northern states (not including Iowa), who moved South before the Civil War (sometimes as early as the 1810s).    This scholarly book explores the complex dynamics of identity formation in the nineteenth century.

Main questions

Zimring asks why northern emigrants “chose to fight for their adopted home and against their native section?  Most importantly, what do their experiences tell us about the nature of sectional identity and Confederate nationalism?”  I have thought about related questions for the better part of six years.

The author contends:

Those [emigrants from the North] who supported the Confederacy did not fight as northerners dragged into the Confederate ranks against their will; they viewed themselves as both southerners and Confederates in thought and action, by adoption rather than by blood.

Differences between his definition of “resident” and mine

Zimring defines “resident” as a native of a northern state who left that state and moved South as an adult.  I define resident as a person who lived in Iowa no earlier than 1850 (that is, after Iowa became a state), for at least two years, and who was 13 or older while living in Iowa.

Zimring’s definition of resident is more stringent than mine.  It seems open to discussion as to whether people as young as 13-15 years old are able to identify with a state and/or a region.  This question may need further study.

Positive attributes

I found Zimring’s main points to be compelling.  I appreciated the fact that his sample size (303) is much greater than my list of 75 Confederates from Iowa (although research is continuing).

Negative critique

To Live and Die in Dixie would have been richer if Zimring had included Iowans.  I question whether Zimring needed to include Northerners who moved South as early as the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s.  On a micro level, I think that Zimring’s book would benefit from another round of copyediting.  Specifically, some individual statements (in support of a larger point) are weak or indefensible, although the larger points are typically credible and persuasive.   Additional copyediting might also reduce repetitive statements.

My recommendation

This book is rather expensive (I paid $53.39 for a copy).  Nonetheless, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in northerners who emigrated to the South before the Civil War.