Reluctant Confederates

My first book, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 1989), focused on Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee—the three large pivotal states in the Upper South that ultimately sided with the Confederacy.  I look especially at white Southerners who opposed secession and at their unsuccessful efforts to find some peaceful resolution to the crisis.  The book includes an extensive segment on conciliatory Northerners, most notably William H. Seward, the incoming secretary of state in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, who attempted to find common ground with Southern Unionists. A paperback edition of Reluctant Confederates appeared in 1993.  Excerpts from Reluctant Confederates were published in several widely assigned anthologies on the history of the Old South and the coming of the Civil War.

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Reviews of Reluctant Confederates

“Daniel W. Crofts challenges the dominant historical interpretation of the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the start of the American Civil War. . . . His volume succeeds in advancing our understanding of the sources of southern Unionism and increasing our appreciation of its possibilities.”—Stephen E. Maizlish, American Historical Review

“Crofts’s fascinating and convincing discoveries about the strength of Upper South Unionism . . . [have] to be taken seriously by historians who in recent years have been stressing the inevitability of the breakup of the Union.”—Michael Perman, Illinois Historical Journal

“Dan Crofts has written an important book. . . . Some may disagree with his questioning of Lincoln’s handling of the secession crisis, but anyone studying the road to Civil War cannot overlook Crofts’ contribution to the subject.”—Charles F. Bryan, Jr., Tennessee Historical Quarterly

“The achievements of this book are many. It establishes the importance of the period when peace and war hung in the balance, and two-thirds of the white population of the slave states, plus most of their manufacturing and foodstuff production, remained outside the Confederacy.”—Ralph Mann, Civil War History

“In his impressive work, Crofts has taken an important step toward an understanding of the political and social transformation of this region [the Upper South] in the Civil War era.”—Louis S. Gerteis, Reviews in American History

“Vivid character sketches and lucid prose help bring this well-conceived study to life. By ranging widely in primary sources and analyzing them cogently, Crofts has provided significant new insights on the coming of the Civil War.”—Stephen V. Ash, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography