A War State All Over – A Virtual Presentation
By Dr. Ben H. Severance
The public is invited to a presentation and discussion on the impact of the Civil War on the Civilian and Political attitudes in the State of Alabama by Dr. Ben Severance, Professor of History at Auburn University Montgomery, on Sunday, April 25th at 3:00 PM EDT (2:00 CDT). This public discussion will be held online (since the Bradshaw Library still is not yet available for presentations) via ZOOM. All attendees, both CVHS members and the general public, will need to send an active email address to the following address by 12:00 noon (EDT) on that Sunday, April 25th: programs@cvhistoricalsociety.org . The moderator (Charles Powers) will respond to each email with specific directions on how to connect prior to the 3:00 PM meeting.
Dr. Ben H. Severance is a professor of history at Auburn University Montgomery, an institution he joined as a faculty member in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). His principal areas of research and teaching include the American Civil War and American Military History more broadly. Among his publications are three books: Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869 (University of Tennessee Press, 2005), Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama during the Civil War (University of Arkansas Press, 2012), and A War State All Over: Alabama Politics and the Confederate Cause (University of Alabama Press, 2020). In addition to his academic career, he was also an officer in the United States Army before pursuing his PhD.
The focus of Severance’s book A War State All Over is a detailed study of Alabama’s political allegiance to the Confederacy. His research for this project is oriented around the important mid-war elections of 1863, which serve as a crucial gauge of popular support for the Confederate war effort. Severance argues that a strong majority of Alabama’s political leaders remained steadfast to the cause of southern independence right to the end of the war. In doing so, his book illuminates the often-overlooked lives of Alabama’s wartime governors, Congressmen, and state legislators.
The University of Alabama Press review of Dr. Severance’s states, “Alabama’s military forces were fierce and dedicated combatants for the Confederate cause. In his study of Alabama during the Civil War, Ben H. Severance argues that Alabama’s electoral and political attitudes were, in their own way, just as unified in their support for the cause of southern independence. To be sure, the civilian populace often expressed unease about the conflict, as did a good many of Alabama’s legislators, but the majority of government officials and military personnel displayed pronounced Confederate loyalty and a consistent willingness to accept a total war approach in pursuit of their new nation’s aims. As Severance puts it, Alabama was a “war state all over.”
Please encourage all to join this insightful presentation on our state history!