This controversial history explodes orthodoxies over why the South lost the Civil War. Robinson contends that the process of social change initiated during the birth of Confederate nationalism undermined the social and cultural foundations of the southern way of life built on slavery, ultimately sapped white southerners of the will to go on.

In this controversial history the author tells the story of how the Civil Warand slavery were intertwined, and how internal social conflict undermined theConfederacy in the end.