New Arrivals

A few new arrivals compliments of publishers have been in my mailbox over the last couple of weeks.

Courtesy of my good friends at L.S.U. Press: They have been kind enough to send along a copy of Albert Taylor Bledsoe: Defender of the Old South and Architect of the Lost Cause (Southern Biography Series).

From the front flap and Amazon: 

Product Description

Albert Taylor Bledsoe (1809-1877), a principal architect of the South's ''Lost Cause'' mythology, remains one of the Civil War generation's leading and most controversial intellectuals. In Albert Taylor Bledsoe: Defender of the Old South and Architect of the Lost Cause Terry A. Barnhart sheds new light on this provocative figure.

Bledsoe gained a respectable reputation in the 1840s and 1850s as a metaphysician and speculative theologian. His two major works, An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will (1845) and A Theodicy; Or, Vindication of the Divine Glory, As Manifested in the Constitution and Government of the Moral World (1853), grapple with perplexing problems connected with causality, Christian theology, and moral philosophy. His fervent defense of slavery and the constitutional right of secession, however, solidified Bledsoe as one of the chief proponents of the idea of the Old South.

In An Essay on Liberty and Slavery (1856), he assailed egalitarianism and promoted the institution of slavery as a positive good. A decade later, he continued to devote himself to fashioning the ''Lost Cause'' narrative as the editor and proprietor of the Southern Review from 1867 until his death in 1877. He carried on a literary tradition aimed to reconcile white southerners to what he and they viewed as the indignity of their defeat by sanctifying their lost cause. Those who fought for the Confederacy, he argued, were not traitors but honorable men who sacrificed for noble reasons.

This biography, the first ever published of its subject, skillfully weaves Bledsoe's extraordinary life history into a narrative that illustrates the events that shaped his opinions and influenced his writings. Barnhart demonstrates how Bledsoe still speaks directly, and sometimes eloquently, to the core issues that divided the nation in the 1860s and continue to haunt it today.

About the Author

Terry A. Barnhart is professor of history at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. He is the author of Ephraim Squier and the Development of American Anthropology and journal articles relating to the history of American anthropology and the development of regional consciousness in the Old Northwest, 1820 to 1865.

Next up is an interesting self published book that looks like it will have lots of value for anybody interested in the role of Alabama in the Confederate army and should be a must check for anybody doing genealogical work on Tallapoosa County, Alabama.

Thanks go to William Gregory Wilson for sending a nicely signed copy of his work SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS: THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS OF TALLAPOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA. This book discusses the various regiments that young men from a single county joined during the Civil War. Using letters, the OR, service records, and more along with period photos of some of the brave soldiers, this looks like a book that will do these men and this county proud. Included are name lists for the various regiments with brief biographical information on the men when available and also a full index which should make this easy to use for family historians. I have high hopes for this.

Please visit Mr. Wilson's website here. There you can learn more on the subject and also on soldiers who served in World War 1. Also consider joining his Facebook page here