Books by Drew Gilpin Faust

This journal records the Civil War experiences of a sensitive, well-educated, young southern woman. Kate Stone was twenty when the war began, living with her mother, brothers, and younger sister at Brokenburn, their plantation home in Louisiana. Without pretense and with almost photographic clarity, she portrays the South during its darkest hours.

First published in 1865, Belle Boyd's memoir of her experiences as a Confederate spy has stood the test of time and interest. In this new edition, Kennedy-Nolle and Faust consider the domestic side of the Civil War and also assess the value of Boyd's memoir for social and literary historians.

From his birth in 1807 to his death in 1864, James Henry Hammond witnessed the rise and fall of the cotton kingdom of the Old South. A long-awaited biography, Drew Gilpin Faust's James Henry Hammond and the Old South reveals the South Carolina planter who was at once characteristic of his age and unique among men of his time.

In one volume, these essentially unabridged selections from the works of the proslavery apologists are now conveniently accessible to scholars and students of the antebellum South. The Ideology of Slavery includes excerpts by Thomas R. Dew, founder of a new phase of proslavery militancy; William Harper and James Henry Hammond, representatives of the proslavery mainstream; Thornton Stringfellow, the most prominent biblical defender of the peculiar institution; Henry Hughes and Josiah Nott, who brought would-be scientism to the argument; and George Fitzhugh, the most extreme of proslavery writers.The works in this collection portray the development, mature essence, and ultimate fragmentation of the proslavery argument during the era of its greatest importance in the American South. Drew Faust provides a short introduction to each selection, giving information about the author and an account of the origin and publication of the document itself.Faust's introduction to the anthology traces the early historical treatment of proslavery thought and examines the recent resurgence of interest in the ideology of the Old South as a crucial component of powerful relations within that society. She notes the intensification of the proslavery argument between 1830 and 1860, when southern proslavery thought became more systematic and self-conscious, taking on the characteristics of a formal ideology with its resulting social movement. From this intensification came the pragmatic tone and inductive mode that the editor sees as a characteristic of southern proslavery writings from the 1830s onward. The selections, introductory comments, and bibliography of secondary works on the proslavery argument will be of value to readers interested in the history of slavery and of nineteenth-centruy American thought.

First published in 1864, Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice was the third novel of Augusta Jane Evans, one of the leading women writers of nineteenth-century domestic fiction. Long out of print and largely unavailable until now, Macaria is a compelling narrative about women and war.

Argues that coming to a fuller understanding of southern thought during the Civil War period offers a valuable refraction of the essential assumptions on which the Old South and the Confederacy were built. Drew Gilpin Faust shows the benefits of exploring Confederate nationalism "as the South's commentary upon itself.