Well into the final months of the Civil War, countless Confederate soldiers earnestly believed that victory lay just around the corner.
He has also taught at Texas A&M University..
About the Author: Jason Phillips is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.
The central elements of Confederate Invincibility fueled white southern defiance after surrender and evolved into the Lost Cause.
Instead of crippling diehards after defeat, old notions of southern superiority helped them uphold southern honor.
In addition, diehards were both consumers and conduits of rumors, misinformation, and propaganda that allowed them to envision a war that was rosier than the truth but still believable.
Troops also tended to perceive the course of the war in far-off theaters, the North, and overseas in positive ways.
Close comradeship and disorienting combat conditions were factors, says Phillips, as well as conclusions drawn from images and experiences contradicting the larger reality, such as battlefields littered with enemy corpses and parade-ground spectacles of Confederate military splendor.
Within the soldiers\' closely circumscribed world, other elements reinforced convictions that the South was holding its own against great but surmountable odds.
Drawing on soldiers\' letters and diary entries from 1863 to 1865, Diehard Rebels explains how religious dogma and perceptions of Union barbarity and ineptitude affirmed in many soldiers a view of an indomitable South.
Much is known about what Confederate soldiers fought for; far less is understood about why they fought on despite long odds and terrible costs.
How could this be? Jason Phillips reveals the deeply ingrained attitudes that shaped the reality of these diehards not only during the war but in the subsequent era, when the myth of the Lost Cause was born.
Well into the final months of the Civil War, countless Confederate soldiers earnestly believed that victory lay just around the corner
