Abraham Lincoln The Orator, Vol. 16 Book

A Higher Duty is a detailed look at desertion among Georgia troops during the Civil War. Mark Weitz examines the numbers, times of desertion, home counties of deserters, units in which the deserters served, and the effect of the home front on deserting soldiers. The result is an insightful and original look at the subject, and challenges some of the assumptions that have been held by historians about Confederate desertion.

Weitz uses a wide variety of sources, including letters, newspaper articles, and government documents to craft his arguments and narrative. The main pillar of the research bind this book is the US register of Confederate deserters that took the oath of loyalty to the Union. The register lists soldiers by name, home, age, date captured, and date they swore the oath of loyalty. The author uses the register to find the pattern of desertion for Georgian troops, both when and where they deserted, but also where those men were from in Georgia.

The vast majority of Georgian troops that deserted to the Union did so between Fall 1863 and Fall 1864. Tradition views of Confederate desertion tie it to military defeat, but Weitz argues that at least for Georgian troops the causes were deeper. While the turning tide of military fortune doubtlessly played a part, proximity to home, proximity of Union authority, evaporation of Confederate control of their homes, and hardship suffered on the home front seem to have played a larger part.

According to the author's research, the majority of Georgian deserters came from counties in the Northern Georgia Upcountry and Upper Piedmont. These men were also mostly privates from regiments serving in the Army of Tennessee, which retreated into North Georgia after it's defeat at Missionary Ridge in November 1863. Since there were few slaves in the Upcountry and Upper Piedmont, and most people were subsistence farmers, the burdens of the war fell harder on families there. When the men who provided for those families went to war, there weren't slaves to fall back on to plant and reap crops or perform other labor to sustain them. In addition to this, the Georgian government failed to step in to relief the hardships of these families, despite it's promises to the contrary.

Weitz contrasts desertion numbers, as well as demographics and economics, of different regions of Georgia to help show class differences between these regions. These differences help to further explain who deserted, when and why, and also why there was not more desertion in other parts of the state.

The author clearly did his research well, and he draws clear and original conclusions from them. The narrative reads easily, and maps and charts help to illustrate and explain the data from which the author crafts his arguments. The author also studiously avoids the pitfalls of making sweeping statements and generalizations from his research. While he argues that Georgian desertion is an illustration of the failure of Confederate nationalism, and also challenges long-held beliefs about Confederate desertion, he also confines his arguments to the Georgians whom he studied. All of this adds up to an original, thought-provoking study, which should be informative for anyone interested in the social history of the Civil War.