Clarence L. Mohr

The war that southerners waged to prevent change was itself a powerful agent of change; as they waged war southerners were forced to make major changes in the structure of their ‘peculiar institution.’ The demands of the war forced slaves into new occupational roles, lessened the controls over them, and increased the geographic mobility of many of them. Many of the traditional institutions of control evaporated under the pressure of war. “The basic norms of a relatively static and immobile society became all but impossible to maintain.” (111) Mohr argues that by 1865 Georgia stood on the brink of emancipation; by that point it was inevitable, regardless of the military outcome.… (més)