Rich Man S War

During World War I, thousands of rural southern men, black and white, refused to serve in the military. Some failed to register for the draft, while others deserted after being inducted. In the countryside, armed bands of deserters defied local authorities; capturing them required the dispatch of federal troops into three southern states. Jeanette Keith traces southern draft resistance to several sources, including whites' long-term political opposition to militarism, southern blacks' reluctance to serve a nation that refused to respect their rights, the peace witness of southern churches, and, above all, anger at class bias in federal conscription policies. Keith shows how draft dodgers' success in avoiding service resulted from the failure of southern states to create effective mechanisms for identifying and classifying individuals. Lacking local-level data on draft evaders, the federal government used agencies of surveillance both to find reluctant conscripts and to squelch antiwar dissent in rural areas. Drawing upon rarely used local draft board reports, Selective Service archives, Bureau of Investigation reports, and southern political leaders' constituent files, Keith offers new insights into rural southern politics and society as well as the growing power of the nation-state in early twentieth-century America.

In Rich Man's War historian David Williams focuses on the Civil War experience of people in the Chattahoochee River Valley of Georgia and Alabama to illustrate how the exploitation of enslaved blacks and poor whites by a planter oligarchy generated overwhelming class conflict across the South, eventually leading to Confederate defeat. This conflict was so clearly highlighted by the perception that the Civil War was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight" that growing numbers of oppressed whites and blacks openly rebelled against Confederate authority, undermining the fight for independence. After the war, however, the upper classes encouraged enmity between freedpeople and poor whites to prevent a class revolution. Trapped by racism and poverty, the poor remained in virtual economic slavery, still dominated by an almost unchanged planter elite. The publication of this book was supported by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission.

"A significant voice in a significant debate . . . full of marvelous quotes."--William W. Freehling, University of Kentucky "Shows clearly that the Solid South was not solid at all [and] demonstrates that the war encompassed much more than military strategy and tactics . . . it was fought at home as well as on the battlefield."--Wayne K. Durrill, University of Cincinnati This compelling and engaging book sheds new light on how planter self-interest, government indifference, and the very nature of southern society produced a rising tide of dissent and disaffection among Georgia's plain folk during the Civil War. The authors make extensive use of local newspapers, court records, manuscript collections, and other firsthand accounts to tell a story of latent class resentment that emerged full force under wartime pressures and undermined southern support for the Confederacy. More directly than any previous historians, the authors make clear the connections between the causes of class resentment and their impact. Planters produced far too much cotton and avoided the draft at will. Speculators hoarded scarce goods and brought on spiraling inflation. Government officials turned a blind eye to the infractions of the rich, and were often bribed to do so. Women left to go hungry took matters into their own hands, stealing livestock in rural areas and rioting for food in every major city in Georgia. The hardships of families back home weighed heavily on soldiers in the field, contributing to rampant desertion. Deserters banded together, sometimes with draft dodgers and blacks escaping enslavement, to defend themselves or to go on the offensive against Confederate authorities. Some whites even planned and participated in slave resistance, a joining of forces that previous historians have long dismissed as highly improbable. So violent did Georgia's inner civil war become that one resident commented, "We are fighting each other harder than we ever fought the enemy." This work stresses more forcefully than any before it that plain folk in the Deep South were far from united behind the Confederate war effort. That lack of unity, brought on largely by class resentment, helped to ensure that the Confederacy's cause would, in the end, be lost. David Williams is professor and acting chair of the Department of History at Valdosta State University.

Tanner Malone is starting to enjoy his navy post in the honor guard. After surviving violent conflicts with space pirates in the void, he hopes to stay out of the stars for a while. But when the government of Archangel, a prosperous Union state including four terraformed worlds, makes a dangerous decision to defy the Big Three's corporate dominance, war threatens the galaxy. The interstellar fighting escalates, and duty calls a reluctant Tanner to the front lines, where it becomes more and more difficult to tell the difference between politician, pirate, and protector. When secret intel reveals a vast network of bloody covert operations, along with a rigged economic system that enslaves its members, Tanner finds himself at the perilous intersection between the government, the Big Three, and pirates who will stop at nothing to remain free.

JFK to 911 is already a global phenomenon, having began as a Youtube video which achieved over a billion hits by becoming the first documentary in human history to untangle all the establishment lies and reveal the entire truth about the Kennedy Assassination and 911. These disclosures so frightened the powers-that-be that President Trump and the Queen of England took the joint decision to ban it altogether, so that if you read this book, you will be learning the most cardinal secrets which your government would much rather you did not know. Nearly all intelligent people these days are wary of what we are being told by the mainstream media, but fewer are aware that the very notion of 'fake news' began with the words on these pages, and that all government policy in recent times has been an ongoing effort to hold back the increasing enlightenment these words have inspired. Legions of people have taken the trouble to go online so that they could tell the world about how learning that absolutely everything is a rich man's trick—the justice system, the education system, the economic system, and most importantly, the media. Francis Richard Conolly is extremely hopeful that the people who have made a movie which he originally gave them for free such a central part of their existence will now buy this book in order to build the revenues which he needs to make the sequel which everyone wants to see.

Reproduction of the original: A Certain Rich Man by William Allen White

“Does for the Civil War period what Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States did for the study of American history in general.” —Library Journal Historian David Williams has written the first account of the American Civil War as viewed though the eyes of ordinary people—foot soldiers, slaves, women, prisoners of war, draft resisters, Native Americans, and others. Richly illustrated with little-known anecdotes and firsthand testimony, this path-breaking narrative moves beyond presidents and generals to tell a new and powerful story about America’s most destructive conflict. A People’s History of the Civil War is a “readable social history” that “sheds fascinating light” on this crucial period. In so doing, it recovers the long-overlooked perspectives and forgotten voices of one of the defining chapters of American history (Publishers Weekly). “Meticulously researched and persuasively argued.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution