Foreword / James M. McPherson -- Politics, education, and secession -- The old republican constitutional primer : states rights after the Missouri controversy and the onset of the politics of slavery / Christopher Childers -- Punctuated progress : education developments in the antebellum Gulf South / Sarah L. Hyde -- Preaching disunion : clergymen in the Louisiana secession crisis / Julia Huston Nguyen -- The diverse challenges of war -- Confederate dilemmas : the strange case of Clement L. Vallandigham / George C. Rable -- Rich man's fight : wealth, privilege, and military service in Confederate Mississippi / Paul F. Paskoff -- Searching for "some plain and simple method" : Jefferson Davis and Confederate conscription / John M. Sacher -- The legacy of war and its memory -- Old South, New South : the strange career of Pierre Champomier / Richard Follett -- Continuity recast : Judge Edward McGehee, Wilkinson County, and the saga of Bowling Green Plantation / Samuel C. Hyde Jr -- A monument of paper for William Lowndes Yancey : crafting and obscuring historical memory / Eric H. Walther -- Afterword : contingency and continuity : William J. Cooper Jr., an appreciation / Gaines M. Foster.