"To Fight and Die for Dixie: Alabama’s Manpower Contribution to the Confederate War Effort, 1861-1865" on Sept. 26 at 10:30 a.m. at the Trussville Historical Museum

This talk addresses the disparate scholarly debate over how many Alabamian actually served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and how many subsequently died in that conflict. Getting the numbers rights not only clarifies the state’s massive contribution to America’s greatest struggle, but permits a re-examination of the longstanding, yet misleading, notion about “a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.”

A former lieutenant in the US Army, Ben Severance is a Professor of History at Auburn University Montgomery, a position he has held since joining the faculty there in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). His principal areas of research and teaching include the American Civil War, Nineteenth Century America, and U.S. Military History. Among his publications are three books: Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869 (University of Tennessee Press, 2005), Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama during the Civil War (University of Arkansas Press, 2012), and A War State All Over: Alabama Politics and the Confederate Cause (University of Alabama Press, 2020).