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Dissertation Information for Mark Alan Weitz

NAME:
- Mark Alan Weitz

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Arizona State University (USA) (1998)

ADVISORS:
- Brooks D. Simpson

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Philip VanderMeer
- Roger D. Adelson

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: A higher duty: Desertion among Georgia troops during the Civil War

Abstract: Historical scholarship over the past sixty years has virtually ignored the study of desertion in the Civil War. This study examines desertion among Georgia troops during the war by using Union army records to identify specific deserters, their unit affiliation, their time and place of desertion and their county of residence prior to the war. This information allows for the analysis of desertion at the county level to determine what factors motivated Georgia's Confederate soldiers to desert. Despite data that reflects enlistment figures for Georgia's different regions roughly equivalent to the proportion of white people in those areas, desertion occurred predominantly among the common soldiers from Georgia's northern regions, particularly its Upcountry. The diaries, letters and memoirs written by soldiers and their families reveals that desertion among Georgia troops resulted from severe economic hardship at home that affected the northern regions more severely than the central and southern portions of the state. When the situation at home reached unbearable levels, the women these soldiers left behind when they went to war called them back home. Confronted with a conflict between their duty to home and family and their duty as Confederate soldiers, north Georgians chose the higher duty to their families. These men took advantage of a Union desertion policy that allowed them to desert into the Union lines, swear allegiance to the United States and then return home. As the war progressed, the Union occupation of the South made it possible for Georgia's deserters to return home to areas freed of Confederate control and the desertion pattern in Georgia demonstrates a clear connection between the Union invasion of the state and the desertion of its soldiers.


MPACT Scores for Mark Alan Weitz

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-05-05 19:12:22

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Students under Mark Alan Weitz

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None