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"In 1923, the Southern Historical Society (SHS) published 'Proceedings of the Confederate Congress' in its journal, Southern Historical Society Papers. It was the first of nine issues containing congressional minutes from the public sessions of the Confederate Congress that met in Richmond, Virginia from February 1862 to March 1865. Unlike the summary notations of the official US congressional journals, the 'Proceedings' were drawn primarily from the archives of two newspapers from Richmond, Virginia-the Examiner and the Dispatch-which served the Confederacy's capital city. These journalists['] reports preserved nearly verbatim transcripts of speeches, debates, and bills considered by the Confederate legislature, including details seldom available from other sources, and have proven to be invaluable sources for Confederate political history. 'Proceedings of the Confederate Congress' is not without problems, however, chief among them its lack of completeness. Owing to budgetary constraints and lack of resources, SHS president Douglas Southall Freeman was forced to focus exclusively on the sessions of the Regular Confederate Congress beginning in 1862. None of the proceedings of the Montgomery and Richmond Provisional Congresses of 1861 and 1862 were included in the series. With 'Congress of States,' David Carlson fills this void by compiling and editing the minutes of these early legislative sessions from daily press reports published in newspapers in Richmond, Virginia; Montgomery, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Savannah and Augusta, Georgia, in the process assembling a complete set of transcriptions documenting the creation of the Confederate government. When delegations from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and, later, Texas met in Montgomery, Alabama in February 1861 to discuss the creation of a southern national government, none had been authorized to do so by the conventions that sent them. Within weeks, however, they launched a de facto constitutional convention, formed a government, and selected Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens to serve as president and vice president of the new nation. This transpired at a critical juncture prior to Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration when eight other slave states had yet to act. The delegates understood their place on the public stage and newspapers' usefulness in espousing and galvanizing their cause. From its initial formation through the expansion of the Confederacy and the new government's official establishment in the capital city of Richmond, Virginia, the Provisional Congress provided a vehicle around which the new nation coalesced as members negotiated with states and foreign governments, mobilized a military, consulted with constituents, and forged a national culture. As the conflict deepened, sensitive business increasingly took place behind closed doors away from the public, reporters, and the risk of espionage (as would also be true in the Regular Confederate Congress), but even the public functions that remained and were reported on in open chambers provide valuable insights into the workings and mindset of the Confederate government. Intended as a primary source and reference for libraries, historians, and political scientists of the nineteenth century, 'Congress of States' provides an introduction explaining the Provisional Confederate Congress and the background and purpose of the book relative to the SHS and its 'Proceedings of the Confederate Congress'; a chronology outlining the major events surrounding the secession crisis which informed and influenced the Provisional Congress; annotated minutes for each of Provisional Confederate Congress's five sessions; and appendices featuring the leadership and committees of the Provisional Congress, primary source documents referenced but not included in the proceedings, and examples of the proposed emblem and flags debated as symbols of the Confederacy"--

In the years leading up to the Civil War, southern evangelical denominations moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the American South. Scott Stephan argues that female Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians played a crucial role in this transformation. While other scholars have pursued studies of southern evangelicalism in the context of churches, meetinghouses, and revivals, Stephan looks at the domestic rituals over which southern women had increasing authority-from consecrating newborns to God's care to ushering dying kin through life's final stages. Laymen and clergymen alike celebrated the contributions of these pious women to the experience and expansion of evangelicalism across the South. This acknowledged domestic authority allowed some women to take on more public roles in the conversion and education of southern youth within churches and academies, although always in the name of family and always cloaked in the language of Christian self-abnegation. At the same time, however, women's work in the name of domestic devotion often put them at odds with slaves, children, or husbands in their households who failed to meet their religious expectations and thereby jeopardized evangelical hopes of heavenly reunification of the family. Stephan uses the journals and correspondence of evangelical women from across the South to understand the interconnectedness of women's personal, family, and public piety. Rather than seeing evangelical women as entirely oppressed or resigned to the limits of their position in a patriarchal slave society, Stephan seeks to capture a sense of what agency was available to women through their moral authority.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.