Reviews Planters Progress
"Morgan makes good use of the evidence and has produced a gracefully written and intelligent work. It will be valuable for upper division undergraduate and graduate students as well as specialists in antebellum Georgia, the Civil War, Southern industrialization and Southern intellectual history."
--H-net.org South
"A masterful handling of a variety of primary sources and . . . a keen understanding of published scholarship . . . Morgan's well-crafted portrait of Confederate Georgia's industrialization provides a fresh perspective on the Civil War's long-familiar story."
--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"An instructive case study of a state's economic transformation during wartime conditions...a model of efficient and effective prose backed by evidence...recommended reading for economic and political historians grappling with the complex nature of southern industrialization during the turbulent decades of the mid-nineteenth century."
--EH.NET
…emphasizes the economic modernization developments war needs caused.
--The Journal of American History
…revisits and revises the Marxist school of historiography within the context of Civil War Georgia.
--North Carolina Historical Review
Morgan has written a fine work that should be read by anyone interested in the Civil War's economic impact upon the South.
--Journal of Southern History
Morgan brings important insights into how Confederate industry adapted to fit into a slave society.
--Technology & Culture
…Morgan examines the efforts to promote and to foster industrialization in Georgia during the Civil War as a window onto the larger question of wealthy planters' attitudes toward modernity and progress.
--Louisiana History
…an important contribution to our understanding of the transformation of Georgia's urban home front during the Civil War.
--American Historical Review
…an intriguing blend of economic and intellectual history set before the compelling backdrop of a society hurtling toward secession, war, and defeat.
--H-Net
"The substance of this short book is persuasive."
--Enterprise & Society
"Represents a sterling addition to the University Press of Florida's New Perspectives on the History of the South series; it deserves a place among the book of any serious student of the Civil War".
--Civil War History