Confederate and Southern identity can be discerned in modern-day southerners. That dynamic belies the contentions of other historians who suggest that class-based cleavages, in particular with respect to the relatively privileged southern elites, help explain the demise of the Confederacy. In Gallagher's view, too much is made of the divisions between the elite and lower classes of whites, while too little is made of the near-mythic binding power of the Confederate social idea. The written records kept by Southerners of the period reinforce that argument. Thus one need not be an advocate of a slave-based society, which one can
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