In Rich Man's War historian David Williams focuses on the Civil War experience of people in the Chattahoochee Valley of Georgia and Alabama to illustrate how the exploitation of enslaved blacks and poor whites by a planter oligarchy generated overwhelming class conflict across the South, eventually leading to Confederate defeat. This conflict was clearly highlighted by the perception that the Civil War was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.".

Throughout the war growing numbers of oppressed whites and blacks openly rebelled against Confederate authority, undermining the fight for independence. Southern plain folk expressed an increasingly antagonistic attitude toward the region's elite and the Confederacy itself as the war dragged on, and slaves looked forward to the Confederacy's downfall and the freedom they hoped it would bring.

After the war, however, the upper classes were able to prevent a class revolution by encouraging enmity between freedpeople and poor whites. Trapped by racism and poverty, the poor remained in virtual economic slavery, dominated by an almost unchanged planter elite. Nowhere was the impact of class and caste on Confederate defeat more evident than in the lower Chattahoochee Valley.