In January 1861 a state convention voted by a narrow margin to secede from the Union. In this popular treatment of the Civil War in Georgia, F. N. Boney tells the story of how the strain of this modern, total war relentlessly ravaged the state's resources and weakened its resolve to fight for the Confederate cause. Heavy casualties on the battlefield and accelerating inflation on the home front combined to undermine the morale of the Confederacy and the citizens of Georgia.

Narrating Sherman's pivotal capture of Atlanta on 2 September 1864 and his crushing march to the sea, which ended with the fall of Savannah in late December, Boney recounts how the Confederacy's slow death affected the psyches of Georgians black and white. In the process, Boney shows how rebel Georgia gradually overcame its grief and was eventually reunited with the north in a national reconciliation.