Historians often emphasize the physical features of battleterrain, weaponry, troop formations, earthworks, etc.in assessments of Civil War combat. Most scholars agree that these external combat conditions strongly influenced battle performance. Other historians accentuate the ways in which the mental stresses of soldiering affected combat performance. These scholars tend to agree that fighting effectiveness was influenced by such non-physical combat conditions as unit cohesion, leadership, morale, and emotional stress. Few authors argue that combat's mental influences were more significant in determining success or failure than the physical features of the battlefield. Statistical analysis of the 465 tactical engagements fought by twenty-seven Federal regiments in the First Division of the Army of the Potomac's Second Corps throughout the American Civil War suggests that the mental aspects of battle affected fighting efficiency at least as muchand probably more thancombat's physical characteristics. In other words, the soldiers' attitudes, opinions, and emotions had a somewhat stronger impact on combat performance than their actions, positions, and weaponry.

In 1824 a young Virginia aristocrat named Richard Thompson Archer migrated to Mississippi. Joining in the boom years of expansion in the Magnolia State in the 1830s, Archer built a vast cotton empire. He and his wife, Ann Barnes, raised a large family at Anchuca, their home plantation in Claiborne County, Mississippi. From there Richard Archer ruled a domain that included more than 500 slaves and 13,000 acres of land. On the eve of the Civil War he was one of the wealthiest men in the South. This work examines the life of Richard Archer from his origins in Amelia County, Virginia, to his death in Mississippi in 1867. It takes as its thesis the theme of Archer's life: his burdens as proprietor of a vast cotton empire and as father figure and provider for a large extended family. This theme weaves together the strands of Archer's life, including his rise to the position of great planter, his duties as husband and father, and his political beliefs and activities. Archer's story is told against the background of the history of Mississippi and of the South, from their antebellum heyday, through the Civil War, and into the early years of Reconstruction. …