Dr. Phillips researches how Civil War Americans created widespread expectations for the future to understand how anticipations influenced people’s perceptions, actions, and stories. His first book, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (2007), explains why many Confederate soldiers expected victory to the bitter end. The expectations of diehard rebels merit close examination because these men prolonged the war, embodied southern patriotism, created the Lost Cause, and seized power after Reconstruction. By interpreting the letters and diaries of hundreds of Confederates, he shows how several factors, including religion, slavery, sectional stereotypes, the fog of war, and widespread rumors convinced these men that they were unconquerable. When forced to surrender, stalwart southerners defended their failed expectations and fashioned a peculiar postwar identity as unconquered losers.
