The Old South died hard. That story is told in these pages by those who lived it, from John Brown's raid to Appomattox. But this work also warns that Mortality - Nemesis of men, nations, and empires - awaits alike the vanquished and the victor. Adapt or die is the Law of Evolution. Those that don't adapt either become subjugated to those that do, or they perish. Resting largely upon a technological foundation of muscle power and staple-crop agriculture, and shackled to her large population of African slaves, the Old South was unable to adapt successfully to the Brave New World of the Machine Age, but she refused subjugation to an alien rule, and she refused to worship an alien god.