Drawing from the experiences of 3,126 enlisted men from North Carolina who fought for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, this article focuses on the determinants of desertion. I argue that men deserted because their identity as Southerners was eroded by an emergent localism, sustained and organized within the Confederate army. Desertion rates were highest in companies that evidenced a high degree of local homogeneity — company solidarity thus bred rather than reduced desertion rates. There is no support for any of the historical models of desertion that search for individual-level determinants, such as social class, occupation, status, family structure, age, or time of enlistment. Finally, contextual variables seem to be weak proxies for the central variable accounting for desertion — the emergence of a localist identity.
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