Publications

Books

• Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021)

• A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824-1861. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003). Winner of the 2003 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize for best book on Louisiana History.

Articles/Essays

• “Reconsidering the ‘Twenty-Negro’ Law as the Overseer Exemption,” Journal of the Civil War Era (June 2017), 269-92.

• “The Loyal Draft Dodger? A Reexamination of Confederate Substitution,” Civil War History, (June 2011), 153-178.
• “’Our Interest and Destiny are the Same’: Governor Thomas O. Moore and Confederate Identity,” Louisiana History (Summer: 2008), 261-286.
• "'A Very Disagreeable Business': Confederate Conscription in Louisiana," Civil War History (June 2007) vol. LIII, no. 2, pp. 141-169.
• "'The Ladies are Moving Everywhere': Louisiana Women and Antebellum Politics," Louisiana History 42 (Fall 2001), 439-57. Winner of the Presidents Memorial Award for Best Article in Louisiana History, 2001
• "The Sudden Collapse of the Louisiana Whig Party," Journal of Southern History 65 (May 1999), 221-48. Included in Carolyn De Latte, ed., Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History, Volume 4, Antebellum Louisiana, 1830-1860, Part B: Politics (Center for Louisiana Studies,2004), 260-81.

Book Sections/Chapters

• “Davis and the War,” in Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., The Cambridge History of the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 501-20.

• “’Searching for ‘Some Plain and Simple Method’: Jefferson Davis and Confederate Conscription,” in Samuel C. Hyde, ed., The Enigmatic South: Toward Civil War and Its Legacies (LSU Press, 2014), 133-149.

• “The Elections of 1824 and 1828 and the Birth of Modern Politics,” in Sean P. Adams, ed., A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson (Blackwell-Wiley, 2012)

Awards

• Confederate Conscription  Winner of 2021 Jules and Frances Landry Award for most outstanding LSU Press publication in the field of Southern Studies

• Confederate Conscription Finalist Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize

• A Perfect War of Politics Winner of 2003 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize for best book on Louisiana History
  

Courses

• Fall 2025
• Spring 2026