Books: Blue and Gray

WHY THE SOUTH LOST THE CIVIL WAR. By Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones and William N. Still Jr. Illustrated. 582 pages.

University of Georgia Press. $29.95. WHEN a university press book arrives from Georgia 121 years after the surrender at Appomattox Court House and bears the title,''Why the South Lost the Civil War'' (rather than ''Why the South Lost the War Between the States''), it suggests that the Stars and Bars is finally being hauled down. This news may not be greeted with approval by the good old boys who flaunt the Confederate flag for fun and games; but to Civil War scholars it is a signal of changed attitudes.

The very title undercuts one of the fundamental arguments of the Confederate Government - that secession from the Union was not an illegal insurrection against constitutional authority but a natural extension of the doctrine of states' rights. The lanyard was first pulled by South Carolina against Federal Government property at Fort Sumter. Thereafter, the war was a civil war.

After reaching its military high-water mark at Gettysburg, the South no longer advanced the notion that it was fighting to preserve the peculiar institution of slavery as a property right. When some Confederate military leaders suggested that slaves should be enlisted, bartering service for the promise of emancipation -after Lincoln had already issued his Emancipation Proclamation - many Southerners recognized that the war was a lost cause.

That left only the shaky premise that the Federal Constitution was an agreement among the states that could be unilaterally revoked. No longer would the motto in Latin on the official seal of the United States -Out of Many, One - be respected. In effect, the Confederacy stood for another motto: Out of Many, Several.

The four authors - Profs. Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones and William N. Still Jr. - introduce other factors to explain the death of the Confederacy. One argument seems far-fetched: that the South might have continued fighting a guerrilla war against the might of the Union. On other matters, the authors offer original documentation. They show that that the Southern states were not united around a single leader or cause. The North, with its peace Democrats and draft riots, had its divisive elements; the South was even more divided.

The roots of Confederate nationalism were shallow; the South lacked the will to endure a long, decimating war. Most startling, Southerners began to sense a loss of God's favor after suffering military defeats. Their ministers had exhorted congregations to ''throw the sword into the scales, and leave the issue to the God of battles.'' Some Southerners began to view battlefield losses as just punishment for personal sins. In the end, they discovered that God did not wear gray.