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Book Reviews449 were locked in combat for four bitter years. By some miracle all four of the guns of the original VMI Cadet Battery survived the war, as did Poague, in spite of four action-filled years of campaigning. The guns were discovered in Richmond in 1874 and were returned to VMI where they were used by the cadets for artillery drill until 1913. Colonel Poague, who never again practiced law after the war, joined the VMI staff as Treasurer in 1885 and remained at this post until his retirement in 1913. He died one year later at the age of 78 and his burial place is close to that of his old commander, the immortal Stonewall. As for the four treasured relics, the war-weary guns of the old Cadet Battery and of the Rockbridge Artillery, they stand at the base of Stonewall Jackson 's statue on the VMI campus. Here one likes to think of them as standing amid the memories of the brave young men who took them to war calling them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, "because they spoke a mighty powerful language." Bruce Jacobs Park Ridge, New Jersey Goodbye to Uncle Tom. By J. C. Furnas. (New York: William Sloane Associates . 1956. Pp. 435. $6.00.) the story of slavery in America can be approached from many directions, and at least a half dozen different recent books testify to the many aspects of that "peculiar institution." In his substantial study Mr. Furnas considers* many of the prime forces that shaped both the public opinion of the Slavery Period in America and the misconceptions passed along ever since. Mr. Furnas presents a book that seems to represent the Negro and Slavery for not only many Americans but for people around the world. He does not spare feelings or long-held beliefs and proceeds not only to dissect Uncle Tom's Cabin but Harriet Beecher Stowe herself. It is his contention that Mrs. Stowe's book of fiction, "a cheap one, too," had been an errant force in American thinking, as well as feeling, on the matter of slavery and the Negro. While some may take exception to the author's estimate of Mrs. Stowe's longlasting influence, others hold that her contribution was only one of many factors that shaped American thought on the matter. Whatever the conclusions drawn, no one can deny that Mr. Furnas has written a book of great sincerity and vigor. The author's careful analysis of how Harriet Beecher Stowe's original story was reduced to a series of set types and burlesque is, in itself, a valuable study of the minstrel and "theater" of the Civil War period as well as the years that followed. One of the most recent stage versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin appears in the play The King and I, where it takes the form of a ballet titled "The Small House of Uncle Thomas." From that version to the first one presented at the National Theatre—in New York's lower Bowery in 1852—all illustrate Mr. Furnas' careful argument that the Negro is consistently misrepresented in the telling of the American story. 450CIVIL WAR history Blunt and direct is the author's word portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Actually," he writes, "she was a character created by Louisa M. Alcott: the ugly duckling gradually evincing talent in a Yankee context, committed to a world where women doughtily make do because men are shiftless, though pretentious and important, gamely scribbling hack work to eke out the family purse. Call her Jo March with a small-boned skeleton, curly hair, many children , and a touch of megalomania." As for her novel, Mr. Furnas views it as unreliable "even in its own time," and its author as "floundering in verbose circles" when she wasn't "slapping down one line after another." The indictment is strong and pointed. Uncle Tom's Cabin, in the author's conclusion, not only asserted a distorted influence in American thought on the eve and during the Civil War but "to an unholy extent the text, topics and doctrine of her sermon still shape our attitudes toward Negroes." It is for this...

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