Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (review)

Book Reviews EDITED BY CHARLES T. MILLER State University of Iowa English Department, Iowa City Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action. By Louis M. Starr. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954. Pp. xvii, 367, xix. $5.00.) there is a basic difficulty with Mr. Starr's lively book, a difficulty of which the author is probably more aware than anyone else. It has presented itself to almost every writer who has dealt with some specialized aspect of the Civil War. The difficulty lies in answering a simple question of proportion: how much war, and how much specialty? The best answer, obviously, is "just enough of both," but any writer who hopes to stay under eight hundred pages will probably show heavier marks of neglect on one side than on the other. Mr. Starr has chosen to neglect the war and to concentrate upon the men who reported it and the editors who put their work in print. This makes sense, of course, in accordance with his announced subject, but the result is a book which will be of primary interest to the reader who already knows well the historical framework and the military development of the war. The battle of Fredericksburg will emerge sharply for any reader, because the engagement is as easy to comprehend as if it had all been plotted by Hollywood , and three or four well-written paragraphs are enough to tell of it. But the reader of Bohemian Brigade would do well to know beforehand what really happened at Antietam, at Shiloh, and in the trenches before Petersburg, or his confusion and sense of frustration will be considerable. Perhaps this problem is insignificant to many who read this review, but for students of American journalism and for those interested in the broader aspects of nineteenth century American history, it sharply limits the usefulness and inherent interest of the book. Other writers working from a specialized viewpoint (Margaret Leech, tinsel and all, is one of them) have done an appreciably better job of conveying the sense of what the war was about and what happened to armies in the field. Bohemian Brigade will bring most satisfaction to those who have studied the war sufficienüy to be curious about certain names which turn up from 83 84civil war history time to time, usually in a minor way, in other accounts, or to those who have seen a footnote citation often enough to wonder about the man who wrote the tiling cited. For such readers, here is detail on such men as Sylvanus Cadwallader , whose personal association with Grant was so close that the General's own staff prepared and maintained the reporter's quarters; A. B. Richardson, who spent most of the war in Confederate prisons; Edmund Clarence Stedman , whose account of the first battle of Bull Run is generally regarded as one of the great pieces of battle reporting in American journalism; and George A. Townsend, perhaps the best professional of the lot. Here also are Henry ViIlard , Whitelaw Reid, and dozens of other reporters. There are so many, indeed, that one is inclined to wish there were fewer of them. For the most part, Mr. Starr follows the war chronologically, a system which means that reporters turn up briefly for a few pages and then disappear for a hundred. So many are touched upon that keeping them straight becomes almost impossible, apparendy even for Mr. Starr, who introduces Charles A. Page of Greeley's Tribune with some personal background near the beginning of the volume and then, in effect, reintroduces him with the same material near its close. Among this considerable gallery Mr. Starr has chosen to place several editors, because he is a newsman himself and well knows that editors on a desk far from die fighting front have much to do, not only with the way the news story is presented but with the way it is covered in the first place. He therefore wisely pays much attention to Charles A. Dana of the Tribune; Dana's successor , Sydney H. Gay; Frederic Hudson of Bennett's Herald; and Samuel Wilkeson, whose varied career included the managership of the Tribune's Washington bureau...