Letters of Warren Akin, Confederate Congressman (review)

Book Reviews321 years, including one small volume by Bruce Catton. Grant Moves South follows closely the outline of this author's earlier volume and skillfully enlarges each topic. No other work shows such a mastery of the field. A book similar to it is A. L. Conger's The Rise of U. S. Grant, published in 1931. Of course Catton uses three times the space allowed Conger to tell the same events, and he takes advantage of these extra pages, breathing life into the narrative. Random sampling of a few chapters discloses a marked variance in the two writers' procedure. Conger, in incident after incident, relies on the Official Records for approximately two-thirds of his sources. For the same incidents, two-thirds of Cation's citations are to regimental histories, secondary campaign studies, and personal manuscripts, with only one-third taken from the Official Records. This difference in sources may well add the vitamins which make Carton's account so much more lively than Conger's. Incidentally, it is noticeable that both authors agree that "Old Brains" Halleck was not so brainless as many historians picture him. It is also pertinent to compare the historical method used in Grant Moves South with the work of another specialist in the field, Major General J. F. C. Fuller. Again Bruce Catton deserves thetoprank. Fuller omits the dustyroads, the humidity, the smell of bayou vegetation which is a part of any campaign along the Western waters. He also seems much too prone to pass snap judgments. With crisp military finality he calls Halleck "witless" and "stupid." The two writers' appraisal of Buell's problems in East Tennessee is another case in point. Grant Moves South is not a revisionist's picture. Quite the contrary. The Grant who emerges is a familiar character, and this intensely interesting narrative should be a convincing lesson for the school of academicians who believe their work important only if they present a new thesis. Like all good biographies, this volume is also a history of the times. Nowhere can a reader get a better understanding of the Civil War campaigns in the Middle West thanin thepages of this book. Jay Monaghan Santa Barbara, California Letters of Warren Akin, Confederate Congressman. Edited by Bell I. Wiley. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1959. Pp. 151. $3.75.) the PAUCTTY of information not only as to the actual functioning of the Confederate Congress but also as to the personal lives of the members themselves makes the publication of these letters of a member of the lower house of the Second Confederate Congress of special interest and gives them added significance. Thirty-four of the fifty letters cover the period of the second session of the last Confederate Congress and are addressed to the writer's wife. Although Akin explained to her that "affairs of a public character I can not write and what takes place in secret session," still his true feelings in most matters was expressed when he wrote "I do not think I ought to conceal from you any thing." 322CIVIL WAR HISTORY Refreshing indeed, in these postwar years when Jefferson Davis has become the whipping boy of the Confederacy, is Akin's estimate of him as ". . . the best man in the Government for his place. Many want him out of office. Were he removed today, we should be ruined in a few months." His estimate of Lee is summed up in the sentence "I wish my children could see him." After perusing the thumbnail sketches of Akin's colleagues, his estimates of the failings of the group as a legislative body, and his fulminations against the number of secret sessions, the reader feels that he has been personally to Richmond duringthelast months of the Confederacy. The inclusion of a number of letters from Mrs. Akin to her husband serves to show the obverse of the coin. Had these been interspersed chronologically with those of Akin, they would have given a clearer picture both of the times and of the relationship between this man and wife. Akin's letters, for example, contain minute instructions as to how his wife should conduct his affairs in Georgia and savor somewhat...