Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (review)

444CIVIL WAR HISTORY slave insurrection early in the volume. The pro-Southern point of view, another feature, prevails throughout and is best illustrated by his ultra-severe judgment of General WiUiam T. Sherman: "He was the executioner of the sentence which the sitters-in-judgment wished to have carried out against die Southern people. To tìie South he remains a symbol of the wanton and rudiless brutality of a might which denied all human right to its victims." In die audior's view, Robert E. Lee is always the hero and Jefferson Davis is always the viUain. Lee "was instinctively kind, of amiable disposition; and training, association, and experience developed his native traits into a gracious consideration in deaUng with others. With aU his awesome self-discipline, his unbending devotion to duty, Lee was a sweet-natured person of true Christian humility. It is probable that these quaUties, which caused him to suffer Davis' unconscious rudeness for the sake of their country, caused die self-aware gendemen to feel superior and to underestimate the selfless patriot." The author is certain that Davis learned Uttle about his own limitations during the ordeal of war, and cites The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in evidence. By contrast, former Confederates "partook of the heroism of Lee" while the youtii of die New South were "molded on die symbol and the model of the Confederate ex-commander." This account uniquely inaugurates the Confederacy witìi the nullification controversy of 1832 and is the first modern history of the war-time South to so contend. The first of four sections, a unit of 71 pages, is devoted to the antesecession period. In support of this argument, there is Uttle doubt that the origins of the secession movement extend back to 1832, if not before. The evidence of history indicates that the embryo of the Confederacy was planted along with the establishment of the Southern colonies. Some errors of fact do not seriously detract from the volume's contribution, but the lack of notes does depreciate its usefulness. Appended is a bibUography which points to wide reading; it is noted, however, that manuscript collections were not drawn upon and that few periodicals and newspapers were used, thereby seriously limiting the research. The page format and index are all that is to be desired. Leroy H. Fischer Stillwater, Oklahoma Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History. By James D. Horan. (New York: Crown Publishers, Incorporated. 1954. Pp. 326. $5.00.) the winter of 1863-64 was one of despair and gloom for the Confederacy, and out of dieir despondency Confederate leaders hatched an audacious plot to check tìie Union's progress by means of a "fifth column" campaign without precedent. Mr. Horan's book concerns diis desperate adventure. It is a weUdocumented story-history centering around Captain Thomas H. Hines, described as the mastermind of the scheme and "the most dangerous man in the Confederacy." To set the stage for an understanding of this undertaking, it is important to recaU the events of the battlefield leading up to the point of Hines' commission. General Braxton Bragg's army had crumbled at Missionary Ridge, putting die Book Reviews445 whole of East Tennessee under Federal control for the first time since the beginning of the war. This event led to the promotion of U. S. Grant to the rank of Ueutenani general and to the over-all command of the Union armies; it also paved the way for Sherman's march from Tennessee to Atlanta. Thus it was entirely natural, as H. S. Commager has noted in The Blue and the Gray, that "the Confederacy, which was on the defensive militarily, should have sought to attack the Union from behind the Unes. For in the end the only hope of Confederate victory ... lay in encouraging discontent and disunity to the point where the Northern people would weary of the war." For this purpose Captain Hines was summoned from his engagement party in Kentucky to confer witìi the Confederate leaders in Richmond. Why had an obscure junior officer, not yet twenty-four years old, been chosen for such an assignment? It is not hard to understand...