The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance (review)

90CI VIL WA R HISTORY concession. Though not an abolitionist, Lincoln thought slavery wrong; to expand its territory denied the Declaration of Independence and threatened all free men. Lincoln remained true to this principle, embraced war, and incidentally saved his party. As the war progressed Lincoln's greatness became apparent. More than anyone else, he saved the Union; his political genius preserved "unity of spirit in the North." Above all, Brogan praises Lincoln's magnanimity to the vanquished and laments his death as the most untimely in history. Thirty years ago this book deserved an enthusiastic review, but this is not 1935. In reissuing it without a revision, not only do minor factual errors remain but interpretations which Brogan now rejects stand side by side with his admirable insights into the political dimension of the Civil War. Ari Hoogenboom Pennsylvania State University The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance. Volume I, 1843-1862. Edited by Frontis W. Johnston. (Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1963. Pp. Ixxiv, 475. $5.00.) The first volume of The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance contains a total of 338 letters, 250 to Vance, eighty-eight from him, and ten miscellaneous documents. These papers and those to follow, all previously available to scholars, will thus one day be within easy reach of persons interested in the Civil War. The papers in this volume were written during the years 1843-1862, about three-fourths of them between mid-June, 1862—when Vance announced he was going to run for governor of North Carolina— and the end of that year. According to Professor Johnston, the editor, many saw in Vance's election in 1862 proof of North Carolina's disloyalty to the Confederacy. His Whig background along with his strong unionist feeling, and his political associations after secession, particularly with editor William W. Holden of the Raleigh North Carolina Standard, would seem to have inspired this judgment. Vance's military service, dating from May 4, 1861, and the few extant letters he wrote during his first gubernatorial campaign , strongly suggest the contrary. Governor Vance's running fight with Confederate authorities is a wellknown story. The bitter exchanges that passed between him and the Davis government through 1862 are included in this volume. That the North Carolina governor knew this was no way to win a war testifies to the futility of the thrust for southern independence. Like some other southern unionists of the antebellum era, Vance would seem to have been under an abiding compulsion throughout most of the Civil War to prove that he was the symbol of a paralyzing decentralization. Yet his reelection in 1864 was seen by many as a manifestation of North Carolina's loyalty, observes Professor Johnston as he projects events beyond the let- BOOK REVIEWS91 ters of this volume. To what, one wonders, was North Carolina then really loyal? The fiercely independent spirit of her people had not vanished, nor had the consolidationist tendencies of the Davis government abated. Had North Carolinians and the Richmond authorities come to believe that Vance had resolved, or could somehow resolve, their dilemma? Professor Johnston has provided a scholarly biographical account of nearly sixty pages in which he sketches the life of his subject from the time of his birth in 1830 in western North Carolina until the close of the war. He has also adorned his first volume with lavish scholarship, his own wordage probably exceeding that of the papers themselves. The editor has set a high standard for the remainder of his task. Horace Montgomery University of Georgia The Seven Days: The Emergence of Lee. By Clifford Dowdey. (Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 1964. Pp. 368. $7.50.) At long last, here is something new on the military history of the Civil War. Clifford Dowdey has attacked the old prroblem of what caused Stonewall Jackson to dawdle so at the Seven Days, to be late at the crucial moment, to fail to press his attack against McClellan's army. Jackson's own answer was that he suffered from the bad air in the Tideland, an answer Dowdey quickly demolishes. Historians had emphasized Jackson's weariness, which is closer to the truth but does...