The Confederate Navy: A Study in Organization (review)

BOOK REVIEWS69 Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, said Mrs. Lincoln was "the victim of slander." Dr. Milton H. Shutes, author of Liiwolris Emotional Life, once wrote that "Mary Todd was good for Abraham Lincoln." In her slim volume Mrs. Simmons agrees with both. Arnold Gates Garden City, New York The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina. By George C. Rogers, Jr. (Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 1970. Pp. xvi, 565. $12.50.) All too often the writing of local history has been left to amateurs— who usually either compile useless data or spend much time in tracing family trees. This splendid volume by Professor Rogers, who teaches at the University of South Carolina, is a happy exception to the generalization . Recognizing that local history can reveal much about a people, thencustoms , habits and mores, Mr. Rogers proceeded with skill and scholarship to tell the story of Georgetown County from its beginnings to the present. And it is a story well worth telling. For Georgetown County— which in its heyday has been termed by some as perhaps the most aristocratic region in the nation—was a section where the myth and legend of the Old South actually existed. The society consisted mainly of a relatively few rich planters, living in plantation splendor, and drawing their wealth mainly from rice produced by thousands of Negro slaves. In 1840, for example, Georgetown produced almost one-half of the total rice crop of the nation. But then came economic disaster. In the years after 1865 the rice industry collapsed, for a variety of reasons. And in the twentieth century many of the former rice plantations were bought by wealthy northerners . And so, in the words of the author, "In the years after 1900 the rich Yankees came to seek what their fathers had destroyed" (p. 489). In short, this is a superb example of local history and what it might teach us about ourselves. Its only flaw—and this is minor—is the absence of a really good and clear map of the county. Martin Abbott Georgia College The Confederate Navy: A Study in Organization. By Tom H. Wells. ( University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1971. Pp. ix, 182. $7.50. ) Even on the eve of the Revolutionary Bicentennial, it seems that the last volleys of the Civil War Centennial have yet to be fired. Each year new volumes are published exploring some aspect of that "Great Rebellion " and with greater frequency, these have come to be concerned with the opposing navies. 70CIVIL WAR HISTORY Interestingly, in the years since 1861, one can hardly locate 3,000 printed sources referring in part or whole to that naval war. Fewer items have been published on the sea arms of the North and South than on the single battle of Gettysburg. Most of what is available observes the operational aspects; often from a Yankee quarterdeck, usually from a Yankeeinclined armchair or study carrel. Around the turn of this decade, Professor William Still produced two excellent volumes on the building and operations of the Confederate ironclads. Now in a work which might serve as a companion, Professor Tom H. Wells, author of several books on the Texas Navy, has given us a minute account of the overall organization and poor functioning of the Confederate States Navy Department—a "Study in failure (p. vii)." This small volume, winner of the triennial prize of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (the Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award), was originally presented as the author's 1963 doctoral dissertation at Emory University. Its main thrust, quite simply, is that poor administration at all levels, compounded by a lack of men, material, and vessels ( to say nothing of a stubborn and gifted Union resistance) impeded the successful operation of the Confederate naval branch. To back his thesis, the author, who incidentally contributed the naval section to Allan Nevins et al, Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography. opens with an overview of the Rebel Navy Department and its Secretary, Stephen Mallory, finding it was, throughout the war, a division where "subordinates usually worked in a hazy world of conjecture as to the desires of a non-committal senior pursuing an unknown...