The Memoirs of Henry Heth (review)

70CIVIL WAR HISTORY portrayed. One understands the action, but the drama is flat and monotonous . In every other respect, though, this volume is a working scholar 's guide through the abolitionist 1840's. Garrison's interests in the world around him were drab and provincial, but whatever his failings of epistolary craftsmanship might be, the editors of the collection deserve high praise for their painstaking efforts. Bertram Wyatt-Brown Case Western Reserve University The Memoirs of Henry Heth. Edited by James L. Morrison. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. Pp. Ixxvi, 303.) Professor Morrison has brought forward the long neglected manuscript of Henry Heth. He has added a well-written, interesting introductory chapter that explains and expands on many important points which Heth quite often left painfully short. This work can be divided into three major content areas. The first deals with the impact of West Point on Heth and the resulting intimate friendships that survived the bitterness of Civil War and endured throughout his life. His comradeship with Burnside, Reynolds, Grant, and Lee in particular, emerge from his pages as his most treasured moments. They also provide us with additional insights to their personalities . The second area of interest deals with the American Plains Indians. Prior to the Civil War, Heth served and fought in the Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah territories. He wrote a good account of the Indians ' way of life, but was not overly sympathetic to them, and he hated the Mormons. In the postwar years, when he served with the Indian Bureau, he worked with the Warm Springs Indians in Oregon, and tried to prevent the loss of their fishing rights in the Columbia River. His final evaluation of the Indian was that you could not trust his honesty, but that you could trust his honor. The last and primary area deals with the Civil War. The length, and completeness of Heth's writing is measured by his success or failure in a particular campaign. His defeat at Lewisburg, (West) Virginia was taken very personally and dismissed in four sentences. He covers the momentous decision to move his division to Gettysburg on the morning of July 1, 1863 in one paragraph. Morrison brings out clearly that Heth combined the characteristics of aggressiveness with carelessness. Heth in his rush for shoes at Gettysburg might have paused to reflect that Early's division of Ewell's corps has passed through the town earlier and had undoubtedly cleaned out the supply. Heth's more detailed account of the comic-tragedy of the Confederate generalship of John Floyd and Henry Wise is worthwhile, as are his views on A. P. Hill's conduct of the Wilderness campaign. Heth's comment on the failure of one of his attacks in the Wilderness could well be applied to his deci- BOOK REVIEWS71 sion to move on Gettysburg—"I should have left well enough alone." Heth should also be consulted for his remembrances of the Perryville, Chancellorsville, Bristoe, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg campaigns, and the surrender at Appomattox. Unfortunately, the excellent footnotes are in the back of the book, but this minor flaw does not detract from its genuine value to the bibliography of the war. Roy P. Stonesifer, Jr. Edinboro State College That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt. By James A. Ward. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Pp. 278. $11.97.) The career of Herman Haupt coincided with and indeed was part of the transportation revolution and the general rise of industrial capitalism that spanned much of the nineteenth century. A significant figure in American railroad development, Haupt was, according to this biographer , a creature of the early part of the century, but was unable to adapt his ideas and skills to the more crassly materialistic and corporate scramble of the Gilded Age. Born in 1817 and trained as an engineer at West Point, Haupt devoted most of his professional life to building, organizing and operating railroads. A pioneer in bridge design, he early became a protege of J. Edgar Thomson and rose to become general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1850's. In that capacity, he was one of the first to study actual costs and...