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276civil war history side and outside die state, black Texans' contributions and culture will remain illusory. Barry A. Crouch Bowie State College Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century. By Joan R. Sherman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974. Pp. xxxii, 270. $10.00.) LeRoi Jones, perhaps America's greatest living black poet, once asked whether "Negro literature" or poetry existed in the nineteenth century. By this, Jones did not ask whether poetry that had been written by blacks existed, nor did he inquire whether it was good, bad or indifferent to the aesthetic standards of the Victorian age. He did ask whether it was "black," and what made it so. Joan R. Sherman's extended response to Jones' inquiry has produced Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century. The monograph documents critically the lives and writings of twenty-six Afro-American poets who published their work before 1900. Sherman's exhaustive research includes seven appendices, listing such information as white poets erroneously identified as blacks and complete bibliographies of the works of Jupiter Hammond and Phillis Wheatley. Despite her careful treatment of her subjects and critique of their poems, Sherman's book is in search of a thesis. The author never determines whether the poets are worthy of study simply because they were black, or because their poetry reveals a unique early black aesthetic. The "invisible poets" were a diverse group of former slaves and freedmen, school teachers and evangelists. Nevertheless, at a time when most blacks could not read, a number of Sherman's poets had attended college. The majority were conservative educators or ministers, and many refused to take part in organized black politics. What emerges from this profile is not black poetry, but standard, American poetry which was composed by assimilated Negroes. Occasionally a black, post-Reconstruction politician like John W. Menard or T. Thomas Fortune wrote poems against white racism. Generally, the Negro middle class poets did not, or perhaps could not, express the aspirations and worldview of black sharecroppers and slaves. There were exceptions, of course. James Monroe Whitfield, a Buffalo, New York barber, was perhaps the most skillful poet black America produced during the century. An active proponent of black nationalism, Whitfield's imagery comes across clearly in the first stanza of "America": BOOK REVIEWS277 America, it is to thee Thou boasted land of liberty,— It is to thee I raise my song, Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong. The blues, spoken or sung by black agrarians during and after the Populist era, was the fundamental form of late nineteen century black poetry. Invisible Poets preserves the myth of a Negro literary tradition which largely and unsuccessfully imitated the work of white poets. Sherman does provide a valuable reference source for black literary critics of the period, despite its limitations. Manning M arable Tuskegee Institute Privateers ¿r Volunteers: The Men and Women of Our Reserve Naval Forces: 1766 to 1866. By Reuben Elmore Stivers. (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1975. Pp. 502. $17.00.) "A naval reserve is that part of a nation's manpower not enrolled in a regular military service which can be used effectively as a force directed seaward against a prescribed enemy under the authority of an established government" (p. xiv). Using this definition, Captain Reuben E. Stivers presents a convincing case that de facto naval reserve forces existed long before the U.S. Naval Reserve was established in 1915. This is the story of their first century of service. Colonial privateersmen were "America's first naval reservists, and they made up what was its first reserve naval force" (p. 17). By the time of the Civil War the distinction between a regular and a reservist had been refined to the point where the latter were specifically identified as members of the volunteer navy. The author has worked hard to separate the story of the reservists from that of the regular navy, but a large part of it is familiar to students of naval history. Yet there is also a fuller discussion of privateering, letters of marque and of prize money than is usually found in most naval histories. Between the wars the author...

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