Civil War Recollections of James Lemuel Clark (review)

BOOK REVIEWS361 scholarship slowly shifted away from the racist imagery which dominated its past. But Van Deburg believes that the transformation has not yet significantly spread beyond the academy; nor are there signs that it is about to do so. The simplicity of the story told by Van Deburg is both its great strength and weakness. The battle of popular images does not vary with time; 1660 is much like 1960. The images do not vary with place. North and South are remarkably similar. Variations in the media matter little. Poets and filmmakers, novelists and minstrel men are all basically the same. The only division of any consequence in this monolithic world is the division between black and white. There is much lost when nearly all variations are removed from our understanding of a human landscape. On the other hand, Van Deburg does offer us something well worth having: a clear, unambiguous restatement of the importance of race and racism as categories in American life. This is a useful reminder to historians perhaps overly impressed with the blows against racism repeatedly struck by historical writing of the last twenty years. Our writing has only touched the surface of the world. Kenneth S. Greenberg Suffolk University Civil War Recollections of James Lemuel Clark. By James Lemuel Clark. Edited with an introduction by L. D. Clark. (College Station, Texas: Texas A & M Press, 1984. Pp. 124. $12.50.) Eighteen years of age when the Civil War broke out, youngJames Lemuel Clark, who resided with his parents near Gainesville in northern Texas, faced a dilemma not uncommon to many people of the area. He, like his mother and father, held antislavery views (there were many Unionists in northern Texas) and had little sympathy with the principles which led to secession. Yet, short of escape to a Union state, the youngster could not avoid military service—for a cause in which he did not believe. Hopingnot to have to fight against the Union, he joined the state militia, which generally was used to control hostile Indians. And for a time beginning in 1861, Clark saw service in Indian Territory. However, the militiaunit was eventually absorbed into the Confederacy and spent many months campaigning against the Union with General Joseph Shelby 's cavalry division. After that military tour, Clark returned home only to be conscripted again in 1864. Rather than to continue fighting for a cause in which he did not believe, he escaped to Fort Gibson (in Indian Territory), which was then in the hands of the Federals. He then became a scout for the Union army, a post he held until the end of the war. In the sweeping Civil War Recollections of James Lemuel Clark, editor L. D. Clark, grandson of the noted soldier, allows James Lemuel to tell his own story in a series of letters and memoirs. The pages are full of 362CIVIL WAR HISTORY excitementwith eye-witness accounts of the Civil War and of life in both the Confederate and Union armies. The most interesting aspects of the recollections, however, concern the "Great Hanging" at Gainesville, Texas, wherein more than forty Unionists were hanged (lynched is a more accurate word) by Confederate supporters. Clark's father was one of the victims who did not have the benefit of real justice and whose only "crimes" appear to have been heated conversations critical of the Confederacy and what it stood for. James Lemuel's account of the Great Hanging is powerfully moving and is factually consistent with several other primary sources which outline the same story. I am somewhat versed about the events leading to the troubles in Gainesville, about the hangings themselves, and about their aftermath (see James Smallwood, "Disaffection in Confederate Texas: The Great Hanging at Gainesville," Civil War History 22 [December 1976]: 349-60). As a matter of fact, I used Clark's reminiscences in manuscript form as one of the sources from which to prepare that "Great Hanging" article and can therefore fully attest to the accuracy of the work that L. D. Clark had edited. This excellently edited volume is a noteworthy contribution to Texas and Southern history. The material on the "Great Hanging" is particularly useful...