In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOOK REVIEWS155 from two admittedly bountiful sources: the Pettigrew papers, including the diary of Plymouth planter and mayor H. G. Spruill, and the published Official Records of the Union and Confederate armed forces. While these offer unique insight into planter activity and motivation in Washington County, and into the military conflict that enveloped the region, they do not, as Durrill implies, provide a sufficient foundation for his conclusions concerning other groups, notably the yeoman farmers and landless laborers. It is particularly regrettable that the author did not attempt any detailed scrutiny of district loyalties within Washington County. Nor is his cause advanced by an all too brief historical prologue and by the limited nature of his statistical sampling. While the data Durrill presents concerning Confederate and Unionist support is certainly suggestive, wider sampling in the federal census and in military rosters would surely have yielded more definitive results, particularly if combined with a more sophisticated model of the county's socio-economic and political structures. Despite his book's narrative appeal, Durrill's conclusions must be approached with some caution. The conspicuous exception is his sensitive discussion of master-slave relations, where the deployment of evidence is exemplary. Here Durrill makes a major contribution to the history of slavery's demise during the war. For the rest, we are bound to question the motivations that he ascribes to yeoman and other non-elite groups, if only because the evidence he presents is so fragmentary and elusive. Too often Durrill interprets the motives of whole groups, even classes, on the basis of the actions of one or two individuals, as in the case of Washington County's landless farmers who, he claims, "resolved in 1863 to take over the area's remaining plantations" (181). Durrill also tends to believe everything that he hears, including a report that Governor Vance had authorized the assassination of a leading area unionist in early 1863 (166). Twenty pages later, Durrill is adamant that Vance "refused to sanction the use of force against opponents of the war" (187). Other readers may find these problems less troubling. Without doubt, Durrill's highly readable, provocative book will stimulate further inquiry into the war's internal effects, and for that reason, he is to be congratulated. Martin Crawford University of Keele Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew. By Clyde N. Wilson. (Athen, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Pp. 303. $35.00.) This book had its genesis twenty years ago as Clyde Wilson's doctoral dissertation. For whatever reason he has waited two decades before 156CIVIL WAR HISTORY publishing it. Wilson's Carolina Cavalier is no lame, worn dissertation that somehow found its way to a publisher; nor has Wilson been on a scholarly shelf. Quite to the contrary. For almost fifteen years he has had a notable career as editor of the John C. Calhoun Papers, one of the most significant editorial projects for American history in the first half of the nineteenth century. As editor of the Calhoun Papers, Wilson is quite familiar with historical writing on the antebellum South. I suspect the course of that historiography has affected the history of this book. In his preface Wilson makes the point that when he wrote his dissertation, topics that he took seriously such as Southern intellectual life and Southern honor generated little interest among historians of the South. Of course, in the last dozen years those areas have become central in the investigations and discussions of Southern historians. Now, Wilson makes his contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of antebellum Southern society and culture. Carolina Cavalier is a strong, forthright book, which clearly has goals beyond the recounting of James Johnston Pettigrew's life. Using Pettigrew , the brilliant young Carolinian, as his canvas, Wilson with bold strokes sharply sketches his interpretation of the antebellum South. Wilson's view of the South is surely influenced by the ideas of Eugene Genovese. It is also in important ways akin to the literary depiction of the Old South that grew out of the Southern Renaissance. For Wilson, most fundamentally the Old South was different from the rest of the nation. In his depiction it...

pdf

Share