Lessons of the War: The Civil War in Children's Magazines (review)

356CIVIL WAR HISTORY Bassham relates Chapman's life story with skill and compassion. Author and publisher give the artworks the attention they deserve, with 133 illustrations and 20 color plates. The book does have weaknesses. Chapman's rival soldierartists warrant more analysis than they receive. An aggregation of consistent little errors (misspelling the names of John Breckinridge, Frank Vizetelly, and others and referring to John Slidell as Benjamin Slidell) and a relatively weak secondary source bibliography remind the reader that Bassham's training is not in Civil War history. This is, nevertheless, the definitive book on Chapman and a pleasure to read and peruse. John M. Coski The Museum of the Confederacy Lessons ofthe War: The Civil War in Children's Magazines. Edited by James Marten. (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1999. Pp. xviii, 259. $55.00, cloth; $18.00, paper.) The Civil War coincided with the spread of literature, periodicals and magazines propagating middle class Victorian values and perspectives. This book presents the efforts of Civil War-era editors and authors to provide children with their own "literary community," a space to offer young readers "sympathy and encouragement for . . . facing the challenges of the war" (xi). Lessons of War supplies excerpts from period children's publications along with introductory commentary from the book's editor, James Marten, associate professor of History at Marquette University. James Marten previously published the well-regarded The Children 's Civil War in 1998. This latest book marks another contribution to the growing body ofCivil War social history. He has chosen a collection ofeditorials, correspondents' letters, readers' letters, short stories, poetry, and plays drawn from over ten Civil War-era children's publications. All but two of these periodicals were produced in the North for white middle class audiences. The Freedman was produced for both freed adults and children in the South. One white Southern journal is included, a representation suggestive of the material disparities between the two economies. In his introduction, Marten gives an overview of Civil War children's magazines. He identifies four themes that characterize the response of these publications to the war. First, editors and writers expressed an obligation to inform their readers "about the causes and conduct ofthe war as well as about the incredible hardships that the war brought." Second, "Many articles also used the war as an opportunity to teach important moral and ethical lessons; it was a valuable—if tragic— chance for self-improvement." Third, there was ". . . implicit—and often explicit—recruitment ofchildren to work for the Union or Confederate war effort." And finally, there prevailed "commonassumptions aboutgenderroles andrace" (xvii). White middle class adults produced these magazines for a predominately white middle class readership. The perspective offered was small-town if not actually rural. Class, ethnic, and gender stereotypes were taken forgranted. Poorpeople book reviews357 "appear as victims or as noble charity cases" (xvii). African Americans were portrayed in a patronizing if sympathetic light, at least in Northern publications. Lessons of War is divided into eight chapters. The first addresses the efforts to build a "literary community" for children. Editorials and correspondents' letters furnish examples of contemporary adult attempts to explain the war and its suffering to children. The second chapter focuses on the work of William T. Adams, who used the pen name Oliver Optic. Adams edited the popular The Student and the Schoolmate and wrote a vast range of editorials, articles, and also several children's novels. His work embraced didactic sermons, factual descriptions, and escapist fantasies, all aimed at a repeated and comprehensive message of patriotic duty, honorable sacrifice, and perseverance. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 deal respectively with how the magazines treated play activity and the war, war imposed sacrifices on children, fictional and real life relations between children and soldiers, and, finally, children's contributions to the war effort. Marten, in the commentary for the last chapter, identifies two recurring types of child-characters: one type that is naturally generous and selfsacrificing , and another type that possesses such traits but must first master selfishness and mobilize his or her inner character. Chapter 7 addresses wartime literature for Southern children, both white children in the Confederacy and freed children in Union occupied areas...