A Banner in the Hills: West Virginia's Statehood (review)

Book Reviews331 is always room for another book on the subject. With insight provided by rich experience in two recent wars, Mr. BeUah has attempted to recapture the feelings of the rank and file and the reactions of the company grade officers as they were fed into the expanding fight along Seminary Ridge, grappled in darkness atop Culp's Hill, or prepared for the final assault against the Union center. With the imagination and skill of the accomplished novelist that he is, he has managed to reproduce a vivid picture of the battle as it must have appeared to the men who fought there. The book is weU-written—perhaps overwritten in parts—and obviously the product of laborious research. But it is an impression rather than a record of what reaUy happened, a mosaic in which the pieces quoted form an image only from a distance. The book is what the tide would indicate—a soldier's view of the battle; but one might question the validity of the author's assumption that Gettysburg in particular was a soldiers' battle because it was "not seriously trammeled by either the briUiance or the blundering of generals " (p. 13). Who, if not the generals, was responsible for the decision not to take Culp's HiU on the evening of the 1st, the wretched timing of the Confederate attacks on the 2nd, and the launching of Pickett's charge on the 3rd? Nor would aU authorities and participants agree that the cavalry fight at Gettysburg was the "largest" and "most dramatic . . . ever fought in the Western Hemsphere" (sic). What about Brandy Station? To credit Farnsworth with the last cavalry attack against infantry in force on the North American continent is to ignore the later campaigns of Wilson and Forrest in the West. With BeUah's repeated references to charges with bayonet and saber, moreover, the reader would do well to remember that of all battle wounds inflicted during the Civü War, only .4 per cent were attributed to what in müitary jargon was called "cold steel." And finaUy, at the risk of being labeled a "flyspecker" for pouncing on the insignificant, the reviewer cannot refrain from commenting that inasmuch as the author pays tribute to the "Objective Historical Tradition" and foUows "Ruthless Jesuitical Persistence" to the point where he spent twenty-seven montiis searching for the name of a certain company commander (p. viii), it is all the more a pity that he did not invest a few additional days in proofreading . Scheibert and Fremantle are misspeUed throughout, the name of the Austrian officer present was not Sorrel, who was a Confederate staff officer, but Fitzgerald Ross, and in one quotation the word chivalry is substituted for cavalry—a slight difference, perhaps, but one which the inhabitants of Georgia might appreciate after a visit from Küpatrick's troopers. Jay Luvaas AUegheny CoUege A Banner in the Hills: West Virginia's Statehood. By George Ellis Moore. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963, Pp. xii, 256. $5.00.) This book, an official publication of West Virginia's Centennial Commission , provides a satisfactory narrative account of military affairs in the state 332CIVIL WA R history during the Civil War—i.e., McCleUan's invasion of northwestern Virginia in 1861, Lee's Cheat Mountain campaign, and the Jones-Imboden raid. Conversely , it is totally inadequate as an analysis of forces and factors which led to the dismemberment of the Old Dominion and the admission of West Virginia into the Union in 1863. First, Moore not only argues that an overwhelming majority of West Virginians remained loyal to the Union in 1861, but they urged and abetted McCleUan 's invasion of the trans-Allegheny and favored the creation of a new state. Union sentiment was indeed overwhelming in twenty-five northwestern counties, but Moore faüs to realize that 40 per cent of the inhabitants and half the counties included in West Virginia were loyal to the Confederacy and bitter opponents of separate statehood. It is true, as Moore points out, that the origins of the statehood movement are to be found in the politics of prewar sectionalism, but his evaluation is virtuaUy meaningless, as...