Lone Star and Double Eagle: Civil War Letters of A German-Texas Family (review)

BOOK REVIEWS81 without giving any clear picture or grasp of the "face of battle." Did he consider the horrors of war which he almost daily faced so commonplace as not to merit observation? The reader is given no clue. When Tuttle does rarely attempt analysis of the larger conflagration, his conclusions are so commonplace as to appear almost trite. Heargues, for instance, that Kentucky Unionists fought only for the preservation of the Union, not for the abolition of slavery. On another occasion he concludes that schoolteachers "on account of this close attention to details, their patient and methodical performance of routine, and their experience in the enforcement of discipline" make the best officers in both armies. Preachers "showed up well," but were "perhaps just a little too severe and tyrannical." Lawyers were too easy-going, and politicians were "the very poorest sticks in the service" (p. 45) . Even such questionable gems as these, however, are rare in the total text of the diary. One is forcibly struck by the loss to historians occasioned by Tuttle's continuing and peculiar reticence. Trained as a lawyer at the University of Louisville just before the war, he obviously had both the insight and capacity to make shrewd observations about the holocaust which surrounded him. Nor is Tuttle overly concerned with his own selfimportance ; he ridicules his own frailties, getting drunk and acting "the fool very completely," with disarming frankness. Why he should so persistently omit any elaboration of the horrors of battle is puzzling. Despite the editors' valiant efforts, much of what Tuttle says only confirms existing knowledge of the Civil War. Scholars seeking to penetrate in any real depth the battles or motives of men who fought them must look elsewhere. Durwood Dunn Tennessee Wesleyan College Lone Star and Double Eagle: Civil War Letters of A German-Texas Family. By Minetta Altgelt Goyne. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1982. Pp. vi, 276. $15.00.) The bulk of this well-edited collection is made up of letters between Texas settler Ernst Coreth and his enlisted son Rudolf. The combined lives of these two German immigrants span nearly all of the nineteenth century, and Minetta Altgelt Goyne supplies relevant historical background and context for these years, throwing light on important themes of emigration, assimilation and acculturation, ethnic and family loyalties , as well as response to slavery, secession, and war. The Coreths appear to have been less than enthusiastic about slavery and slaveholders but were very much infused with anticentralist State Rights attitudes. The father, Ernst, and the sons who served, felt less dedication to the Confederacy (believing, indeed, that they could not be compelled to serve outside Texas), than they did to their adopted "homeland," the lone-star state. The company that Rudolf joined was 82CIVIL WAR HISTORY made up, he wrote, "of farmers who like ourselves, only want to defend the coast of Texas" (p. 48). Rudolf makes it clear throughout that he (like so many Germans in Texas) is neither Unionist nor Secessionist. The correspondence contains gems of insight and commentary on the war, military service, and life in general. The father writes to Rudolf: "It pleased us to hear that you have good provisions . . . and are in good spirits. On the other hand, shadows pass over the picture of your existence as you sketch it for us. The undemocratic manner of a soldier's life, the meanness. Dear Rudolf, life strips away one bit of faith in incarnate beauty after another" (p. 86). Agnes, the mother and apparent linch-pin for this close-knit family, wrote almost nothing, but appears in these letters to be a strong character and indefatigable nurturer. "The old dear," wrote Ernst, "works from early until night with insatiable endurance." She shopped, baked, worked in rye and peas, built a shed, supervised the general sowing, was incessently solicitous, and never failed to send food and clothing to her soldier sons. These sons reveal in their letters, like so many other Civil War soldiers on both sides, that daily concerns revolved more around illness, food, clothing, and general living conditions than around battle. Rudolf, after all, was nine months in service before he encountered the Yankees. The...