A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House ed. by Daniel E. Sutherland (review)

remained. East Tennessee was thenceforward the center of his Southern operations until his mysterious death in Knoxville in 1861 during the first months of the Civil War. During the 1840s he sent a series ofinsightful letters to Gerrit Smith dealing mostly with his experiences with slavery, debates with slaveholders , various antislavery contacts mostly through Maryville College, as well as investment possibilities and the economic conditions in the South. The book is organized into two parts. Part I is Professor Dunn's excellent four-chapter, eightyeight page essay on Birdseye and his place in the abolitionist movement. One chapter evaluates Birdseye's entrepreneurial role. Scholars interested in the industrial and mining development of Appalachia will be most interested in this chapter, for Birdseye was deeply involved with his friends, Judge Jacob Peck and John Caldwell, in various speculative ventures, including the opening of the copper mines and smelting in Polk County, Tennessee, in 1852. Part II of Dunn's book includes thirty well-edited letters from Birdseye to Gerrit Smith from February 23, 1837, to March 25, 1846, as well as a letter to Andrew Johnson written only months before Birdseye's death in June of 1861. The letters tell a story that Professor Dunn does not need to enhance. The early letters show an optimistic and gentle believer in the rights of man, and a man who made sincere business alliances wherever he went. His optimistic and uncompromising faith in the advantages to the South, ifonly slavery was destroyed, was strong and clear in the 1830s and early 1840s. But the later letters betray a fear that slavery was too strong, and that proslavery entrepreneurs were only waiting for a chance to ruin him. The last letter to Andrew Johnson in February, 1861, is a pale, whimpering affair begging for a post office appointment for a young friend. His mysterious death in Knoxville the following June, and the disappearance ofhis $250,000 estate in legal wrangles during the War and Reconstruction from 1861 to 1869, leave us wanting to know much more about this fascinating person. —Richard Drake A Very ViolentRebel: The Civil War Diary ofEllen Renshaw House. Daniel E. Sutherland, ed. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1996. 285 pages. IUustrations. $34.00. In September 1863, Ellen Renshaw House, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a middle-class Georgia businessman, wrote in her diary, "I think it is outrageous. The Yankees are here." This entry summarizes in 63 many respects the spirited narrative ofthis Georgia migrant, who moved to Knoxvüle in the years just preceding the Civil War. Chronicling the affairs of her family and the town when the Union Army arrived in 1863 to the end of 1865, House describes in intimate detail the experience ofUving in a town that is alternately under siege and military occupation. Her devotion to the Confederate cause was unstinting. While observing a Union ambulance train entering Knoxvüle, House writes, "Oh! How I do long to see our boys back here. A good many ambulances came in this afternoon , and aU seemed to have at least two wounded men [in] them. I wish they had all been kiUed." Her principal activities included assisting Confederate prisoners and baiting Union officers. "... I feel perfectly fiendish. I beUeve I could IdU a Yankee and not a muscle quiver. Oh! The intensity with which I hate them .... When I see a Yankee going along with one leg or one arm I reaUy feel glad, and wish it was the whole Yankee nation instead." It was probably this same devotion that saw her evicted from Knoxville in April 1864. "Capt' McAUster told me ... I would certainly be sent South if I were not more prudent. That I had been ... a very violent rebel, one who would seU her soul and body for the benefit of the Confederates." A Very Violent Rebel is skillfully edited by Daniel E. Sutherland. Preserving House's spelling and idiom maintains the flow of the entries' authenticity. Copious footnotes clarify the numerous and confusing rumors that House frequently held as facts. The excellent index is also helpful in identifying the numerous events and individuals House mentions in her diary. A Very Violent...