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BOOK REVIEWS217 the question of whether to draft Negro men or let them work the land, develop homes, and attend schools. Even after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, there remained a question whether the slaves were ever to be completely free, and as the war ended, the issue of political rights arose. In the course of events, many of the Negroes acquired at least an elementary education (with the aid of devoted teachers such as Laura Towne), some were given farms, and a few rose to positions of political influence and responsibility. Yet the high hopes of the missionaries and the aspirations of the erstwhile slaves were to be realized only partially and temporarily. Actually, the Port Royal experiment was a "rehearsal" for Reconstruction only in presenting problems later to be faced on a wider scale and in providing experience for some of the people who were later to deal with the problems. The wartime reconstruction of the Sea Islands produced no pattern, no set of lessons, to be applied in the postwar era in the South as a whole. Though the outlines have long been familiar, the Sea Islands story has never before been so fully and expertly told. Willie Lee Rose is at once objective and sympathetic in her treatment of both missionaries and Negroes . Her deft prose carries lightly a tremendous weight of research. Her book, the end product of a study begun in C Vann Woodward's seminar, is more than a model dissertation; it is a masterpiece of the historian's art. It has received and well deserves the Allan Nevins History Prize, which the Association of American Historians awards on the basis of literary excellence as well as historical substance. Richard N. Current University of Wisconsin Henry Watkins Allen of Louisiana. By Vincent H. Cassidy and Amos E. Simpson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Pp. vii, 201. $5.00.) In recent years our knowledge of the Civil War and those who participated in it has been considerably enlarged through a series of fine studies dealing with leading state political figures. Although these individuals never held the center of the historical stage with Davis, Lincoln, Seward, and Benjamin, their importance in the whole story of the war is nevertheless significant. The present biography of Henry Watkins Allen, sugar planter, lawyer, traveler, writer, legislator, brigadier general, and governor of Confederate Louisiana, sheds much light on conditions in the Trans-Mississippi West during the Civil War. Born in Virginia, Allen spent much of his life in the Southwest and his early career was filled with the excitement adventure , and color of soldiering in Texas, traveling through the South and Europe, and vacationing at fashionable spas and watering places. He also found time to serve in the legislature (where he was more "energetic than effective") in Mississippi and Louisiana, to become a successful sugar planter, and to study briefly at Harvard. An impetuous and hot-tempered individual, he was frequently involved in duels and quarrels, some through accident and some through choice. Like many southern planters he moved politically from the Whig, to the American, and finally to the Democratic party in the late ante-bellum period. With the coming of war in 1861, Allen served with the 4th Louisiana Infantry. Severely wounded at the battles of Shiloh and Baton Rouge, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1863. His election as governor later that year was a result of the high esteem in which he was held by Louisianians . His work in restoring the state's finances through the sale of cotton, in obtaining medical supplies for the people, in operating iron and salt works, and in distributing food to the poor raised the morale of the people and won him praise as an administrator. Douglas Southall Freeman later characterized Allen as "the single greatest administrator produced by the Confederacy." Like a number of southwestemers, Allen went to Mexico following the war. There in exile he edited an English language newspaper and praised the rich opportunities afforded by Mexico, but longed to return to Louisiana . His death in April, 1866, resulted from a combination of fatigue, stomach disorders, and possibly yellow fever. The authors...

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