In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

268CIVIL WAR HISTORY Much less conventional is Hess's take on the principal commanders in these campaigns. Hess paints a very understanding portrait of much maligned commanders such as Don Carlos BueU. He argues that BueU's conduct ofthe campaign in Kentucky was reasonable, given the difficulties he was operating under. In this regard, Hess is following die line on Buell recently taken by Stephen D. Engle. Likewise, Hess is also very understanding of the problems faced by Braxton Bragginboth Kentucky andTennessee. Somewhatless convincing is Hess's contention that the experience of Stones River had a traumatic effect on Rosecrans, making him a much more cautious and less optimistic commander than he had been at Corinth. It is certainly not supported by subsequent events, especially by Rosecrans's brilliant planning and conduct of the TuUahoma campaign. Given the broad scope of the book and its relatively small size, it should come as no surprise that Hess relies largely on secondary sources, including some works that are marred with haphazard research and implausible interpretations . Hess, however, has an excellent grasp of the issues that confronted both sides at this juncture of the war. Consistent with Hess's other work, the book is a quick and a pleasant read. It also has a number of fine photographs, several of which have not been previously pubUshed. In conclusion, someone whois famiUar with the works ofThomas L. Connelly and some of the other historians of the western campaigns wiU not find much here that is new. For the reader who is new to this part ofthe war, this book is an invaluable starting point. R. L. DiNardo Quantico, Va. Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings ofZephaniah Kingsley. Edited and annotated by Daniel W. Stowell. Foreword by Eugene D. Genovese. (GainesvUle: University of Florida Press, 2000. xviii,i27 pp. $49.95.) Daniel Stowell's Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley adds a new Floridian voice to the body ofproslavery Southern writers. Zephaniah Kingsley (1765-1843) was a planter, slaveowner, and one-time slave trader. Beginning in the 1790s, Kingsley operated out of South CaroUna, Cuba, Haiti, and Florida, and claimed at various times loyalty to the new United States, Denmark, Spain, and the United States again, before removing one last time from Florida to Haiti in the mid-1830s. His adventures ofthe heart and mind (he was both a slaveowner and married to a slave woman whom he had purchased in 1806) shaped his views on race, caste, freedom, and slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley's main contribution to proslavery thoughtis his "A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Co-Operative System ofSlavery." Originally published in 1828, Kingsley revised and republished the tract three times through 1834. In it, he estabUshed his fundamental belief that "slavery is a necessary state of control from which no condition ofsociety can be perfectly free" (62). Kingsley, BOOK REVIEWS269 however, did not root his views on the necessity of slavery in racial assumptions alone. Both his family situation and his extensive travels around the Caribbean shed him ofthe cruder racism found in some proslavery thinkers. Rather, Kingsley argued for a three-tier caste system based on property holding. For Kingsley, legal protections for property-holding free blacks were also an essential piUar upholding an orderly society. His analysis of biracial Caribbean societies plus his unswerving faith in the stabilizing quaUties ofproperty-owning led Kingsley to predict confidently that free blacks would develop a common bond with white society. Revising in the aftermath of the Nat Turner RebelUon and during the emergence ofGarrisonian abilitionism, Kingsley felt a sense ofurgency in his work. Southern states were tightening laws to sharpen the lines in society according to race, constricting along the way the Uberties of free blacks. Kingsley predicted that this would engender greater tension by encouraging purely racial identities , thus inducing new bonds to form between free blacks and slaves. When Florida revised its statutes along these very Unes, Kingsley removed his family (including his now manumitted wife and several free black children), his business , and most of his slaves to Haiti. Kingsley's knowledge of slavery in the Caribbean and South America gave him insight into societies where caste and...

pdf

Share