Exile in Richmond: The Confederate Journal of Henri Garidel (review)

Exile in Richmond: The Confederate Journal of Henri Garidel.Edited by Michael Bedout Chesson and Leslie Jean Roberts. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Pp. xvi, 466. Cloth, $35.00.)

Refusing to take a loyalty oath to the Union, on May 18, 1863, Henri Garidel left occupied New Orleans for Richmond, intending to eventually join his wife, Elodie, and some of his children in Italy. It was a decision that he later came to regret. After two unsuccessful attempts to use Confederate money to book passage to Europe on a blockade runner out of Wilmington, North Carolina, Garidel realized that he was trapped in Richmond.

Garidel's predicament turns out to have been a boon for anyone interested in Civil War Richmond. From the time he left New Orleans until late June 1865, Garidel kept a journal in which he meticulously recorded his daily activities and observations. Addressed to his beloved Elodie, or Lolo, the entries are the reflections of a man who always felt himself a stranger in the Confederate capital. For although Garidel was about as devout a Southerner as one could find in Richmond, and although he knew or met many of the military and political leaders who lived in or passed through the city, he was an outsider. Garidel was a Louisiana Creole whose first language was French—a Catholic in a mostly Protestant city. He recorded his observations with the critical detachment of someone who was aware that he was not quite part of the local society or culture.

In January 1864, Garidel took a job as a clerk in the Ordnance Bureau of the Confederate War Department, and he saw brief service near the front in May 1864. Although his web of friends and acquaintances was far ranging, Garidel remained unhappy about being away from home at a time when he thought he should be with his family. Fighting depression, he turned to his religion for some solace, praying daily and attending mass at one of Richmond's Catholic churches at least once a week. Writing in his diary was also a way to deal with his melancholy and to keep in touch with his wife, even though he knew that she would be reading his entries long after the fact.

Fortunately for the modern reader, Garidel had a keen eye for what was happening around him. Whether commenting about the poor food and coffee, Richmond's social customs, news of his neighbors and friends, or his chronic ailments—stomach spasms and bleeding hemorrhoids, among others—Garidel felt no compunction to hold back details. Significantly, Garidel was intent on sharing not only his observations, but also his deep feelings about what was happening around him. While he was fascinated by some of the women he met, he was generally very paternalistic toward the opposite sex. Meanwhile, he was openly disparaging of Jews, and an unapologetic racist with respect to the slaves and freedmen he encountered.

Although his discussions of battles were mostly summaries of what he had read in various newspapers, he brought the accounts to life by putting them in the context of what was happening in the Confederate capital, frequently showing how military events touched the lives of civilians. One of Garidel's most poignant entries was written after he visited the Drewry's Bluff battlefield in May 1864 to retrieve the dead body of a friend's son for burial. His observations about life under the despised Federal occupation were especially trenchant.

Henri Garidel's journal, handwritten in French and housed at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, had never been published. Civil War scholars and enthusiasts owe Michael Chesson and Leslie Roberts a debt of gratitude for bringing the journal to the public. The editors provide a thorough introduction, which, among other things, delves into Garidel's background as a Louisiana Creole, discusses his life in occupied New Orleans, and compares his journal with other...