Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870 by W. Todd Groce (review)

we witness them through the minds of people who manage to survive. Morgan captures, without grotesque exaggerations, the patterns of Appalachian speech, and his stories tell an extraordinary history of the region as witnessed by ordinary people. —Stephanie Browner Groce, W. Todd. Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999. 218 pages, illustrations, maps, tables and index. $28.00. For many years, East Tennessee has often been labeled as a stronghold of Unionist sentiment during the American Civil War. Regretfully, this view has suggested that little or no Confederate sentiment existed in the Tennessee mountains, or if it did, the "rebellion sentiment" could not have had much impact set amidst so many Unionists. W. Todd Groce's useful book, Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870, offers a convincing and important analysis that once again undermines the idea that Appalachia was some type of Unionist monolith. Instead, we find in East Tennessee a region full of complex controversy that led to bloody fighting and bitter memory. In many respects, East Tennessee secessionists were what Daniel Crofts has termed "reluctant Confederates." Groce argues that these mountain rebels, many of whom had developed social and economic ties with Virginia and the Deep South, followed their home state out of the Union only after Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion. Interestingly, many mountain Confederates tended to be young, town-based merchants or professionals, located along major communication routes such as the Holston River or the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad. As Oliver Temple, a notable East Tennessee Unionist, observed, "Outside the towns and railroad lines, with the exception of two or three counties, the country became a unit, a solid compact body, in favor of the Union" (47). The remarkable William G. "Parson" Brownlow asserted, "Merchants, Railroads and others largely indebted to the North are the most clamorous for Secession. Wherever a merchant is found largely indebted to the North...they are throwing up their hats for Jeff Davis" (47). Nevertheless, despite their economic power, East Tennessee secessionists were unable to exercise decisive influence outside the cities and towns of the Great Valley. This failure, Groce points out, 72 "exposed a rift between the cosmopolitan advocates of change and the defenders of the old local order—a rift which, in many ways, portended the savagery and bitterness to come" (67). This savagery and bitterness effectively led to the forced exile of many East Tennessee Confederates from their home state in the years following the Civil War, with the result that their stories and experiences were largely lost in what Groce terms "the myths and stereotypes of mountain Unionism" (159). Mountain Rebels is an important contribution to the emerging literature on the Civil War in Appalachia. Groce's analysis is thoughtfully written and well supported, and is accessible to both scholars and general readers. When read alongside the works of Martin Crawford, Robert Tracy McKenzie, Ralph Mann, Kenneth Noe, Gordon McKinney and John Inscoe, Groce's book lends distinctive insight into the complex features of Appalachia's Civil War. —Shannon Wilson Lyon, George Ella. Borrowed Children. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. In this young adult novel, reissued in paperback by the University Press of Kentucky, George Ella Lyon does a wonderful thing. She presents a story that is simple and timeless, but also one that can keep adult readers interested and connected. Anyone who has read Lyon's many children's books might have expected to enjoy this offering, as certainly this reviewer did. What was unexpected was the presentation . As a beautifully wrapped gift is a thing we savor, with appreciation for the beautiful ribbon, the pristine box, the colored tissue paper and finally the gift itself, so this story is a gift to the reader at each of its several levels. Twelve-year-old Amanda Perritt is the first-person narrator of Borrowed Children. Right away, in the novel's opening sentences, the reader is pulled to the interior of the situation: It's Friday. Fridays are the best because we know Daddy is coming home. He works all week cutting timber on...