The View from Headquarters: Civil War Letters of Harvey Reid (review)

282CIVIL WAR HISTORY 1960's Protestant leadership had become pretty well integrated, but more often than not this did not extend to the congregations. The movement toward interracialism since World War II, within individual churches, met with most success in the North and West, practically none in the South. Among Reimers' conclusions are first, the obvious one that "fundamental to an understanding of the race problem in Protestantism is the fact that the churches are social institutions that are shaped by the culture in which they exist," and second, "it is difficult to assess the role of theology as a factor in the history of race relations" (was it theology or regional mores that was the more important, he asks). This reader rather suspected that environment might shape church policy, but at the same time was disappointed at the author's failure to venture a very positive opinion on the second point. One must infer from the author's tone that he disapproved of the way American Protestants handled the whole matter of race. Emphasis is placed upon the Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, with much less attention to other sects. With his focus on Protestantism, the author neglects the influence of non-church groups on church affairs, most notably the N.A.A.C.P. The author makes no attempt to compare, for perspective, the attitudes of non-Protestant churches, even if very few Negroes would be involved. On the matter of style, Reimers' prose is a little stiff, and at time annoyingly repetitious, but clear enough. For those Protestant denominations, certainly the most important ones so far as Negroes are concerned, that he studies in detail, he has done a workmanlike, well-documented job. This reader's impression is that his scope is too narrow, lending an aura of unreality to the picture that it certainly does not deserve. Even so, this slender volume will be useful to students of American history for its brief, accurate survey of American Protestant race relations. Robert Huhn Jones Western Reserve University The View from Headquarters: Civil War Letters of Harvey Reid. Edited by Frank L. Byrne. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1965. Pp. xiv, 257. $6.00.) The war was going badly for the Union when President Lincoln, in the summer of 1862, issued a desperate call for troops. Among those who answered Lincoln's plea with the stirring battle cry, "We Are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More," was a twenty-year-old Wisconsin schoolteacher named Harvey Reid. He and several friends were soon part of Company A, 22nd Wisconsin Infantry. The regiment reached Kentucky on the heels of Bragg's invasion. In February, 1863, the Badger unit joined the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee. Reid was captured in the regiment's first engagement, the battle of Thompson's Station. Exchanged after a brief imprisonment, Reid rejoined the 22nd Wisconsin for a year's garrison duty in the Nashville- BOOK REVIEWS283 Franklin area. Military inactivity for Reid and his compatriots ended in May, 1864, when William T. Sherman struck into Georgia on what became one of the war's most famous campaigns. From Resaca to Raleigh, Reid served as infantryman, commissary corporal, and brigade clerk. His pride, and his military career, had their climax at the May, 1865, Grand Review in Washington. Reid's wartime letters are lengthy episdes to his parents. They form an almost unbroken chronicle of his three years' service as a Federal soldier. More importantly, however, the letters are unusually literate and revealing. Like most BiUy Yanks, Reid observed many facets of the Civü War; but unlike the majority of his comrades, he had the keen perspective and sense of history to record his observations in interesting fashion. Professor Byrne, who skillfuUy edited this coUection, apdy summarized the letters by stating: "Besides describing the exterior of mihtary life, [Reid] revealed the inner effects of the Civil War upon a sensitive soldier: his increasing awareness of human weaknesses, his changing attitudes on poUtics and slavery, his growing caUousness toward war's horror and cruelty." Although Reid's letters are heavy with mihtary and personal trivia found in all soldiers' writings, they also contain penetrating...