An Englishman in the American Civil War: The Diaries of Henry Yates Thompson: 1863 (review)

book reviews85 omy remained viable until the end of the war, despite severe dislocations . Third, he sees disintegration of morale during the last months of the conflict directly causing the breakup of the war effort in Kirby Smith's area rather than battlefield defeats or economic inadequacies. Fourth, Kerby suggests the need for some modification of the notion that states' rights undermined the achievement of Confederate national independence. Apparently state governments west of the river all but abdicated authority to Confederate representatives and if anything, this weakened the citizenry's faith in their own states' rights rhetoric. Finally, Kerby thinks that: "If any generalization may be made upon the basis of evidence taken from the history of the Confederate Southwest , it seems that the high tide of Confederate aspirations began ebbing away during the first months of the Civil War." The first chapter is too long, the book might profit from illustrations and a bibliographic essay rather than list, but good maps are included and the footnotes seem to indicate exploration in width and depth. Perhaps Kerby's contribution assumes significant proportions because he has undertaken so much within one volume. He has unshackled Civil War history from unilateral consideration of battles, leaders, political events, economics, or social customs. He has packaged all of these together in a fashion which may seem diffusive, yet possibly more indicative of how wartime situations really were than the neatly blown conclusions and polished images of older accounts. B. Franklin Cooling U.S. Army Military History Research Collection Carlisle Barracks An Englishman in the American Civil War: The Diaries of Henry Yates Thompson: 1863. Edited by Sir Christopher Chancellor. Preface by Dr. W. M. Whitehall. (New York: New York University Press, 1971. Pp. xx, 185. $12.50.) The scion of a prominent English banking family and a recent graduate of Cambridge, 24-year-old Henry Yates Thompson was in 1863 on the threshold of a distinguished career as a newspaper publisher, Liberal politician, and collector of ancient manuscripts. But first he took off the last half of the year and toured the United States in the midst of the brutal Civil War. Unlike many other upper class Englishmen, young Thompson enthusiastically supported the Union, and he was even more passionately hostile to slavery and the Confederacy. He arrived in Boston in July and began his diary, recording hospitable receptions by Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Nathaniel Hawthorne , and many other prominent New Englanders. He went to Canada in August and started a new diary in September when he visited New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Then he spent a few days in eastern Maryland, fascinated and pleased to observe the death throes of the monster slavery in that area. 86CIVIL WAR HISTORY After a brief sojourn in "disgusting" Washington, he spent October and half of November on a swift grand tour of the nation's interior. He passed through Wheeling, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Louisville, and other areas and came away much impressed with the heartiness and vigor of western Americans. His third and final diary covered the last and most dramatic month of his American Odyssey and brought him through bustling Nashville to embattled Chattanooga. There he stood near General U. S. Grant ("the model ... of a modest and homely but efficient Yankee general") and witnessed the spectacular Lookout Mountain-Missionary Ridge battles which hurled the battered rebel army back into Georgia. He was buoyed by the Union victory but so sobered by the widespread carnage that he developed a permanent distaste for war. This pro-American Englishman soon left the battle area and returned to New England where he concluded his third diary in mid-December and returned home. Henry Yates Thompson's great-nephew, Sir Christopher Chancellor, has assembled these three short diaries and some related family letters and papers and many pertinent illustrations—including some of Thompson 's original sketches—and made an interesting monograph. Chancellor , former head of Reuters, insists that his work "lays no claim to serious scholarship," and certainly the inadequacy of the index, footnotes, biographical notes, and bibliographical information, occasional printing errors, and a few weaknesses in the introductory sections are all troublesome . Still, Editor...