Growing Up in the 1850s: The Journal of Agnes Lee (review)

book reviews183 sending antislavery resolutions to their coreligionists and others in the United States. By 1855 the antislavery activities of British Unitarians were declining. One oftheir ablest spokesmen died that year; also by this time a number of British abolitionists had given up hope ofredeeming America from the sin ofslavery. With the new Fugitive Slave Act, violence in Kansas, the defeat of Freemont, and the Dred Scott decision—it seemed to many in Britain that the slave power was firmly in control in America and would probably continue for an indefinite time. The author claims that during the Civil War most Unitarians, as well as others in Britain, were neutral; however, he notes one Unitarian clergyman who advocated that the British government recognize the Confederacy . The Emancipation Proclamation elicited a mixed reaction, but the defeat ofthe Confederacy and the addition ofthe Thirteenth Amendment to the American Constitution stimulated British Unitarians to undertake activities designed to help the American freedmen. Although this study is sympathetic to the British Unitarians, it is not uncritical. It offers an encapsulated history of the Unitarian movement in Britain and of their leading spokesmen, together with an account of their interaction with American Unitarians in the antebellum years. It is a welcome contribution to an understanding ofBritish church history in the nineteenth century and to the transatlantic antislavery movement. It is hoped, and expected, that Stange's monograph will stimulate similar ones pertaining to other British churches. W. Harrison Daniel University ofRichmond Grourtng Up in the 1850s: TheJournal ofAgnes Lee . Edited by Mary Custis Lee DeButts. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. XX, 145. $11.95.) Eleanor Agnes Lee, the fifth child ofRobert Edward Lee and Mary Anne Randolph Custis Lee, began keeping a journal in December 1852 at the age oftwelve years. Although her entries were sporadic, Agnes continued thejournal for a period offive years, spanning her transition from girlhood to womanhood. One of the appealing aspects of this journal is the glimpse it affords the reader into the personal life of the venerable Custis-Lee family. Agnes's journal contains accounts of family gatherings at her beloved Arlington, the home of her maternal grandfather, George Washington Parke Custis; the events surrounding the years spent at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where her father was superintendent from 1852 to 1855; and her life as a student at the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton (referred to by Agnes as "Staunton Jail," 75). 184civil war history The most interesting aspect ofthe journal, however, is the deep concern frequently expressed by Agnes regarding her religious faith, and her struggle with haunting doubts about her own worthiness and piety. "Will I ever be a Christian? Ever be worthy ofthe love and esteem ofanyone? O I hope so—but I am afraid not" (61). "How I wish I could ever be pure and holy ..." (95). "Much would I love to receive the holy communion also, but oh! my deep unworthiness makes me shrink from so blessed a privilege ..." (132). Many young women in the antebellum South had similar doubts and conflicts, as they struggled to meet the demands of church and family. Manuscript sources and edited letters and diaries such as this provide a fertile field for study of the role of religion in the molding of Southern women during the nineteenth century. The work ofJean E. Friedman, The Encfosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900, scheduled for publication in the fall of 1985, promises to illumine this interesting and relatively neglected subject. Mary Custis Lee DeButts, editor ofAgnes Lee's journal, is the daughter of Robert E. Lee, Jr., Agnes's younger brother. We are indebted to Mrs. DeButts for making this interesting journal available and to Mary Tyler Freeman Cheek and Robert Edward Lee DeButts, Jr. for providing useful background information. The footnotes, although not documented, are helpful in identifying people and places mentioned in the journal, and the index is adequate. One disappointing aspect of the journal, however, is the fact that nowhere in the concluding section of "Recollections of Mildred Lee" and "Family Letters" is there any mention ofthe cause ofAgnes's early death at age...