Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences (review)

BOOK REVIEWS187 study's assets as well as its defects. Having this minute detail easily to hand, along with a forty-seven page appendix which inventories the groups of papers used, will please specialists in the naval history of the Civil War. Yet Turner sometimes allows the data to dictate the narrative. She wanted to use so much of it that her text often becomes a series of summaries ofeven relatively insignificant documents. In addition, the narrative often wanders offonto matters that may be interesting to local history buffs but add little to a central theme. As a result the narrative tends too often to lack crispness or focus. In her introduction, Turner indicated she wanted to write good narrative history—history as a story—and avoid "formal historical exposition" (p. xi). Not only is this an unnecessary distinction but the inclusion ofso much detailed information detracts from a strong narrative rather than adds to it. But it is easy to emphasize the significance of Turner's book and overlook the annoying questions of style. Civil War naval history is so often forgotten that a solid contribution to it will stand out. On a lighter note, Turner, if nothing else, tells us the origin of Catesby ap R. Jones's bizarre name. On a sophisticated and much more important level, she does an excellent job of examining the technical side of war. Her book will be of interest as much to the historian oftechnology and administration as to the military historian. Her subjects engaged in very little combat. As Turner puts it, "Both Union and Confederate officers and men were less men at war then they were men at work" (p. 256). Thus the human drama of her story is not felt in the agony ofbattle but in the unsung, frustrating effort to create a naval force out of nearly nothing. In its own way this drama is certainly worthy ofexposure to both the buffand professional reader, and Turner demonstrates why regional history is often national history writ small. Earl J. Hess University of Arkansas Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. By Reid Mitchell. (New York: Viking Press, 1988. Pp. xi, 274. $22.95.) Last year, Gerald Linderman's study ofthe combat experience of the Civil War soldier entitled Embattled Courage appeared. In that book, Linderman argued that soldiers on both sides viewed combat as an opportunity to prove their valor, and as the war dragged on and troops endured its hardships , a psychological transformation occurred. Slowly they realized that modern war was a brutal, dirty business and that victory demanded aggression toward the enemy army and its civilian population. Now, Reid Mitchell has expanded, in some ways refined, and other times challenged that thesis in his book Civil War Soldiers. Rightly so, Mitchell emphasizes the similarities between the Union and 188CIVIL WAR HISTORY Confederate soldiery and their motivations for joining the war effort. He argues that both Northern and Southern soldiers enlisted forthe same sorts of reasons: excitement of the moment, adventure, protection of their way oflife, and defense oftheir perceived rights. Both sides depicted themselves as the torchbearers of the Founding Fathers and Revolutionary patriots and believed that the leaders in the other section had duped their masses into pursuing this needless war. Nevertheless, both sides had depicted their enemy as savages, a common psychological technique to lessen the guilt over killing fellow human beings . Begun in the years prior to secession and accelerating rapidlyafter the incident at Fort Sumter, this technique also fit in nicely with the soldiers' perceptions that the enemy threatened their way oflife. Defeat would result in the imposition ofthe enemy's barbaric practices, values, and institutions. Here, Mitchell is at his best. Although the author discusses a change in the mind-set ofthe Civil War soldier as the fighting extended from weeks to months and years, he does not emphasize it with the same force that Linderman does. Mitchell believes that wartime experiences toughened the men physically and psychologically . Soldiers on both sides developed a grudging respect for one another, due primarily to military prowess, and they had no use for anyone at home who was not aiding or supporting the...