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BOOK REVIEWS26 1 and A.O. Abbott from which he is able to invigorate his narrative with much human interest. Among the book's weaknesses is the scant attention paid to western prisons , including the most important, Camp Ford at Tyler, Texas. Even in dealing with the East the tendency is to focus on such well-known prisons as Andersonville and Elmira. Thus the entry for November 25, 1864, makes no mention of the major uprising at the prison in Salisbury, North Carolina. The conclusion shows signs of haste with contradictory information on pages 368 and 369 concerning the taking to Washington of Andersonville commander Henry Wirz and the attribution to that captain of the erroneous title ofmajor. Moreover, the book ends abruptly with Wirz's hanging, omitting reference to such prison-related matters as the outcome of the trial of Salisbury commander Maj. John Gee. Overall, Denney's book is a useful introduction to its subject. As might be expected of the author of a previous Civil War chronicle, Denney puts his subject into the context of the war's battles whose outcomes, of course, did much to provide inmates for the prisons. The author's background as a professional soldier does much to inform the often cynical critical observations concerning the military bureaucracies (North and South) which are among his book's strong points. The excellent foreward by Edwin C. Bearss, which effectively compares the number of names on a hypothetical monument to those who died in Civil War prisons with the list actually carved on the Vietnam Memorial's black wall, should convince any doubters of the significance of this subject. Other supporting materials are more varied in quality. The appendices do contain a helpful reprinting of the cartel for prisoner exchange and of both sides' laws governing treatment ofprisoners. But they also reprint a statistical compilation by a former Confederate officer, yet neither here nor in the prologue is there an analysis of the problems with this and the equally questionable United States statistical estimates that is as critical as that in Hesseltine's old book. There is a section of illustrations ranging in content from irrelevant (a few) through routine to excellent, but all are unfortunately too small. Even worse for a topic so closely related to railroads and other forms oftransportation is the complete omission of maps. Still, those without convenient access to the sources on which this book is based are likely to find it to be an attractive investment. Frank L. Byrne Kent State University The Lion of the South: General Thomas C Hindman. By Diane Neal and Thomas W. Krenn. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1993. Pp. 319. $24.95.) Thomas Carmichael Hindman (1828-68) has long needed a biography. This pre-Civil War fire-eater revolutionized Arkansas politics just prior to the 2Ó2CIVIL WAR HISTORY war, had a short but memorable career in Congress, and then followed the glory road, rising to the rank of major general despite a lack of military training . His 1862 service in Arkansas marked the first sustained attempt to place an entire state on a total war footing. Hindman sanctioned guerrilla warfare, enforced his own version of the draft, and ruled the state by martial law decrees . He created a host of enemies, becoming perhaps the Confederacy's most notorious violator ofcivil liberties. Defeat at Prairie Grove in December 1862 effectively ended Hindman's experiment. Later, he urged the recruiting of slaves into Confederate armies in support of his friend Pat Cleburne. In the field he distinguished himself at Shiloh and Chickamauga but quarreled with first Bragg and then Hood. At the war's end, he fled to Mexico, where he failed to prosper. After returning to Arkansas, he did not endear himself to President Andrew Johnson (whom in 1861 he had attempted to capture), and he remained unpardoned although politically active at the time of his assassination in 1868. Obviously, there is plenty to work with despite a lack of family correspondence. Although the authors provided a balanced account of Hindman's life, drawn mostly from secondary sources, the personality of this diminutive fireeater remains shrouded. Among the most urgent unanswered questions is...

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