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BOOK reviews353 The Dulanys of Welbourne: A Family in Mosby 's Confederacy. By Margaret Ann Vogtsberger. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1995. Pp. xxi, 316. $32.00.) The Dulanys of Welbourne is the edited correspondence of a northern Virginia plantation family during the Civil War. Richard H. Dulany, colonel of the 7Ü1 Virginia Cavalry, was a wealthy Loudon County farmer and horse breeder before he raised and equipped a company and joined the Confederate army. The letters chiefly detail relations among the Dulanys' extended family and shed light on the fate of the Southern gentry caught up in the conflict. Thrice-wounded and long-suffering Colonel Dulany served the Southern army with considerable distinction; several of his accounts of famed cavalry engagements are of great interest to historians of the partisan forces ofJohn S. Mosby, whose guerrilla raiders operated out of the Loudon County countryside. A doting father who seems more concerned with his daughters' dental hygiene and the family's finances than Southern independence, Colonel Dulany's letters and dispatches nevertheless offer a unique perspective on the landed aristocracy's often-cavalier war effort. His characterization of Grant as "brave, rash and desperate " (151) merits further consideration. Although greatly inconvenienced, the Dulany clan survived the conflict with its huge fortune intact, including considerable investments in New York and Baltimore. The materials printed in The Dulanys of Welbourne remain in the family's hands, but perhaps they should be placed in a public repository where professional historians could utilize them to shed light on Civil War Virginia. The present volume's editor perhaps aimed the text at the family descendants rather than the general CivilWar readership.The introduction and annotation are riddled with errors (Pierpont listed as governor ofWest Virginia [157]), poorly written, and quite misguided. We read, for example, of "the divisive presidential campaign of i860 and the election of Abraham Lincoln with the smallest popular vote on record" (xxi). The editor's notes reverberate with Southern patriotism; the Confederates are "legendary" (2), "bold" (plate 19), and "gallant" (plate 3), while we read of "Northern aggression" and "depredations" (1). Exhaustive genealogy and filio-pietistic hagiography mar the dramatis personae's poignant and often insightful sentiments. The editor's antediluvian approach is especially apparent in the treatment of slavery. Vbgtsberger rarely uses the word "slave," preferring "servant," "aunt," and "uncle." An elderly slave woman is called "an old mammy" (92, 135), while the African Americans speak in fawning patois in "Welbourne oral history " (101, 135). The Dulanys of Welbourne does CivilWar historians a service by printing the Dulany manuscripts, but the materials should be professionally conserved and analyzed to provide insight into the experience of the slave masters during the 354civil war history war, as has recent scholarship on the Chesnuts and Hammonds. The present volume is highly recommended for overnight guests at aptly named Welbourne, today a popular bed and breakfast in the genteel northern Virginia countryside. C. Stuart McGehee West Virginia State College One Surgeon 's Private War: Doctor William H. Porter ofthe 57th New York. By John Michael Priest et al. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing, 1996. Pp. 158. $19.95.) This book is a reprint of a Civil War memoir that first appeared in 1888. It is a gem for two reasons. First, it is an account of a Buffalo, New York, doctor who spent three years with the Army of the Potomac. The good doctor offered his services after the first call for troops, was commissioned an assistant surgeon in September 1861, and along with other Buffalo volunteers became part of the Army of the Potomac. From the vantage point of a junior medical officer, he observed the Peninsula campaign, the Maryland campaign, and the Fredericksburg disaster. He was captured by the Confederates in 1 862, had an "interview" with Stonewall Jackson, and was locked up in the Libby Prison in Richmond. He was then released with the first exchange of prisoners, spent a brief time aboard the hospital ship Louisiana, and rejoined his old regiment. Promoted to surgeon after the Battle ofFredericksburg, he tended to the wounded during the Chancellorsville and Gettysburg campaigns and then was put in charge of a Union hospital...

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