A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea, 1866-1904 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS269 the location ofalmost every official Confederate general. The value ofthe source is its photographs of headstones or markers and sometimes obscure portrait images. Traveling extensively through twenty-one states, the District of Columbia , and Mexico and Germany was a labor of love. Two similar books are Confederate Generals Buried in Louisiana and Lest We Forget: A Guide to Civil War Monuments in Maryland, and a third book in preparation about Civil War monuments in NewYork states suggests there is a particularmarket in the physical legacy of the Civil War. The book complements Ezra Warner's Generals in Gray, Jon L. Wakelyn's Biographical Dictionary ofthe Confederacy, and James Spencer's compilation, Civil War Generals. Generals At Rest provides the burial location of almost every Confederate general. The single location that contains the greatest number of Confederate generals is Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery, with twentysix burial sites. Twenty-six generals are buried outside the former Confederacy and boarder states, and the exact locations of graves of generals are either unknown or disputed. The book contains twenty-one chapters arranged alphabetically by state. Each chapter has an outline state map showing the location of burial sites—by county, or city or town, then alphabetically by general. Otherwise the biographical sketches contain basic information. The price is high for the information contained, but the information is unique. Unfortunately, the text lacks the exact locations, particularly in larger public and church cemeteries (section, plot, and lot) of grave sites. Additional information as to how to contact cemetery offices would also be helpful. Some generals are buried on private property and require permission from the landowners to view the grave; however, the authors did include an appendix for nineteen "Hard-To-Find Grave Sites," which describes in detail the location of the more obscure sites. For the Southern history enthusiast and researcher, this source may be too good to pass up. Alan C. Aimone U.S. Military Academy Library A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea, 1866-1904. By Richard Sears. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1996. Pp. xi, 272. $59.95.) The devourer of all things Civil War will likely ignore this book because of the title's subject matter and time frame. The high cost (not justified by image or print quality) will further restrict its ownership and consequently its readership. This is unfortunate; this work is an important contribution to the history of American slavery, the abolitionist movement's role in the education of former slaves, and most importantly, the vision and forty-year-long successful operation of the only fully integrated community and educational experiment in the South following the Civil War. That vision was Berea College, and its associated 270CIVIL WAR HISTORY community and church, which sought to promote "black autonomy and self government" in a fully integrated social setting. Sears's work is primarily the story ofthe vision and life work of Reverend John Gregg Fee, a staunch abolitionist who was forced out of Kentucky in 1 859 but returned to Camp Nelson in the fall of 1 863, where he laid the groundwork for Berea College, which he and others established in 1 866. Sears traced Fee's prewar story in KentuckyAbolitionists in the Midst ofSlavery , published in 1986, and both works should be read—given that much preparatory material appears only in the first volume. While that work concludes with the year 1 864, this sequel takes up the tale with the establishment ofCamp Nelson, the key Federal training and black recruitment cantonment in central Kentucky, in August 1 863 and devotes three of its eleven chapters to that camp. The U.S. War Department found itself the unwilling steward for the welfare of thousands of former slaves at this and similar bases throughout the South, and with the conclusion of hostilities, largely black communities evolved as the military sought to shut the bases down. A black community and academy struggled on at Camp Nelson until the early years of the next century; and that community, along with literally hundreds of schools and churches, black and white, located throughout central Kentucky, formed a broader support community for Berea College and received the...