Travels in the Old South: A Bibliography. Vol. III: The Ante Bellum South, 1825-1860; Cotton, Slavery, and Conflict (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Edited by Charles T. Miller Travels in the Old South: A Bibliography. Vol. Ill: The Ante Bellum South, 1825-1860; Cotton, Sfaery, and Conflict. Edited by Thomas D. Clark. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. No. 19, including two earUer volumes, of "The American Exploration and Travel Series." 1959. Pp. xviii, 406. $10.00. ) with the publication of the third volume of Traveh in the Old South, Thomas D. Clark and the University of Oklahoma Press have made another valuable contribution to the world of scholarship. This especiaUy appealing section of a monumental bibliography is divided into four parts under die respective immediate editorships of James W. Patton of the University of North Carolina, the late Charles S. Sydnor of Duke University, Robert G. Lunde of the University of Kentucky, and F. Garvin Davenport of Monmoutii CoUege. High quality of historical and bibliographical criticism, evident in die first two volumes, has been maintained. And die reader wül also find die flavor, comprehensiveness, artistry, and craftsmanship for which die general editor and his Norman coUaborators have become celebrated through the years. The reviewer happens to be a person who often uses bibliographies, but rarely becomes excited about them. The book in question is an outstanding exception where endiusiasm is concerned, having many features of esdietic as well as practical worth. So attractive are various aspects of the format, and so helpful the more tiian five hundred critiques, that Traveh in the Old South can quickly become one of a susceptible reader's favorite companions. Whether a scholar is primarily interested in the delightful sketches of an A. Oakey HaII or the acid prejudices of a Mrs. Anne RoyaII, the personalities of colorful Americans stand vividly revealed in their writings. Picturesque foreign visitors are legion. Represented for example, are Prince Achule Murat, who was Napoleon's nephew and lived for years as a planter in Florida; die Irish actor, Tyrone Power; the distinguished Latin-American, Domingo Sarmiento; ¿lie Hungarian exiles, Ferencz and Theresa Pulszky; "the world's outstanding phrenologist," George Combe; and die French audior Gustave de Beaumont who accompanied Alexis de Tocqueville and penned the raceproblem novel, Marie. Tocqueville himseU, of course, wrote one of the great works. Odier wellknown ones were those of Fredrika Bremer, Fanny Kemble, Sir Charles 95 96civil war history LyeU, Harriet Martineau, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Solon Robinson. Included , too, the George W. Featherstonhaugh's Excursion Through the Slave States, Thomas Hamüton's Men and Manners in America, Captain Frederick Marryat's A Diary in America, and Mrs. Frances TroUope's Domestic Manners of the Americans. ActuaUy, Mrs. TroUope saw little of the South—and Charles Dickens, who joined her in roiling American sensibih'ties, limited the "southern" part of his tour to a fortnight in Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. Then, as now, diere were travelers who became "authorities" in a matter of weeks or even days. It is not hard to imagine a latter-day version of James Stuart, whose pages "were derived more from reading tiian from observation," on the modem creamed-peas-and-chicken circuit. Others (who may have set the style for the home-movie exhibitors we know aU too intimately ) bragged about their extensive journeys; one was James Silk Buckingham , who said he covered "a greater number of states and territories than had ever before been traversed." Between the boards of Travels in the Old South lie listings of a book by a blind observer and another by a deaf interpreter of men and measures; the ungrammatical musings of a twelve-year-old boy; die "experience in high Ufe" of a chatty and incoherent hairdresser; Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner 's technical description of American railroads and canals; gazetteers; guidebooks; and even biographies mirroring American travel experiences or containing pertinent notes and appendices. Recommended to stylistic connoisseurs are die morbid humor of die biased but provocative Theodor Griesinger and droU descriptions enlivening die narrative of die Scottishbom Alexander Mackay. Six tide-page reproductions serve as eye-catching ülustrations. And serious students wiU be particularly grateful for die careful attention given such frequentiy-overlooked volumes as the three needed by Moritz Wagner and Karl Scherzer for their collaborative analysis...