Refugee Life in the Confederacy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS93 and objective; his prose clear and concise. He captures the spirit and feeling of his subject without yielding to pettiness or provincialism. The research in primary sources is extensive, and the brief secondary bibliography hardly does the author justice. The first half of the book stresses the history of the various military units contributed by the county, and occasionally the narrative is burdened with details and technicalities which are not absolutely necessary. The second half emphasizes the home front. Southern women, inflation, religion , diseases, morale, farming, slaves, refugees, treatment of prisoners of war, and finally the conquering Yankees—all are examined through the eyes of the people of Thomas County. Thus the Civil War comes alive. Thomas County is not indispensable for the student of the Confederacy , but it is certainly useful and interesting. Of much less historical value is The Journal of a MiUedgeviUe Girl, 1861-1867. Born in 1844, Miss Anna Maria Green will never be known as the Anne Frank of the Confederacy. She spent most of her time seeking salvation and a husband—not necessarily in that order. Her journal is full of local gossip, and she makes only scattered, superficial references to secession and the war. Even when Sherman's troops entered Milledgeville , she penned only a few prosaic observations. The crucial Reconstruction period was ignored except for a few fleeting references to the possibility of race war and further disunion, and the impossibility of white submission to Negro rule. As Miss Green herself wrote, she was "totally ignorant" of politics. In Editor Bonner's words, she was "a young and somewhat frivolous girl." Perhaps cultural historians will find Miss Green's reading habits of some interest—the Bible, Hugo, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, De Staël, Scott, and many lesser novelists. The general reader will be more impressed with her failure to contribute to the rebel war effort. Professor Bonner has thoroughly identified the host of nonentities who wander through the pages of the journal, and the University of Georgia Press has produced an attractive paperback edition. However, their efforts do not constitute a particularly significant contribution. F. N. Boney University of Georgia Refugee Life in the Confederacy. By Mary Elizabeth Massey. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Pp. xvi, 327. $8.00.) Given the fact of military invasion, one can safely deduce refugees fleeting to the interior. Given refugees, one may expect that the rich would have better means of flight than the poor; that some refugees would go to live with friends or relatives and some would not; that some would be warmly received and some would not; that many would encounter inconveniences or hardship; that some would bear up better than others; and so forth. Since, as Professor Massey observes, "it is never easy or safe to general- 94CIVIL WAR HISTORY ize on the refugees or their movements," she has confined herself largely to the presentation of facts illustrative of commonplace conclusions, some representative examples being: "Refugees going into a strange community did not always react to the people in the same way." "Just as some people refused to take strangers into their homes, others opened wide their doors to those in need." "The disease common to all refugees at one time or another was home-sickness. . . ." "Although the displaced people were never adequately cared for, they received less as the war continued." The illustrative information follows each such statement and, while often interesting, amusing, or pathetic, unfortunately it tends to engulf the actual refugees in a sea of their own examples. Some of the author's attention is indeed directed toward matters of larger scope— for instance, military and civil policy concerning refugees—but even here her observations contain little that is new. From an amorphous subject and amorphous materials, Professor Massey has made an amorphous book. Yet she has used great numbers of primary sources. Her bibliography lists about 130 manuscript items and almost one hundred newspapers. With this mastery of the sources, it seems too bad that she did not adopt a different approach. She might have selected several refugee families with typical problems and experiences and followed each through the war. Then perhaps the reader...