A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (review)

208CIVIL WAR history he maintained good grades without excessive exertion and never aspired to academic leadership. He did, however, display qualities of character that made him a natural leader among his peers and in the years that followed it was this element of character which, in the opinion of Professor Roland, became his "sustaining force." Receiving his baptism of fire in the Black Hawk 'War," Johnston quickly adopted the frontier equation between good Indians and dead ones. When personal tragedy made a shambles of his life he found his way to Texas. There his military training and reputation for leadership quickly brought him command of the Texas army. Mexican War service was confined to the battle of Monterrey but Johnston's performance there marked him for future advancement. Bleak years in the early 1850's were foDowd by important appointments as commander of the 2nd Cavalry, leader of the Utah expedition, and commander of the Department of the Pacific. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Johnston promptly resigned his San Francisco command and made his way to Richmond where he offered his services to his old friend Jefferson Davis. The President was delighted and promptly offered Johnston command of the Confederate West When his initial effort to establish a line of defense through central Kentucky was smashed by Halleck, Grant, and Foote, Johnston proved an adept improviser in reestablishing a new line covering the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and centering on Corinth. And his plan to strike Grant before Buell's arrival at Pittsburg Landing proved him both audacious and aggressive. His death on the field at Shiloh undoubtedly deprived the Confederacy of an "incalculable asset" in the trying years to come. Roland concludes that Johnston died too soon to permit a considered judgment of his talent for high strategy, but not too soon to prove himself a combat leader whose "metal could withstand the hottest flame." Rescuing Johnston from his over-zealous friends, as well as from his severest critics, was no simple task. It called for meticulous scholarship, discrirninating judgment, and a thorough grounding in military and political history. Professor Roland has displayed all three qualities to a very marked degree in this definitive and splendid study of Johnston. It is so good, in fact, that one closes the book with the distinct impression that this is one biography that deserved a better subject. David S. Sparks University of Maryland A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia. By Richard Orr Curry. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964. Pp. 203. $5.00.) An aura of fantasy, almost of unreality, has always surrounded the creation of the state of West Virginia during the Civil War. Henry A. Wise said that the new political entity was the "bastard child of a political book reviews209 rape." Wise's statement reflected the view of "old Virginia" and attributed altogether too much unity of purpose to the founders of West Virginia— they were determined men who committed an act which if not criminal was certainly improper. But even granting some exaggeration in Wise's remark, one still has to say that West Virginia came into existence in the most peculiar of circumstances. The mountain counties, supporting an organization which purported to be the loyal government of Virginia, gave themselves permission to split off from Virginia and form a separate state. The constitutional provision that a state cannot be divided without its own consent was thus evaded, although the constitutionality of the action has been argued ever since. The action itself, and its acceptance by the national government, was one of the several revolutionary actions occurring in the North, which exhibited much more revolutionary zeal in conducting the war than did the officially labeled rebellious Confederacy. Just as West Virginia was conceived in controversy, so the historical writing about its birth has been controversial, with most of the arguments revolving around the legality of the event. The latest entrant in the lists is Professor Richard O. Curry. But his interest in the dispute has nothing to do with the constitutional issue. Rather, he wishes to demonstrate that previous writers have not accurately analyzed the differences in...