Dear Ones at Home: Letters from Contraband Camps (review)

BOOK REVIEWS87 the vernacular, it has everything. Worsham's eyes missed nothing, and what he saw, he remembered. From General Lee and President Davis (in that order, of course) acknowledging the cheers of the Twenty-first at Gaines' Mill, to the making of soap by a detail of the regiment; from the roar of musketry in the "Mule Shoe" on the bloody morning of May 11, 1864, to the Twenty-first stripping to the buff to ford the Shenandoah under the watchful eyes of General John M. Jones and of a large congregation , male and female, of Front Royal—Worsham's narrative is all-inclusive . This is a fascinating story of young gentlemen who went into war wearing white gloves on duty becoming ragged, hard-bitten, battle-wise veterans, retaining out of all the elaborate baggage they brought with them in the exhilaration of 1861, only their patriotism and capacity for hero worship . For those whose interest lies in battles and marches, Worsham supplies top-notch eyewitness accounts of the unforgettable Valley Campaign, of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, the Wilderness; but he has even more to give to those who want to know how "Johnny Reb" marched, what he ate and wore and thought, how he lived and how he died. And even how he smelled, for with a minimum of reading between the lines, one can deduce why, at the end of the Seven Days, none other than Stonewall Jackson "said he would like all of us to take a bath, and that he would give us several hours to do so." Unlike the generality of publishers' blurbs, Worsham's original publisher did not exaggerate when he claimed that "If Dickens had followed Stonewall Jackson, he would have written just such a book as this." Worsham's book was published originally in 1912, and copies of it have been nearly unobtainable for many years. The republication of a book that is as valuable as it is pleasant to read, and especially a republication so admirably edited, is a boon to be welcomed by scholars and buffs alike. Stephen Z. Starr Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Ones at Home: Letters from Contraband Camps. Edited by Henry L. Swint. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1966. Pp. 274. $6.95.) What the abolitionists envisioned, and what the Civil War effected, were two different things. Starry-eyed abolitionists spent thirty years bawling lustily for emancipation of slaves. Their activities did much to provoke a war. Yet when that war had passed, the idealistic end which the abolitionists sought turned out to be but a tragic beginning. The Negro was free, but he was an alien in a white man's civilization. The few efforts to extricate thousands of freedmen from their calamity of liberty were, in large measure, singular and voluntary. Two such laborers in the human vineyard were Lucy and Sarah Chase, Quaker sisters from Worcester, Massachusetts. Late in 1862 the middle-aged spin- 88CIVIL WAR HISTORY sters volunteered to become teachers at contraband camps, sites to which hordes of freedmen had been shuttled. When they arrived at Craney Island, Virginia, near the mouth of the James, in January, 1863, the sisters found two thousand bewildered Negroes, "homeless, hungry, and cold." The misery everywhere in evidence jolted the Quaker simplicity of the ladies. In the years that followed, the Misses Chase labored long hours and performed a variety of duties at contraband camps extending from Washington and Norfolk to Roanoke Island and Savannah. Fortunately for history, the sisters' long and descriptive letters of their observations have been preserved. They are printed here for the first time. The letters are as unique as they are revealing. They provide an almost unparalleled insight into the early life of freedmen. In the correspondence are pointed commentaries on a veritable host of topics: the freedmen themselves; the Freedman's Bureau; hospitals; the hostility to Negroes by northerners and southerners alike; social crimes; individual tragedies; and some amazing conduct by both conqueror and conquered. Professor Swint of Vanderbilt University has done a superb job of preparing the letters for publication. His annotation is extensive (though on occasion it tends to become exhausting). The index is a model. Only in the introduction...