Andrew Brown and Cypress Lumbering in the Old Southwest (review)

358CIVIL WAR HISTORY Coulter used sources relating to the Old South with which he is thoroughly famiUar: official documents, manuscripts and newspapers. In addition to the well-known papers of men like Davis, Holt, Black, Buchanan and Cobb, Coulter drew extensively from the Samuel L. M. Barlow manuscripts, only recently available to scholars, which contain many letters from Browne. Considering the difficulty of writing a full-length biography of a man who left no collection of his own papers, the author has done a good job of reconstruction and produced a well-balanced story. There are necessarily some gaps. Browne's early years receive sketchy treatment because data proved unobtainable. In view of Browne's violent hatred of Lincoln, it seems odd that there is no reference to the assassination. Sherman's march and the defense of Savannah in which Browne participated receive only brief attention . On the other hand, a great deal of material is included which may be labeled trivia. The chief justification for it may be that, as it is unhkely that other biographies of Browne will appear, the full record ought to be preserved even though some of it clutters the narrative. The author has provided copious and careful end-notes, but too many errors escaped the eyes of proofreaders. The table of contents and appendix differ on the way to spell Pickett. Buchanan's book on his presidency is cited in notes and bibhography as his administration "on the Eve of the Revolution" rather than "on the Eve of the RebelUon," a sUp which Browne would have heartily approved. A number of typographical errors appear, both in and out of quotations. The author has treated Browne and his ideas with evident sympathy. "His mind was cultivated and his impulses were noble, but his steadfastness to his principles led him to attack sharply whoever opposed them," is Coulter's closing evaluation. This book will give William Montague Browne a niche in American History which his own career would not have gained for him; but of more importance, it will transport modem readers into the Ufe and thought of the South in an era forever gone. Phu-ip Shriver Klein Pennsylvania State University Andrew Brown and Cypress Lumbering in the Old Southwest. By John Hebron Moore. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Pp. xvi, 180. $6.00.) In the ten years since Conrad and Meyer inaugurated the econometric era with their pathbreaking article on the profitability of slavery, there has been a widespread revival of interest in the economic history of the Old South. The quantifiers have largely dominated the field during the past decade, in part because the more traditional economic historians have suffered from a general lack of fresh primary sources and an acute shortage of records of antebellum and wartime industrial concerns. John Hebron Moore demonstrates in this brief, well-written monograph what can be accomplished BOOK REVIEWS359 when a diUgent and resourceful, albeit "old fashioned," narrative historian turns up a substantial body of new manuscript material, in this case the virtually complete correspondence and financial records of a cypress lumber firm that operated in the lower Mississippi Valley from the 1820's through the 1860's. The result of his discovery and his subsequent labors is a soUd piece of historical research, one that makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of industrial conditions in the Old South. As Professor Moore notes in his introduction, the preservation of the records of Andrew Brown's various lumbering enterprises was particularly fortunate. Brown, an Edinburgh-trained architect who emigrated from Scodand in the 1820's, was much better educated than the vast majority of contemporary southern lumbermen and, consequently, kept what must have been for his day and his profession an exceptionally complete and meticulous set of records. From these manuscripts emerges a remarkably detailed picture of the rise of a large industrial concern in the slave South and the development of an able and energetic southern entrepreneur, whose career bears strong resemblance to those of other well-known antebellum businessmen like WilUam Gregg, Daniel Pratt, and Joseph R. Anderson. Brown's lumber operations began humbly enough when he purchased a small, single-saw...