The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation (review)

172CIVIL WAR HISTORY role of women in plantation life and the immense expansion of that role during the war. The competence of Kate's "Momma" is pervasive, as she —a widow—managed the affairs of the family while her eldest sons fought in the army. Kate's description of the behavior of Negroes and Yankees near Vicksburg in 1862 and 1863 may be of interest to those studying black history. Social historians have long found useful Kate's references to plantation life, visiting customs, illnesses and remedies, popular fiction, the deprivations of the war, the difficulties of traveling during the war, and refugee life in northeastern Texas. Kate's two short annual summaries in 1867 and 1868—the regular entries end in November 1865—reveal a little about changed race relations and economic readjustment after the war. The general reader, as well as the historian , will find the diary a pleasant diversion. Judith Fenner Gentry University of Southwestern Louisiana The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. By Robert F. Durden. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Pp. xi, 305. $10.95.) Robert F. Durden's The Gray and the Black proves that almost anything with the word "Black" in the title can be published today. In a real sense this book is merely an edited collection of documents covering the Confederate debate on arming and freeing the slaves. Durden has strung together the debate with a scissor and paste job on sources drawn from southern newspapers, correspondence of leading Confederate civil and military authorities, and an assortment of selections from the Official Records and the debates in the Confederate Congress. What emerges is a fairly comprehensive compilation of Confederate attitudes on slavery from the writing of the Confederate Constitution to the war-long debate which culminated in the 1865-statute arming—but not freeing—the slaves. The work is disappointing because it offers very little original analysis of the whole question. Durden has limited himself to brief introductions to the various selections and has not attempted any overall analysis of the controversy. His theme is traditional: the South even in its most trying hour could not bring itself to tamper with its basic social institution—slavery. He selects editorials from the Charleston Mercury, the words of Virginia Senator Hunter and others to demonstrate the South's unwillingness to free slaves in order to achieve independence. Perhaps the words of the Charleston Mercury demonstrate better than any others the dilemma which the issue forced on many Confederates: "We want no Confederate Government without our institutions." Clearly slavery, as Durden's early chapter on the Confederate Constitution demonstrates, formed, in the words of Vice President Stephens, the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy. The thrust of the book attempts to show how the South held stead- BOOK REVIEWS173 fast to her institutions despite impending doom and sure defeat. Clearly Durden regrets that the South did not bring itself to free the slaves. We all agree; everyone today is against slavery. But Durden seems to miss two major points in the whole episode over arming the slaves. First, the war brought the Confederates to the verge of destroying what they were all about. Slavery, the basis of southern social institutions, was the very cornerstone of her way of life. What the debate over arming the slaves illustrates is not the inability of the South to face change, but rather it shows that many political and military leaders as well as most of the prominent newspaper editors were willing to sacrifice basic institutions in order to win the war. It provides abundant evidence that waging war can destroy a society's basic values. Because we do not like slavery, historians have too often neglected this vital aspect of the Confederate experience. Durden's concluding chapter, entitled, "On the Confederacy's Tombstone: 'Died of a Theory,' " tends to perpetuate this neglect, and consequently his whole study adds little more to our knowledge of the Confederate experience than an extended collection of source material. Second, Durden seems to misunderstand the reasoning of those who sought to arm and free the slaves. In his preface, the author implies that the debate over arming the slaves...