General Stephen D. Lee (review)

BOOK REVIEWS179 George H. Boker, and in 1879 he criticized the return of Southern Blacks to the control of their former owners. 8. In the years after 1877, in addition to its interest in more popular policy issues, the ULP continued into the twentieth century to show concern for civil (including voting) rights and Southern education for Blacks. The appendix includes valuable lists of ULP officers and a list of founding members with brief biographical notes. (Students of the Union League movement will agree with the author's justifiable indignation at the failure of many biographers of persons prominent in the ULP to have mentioned their ULP role.) The footnotes are a rich mine for tracing a significant aspect of Northern thought and action in the war and Reconstruction years. Much use is made of ULP published annual reports and manuscript minute books of committee and general meetings. Very little early ULP manuscript correspondence is extant. The work would benefit from more attention to the impact of Douglas Democrats, Copperheads, the Radical-Conservative Republican division, and "Liberal" Republicanism in understanding the political developments relating to the League movement. Considering the mass of detail, the occasional errors are not surprising: Clement Mario Silvestro is incorrectly spelled "Sylvestro" at times in the footnotes. The author has written a number of books in the area of local, ethnic, and business history. Whiteman, who has been the archivist of the ULP since 1964, says that he was given "free range to write and interpret events as I saw them" and that he enjoyed "total freedom." The result is a sympathetic but judicious treatment. The volume is an admirable contribution to a topic that has been inadequately studied previously. Every Civil War-Reconstruction library collection should have this book, and every community library should have it as an example of what can be done relating local and national history in their political, economic, and sociological aspects . Guy J. Gibson University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point General Stephen D. Lee. By Herman Hattaway. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976. Pp. xi., 283. $12.50.) General Stephen Dill Lee is one of the last of that group of secondrate Confederate generals deserving a scholarly biography. Others, such as William Hardee and Leónidas Polk, have been afforded such recognition within recent years. Unfortunately the legacy of 180CIVIL WAR HISTORY the overwriting during the Civil War Centennial years has also produced a flurry of biographies on Confederates who deserve little more than a serious article. Professor Herman Hattaway has provided a heavily-researched study on one of the last of those deserving individuals. These were men who commanded at usually corps or division level, yet lacked either the ability or the opportunity to exhibit genuine talents. One might also conjecture that such men as Stephen Lee and William Hardee, by nature of personality, scarcely provide exciting reading. They were steady men, often in positions of importance . Yet they lacked the charisma to excite either the Confederate press or populace, and an analysis of their lives, while demonstrating often an admirable consistency, lacks the public relations style one would associate with a J.E.B. Stuart. Certainly Lee appears to meet the requirements for such an individual . His military career, from his entrance to West Point in 1850 at age seventeen, exhibits a determined steadiness. Eventually he rose higher during the Civil War than any other officer of his age. Beginning as captain, Lee by the age of thirty was a lieutenant general. Yet he was no George Custer; his advance was methodical, holding every subsequent rank. Perhaps the answer to why Lee has not achieved more acclaim for his service in the war rests in this concept of steadiness. After all, few could boast of broader experience. As an artillery commander in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, Lee distinguished himself. Then in 1863 he commanded the cavalry in the Mississippi Department. By 1864 he led the entire Alabama-Mississippi Department , and then became a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee during the Atlanta campaign. In all of this, he exhibited considerable bravery, as well as a large capacity for administration. Yet he often showed little imagination...