The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS247 Callaway wrote most of the letters in this collection to his wife, Dulcinea, but a few were addressed to his brother-in-law and cousins. All ofhis letters show a man concerned about his wife and children, increasingly religious, and tired of soldiering. His faith in the Confederate cause never seemed to waver, although he only infrequently addressed his reasons for fighting. Besides the hated Yankees , illness and boredom were his greatest enemies, and he fought them constantly . The prospect of battle was exciting, but its horrific reality tempered his enthusiasm. In his last surviving letter to Dulcinea he confessed that he would be content returning to his wife and his quiet prewar existence. Judith Hallock discovered Callaway's letters while researching her book on Braxton Bragg. She recalled returning again and again to the collection at the University ofTexas,Arlington, discovering something new and memorable each time. Finally, she decided to pursue publishing the letters to make them accessible to the public. Hallock has done a fine in editing the seventy-four missives. Her introduction is short but informative, and she begins each of the eleven chapters with broad overviews oftheArmy ofTennessee's operations and locations . Hallock's notes and appendix are equally helpful, giving readers information on people, places, events, and literary references Callaway mentioned. In her editorial commentary Hallock is willing to take these letters at face value, but readers may come to different conclusions about their meaning and importance. While she occasionally notes Callaway's exaggerations or misinformation , Hallock does not discuss ways in which Callaway's observations fit or failed to fit the conventional language of many Civil War soldiers. Commenting upon Callaway's first real experience in battle at Chickamauga, Hallock concludes that he "enjoyed it immensely" (127-28). Although Callaway did assure his wife, as did many soldiers, that he kept his wits and did nothing that would shame her, he also wrote: "I have now seen and experienced 'The horrors of war' as well as the spoils and glories. And may God deliver us from so awful a scourge and calamity" ( 1 38). By October 1 3, 1 863 he announced: "I am sick! I am sick of our separation! Sick of the war! And I am sick anyhow!" (146). Six weeks later he was dead, shot through the bowels at Missionary Ridge. Lesley J. Gordon Murray State University The Trial ofDemocracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910. By XiWang. (Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1997. Pp. xxv, 41 1. $58.00.) The Trial ofDemocracy describes the evolution and the implementation of policies toward African American suffrage between i860 and the 1890s. Focusing primarily on the activities ofNorthern Republicans, XiWang examines the impact of philosophical differences, factionalism, and corruption on late-nineteenthcentury American politics. Although suffrage was viewed as a tool for protecting 248CIVIL WAR HISTORY African American freedom in the aftermath of the Civil War, Republicans also saw the Fifteenth Amendment as a mechanism for combating the influence of the Democratic party in national politics and eliminating political corruption. Between 1870 and 1873, Congress passed legislation giving the federal government the power to enforce theAmendment and to suppress antisuffrage violence. Protection of black suffrage continued into the 1 880s and provided the Republican party with a power base solid enough to guarantee its success in state and national elections and its control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. As national support for protecting the rights ofAfrican Americans waned in the 1 870s and 1 880s, factions within the Republican party found it increasingly difficult to agree on policies that could unify the party on this issue and to negotiate from a position of strength with their rivals. Wang argues that the party's policies were always the result of internal compromises that, although creating a working basis for the operation of the party, failed to eliminate factionalism within the party. It was the breakdown of consensus politics that led the party to abandon suffrage as the central focus of its political agenda; and the decline in the party's commitment accounted, in part, for the eventual disfranchisement of southern blacks. The Trial ofDemocracy is extensively...