Amongst Immortals Raging: Gettysburg's Third Day Begins (review)

2oo8Book Reviewsgg Amongst Immortals Raging: Gettysburg's Third Day Begins. By Marshall Conyers. (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2007. Pp 1 12. ISBN 9781589804685. $19.95, cloth.) Historians embarking on voyages through antiquity customarily fuel up on research and leave a wake of footnotes, tables, bibliographies, and such. Forsaking the ordeal of formal documentation, some authors of historical fiction have competed (and occasionally competed well) with traditional scholarship at interpreting history and those who have shaped it. Kenneth Roberts's novel The Northwest Passage narrated a campaign in die French and Indian War (and die complexity of an eighteenth-century Mr. Rogers). Stephen Vincent Benét's/??? Brown's Body poeticized the American Civil War. Bobby Bridger's epic trilogy of ballads and poetry (Seekers of the Fleece, Lakota, and Pahaska) rang of Mountain Men, Lakota Sioux, and Buffalo Bill Cody. Novelist Shelby Foote abandoned fiction for ten years to write a superb three-volume history of the Civil War (containing no footnotes but a bibliographic essay). Now comes Marshall Conyers and Amongst Immortals Raging. Immortals is neither a strategic nor a tactical study. Conyers's slim tome (112 pages) retells the battle at Gettysburg through forty-five short blank-verse poems. These poems craft impressions of major historical figures (Lee and Meade, for example), some not so major ones (civilian Jenny Wade), as well as some slightly ridiculous characters (?G Dan, a Confederate caisson-pulling mule). Conyers's perspective is impressionistic, delving into the hopes, doubts, and reactions of people (and the occasional critter) whose mortal paths led them to that July conflict. Immortals would have historians and general readers suspend expectations of documented events to view three days in July 1863 from the "rightbrain " perspective. Conventional historical research provides a foundation from which the poet contemplates not only the literal events but also the emotions evoked. There is a balance between the artistry of emotion and fidelity to events born out in the record. Poets and novelists must weigh artistry against reality of the historical record. Their decision shapes the work. Conyers is not reweaving official battlefield reports into blank verse. Immortals does not depart so much from strict reality as much as its poetic characterizations clamber to implausible heights. Consider ImmortaW Lee, watching Pickett's division commit to battle, groaning, "may God have mercy on them all . . . /and on me as well, /sole architect of this tragic madness." Pickett, in the midst ofdramatic assault, surveys the ". . . godforsaken bloodbath diat I, George Pickett, /God help me, /so unknowingly made." The better tale lies with the drama of the Applewhites, a North Carolina family of two siblings and their mother. Their fates epitomize the suffering inflicted so often during the four-year conflict for which Gettysburg has become a metaphor and which is depicted in Conyers's imagery. Overall, however, Conyers's lines are the stuff of Hector, Achilles, and Ulysses but not so much that of American Yankees and rebels. The difficulty with Conyers's work is that it struggles against our familiarity with the batde and the principals who appear. Confederate Gen. James ?ooSouthwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly Longstreet's reluctance to commit Pickett's division to its doomed assault against Meade's Union army center is oft told. Ted Turner's 1992 movie Gettysburg dramatized the gallantry of Union Col. Josh Chamberlain. Jenny Wade's tragic death during the fight earned her poignant notoriety among Gettysburg aficionados. The reality of Gettysburg gets in the way of the heroic lines of Immortah . It is not to say that Amongst Immortals Raging lacks a place in Gettysburg collections. As an introductory text, it has features sufficiently compelling to excite younger readers. In this work, however, it is not to be amongst immortals as much as it is to pass among mere mortals, skeptically. Austin Community CollegeBob Cavendish Schooner Sail to Starboard: The US Navy vs. Blockade Runners in the Western Gulf of Mexico. By W. T. Block. New introduction by J. Barto Arnold III. (College Station: Institute of Nautical Archaeology, 2007. Illustrations, maps, appendices , notes, index. ISBN 9780979587405. $40.00, paper.) During the American Civil War, with an economy dependent on agriculture and a manufacturing base less than that of the state...