Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (review)

236civil war history Life and Public Services of an Army Straggler. By Kittrell J. Warren. Edited witìi an introduction by Floyd C. Watkins. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1961. Pp. xiv, 98. $2.50. ) rarity is not enough. It is certainly not the sole criterion on which the publication of a new edition of a book can be justified. Some books become rare because most copies of an edition have been read to death, leaving only a few to survive. Others become rare simply because they were not worth reading or keeping in the first place. Kittrell J. Warren's Life and Public Services of an Army Straggler falls, unfortunately but undoubtedly, into the latter category. Life and Public Services of an Army Straggler was first published pseudonymously (not "anonymously," as the editor writes) in Macon, Georgia, late in 1865. It is now available in a single surviving copy of the original edition which is in the general library of the University of Georgia and in a new edition as the third number in the Miscelhnea Publications series of the University of Georgia Libraries. Floyd C. Watkins' introduction to this new printing of Warren's book is understanding and informative, exhibiting as a demerit only a tendency (and a natural one) to over-emphasize the importance of the edited material. Even his disclaimer, "An Army Straggler is not a document of great value to the modern historian; nor is it a noble work of literature," turns out to be an understatement. Mr. Watkins makes a bit too much of Warren as in the tradition of A. B. Longstreet, J. J. Hooper, and die other Southern humorists of the prewar years. He does not acknowledge that that age of American humor had largely closed by the time Warren was writing. Nor can the editor's claim that this is realistic fiction really stand unquestioned. Fiction is not "realistic " just because an unpleasant character or situation is portrayed in it. An Army Straggler is as thoroughly overdone in its own way as is Augusta Jane Evans' Macaria (which Warren calls "That trans-anthropean specimen of splurgery") is in another. Life and Public Services of an Army Straggler is an unbelievably bad book. But it has some sparks of humor. And it has the fascination of the very, very bad. It makes Mickey Spillane look like a literary genius and the daily comic strips like masterpieces of social comment. Reading it is not a complete waste of time—particularly if the reader has nothing else to do. Richard Harwell Bowdoin College Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical. By Irving H. Bartlett. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. Pp. x, 438. $5.95. ) go back 131 years. Envision a Harvard "Class Day" in 1831. Class Marshal Wendell Phillips leads his fellow seniors to President Josiah Quincy's house for cake, wine, and congratulations. The 'light heart" rules the day. Fanati- Book Reviews237 cism is nowhere. A few weeks later, at commencement exercises, the respected and conservative young marshal would eloquently orate in defense of English aristocrats. Small wonder that one of his student friends said in retrospect that Phillips might logically have been chosen by his classmates as "least likely" to devote the enthusiasm and labor of his life to "the defense of popular rights." It is difficult to be certain about watershed years. If there are such things, 1831 probably was one for the United States because of William Lloyd Garrison 's Liberator and Nat Turner's rebellion. The great change in Phillips' life course, however, appears to have begun around 1835—although proand anti-Garrison public attitudes stemming from events of 1831 had much to do with it. The most obvious direct cause was his interest in, and marriage to, the convinced abolitionist, Ann Terry Greene. While Phillips insisted that his wife converted him to abolition, die author hints that there may be deeper psychological explanations. One was the young Brahmin's ambition to excel as an orator. The other was the possibility that "he chafed under the responsibility of emulating" the conventionally successful career of an "extremely influential" father. For the reviewer, this study of motivation is the most exciting part of the book...