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BOOK NOTES Basic History of the Confederacy. By Frank E. Vandiver. (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1962. Pp. 186. $1.45.) Written in the dynamic style for which its author is noted, this slim paperbacked "Anvil Original" is unusual for the amount of information contained in so few pages. Professor Vandiver devotes half of the text to a seven-phase discussion of the Confederacy. This is foUowed by twenty-two documents, ranging from the Confederate Constitution to Jefferson Davis' last official message. The gist of the author's presentation is that war compelled the South to adopt a strong nationalism and a new democracy. This is a valuable Uttle summary. City of Conflict: Louisville in the Civil War, 1861-1865. By Robert Emmett McDoweU. ( Louisvüle: Louisvüle Civü War Round Table, 1962. Pp. xüi, 259. $6.00.) Novelist McDowell's study, though depending almost entirely on others' research, is a cut above the usual. It denounces, for example, the current local myth that the city had been predominantly Confederate in sympathy. StiU, as a sober historical inquiry this well-written book falls short. Two sins of omission stand out. Louisvüle is traditionaUy aUeged to have been a hotbed of Copperheadism. While faintly skeptical of the pertinent "counterspy " literature, the author nevertheless fails to provide any hard-nosed local analysis that might have given an important measure of confirmation or denial. Second, he takes a straight Beardian view of the war (Northern merchants versus Soudiern planters) which, while interesting to see diese days in a book designed for popular consumption, is imposed on the LouisviUe scene without the kind of documentary support such a truly significant generalization deserves. These omissions, perhaps, indicate only that meaningful local history almost invariably loses out to local color. The Diary of Dolly Lunt Bürge. Edited by James I. Robertson, Jr. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1962. Pp. xv, 141. $4.00.) Dolly Bürge and her diary are both remarkable. Mrs. Bürge was a native of Maine who moved to Georgia with her first husband in 1842. During the next half-century this devout and hard-working woman outlived three 221 9.9.9.CIVIL WAR HISTORY husbands, two children, and several stepchildren. For a good part of this period she managed her second husband's large plantation in central Georgia. It was in this role that Mrs. Bürge weathered the tight times of the Confederacy —and Sherman's March to the Sea. Her diary is an almost unbroken chronicle of twenty-seven years of varied activity. It abounds with information on Georgia Methodism, local life, crops, weather, and Emory College and its first professors, as weU as much of pure human interest. The section treating of Sherman's March is alone so revealing that it was published over forty years ago under the tide, A Woman's War-Time Journal. This marks the first time that the diary has been printed in its entirety. Introduction , notes, and index were added by the former editor of Civil War History. Yankee in Gray: The Civil War Memoirs of Henry E. Handerson, with a Selection of His Wartime Letters. Biographical Introduction by Clyde Lottridge Cummer. (Cleveland: The Press of Western Reserve University , 1962. Pp. vu, 132. $6.50.) This work is another example, regrettably, of a superb collection of documents suffering from editorial shortcomings. In this case the introduction is comprehensive; yet lack of an index makes the book useless as a reference tool. Footnotes, while more inclusive than usual, are placed in the rear and divided enigmaticaUy into three sections. Even the table of contents throws dim light on what the reader may expect. The subject of the book, Henry Handerson (1837-1918), was an Ohio-bom schoolteacher in Louisiana when war began. Like another Northerner, Edwin Fay, Handerson joined the Confederate armies. As a member of the 9th Louisiana, he served in the major campaigns of the East until his capture in the Wilderness. His postwar career as a physician and medical historian was illustrious. Handerson's memoirs and wartime letters are poignant, honest, and forthright. By comparison , they are far above the normal run of soldiers...

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