The Land They Fought For: The Story of the South as the Southern Confederacy, 1832-1865 (review)

Book Reviews443 played at Appomattox. But odier qualities were needed. Aldiough he had Uttle taste for a military career, Grant was a trained soldier, and his training had taught him diat Congress was the supreme autìiority of the United States. Therein, as Mr. Catton sees it, is the great risk of putting "a professional soldier in the White House, no^ because the man wiU try to use too much authority but because he wiU try to use too Uttle." The circumstances of Reconstruction caUed for a strong executive, but Grant could not assert himsetf in violation of his lifelong training. After two terms as president, diere was Uttle of moment in the later years, except a brief flash of glory at the very end when die dying man — aided loyaUy and fervently, even desperately, by Mark Twain — grappled widi death and won an agonizing race to finish his memoirs while he stiU breathed. U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition furnishes an auspicious start for the Library of American Biography, under the general editorship of Oscar Handlin. More than that, it demonstrates that the task of completing Lloyd Lewis' biography, die first installment of which has been noted above, could have been entrusted to no better qualified hands than Bruce Catton's. Robert D. Price New York, New York The Land They Fought For: The Story of the South as the Southern Confederacy , 1832-1865. By Clifford Dowdey. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Incorporated. 1955. Pp. viii, 438. $6.00. A volume of the Mainstream of America Series, edited by Lewis Gannett) ?? this study the author of two distinguished novels on the Confederacy, Bugles Blow No More (1937) and Where My Love Sleeps (1945), turns his attention to an historical treatment of die same subject. This is not his first excursion into Confederate history, for the present volume is prefaced by his well-received Experiment in Rebellion (1947), a personaUty-centered examinar tion of die men who led die Soudiern states in die 1861-1865 conflict. Now Mr. Dowdey makes another notable contribution with a general history of the beleaguered Soutìi, and it may be that he is the only author of recent years — perhaps of any time — to treat the Confederacy witìi credit from both the historical and fictional approach. When another weU-known Civü War novelist, the late James H. Street, turned to the history of the fraternal struggle, the result (The Civil War, 1953) was unworthy and disgusting. In The Land They Fought For, Mr. Dowdey has added to an enlarged understanding of the Confederacy's leaders and actions not unlike Carl Sandburg 's contribution to the continuing Lincoln and Civü War theme. Here is a brilliant interpretation overflowing with imagination and packed witìi the data of history. The Confederacy is born again as the reader experiences the emotions and understands the minds of its people. The psychology of men and events is related in an absorbing story, compactly written and cogent witìi üluminating insights. Although the reader never loses sight of the rapidly shifting panorama, detail is always a high point, as in Mr. Dowdey's vivid account of Nat Turner's 444CIVIL WAR HISTORY slave insurrection early in the volume. The pro-Southern point of view, another feature, prevails throughout and is best illustrated by his ultra-severe judgment of General WiUiam T. Sherman: "He was the executioner of the sentence which the sitters-in-judgment wished to have carried out against die Southern people. To tìie South he remains a symbol of the wanton and rudiless brutality of a might which denied all human right to its victims." In die audior's view, Robert E. Lee is always the hero and Jefferson Davis is always the viUain. Lee "was instinctively kind, of amiable disposition; and training, association, and experience developed his native traits into a gracious consideration in dealing with others. With aU his awesome self-discipline, his unbending devotion to duty, Lee was a sweet-natured person of true Christian humility. It is probable that these quaUties, which caused him to suffer Davis' unconscious rudeness for the sake of their country, caused die self...