Essays in Southern Biography (review)

BOOK REVIEWS183 Only the most unbending of perfectionists would have been willing to insist that the original dissertation failed to meet satisfactory scholarly requirements. It was a most creditable job by a careful craftsman. In published form it is no less craftsmanlike. The volume does lack the sense of climax and the readable style which would make it a candidate for the title of a "Georgia Biographical Classic." It seems certain, however, that a Nevins or a Schlesinger would have troubles in making T. Buder King of Georgia a figure of heroic proportions. King was not such a figure; Steel deserves commendation for refusing to portray him as such. Robert L. Peterson University of Oregon Essays in Southern Biography. Edited by Joseph F. Steelman, et al. (Greenville, N.C.: East Carolina Publications in History, 1965. Pp. vii, 166. $2.50.) Eight members of the department of history of East Carolina College have written Essays in Southern Biography which range in time from 1705 to the rise of Harry Flood Byrd, and in area from Virginia to Georgia. The essays have no common theme and few common characteristics . Several of them tell less than the reader wants to know. In discussing "Daniel Reeves Goodloe: A Perplexed Abolitionist During Reconstruction ," Joseph F. Steelman repeats a story that Goodloe married a congressman's daughter who gave birth to another man's child on her wedding day. One wonders if this story is as useful for its comic properties , as Steelman finds it, or whether it might not be indicative of the sort of tale likely to circulate concerning a southern abolitionist. One wonders, too, in reading LaIa Carr Steelman's study of "Senator Augustus O. Bacon, Champion of Philippine Independence," how this Georgian's views on domestic racial issues shaped his anti-imperialistic role in the Senate. Other essays are "Charles Griffin: Schoolmaster to the Southern Frontier ," by Herbert Paschal; "Richard Yeadon, Charleston Unionist-Whig Editor and Opponent of Nullification, 1832-1844," by John C. Ellen, Jr.; "William 'Extra Billy' Smith, Democratic Governor of Virginia, 18461849 ," by Alvin A. Fahrner; "Civil War Correspondence of Private Henry Tucker," by Hubert A. Coleman; "Daniel Augustus Tompkins and Industrial Revival in the South," by Howard B. Clay; and "The Role of Virginia Democratic Party Factionalism in the Rise of Harry Flood Byrd, 1917-1923," by Henry C Ferrell, Jr. The only essay with direct relevance to the Civil War is somewhat disappointing, for Private Tucker was semi-literate, and given to plagiarizing the poetry of others. Tucker was discharged from the Confederate Army in 1862 as over age, but drafted again in 1864, despite the fact that he had become a plantation overseer and was in ill health. The letters 184CIVIL WAR HISTORY printed by Coleman, all from his second period of service, with the Hampton Legion in Virginia, illustrate the breakdown in morale of the Confederates in the closing months of the war. In one dark hour on December 23, 1864, Tucker told his wife: the yankes has the advanteg of us and we never can git it back un less the kind providence should smile on us and that I am a fraid he will not do we undoubtedly have the wickeddist pepai in the world in plais of ther gitting beter they git wors the young men inpatickle a fidlen and dancin and wishing the .d-d. Confederecy would go up ... we are gone pepai I am Sorrey to say it But the Lord onley knows what will be hour fait. Tucker, always hungry and dispirited, reported on February 21, 1865, that "hour men is whopped the wirst that they have ever bin." The last of the documents, Tucker's pass to return home from Appomattox "and there remain undisturbed," reads like a sigh of relief. John Y. Simon Southern Illinois University The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction. By James M. McPherson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Pp. 474. $10.00.) Whether historians viewed the abolitionists as disruptive fanatics or crusaders for freedom, the tradition of historical writing has been to concentrate on the decades before the Civil War and pay them little, if any...