Steele's Retreat from Camden and the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry (review)

284CIVIL WAR HISTORY of his characters and filled pages with dialogue which he says "is not an arbitrary invention of the author, but is direcdy quoted from sources or carefully constructed from paraphrases." Yet the book is not documented and the short bibUography is inadequate. Experts on parts of the many faceted story will no doubt find reason to quarrel with him, but a parallel reading of Jay Monaghan's Custer (1959) indicates no wide variance from Monaghan 's judgments. Monaghan, in his fine study, did make the reader aware of unresolved questions of fact, but hardly ever does Kinsley do that. William A. Settle, Jr. University of Tulsa Steele's Retreat from Camden and the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. By Edwin C. Bearss. (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, Inc., 1967. Pp. xvi, 190. $5.00.) Interest in the Civil War, always present in American historiography, has seen a tremendous burst of activity in die past decade. Historians, asking new questions or applying fresh techniques to old problems, have provided us with sharper insight into that period of our history. David Donald, T. Harry WilUams, Jay Luvaas, and others have made real contributions. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of books have been published simply to take advantage of this natural interest in the war period. Steek's Retreat from Camden is such a book. Mr. Bearss has written a narrative of a series of relatively insignificant events. He has made no effort to place "die retreat from Camden" within die context of the Camden Campaign, which itself was a part of the larger Red River Campaign. What Uttie analysis appears draws much more heavily upon LudweU H. Johnson's Red River Campaign than Mr. Bearss' citations would indicate. Steek's Retreat from Camden adds nothing to Johnson's excellent study. Robert E. Shalhope University of Oklahoma Douglas's Texas Battery, CSA. Edited by Lucia Rutherford Douglas. (Tyler, Tex.: Smith County Historical Society. 1966. Pp. xni, 238. $7.50.) Douglas' Texas Battery had the distinction of being the only Texas artiUery unit to serve east of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. Made up largely of Dallas and Smith County boys, the unit played an important role in a number of significant battles, including Elkhorn Tavern, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville. This book is not, as the title implies, a history of the battery. Basically it is a collection of eight-nine letters which Captain James P. Douglas, the commander of the unit, wrote to his fiancee, Miss SaIUe Susan White, whom ...