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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 BOOK REVIEWS285 he married during the course of the correspondence. The editor was Douglas ' daughter by his second wife. Miss Douglas finished the manuscript for this book in 1942 (as a seminar project for Professor Charles W. RamsdeU at the University of Texas) but refused to allow its pubUcation during her Ufetime. Her death, in 1964, made the letters available for pubUcation. In addition to Douglas' letters, the editor or pubUsher (it is not clear which) has thrown in, as lagniappe, a short historical sketch of the art ülery unit, written in 1907 by one of the former members, and fragments of diaries kept by Douglas and another member of the battery, one Private Sam Thompson. Captain Douglas' letters are worth reading, not only for the soldier's-eyeview which they present of the important action in which the battery was engaged, but also for their colorful depictions of camp life and their reflections of both the exultation and loneliness that have been the soldier's lot as long as men have gone to war. The letters describing the defense of Atlanta and the subsequent effort of Hood to draw Sherman out of Georgia by invading Tennessee are particularly interesting. The book is handsomely bound and printed, but Douglas' letters deserved a better editorial fate. Although the editor is referred to by the publishers as a "distinguished historian," her editing often seems amateurish and more the work of a devoted daughter than that of a professional. Her foreword is so sentimental as to be maudlin. The footnotes shed more Ught for the antiquarian dian for the historian or general reader; they consist largely of identifications of members of...

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