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78CIVIL WAR HISTORY Albert Castel has contributed to this field of literature. Castel clearly delineates both his reasons for writing the book and his goals. He considers Price an interesting figure and a central character in the Trans-Mississippi area and feels this enough to justify his study. Making no pretense to writing a biography , he intends instead to present a narrative of the activities of Price as they relate to the Civil War in the West. Castel's scholarship is impeccable. He has covered a wide range of sources and skülfully integrates them into a well-written narrative. Beyond this, Castel's work represents judicious scholarship at its best. Where he disagrees with previous studies or draws conclusions from a paucity of evidence, he shares his thought processes with his reader and leads him to the sources to draw his own conclusion. Certainly the bulk of instances will find the reader in agreement with Castel. Points where one might question the author's contentions fall into areas where he cannot really be faulted. He does not claim to be writing a biography nor to possess great knowledge of Price's pre- or post-Civü War life. He realized that Price the man wiU not emerge from his pages. Thus, one more familiar with Price might very well conclude, as Caste] does not, that Price, a lifelong slaveholding democraticnationalist , would very much luce to keep Missouri neutral. Therefore, he, quite unlike Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, did not view the Price-Harney agreement as a devious stall for time to allow the state to arm itself. Instead, he sincerely desired Missouri to remain within the Union with slavery protected. This unfamiliarity with Price allows Castel to refer to one Major Thomas Price as Sterling Price's son (189) when Price had no son named Thomas. These, and similar instances, do not essentially weaken the study since it is not Castel's purpose to understand the man, but only to narrate his Civil War activities. One might wish, further, that the author had allowed his concluding sentence to serve as a frame of reference throughout the work. With respect to Price, he claims: "The story of his successes and faUures is the story of the Confederacy's war in the West" (282). This is undoubtedly true, but Castel does not develop this idea in the context of his work. He might have done this by a more explicit analysis of Price's relationship with the Confederate command system, especially President Jefferson Davis. However, in the final analysis, Castel has written a sound narrative that wül take its place as a scholarly reference for those wishing to study the war in the West and thus the author has admirably fulfiUed his purpose. Robert Shalhope University of Oklahoma Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. By Belle Boyd. Edited by Curtis Carroll Davis. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1968. Pp. 448. $9.50) This is the book to end all books about BeUe Boyd; of course it will do nothing of the kind to the unquenchable Belle. It establishes her as the author of that almost unheard -of-article, a reasonably reliable Civü War spy memoir, but reveals her as a gready overrated spy, in which latter respect it amplifies an opinion announced to the readers of this journal in its InteUigence issue (Dec, 1964, pp. 352-53). The history of the case is this: Belle, seventeen in 1861, kiUed a Federal invader in her Shenandoah Valley home, winning notoriety that was a bad start for a wouldbe spy. During the Federals' several occupations of the Valley in 1862-63, she mingled amiably with them and probably came by useful information on several occasions. They returned her cordiality and kept a decently close watch on her. The newspapers were equally attentive, making her a celebrity. She did two short tours in Washington prisons, the first in 1862 after the famous caper in which she fled Front Royal afoot in broad daylight to deliver what she supposed was valuable information to Jackson as he arrived by surprise before the town. The second was the post-Gettysburg period, for causes less evident. Repatriated to Richmond a...

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