A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North (review)

174civil war history to flee Baltimore in the wake of the Gettysburg campaign. Later, in 1864, Glenn returned to the United States. Following the war Glenn became involved in the efforts to secure the release of Jefferson Davis. Glenn's narrative, a composite of diary notations, commentaries, and recapitulations of events, is an important insight into the thinking , changing moods, and activities of the pro-Southern element in Baltimore during and after the war. An additional dimension to his narrative is his observations and comments on his stay in England and on a visit to France. With its inaccuracies and distortions Glenn's work must be used with care, but for the scholar and reader interested in this emotionally divided state his narrative is essential reading. Unfortunately, the editing does have some drawbacks. Despite a seventy-nine page glossary and footnotes to the text, many important names, such as Generals Dix, Schenck, Morris, and Wallace , go unfòotnoted, and the reader must turn to the glossary for a brief description of the person and his position. Despite this criticism the editors and the Maryland Historical Society, in allowing it to be published, deserve high praise for seeing that this important manuscript is finally available for wider use. Richard R. Duncan Georgetown University A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. By John Hope Franklin. (Baton Rouge*. Louisiana State University Press, 1976. Pp. xvii, 299. $12.50.) In the decades preceding the Civil War, southern travelers to the northern states far outnumbered their northern counterparts, though prior to the publication of this book their story was largely unwritten. None of these southern visitors wrote a travel book which rivaled those of Frederick Law Olmsted in popularity. Their reactions to northern life were buried in private letters, magazine articles and published accounts of speeches. From a wealth of such material Professor Franklin has constructed a very readable and useful account, with an emphasis on the human and personal aspects of the travels. A Southern Odyssey covers a variety of travelers who journeyed north out of curiosity, for recreational purposes, to reap the benefits of health resorts, to study at northern colleges or to profit by innumerable business ventures. Most of them were slaveholders and what they found both delighted and disturbed them. They were impressed with the beauty and variety of the landscape. The large industrial cities generated an excitement not known in Dixie. And BOOK REVIEWS175 many were pleasantly surprised to learn that Yankees, too, could be warm and friendly to strangers. At the same time, some of the travelers could not resist making unfavorable comparisons with their more familiar way of life, emphasizing the poverty, crime and unpleasant aspects of northern life in their reports home. Southerners in northern places tended to congregate together and to reinforce their bias in favor of southern society, including, of course, slavery. On this crucial matter they tended to be very much on the defensive. Many felt that though Northerners could be friendly on a personal basis, they tended to judge the South as a section, and to find it wanting. Nevertheless, Southerners continued to go north in large numbers, often because their private business interests required it. Though they were constantly reminded of the colonial status of their section, Southerners as individuals profited greatly from contacts with and travel in the North. Interruption of such intersectional business during the Civil War proved to be temporary, and the commerce was resumed almost immediately after the guns had stilled. Professor Franklin's approach is largely narrative and descriptive. He provides ample evidence to demonstrate the importance of economic interests in transcending sectional arguments, though individuals were often ambivalent in their attitudes towards the other section. He also concludes that southern travelers, instead of providing a bridge to understanding, contributed to the growing polarization of the two sections. They tended to overreact to criticism and failed to understand the need for change in the South if open conflict were to be avoided. Their contributions to American thought of the antebellum period add a significant chapter to the history of ideas, and that contribution is well presented in this study. Larry Gara Wilmington College Essays in Nineteenth...