The Civil War Sketchbook of Charles Ellery Stedman, Surgeon, United States Navy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS165 pointées of General Ord, the district commander under Congressional Reconstruction, continued on the bench until the end of the Reconstruction era. Actually, these judges—the majority of whom were old citizens of the state—were replaced in 1870 by appointees of Governor Alcorn. These men served with distinction until 1876. The only significant contribution of the book is in its discussion of the Mississippi High Court's decisions protecting the minimum rights of slaves in criminal proceedings. This policy contrasted sharply with the court's hostility toward manumission. The difference arose because Mississippians, including members of the court, did not view- the Negro in slavery as a threat to society, whereas in freedom he was potentially "an alien enemy" who, without the restraints imposed by the slave institution, might incite rebellion. Indeed, in criminal law, as interpreted by the High Court, the slave emerged by the late ante-bellum period as a person; in civil matters he was still defined as chattel. In practice, however, the court had few opportunities to demonstrate this distinction, since most criminal infractions by slaves were handled outside the judicial system. William C. Harris North Carolina State University The Civil War Sketchbook of Charles Ellery Stedman, Surgeon, United States Navy. By Jim Dan Hill. (San Rafael: Presidio Press, 1976. Pp. xvii + 218. $25.00.) The artist whose life and work are this book's subject was a Massachusetts physician turned naval surgeon. He did sea duty from 1862 to 1865 on a steam corvette and on a monitor, blockading and supporting invasions of the South's Atlantic coast. Finally he was on a supply ship which plied both Atlantic and Gulf waters. An amateur artist who had already published a volume of lithographs satirizing yachting, Stedman sketched during the war and subsequently drew a set of finished illustrations for the library of the Bay State's Military Order of the Loyal Legion. These plates and a selection from Stedman's other art appear in this book. The work also contains a biography of Stedman, stressing the war years, which relates the pictures to his career and explains their content. While unfoornoted, the biography is solidly based on family letters, naval records and published sources. The authoritative discussion of nautical matters lives up to the author's reputation in that field. Unfortunately, he has also included too much else. The book is like an overloaded small craft. She is weighed down by an excess of conjectural "must have beens" and similar speculative extrapolations. A deck cargo of peripheral history burdens her yet 166civil war history more. Indeed, an unnecessary, misleading reference to the John Brown Raid pushes her down to the Plimsoll mark warning of scholarly peril. Yet the pictures keep afloat this attractive model of the printer's craft. The publisher has carefully reproduced the original size and tint of the fifty-two major plates. From them, the reader obtains rare glimpses of the Civil War navy. All of Stedman's illustrations have merit but those of experiences aboard an ironclad monitor are especially significant. As Hill indicates, Stedman is sometimes inaccurate or uninterested regarding technical details. The artist is, however, always at his best in depicting humans and their foibles. Not content with scenes of military action, he smiles wryly at himself lying seasick in his cabin and at his fellows lined up for the last issue of rum in the United States Navy. Stedman's work will reward careful examination by those interested in the Civil War, of course, but also by students of navies, of medicine and of social history. This is a handsome book which many will prefer to buy rather than borrow. Frank L. Byrne Kent State University The Building of Uncle Tom's Cabin. By E. Bruce Kirkham. (Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, 1977. Pp. 264. $12.95.) The problem of Uncle Tom's Cabin—its attraction, its quality—seems never to be resolved. Charles Foster's The Rungless Ladder (1954) made its statement for literary status, but Stowe's book never gets beyond literary history in academe, and usually at the expense of Oldtown Folks (1869), which has its place in local color literature. Kirkham...