In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

366 civil war history that Homestead and slavery expansion were closely related. In short, the subtitle "Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War" claims too much for this study of one Congress. These reservations should not obscure the book's merits. Not the least of these is a lucid explanation of the techniques of roll-call analysis, provided in the text as well as in the endnotes. Wolff s research results in splendid tables giving voting information for each member of the Thirty-third Congress. Fortunate indeed are future biographers whose subjects happen to have served in that body. Most important, the narrow chronological scope that prevents the study from sustaining generalizations about the causes of the Civil War makes possible what may well be the most detailedstudy in existence of a single Congress. Certainly, Wolff establishes that despite the party chaos associated with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, old loyalties and old predilections persisted among congressmen. Kansas-Nebraska may have killed the second party system, but The Kansas-Nebraska Bill makes it impossible to believe that death was instantaneous. John V. Mering University of Arizona Custer in the Civil War: His Unfinished Memoirs. Compiled and Edited by John M. Carroll. (San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1977. Pp. 233. $27.50.) The modern reputation of George Armstrong Custer is fraught with irony. A successful "fighting general" during the Civil War, he is principally remembered for his disastrous defeat on the Little Big Horn in 1876. Because his grand finale was so memorable, Custer, the most celebrated army loser of the Indian wars, now commonly serves as the symbolic villain of white conquest. "Custer died for your sins," a red power slogan admonishes us. TheCuster publishing industry, which has flourished ever since the Generalfell, reflects the popularpreoccupation with Custer's Indian campaigns. Thus John M. Carroll's compilation Custer in the Civil War is a welcome change from the standard Custer fare. Handsomely printed and illustrated—and with a handsome price to match—Custer in the CivilWarbrings together the General's reports, his unfinished memoirs and an annotated bibliography of606 items relating more or less to his Civil War service. John Carroll's editing is limited to a few introductory remarks, leaving the source materials to stand on their own. Lacking a substantial historical context, the reports make for dry and disjointed reading and are revealing only in attesting to the competitive instinct that would mark Custer's later years as lieutenantcolonel of his regiment, the Seventh Cavalry. The heart of thebook, then (less than ninety pages of the total), is the "memoirs," reprinted herefor 367 the second time since their original appearance in The Galaxy Magazine in 1876. They are a mixed bag, covering Custer's years at West Point (1857-61) and the early movements of the Army of the Potomac, breaking off after Williamsburg in May, 1862—before Custer had become a prominent figure. The viewpoint offered in the memoirs is thus necessarily that of a very junior officer—and even dien it is too often secondhand. Custer was an outspoken McClellan partisan, and three of the seven chapters he completed before his death constitute a brief in McClellan's defence, supported by copious extracts from the official record. Indeed, apart from a few opinions strongly maintained, Custer's memoirs are oddly barren of the personal touch. For allhis reputation as a dashing soldier with a flair for the dramatic, his prose is decorous inclining toward pomposity. A couple of choice anecdotes do have die polish that comes through frequent retelling. Custer's explanation for his dismal academic performance at West Point is both honest and funny, while his account of vacillating between the pistol and the sabre in leading his first charge is worthy of a Mark Twain. Butsuch moments are too few to redeem the memoirs as awhole and they do less than Custer's other autobiographical writings to sustain Carroll's contention that with his death on the Little Big Horn "the country lost a more than able correspondent and journalist." Anyone wanting a solid introduction to Custer's Civil War service would still be best advised to read Jay Monaghan's well-written...

pdf

Share