Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the United States (review)

BOOK REVIEW363 army strength," thereby undermining popular backing, discouraging enlistments, and paving die way for military defeat (p. 151). Escott's thesis is weakened by its reliance on several unproven assumptions. He assumes that it was within the power of one man to mitigate the Confederacy's internal deficiencies so as to avoid military defeat, evidently forgetting that Davis was not even able to feed and clothe the army adequately, let alone the civilian population. He also assumes that civilian disaffection was the main cause of military defeat, whereas the overwhelming weight of evidence, it seems to me, shows that failure in battle was, with all its consequences, by far the most important reason for declining morale. Finally, Escott assumes that the Confederacy lacked the allegiance of the majority of whites to such a degree as to justify his conclusion that Confederate nationalism failed. The fact is that three-fourths ofwhite male Confederates ofmilitary age served in the army, and more than half of those who served suffered wounds or death. If devotion to the cause is Escott's yardstick for nationalism, and if this remarkable display of patriotism and sacrifice is considered to have been insufficient, one wonders what would satisfy him. There is no doubt that Escott wants to be fair to Davis, and he has some very complimentary things to say about him. There are, in fact, inconsistencies in his presentation suggesting that he does not subscribe wholeheartedly to his own thesis, given his own presentation of the appalling difficulties with which David grappled so courageously. The book is written in a clear and straightforward style, and it provides a useful overview of the Confederacy's internal travails. Ludwell H. Johnson College of William and Mary Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the UnitedStates. (Washington, D.C: National Historical Publications and Records Commission, 1978. Pp. 905. $25.00.) Since the publication of Philip M. Hamer's A Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States in 1961, various institutions have produced guides or catalogs of their holdings. Archives and manuscript repositories have also reported their more significant collections in the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) and American Literary Manuscripts. In the knowledge that Hamer's Guide especially was outdated, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) embarked on a program in 1974 to prepare a revised version. Rather than confine the project to Hamer alone, the NHPRC contacted repositories listed in NUCMC and in other publications. As a result, the number of entries more than doubled from some 1,300 in Hamer to 2,675 364CIVIL WAR HISTORY individual repositories in the Directory. As for its geographical scope, institutions are included for each of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas Trust Territory. The entries are arranged alphabetically, first by state or territory, then by city, and last by the name of the institution. The Directory is useful for locating relatively current information on an archives or historical society. In addition to addresses, phone numbers and thehours when a repository is open, theDirectory includes a general description of individual holdings as well as appropriate sources to consult for more detail. Most entries also contain a section that lists the major subject areas for which an institution solicits material. Given the alphabetical arrangement of the work, one can easily consult the Directory to determine whether an institution in a particular geographical area might be interested in accepting material on a certain subject, such as letters to and from James A. Garfield. Should he wish to choose from among allknown repositories that collect Garfield material, however, he must first examine the entire volume in order to find most of the choices available. That is, he cannot simply rely on the index in the Directory. For those who require a comprehensive fist of known source material in a subject area, the name and broad subject index in this volume is not that useful. Under the "CONFEDERACY," for example, the index lists only six entries. In contrast, Hamer has eleven. More seriously, the index might actually tend to mislead novice or even experienced researchers...