Odyssey in Gray: A Diary of Confederate Service 1863-1865 (review)

178civil war history devoted volumes to the subject. Nevertheless, Charles Bracelen Flood, novelist and author of nine books, has elected to recount once again the story of Lee's last years. Flood begins with a poignant description of Lee's surrender at Appomattox and his subsequent journey to his family's rented quarters in Richmond. There the war continued to intrude as soldiers and civilians alike paid their respects to the man already coming to personify southern arms. To Lee's chagrin, this veneration continued for the remainder of his life. Stoically accepting the results of the conflict, Lee counseled all southerners to do likewise, a point much emphasized by Flood. Ultimately, in order to support his family, Lee accepted the presidency of the near-destitute Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, a position he retained until his death in 1870. Lee's successful efforts to improve the college amidst the turmoil of Reconstruction are a major theme of the book. Flood's account unfolds through chronologically arranged vignettes, which serve to emphasize Lee's heroic qualities. His sources are the standard accounts byLee's contemporaries, the best-knownLeebiographies , and the major collections of Lee papers. There are no startling revelations, although the story of the lastpainting ofLee, byartistFrank Buchser, was apparently overlooked by previous biographers. Flood is aware ofrecent attempts to discover a darker side to Lee's character, but he chooses instead to emphasize the more traditional view of Lee as a figure larger than life. Flood's Lee, therefore, is the Lee of Douglas Freeman, not the Lee of Thomas Connelly. Lee - The Last Years is by no means a major scholarly achievement. Instead it is a solid recounting of the last years of a significant American life, told in a pleasant, vivid style. The author intended no more, and, judged by that standard, he has served the reader well. William Glenn Robertson Combat Studies Institute U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Odyssey in Gray: A Diary of Confederate Service 1863-1865. By Douglas French Forrest. Edited by William N. Still, Jr. (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1979. Pp. ix, 352. $15.00.) Seven years before the outset of the American Civil War, French marshal Pierre Joseph Françoise Bosquet uttered his famous observation of the charge of the British Light Brigade at Balaclava—"C'estmagnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." He might well have repeated that sentiment upon reading the diary of Assistant Paymaster Douglas French Forrest of the CSS Rappahannock. However erudite the twenty-six-year-old Virginian appears in his two-year diary, his story is hardly about war. It is more a travelogue—a veritable Boswellian or Pepysian feastofplaces, book reviews179 people, and events more akin to the customary grandtourlavished upon pampered American youth. Actually, from its very title, through introductory comments by the accomplished Confederate naval scholar, William Still, to Forrest's own words, an image emerges of cultivated noncombatancy. Perhaps this was one of the factors meriting the decision by Virginia State Library people to meld their own copy ofForrest's observations with the only other extant products of his writing in the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill. The resulting book is less military or naval history, and more cultural or social history. Still, this book merits our attention for several reasons. Frankly, the palpitating breasts of armchair Civil War buffs will not suffer from the lack of heroic deeds aboard ship as shown by Forrest's diary. They can always turn to Delaney's John Mcintosh KeU of the RaiderAlabama or Charles G. Summersell's editing of The Journal of George Townley Fullam (both University of Alabama Press books) for glorious tales of the Lost Cause. Forrest will show instead that much military service in the Civil War, even for officers, revolved around prosaic drydock anticipation of some future "Trafalgar" which never came, sharp skirmishes with foreign bureaucrats over maritime law or other paper issues, or how much time was spent in escorting visitors around the ship or holding holy services on the sabbath. The details of naval life are scattered and must be sought carefully in the diary. Rather, it is the larger landscape of Forrest...