The Pursuit of a Dream (review)

book reviews183 Union military service. Perhaps students of the war on the western front will be disappointed that the author has reserved only the single last volume for an analysis of operations in this theater. Others may be disappointed in the organization of the trilogy. Some criticism appears valid that the author's treatment of separate war theaters in different volumes sometimes obscures the overall war effort. Still, Starr's work is impressive. After the publication of the third volume, it appears that there will be little remaining to be said of the history ofUnion cavalry in the Civil War. Thomas L. Connelly University of South Carolina The Pursuit of a Dream. By Janet Sharp Hermann. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 290. $17.50.) The combination seems impossible: the Mississippi slaveholding brother of Jefferson Davis and the slave turned entrepreneur/planter. Yet, from the antebellum to the postbellum period, both in slavery and out, Joseph Davis and Benjamin Montgomery cooperated to try to establish a communitarian society for black people on the Mississippi River's Davis Bend, south of Vicksburg. The ideas of Utopian communitarian Robert Owen (whom he met in 1825) inspired Davis. The idea of achievement for himself and his family and the hope of progress for his race drove Ben Montgomery. The result was a remarkable example of black success and failure along the banks of the Mississippi River and in its delta. The Pursuit of a Dream might accurately have been subtitled "A Biography of the Montgomery Family." Joe Davis first conceived the dream of a Utopian society, but it was Ben Montgomery andhis talented family who struggled the longest and the hardest to try to put the idea into practice (with Davis's support). During slavery, Montgomery established a store on theDavis plantation, a featnotnormally permitted or usually attempted by a slave. When the Civil War ended slavery and drove Davis off his lands, Montgomery took over. Hewon jurisdictional disputes with Union officials and then bought the property from Davis, who conveniently and encouragingly held the mortgage. During the Reconstruction years, Montgomery organized a community of blacks and overcame the vicissitudes of floods and insects to build a plantation life not unlike that of a successful antebellum white planter. His residence in Jefferson Davis's former house, Brierfield, was the striking symbol of this success. Unfortunately, Joe Davis's death, Mississippi's changed political conditions in 1874, the economic malaise of the age, Ben's injury and subsequent death, and Jefferson Davis's retaking of his land all helped to doom the experiment. Still, the dream lived on in one of Ben's sons, Isaiah, who founded the all-black town of Mound Bayou. For a time, this 184CIVIL WAR HISTORY town was successful, primarily as a symbol of black hope; but then, like so many other small towns in the twentieth century, it faded into obscurity . Ms. Hermann, now a free-lance writer in Berkeley, has produced a vivid account of both black-white cooperation and the black struggle to survive. She does leave some questions unanswered, perhaps because of a lack of sources; she neglects several pertinent secondary sources; and she uses the term "carpetbagger" rather loosely. But, in all, she has written an excellent book, worthy ofits early honors. Itis a History Book Club alternate selection; C. Vann Woodward and Alex Haley have provided dust jacketendorsements; and, recently, theMississippiHistorical Society awarded it the McLemore Prize for the best recentbook on that state's history. This book is well researched, imaginatively conceived, and well written. It deserves to be read widely. John F. Marszalek Mississippi State Univeristy Bruce Catton sAmerica: Selections from His GreatestWorks.Edited by Oliver Jensen. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1979. Pp. 224. $17.50.) One hesitates to refer to the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award recipient Bruce Catton as a "popular historian." His meticulous research and his value to professional historians are beyond question—and yet his singular claim to fame is the consistent appeal of his Civil War-related books to the rank and file of the American people. His clear, forceful, and straightforward style came as a relief to the generation...