The Gettysburg Campaign, June 3-August 1, 1863: A Comprehensive, Selectively Annotated Bibliography (review)

170CIVIL WAR HISTORY even in carrying out his major objective of chronicling the life of Booth before the assassination, similar mistakes abound. Booth certainly never attended St. Charles' College at Pikeville, Maryland, astheauthor states (p. 12); when his father Junius Brutus died, John Wilkes was fourteen, not thirteen as Samples avers (p. 14); and even in thechronology, which purports to give a complete list of Booth's stage appearances, certain important (and easily documented) engagements are left out entirely. The author also displays vast confusion on the date and significance of Booth's Canadian travels. He seems to think that Booth went to Canada at least twice, and in fact, narrates events properly dated to October, 1864, as if they occurred before the actor's longengagementin Boston in April and May of that same year. When it comes to the matter of the assassin 's escape, readers familiar with the last twelve days of Booth's life will wonder why Samples speaks of "the diary he kept during the six days and five nights of the escape" (p. 3). More serious, however, than any actual errors of fact is the author's uncritical acceptance of data from highly questionable sources. The GreatConspiracy (an anonymous, fictionalizednarrativebestdescribed as a "penny dreadful," publishedinPhiladelphiain 1866) is cited entirely too often as if it were a reliable fount of historic fact. In one instance (p. 166), Samples even quotes as an authentic letter of Booth to his girl friend, EUa Starr Turner, a piece obviously produced by the vivid imagination of the author of The Great Conspiracy. News stories written by the colorful but not entirely reliable "Gath" Townsend are also accorded far too much reliability. A final criticism, in yet another area, is the author's failure ever really to come to grips with the complexities of Booth as a person. Though, as previously commented, the numerous excerpts from Booth's own writings and fromremarks ofotherswho actuallyknew himprovide genuine insights both into Booth's personality and stage achievements, the author on his own seems strangely remote from the object of his research: his Booth is no more alive or real than a painted stage set. The talented, volatile , and tragically misguided young actor, who is unquestionably one of history's most fascinating villains, somehow deserves something better. Constance Head Western Carolina University The Gettysburg Campaign, June 3-August 1, 1863: A Comprehensive, Selectively Annotated Bibliography. By Richard Allen Sauers. (Westport , Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982 Pp. 277 $35.00.) Mr. Sauers is to be commended for undertaking the unenviable task of compiling a "comprehensive" bibliography of the Gettysburg Campaign . After examining an impressive list of2,757 sources, one is inclined BOOK REVIEWS171 to agree with Prof. Warren Hassler in his foreword when he notes that "even the dedicated scholar . . . must wonder if he has really done little more than scratch the surface of the mind-boggling number . . . that exist on Gettysburg" (p. ix). The entries, which "range from generalinterest travel literature, fiction, personal reminiscences of participants, films ... to highly specialized studies of minute aspects of the campaign " (p. xiv), unquestionably providethe most substantial Gettysburg bibliography under one cover. Like Pickett's Division, however, a close scrutiny of the "paper strength" reveals less substance than first apparent , and though he has made a noble effort, the author has not wholly succeeded in his stated purposeofpublishing"avastarrayofitems . . . connected with the second major problem of Gettysburg historiography —the inordinate amount of controversy surrounding the battle" (p. xii). The usefulness of this bibliography is diminished by the author's failure to scrutinize the nature of the entries before including them. Just a quick survey by this writer reveals more than 100 items that will do nothing to further illuminate the Meade-Sickles or Lee-Longstreet controversies , such as guidebooks, films and filmstrips, articles on the 1938 and 1983 anniversaries, and the Gettysburg "Cyclorama." Entry #2404, for example, is the late Gettysburg photographer William Tipton's souvenir booklet Gettysburg in a Bombshell (Gettysburg: 1904), which is little more than a collection of Battlefield photographs in a circular format shaped like a "bombshell." Other entries by Tipton (2401-2403), as well as Battlefield Guides John Pitzer (1896), Luther Minnigh (1589-92...