The Texas Second Infantry: From Shiloh to Vicksburg (review)

BOOK REVIEWS89 of present-day photographs, drawings, and charts. So many pictures, together with the high quality of the narrative justifies the price, which is high but reasonable. University of Delaware Press earns commendation for excellence of production standards involving so many photographs and drawings and simply for publishing such a useful work. The authors, in turn, deserve praise for conscientiousness and dedication in writing it. Edwin Olmstead , James Hazlett, and Hume Parks, each in his own way, are renowned in artifact circles for artillery expertise. Now they have shared that expertise more broadly through the historical community. Admittedly , few historians, professional or lay, will read the book cover to cover, any more than someone reads a dictionary or encyclopedia cover to cover. But like those books, Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War will endure as the standard reference work on its subject: an important addition to any institutional or personal Civil War library and a significant contribution to knowledge. Richard J. Sommers U.S. Army Military History Institute The Texas Second Infantry: From Shiloh to Vicksburg. By Joseph E. Chance. (Austin: Eakin Press, 1984. Pp. xiv, 216. $13.95.) This work is a regimental history that follows the Texas Second Infantry from its organization shortly after Texas's secession to its disbanding immediately before the final Confederate surrender. Included are accounts of the regiment's participation in many of the major campaigns of the war, especially Corinth, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. The brigade's assault on Battery Robinett at Corinth is still considered one of the most valorous, if unsuccessful, "charges" of the Civil War. The purpose of this book is to pull together fragmentary evidence to write the first complete history of the regiment. Stories of his greatgrandfather 's experiences in the Texas Second led Chance, professor of mathematics at Pan American University, to write this history with the hope of conveying to the reader "the impressions and feelings of the Confederate soldier as he daily confronted death from bullets and sickness" (ix). Sources used include diaries, newspapers, and reminiscences of former regimental members. The strength of the book is its personal aspect, from the horror of the shelling at Vicksburg to the description of Bayland Guard Captain Ashbel Smith as "a man of diminuitive stature, [who] naturally chose to carry a quite large sword" (5). Also covered are more serious questions, including , did the regiment disobey orders at Shiloh? The reader will be struck by the determination of men ill-fed and poorly clothed, performing well in a confusion of orders and changing commanders. On the negative side, there are some problems. The text has many inset quotes, some of which are too long. The book is unevenly edited and 90CIVIL WAR HISTORY lacks a bibliography (it does have endnotes) . Most disconcerting is the style, which is a combination of present and past tenses that makes reading sometimes difficult. However, this book does not pretend to be a history monograph. It provides a personal view of the war and adds to the history of Texas's participation. It is an interesting book, although some historians may feel it lacking in certain areas. William h. graves University of Northern Iowa First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes. By Emily Apt Geer. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, 1984. Pp. vii, 330. $19.95.) The purpose of this biography appears to be twofold: to fill the void that exists between earlier studies of the wives of former presidents, such as those of Mary Todd Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt; and to present the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes as a transitional figure between her passive and almost invisible predecessors and her more active and visible successors. The author is convinced that the Lucy Webb Hayes that emerges is representative of the expanding roles that female public figures began to exhibit in the late nineteenth century. Geer has made extensive use of the letters, diaries, and journals of the Hayes family, especially the Lucy Webb Hayes papers (1841-90) kept in the Rutherford B. Hayes Library in Fremont, Ohio. The latter collection includes speeches, correspondence, memoirs, tributes, scrapbooks, account books, photographs, and...