Jubal Early's Raid on Washington: 1864 (review)

182erra WAR HISTORY book (a welcome departure from U. B. Phillips), but neither is there much sensitivity to issues of race. Labor in both field and tobacco factory was overwhelmingly black, but neither race relations nor the evolving impact of the industry on slaves is systematically addressed. There is even less attention to women, black or white. Suzanne Lebsock recently had shown, in her study of entebellum Petersburg, how Virginia women's lives might be illuminatingly reconstructed and analyzed; her work does not even appear in Siegel's bibliography, and indeed, one would have difficulty finding single female name in the book. Surely it is late in the historiographical day to write about "society" from such a strikingly white male perspective. The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness does several things well. It demonstrates persuasively that Danville and its hinterland departed notably from the moonlight-and-magnolias myth of the Old South. It reminds us that climate and ecology really do affect—though not, probably , as deterministically as Siegel suggests—what people do. It shows a close symbiosis between town and countryside too often forgotten in the literature on the South. It reminds us that earlier historians still have useful things to say to us. It holds our interest throughout. It is no small compliment to say that despite its shortcomings, these achievements are major enough to make this book worthy of the attention of every serious student of the antebellum South. John d'Entremont Randolph-Macon Woman's College JubalEarly's Raid on Washington: 1864. By Benjamin Franklin Cooling. (Baltimore: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1989. Pp. xiv, 334. $24.95.) Jubal A. Early's campaigning in the Shenandoah Valley and Maryland during June-October 1864 has attracted less scholarly and popular attention than Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. Images of the dour Jackson driving his infantry up and down the Valley to frustrate a series of Federal opponents abound in the literature, often accompanied by lavish pronouncements about the brilliance and impact of these movements. Early and his small army fought over a larger arena than did Jackson's force, marched hundreds of miles farther, faced better Union leadership, inflicted thousands more casualties, and influenced Northern actions to a greater degree, yet their efforts and accomplishments usually suffer in comparative estimates of the two operations: Jackson is the supremely gifted hero whose exploits in the Valley served as a springboard to international fame; Early a tragically limited man who "lost" the Valley to Sheridan and his torch-bearing soldiers. BOOK REVIEWS183 Benjamin F. Cooling's Jubal Early's Raid on Washington: 1864 joins recent titles by Jeffry D. Wert and Thomas A. Lewis (as well as two reprints of Early's memoirs) in a growing literature on the 1864 Valley Campaign. Cooling focuses on Early's operations through the first week in August, when Grant selected Philip H. Sheridan to command Federal forces that would eventually gain supremacy in the Valley. Frank E. Vandiver traversed much of this ground thirty years ago in Jubal's Raid: General Early's Famous Attack on Washington in 1864, but Cooling's treatment is considerably more detailed and draws on a far wider range of manuscripts and archival sources. The narrative moves briskly forward from Early's victory over David Hunter at Lynchburg through the Battle of the Monocacy, skirmishing just outside Washington (where Lincoln came under fire at Fort Stevens), and the Confederate withdrawal across the Potomac. In addition to the main thread of his narrative, Cooling devotes attention to an abortive attempt by part of Early's cavalry to liberate Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Maryland, the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and postwar debates over the campaign and efforts to preserve the battlefield at the Monocacy. Jubal Early emerges as a general who possessed ability but sometimes failed to march effectively, and proved unable to stop plundering and straggling among his troops once they crossed the Potomac. Cooling's overall analysis of Early's operation is somewhat contradictory. He makes the extravagant statement that "Old Jube's" campaign extended the life of the Confederacy by nine months, but nonetheless follows a time-worn rut in adding that "Old Jube...