Letters from Forest Place: A Plantation Family's Correspondence, 1846-1881 (review)

338civil war history secondary source. A subsequent random check of a half dozen other quotes found all of them to be misquoted to some degree. Marching to Cold Harbor reads well, but such carelessness makes one question its accuracy. Terry L. Jones Northeast Louisiana University Lettersfrom ForestPlace: A Plantation Family's Correspondence, 1846-1881. Edited by E. Grey Diamond and Herman Hattaway. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Pp. 512. $32.50.) This collection of correspondence concentrates on the period from 1 846 to 1 865 and reflects the broader patterns of life and thought in the South of that era. Specifically, the letters delineate daily life on a Mississippi cotton plantation, detail the intimacies of a troubled marriage, and describe the attempts of a wife and mother to keep the bonds of family secure. The principal correspondent is Sarah Watkins, whose exchange of letters with her daughters Lettie and Mary give a decidedly feminine perspective to family relationships, to the personal concerns and the perennial chores that gave size and shape to the world of women in the South. Yet it is the expectations and character of Sarah's husband, Dr. Thomas Watkins, that define and direct the correspondence. Watkins had abandoned his medical practice in Alabama, purchased Forest Place, and entered the top levels of Southern society as a cotton planter in 1843. He zealously guarded his newly earned status and demanded that his wife and daughters do the same. Ever conscious of his prerogatives as family patriarch, Watkins defined any dissent as defiance. When Lettie married against his wishes, he accused his wife, daughter, and son-in-law of conspiring against him. He forbade Lettie entrance to his home, refused to communicate with her, and, for years thereafter, continued to blame his wife and to disparage his daughter. Sarah Watkins tells a compelling story of a woman plying the emotional path between placating her husband and protecting herself and her daughter from his verbal retribution. She proved a resolute woman who stood fast before her formidable husband to correspond with her rebellious daughter, to visit her on occasion, and eventually to bring Watkins to a grudging reconciliation. This protracted discord cuts to the core of letters that denounce the disappointments that descended upon all women—disappointments bred of dependence. The correspondence reveals the usual preoccupation with health and provides chatty commentary on courtships, marriages, and births. Loneliness, too, constitutes a major theme, as does the routine of living and working among slaves. The relationship among Sarah and the house servants demonstrates an unusually warm familiarity. Still, she perceived the matter of selling and leasing BOOK reviews339 slaves as necessary; she despised abolitionists and thought secession a proper response to Lincoln's election. During the Civil War, life at Forest Place continued much as it had before. The primary focus of Sarah's letters centers on the struggle to cope with an alarming variety of shortages that appeared as early as 1861. Anxiety and fear forged by economic uncertainty, rumors of approaching Federals, and the staggering casualty reports combined to confirm the early collapse of morale on the homefront. Sarah Watkins died in 1865 and correspondence dwindled. The postwar years brought declining fortunes that turned Thomas Watkins to drink and forced him to sell his estate and find a home with the daughter he had once banished. Editors E. Grey Diamond and Herman Hatttaway provide appropriate commentary and identifications for this important collection that makes a valuable contribution to the study of women in the nineteenth-century South. Carolyn E. DeLatte McNeese State University One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee. By Robert Tracy McKenzie. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. x, 213. $39-95) Sincethe 1970s, historians have become morereluctantto acceptgeneralizations about the Civil War and Reconstruction based largely upon the conclusions found in studies of the plantation South. Concerned that the region's diversity was being overlooked, scholars more recently have expanded the scope of their research to include nonplantation areas like Appalachia and the upcountry of Georgia and South Carolina. In One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee, Robert Tracy McKenzie, assistant professor...