James Louis Petigru: Southern Conservative, Southern Dissenter (review)

i84civil war history together to memorialize the war, symbolizing the reuniting of whites, North and South. African Americans were barred from most of these activities, and there were few memorials raised to them. The veterans worked to make Memorial Day a national holiday. But Piehler worries that such holidays have lost their civic purpose, becoming times for parties and store sales. The Civil War, along with the World Wars, is unusual in the extent of its remembrance. The Korean and Vietnam veterans who feel neglected have much in common with the veterans of America's other limited wars, who got little federal recognition. This is a valuable study, although it is incomplete. There is more to memory than monuments. Shouldn't we also look at historical reenactment, film, and the many military histories, particularly of the Civil War, as aspects of remembering war? The author barely mentions these. Michael C. C. Adams Northern Kentucky University James Louis Petigru: Southern Conservative, Southern Dissenter. By William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1 995. Pp. xv, 237. $35.00.) Jane and William Pease have written a solid, modern biography ofJames Louis Petigru ( 1 789-1 863) that recounts his family struggles, details his legal practice, and chronicles his political adventures; no scholar will need to cover the same ground in the same way again. Yet much remains unsaid in a brief narrative that too frequently glosses over questions of significance and neglects problems of context. After a troubled childhood in which he early assumed the family responsibilities shirked by his alcoholic father, James Louis Pettigrew (he changed the spelling in 1 809) graduated from South Carolina College and, following teaching stints and a customarily short legal apprenticeship, established a lowcountry law practice. Petigru's 1816 marriage to Jane Amelia Posteli brought him both property and problems, and the tale of their unhappy relationship and related family woes forms a central thread in the book. Petigru mostly appears as a sufferer, although his fiery temper and sometimes excessive devotion to his law practice certainly contributed to family tensions. Petigru unquestionably was an energetic, accomplished lawyer. Like other less skillful pleaders, he handled mostly routine cases that involved property. By rendering valuable services to an incredible number of clients over several decades, Petigru won acclaim, respect, and wealth—wealth unfortunately consumed in ill-considered business ventures. The Peases fail to demonstrate that Petigru shaped important legal developments or made any significant contributions to legal theory. What justifies this biography's inclusion in the Legal History of the South Series is the Peases' careful examination of everyday warfare in the legal trenches. Petigru litigated ordinary matters remarkably BOOK REVIEWS1 85 well, and his career reminds historians that landmark cases were rare and that effective lawyering usually involved diligence rather than brilliance. Petigru's famous case against South Carolina, or vice versa, obviously figures prominently in any appraisal of the man. Nowhere except in South Carolina would Petigru's conservative, Whiggish, Unionist principles have been so objectionable to so many, and the Peases devote two chapters to Petigru's tilts against radicals in the nullification and secession crises. The Peases are, however , at a loss to explain how, exactly, Petigru became a political pariah. Their conventional narrative of events never explores the peculiar political culture of South Carolina or Petigru's own opinions fully enough to allow readers to fathom why Petigru differed so dramatically from the average planter-lawyerpolitician in his native state. Basically, the argument goes, Petigru being what he was, and other white South Carolinians being what they were, a clash was all but inevitable. True, maybe, but not very helpful. References to the Calvinist conservatism of Moses Waddel's academy, to experiences with back-country lawlessness, and to an almost innate fear of disorder hardly suffice to explain Petigru's renegade course— did not John Calhoun have nearly the same schooling , experiences, and traits? The Peases hint that Petigru may have had qualms about slavery, and they mention his occasional laments about not removing to the North, but they pursue neither lead very far. Instead, in summing up Petigru's existence, they stress the "ambiguity of his...