Longstreet's Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J. Goree (review)

84CIVIL WAR HISTORY Longstreet's Aide: The Civil War Letters ofMajor Thomas J. Goree. Edited by Thomas W. Cutrer. (Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1995. Pp. 239. $27.95.) Maj. Thomas J. Goree served on Confederate lieutenant general James Longstreet 's stafffrom Bull Run to Appomattox Court House. As Longstreet's trusted aide-de-camp, Goree participated in most of the major eastern campaigns, and some in the West. Throughout his many months away from home, he wrote his family, recording for them his wartime experience. Thomas W Cutrer has assembled Goree's surviving wartime letters, a travel diary, and selected postwar correspondence into a well-edited and highly readable portrait of the conflict and many of its best-known participants. Goree's letters include vivid descriptions ofJames Longstreet, Micah Jenkins, Joseph E. Johnston, and Jefferson Davis and ofbattles like Bull Run, Seven Pines, and the Seven Days. Most letters date from 1861 and the postwar era, but Cutrer's introduction and informative endnotes fill in the gaps. Cutrer argues that Goree's correspondence offers a broad view of the upper workings of the Army of Northern Virginia, and insight into "a remarkable individual worthy of attention on his own account" (2). Indeed, Thomas Goree's story is unique; he survived the entire war without suffering a single wound. His keen observational and writing skills also make his letters unusually rich and informative. These letters are important for other reasons. Although Goree was an educated member ofthe slaveholding elite, his writings reveal concerns and emotions shared by common soldiers. After Bull Run he confessed that although unhurt, "I will say that I was pretty badly frightened" (23). His letters show a soldier anxious for mail, lonely for his family, and tempted by everyday vices of army life. Goree's age and social class also made him representative of the last generation of antebellum slaveholders. William R. J. Pegram's biographer, Peter S. Carmichael, has recently argued that young officers like Goree saw the war as a holy struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. They perceived slavery as morally and biblically sanctioned and the hated North as a separate people diametrically opposed to the Southern way of life. "I have engaged in this struggle as I would in a religious duty," Goree wrote in December 1861, "and I am not willing, but hope that I am prepared if necessary to be sacrificed upon the altar of my country" (64). Later, he maintained, "If a man cannot get a gun, he should arm himself with a tomahawk, pike or anything with which he can kill the invader. It is better to spend our all in defending our country than to be subjugated and have it taken away from us" (76). Goree survived the war, enduring "subjugation" by the Yankees. He returned to Texas to raise a family and dabble in law, business, and politics. Wartime ties and memories lingered. He corresponded with former comrades, including his beleaguered commander, James Longstreet. In March 1 888 fellow ex-Confederate Moxley Sorrel wrote Goree ofthe '"great days' now settling so long in the BOOK REVIEWS85 past" (169). Goree's published Civil War letters bring those days back; days that were not always great, but days of significant interest to modern readers. Lesley J. Gordon Murray State University Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga ofthe C.S.S. Shenandoah in the North Pacific. By Murray Morgan.(Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1995. Pp. 336. $19.95) In the autumn of 1 864, as Grant pushed toward Richmond and Sherman battered Confederate forces in Georgia, Southern agents in England acquired the Sea King, a new, fully rigged, 1,160-ton vessel that had been built for service as a troop transport between the British Isles and India. On October 8, the ship dropped down the Thames and put to sea, ostensibly bound for Bombay. However, when out of sight, she set course for Madeira to rendezvous with Laurel, a steamer laden with the cannon, ammunition, and stores needed to convert the Sea King into a Confederate commerce raider. Embarked in Laurel were Lt. James I. Waddell, C.S.N., the prospective commanding officer of...