The Civil War Diary of Clara Solomon: Growing Up in New Orleans, 1861-1862 (review)

l68CIVIL WAR HISTORY the girls. He also shared the time-honored foot soldier's resentment for the brass, in fact noting in one letter, "I saw Gen Grant to day he loocks no smarter then eny other man" (82). Although James considered the possibility of advancing his career by serving as an officer in a black regiment when such units were created in 1863, George remained a committed aversive racist. Referring to an abolitionist back in Stockbridge, George insisted, "i wish Baker was down her. he wood get sick ofthe Niger. ... I hate them wors that I do a rebel a good deal. I all moste want to shoot them when I see them darn them, they are the free men now and we are the slaves" (55). Negrophobia was George's only ideological obsession— mainly he wanted to survive and to go back to farming in Michigan, where he had his parents invest his army pay in acreage. Generally speaking, the content ofthese letters is quite thin, comprising enough, perhaps, for part of a scholarly article. The phonetic spelling, as always, is intriguing for what it reveals about the sounds of spoken language in rural midwestem America 130 years ago. Retaining the original spellings was a useful editorial decision, particularly as they are accompanied by an extensive glossary. John T. Greene is a professor of religious studies and Hebrew language at Michigan State rather than a historian, and his lack of background shows. His introduction and notes are amateurish and cranky, his extensive summaries of the contents of each letter tedious. I suppose one cannot blame Michigan State University Press for attempting to cash in on the highly profitable Civil War trade, but putting out such books can hardly gain them scholarly credibility. They should have enlisted the participation of a professional scholar in the field, who might have told them not to bother. Michael Fellman Simon Fraser University The Civil War Diary of Clara Solomon: Growing Up in New Orleans, 18611 862. Edited by Elliott Ashkenazi. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1955. Pp. xiii, 444· $34 95·) Clara Solomon was sixteen years old when the Civil War began. Her comfortable Sephardic Jewish family was well assimilated into the Southern culture of New Orleans and fully supported the Confederate cause. Even when her merchant father went to the Virginia front to supply the Confederate troops there, Clara, her five sisters, and their mother were confident that the war would be short, their own privations minimal, and the Confederacy victorious in its fight for independence. They took early shortages ofbutter and cloth stoically, while they grieved deeply for the loss ofboys and men they knew from New Orleans who began to die at places like Shiloh. They were little prepared for Commodore David Farragut's capture of New Orleans in spring 1862 or for Gen. Benjamin Butler's subsequent rule. Both, however, Clara saw as minor setbacks in the book reviews169 fight for independence, and although she did not support open defiance offederal orders or flaunting of confederate patriotism, she had no use for Union sympathizers or collaborators either. The diary does not tell us how the family handled the prolongation of the occupation or the ultimate defeat of the South. The impressions that come through this diary are of a very well-educated, bright, and thoughtful young woman who is often as eager to read the newspaper and reflect on current events as to engage in the perpetual rounds of visiting family friends expected of people of her social position. Ultimately the diary may reveal more about Southern social history, especially girlhood romantic friendships and education, than about the effects of the Civil War or about New Orleans Jewry, although it is certainly valuable in these areas as well. It does not give the reader insight into why the Solomon family was so pro-Confederate. Clara hardly mentions slaves and slavery, and charges offederal usurpations of power remain vague. Clara is also not very self-consciously Jewish, although the diary reveals that the family's closest friends attend the same synagogue, and part of Clara's constant anxiety about not being well-liked may have come from her...