The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor's Civil War (review)

154CIVIL WAR HISTORY quality of temperament but also from Cleburne's service as a corporal in the British army, where the value of discipline, drill, and unit pride were instilled. Cleburne worked hard to inculcate these qualities in his rebel volunteers. It is indicative of how hard up for military men the Confederacy was in 1861 that Cleburne's term as a British ranker brought him swift promotion to line command . The South, like the North, paid initially for inexperience at the command level; Cleburne could not rid himself at first of the Victorian notion that a gallant soldier's perennial response to a tactical situation should be to charge the enemy. It was a fixed idea that others, notably John Bell Hood, never lost. Cleburne's Ufe experience is perhaps a sad one. Arriving from Ireland in 1 849 at age twenty-one, he settled in Helena, Arkansas, and came to identify passionately with his adopted region. Deeply loyal to friends, he stood up and was wounded in street encounters on the violent Southern frontier. But he never fully understood white Southern mores. In the winter of 1 863-1 864 he recommended solving the Confederacy's manpower problem by inducing slaves to join the army with the offer of freedom. He was surprised that many brother officers thought his scheme insane and himself a traitor. Unlike this Irish immigrant , they could not for a moment contemplate giving up the peculiar institution , even to win their independence. Confederate apologists aside, the preservation of slavery was an essential Southern war aim. Cleburne's deep devotion was perhaps worthy of a better cause, but as an expatriate he at least found a home and a family in the Army of Tennessee to replace the ones left behind. He fought with loyalty and increasing competence although, as Symonds points out, the Stonewall of the west, unlike his namesake in the east, never proved that he had the powers of independentjudgement needed for command above the divisional level. Militarily and intellectually, he was a man of gifts tempered by limitations. Michael C. C. Adams Northern Kentucky University The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor's Civil War. By William Marvel. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. 337. $34.95.) The cruise of the Confederate raider Alabama and her subsequent final action with the United States steamer Kearsarge (June 1 9, 1 864), is a familiar tale— suitably laced with romantic Southern knightly patriotic fervor and hard-headed Northern industrial persistence. It cannot be doubted that the operational lives of Alabama and Kearsarge nicely mirror the different viewpoints, strengths, and deficiencies of both the Southern and Northern naval establishments. It remains a ripping good yarn. These sea miles, however, are already very well represented in current Civil War naval historiography. One is forced to wonder if there is really any point in setting sail with Mr. Marvel once again over this well-traveled course. BOOK REVIEWS155 The author indicates in his preface that Civil War seamen and sea officers are little represented in current "common soldier life," literature—adding in strongly suggestive terms that, at least with the Alabama/Kearsarge affair, he intends to rectify this deficiency. This is surely a true statement. Ifthis is what Mr. Marvel had accomplished it would have been a most useful addition to Civil War naval historiography. The reader will not find, however, any statistically viable revelations concerning Civil War nautical life in general, or regarding the experiences of the Alabama and Kearsarge crews in particular. Marvel prints very few quotations from any of his primary source material (aside from an occasional sentence fragment), and rather than using his primary material to construct an academically defensible interpretive discussion, the author engages in a jarring literary style. Mr. Marvel assumes a great deal about the attitudes of nineteenth-century men. Regarding the arrival of Kearsarge's initial crew, Mr. Marvel writes: "Those who did take to the ship did not like what they found" ( 1 8). Is this really a fair interpretation? Not having the quotations before us from which the author has drawn this conclusion, it is difficult to judge. Is this statement based on...