Sherman's Other War: The General and the Civil War Press (review)

76CIVIL WAR HISTORY man's analysis consistently pushes beyond older categories of interpretation . His discussion of relationships between the sexes stresses changes in the concept of the Woman's Sphere and the improved networks of communication within organizations. His interpretation of the association between white abolitionists and free blacks rests upon a portrait of the immediatist as a paternalistic "white evangelical middle-class missionary " who regarded blacks in terms of a child/savage dichotomy. The endorsement of violence, according to Friedman, reflected the failure of the missionary perspective and signified a search for fellowship outside of the confines of immediatist clusters. While Gregarious Saints fulfills much of the potential of applying social psychological insight to historical settings, the book also reveals some of the limitations of such an approach. Historians still have not addressed satisfactorily the causal relationship between individual behavior and the broader cultural milieu in effecting change. In the example of the immediatists, the internal dynamics of a particular cluster, however significant, tends to obscure the active, often transatlantic, cross-fertilization of ideas and interests between activists. Historians also remain bedeviled by the problem of origins, in this case the timing of the rise of immediatism in America. Friedman suggests that the adoption of immediatism stemmed from a critique of the American Colonization Society first articulated in the 1820s. But this cannot explain why the call for immediate emancipation erupted in America in 1830 and not earlier. Gregarious Saints is a provocative work based upon extensive research in manuscript sources; it is the first to utilize fully the Blagden collection located at Harvard University. Friedman's book offers a fresh perspective, challenges widely accepted generalizations, and suggests new questions for future exploration; it is an important contribution to the literature on American abolitionism. Louis P. Masur Princeton University Shermans Other War: The General and the Civil War Press. By John F. Marszalek. (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1981. Pp. x, 230. $14.95.) In every American war since that with Mexico, press and government have disagreed over the meaning of the guarantees found in the First Amendment. As Professor Marszalek points out, during the Civil War the Union government attempted to control the press through censorship of the telegraph, the denial of the mails to certain newspapers, and the occasional arrest of editors and reporters. While some newspapermen fought back by attempting to subvert the censorship and by attacking these policies in print, others praised the government's actions and BOOK REVIEWS77 suggested competing editors and reporters as candidates for jail. Thus the real issues of press freedom during wartime were never joined. The administration developed no consistent national policy, the journalists no solid defense of their rights. Marszalek says that General Sherman fought his "other war" because of the lack of a consistent national policy. On the other hand, he sees this "war" as also "a personal conflict rather than a constitutional debate" (p. 19). Marszalek believes that although Sherman entered the war with a driven desire to succeed, his earlier experiences made him fear failure from sources beyond his control. Moreover, he attributed the 1857 collapse of the San Francisco bank he managed to the hostility and unfairness of the local press. In this lay the seeds of Sherman's antipress stand. Nonetheless, Sherman did develop a constitutional theory to justify his position. The general argued that a war suspended First Amendment rights. When the enemy received valuable information of the army and its activities from newspaper reports, this prolonged the war. Lowered military and civilian morale brought on by newsmen criticizing the army and its leaders also helped the enemy. Thus the war could only be successfully prosecuted by limiting reporters' activities. As to the public's right to know, Sherman answered that it received all the information needed from soldiers' letters home and the official reports of the army commanders. In tracing Sherman's relations with the press, Marszalek tells a sorry story of newspaper irresponsibility and official overreaction. As Union commander in Kentucky, Sherman limited his contacts with reporters and, to hide the weakness of his army from the enemy, ordered several newsmen from his camps. A rumor that the general might move...