The Wild Life of the Army: Civil War Letters of James A. Garfield (review)

214CIVIL war history been generous in citing within the text the writers whom he has quoted, and while he has relied heavily on published works, anyone who has researched in manuscripts of the period will recognize that the author also has drawn from these sources. The illustrations are magnificent! Some are familiar, especially the portraits of high-ranking political and military leaders and well-known women, but most of the etchings, drawings, and photographs have not appeared in other volumes. Of special interest are the photographs of Negroes and the street scenes in southern towns. So realistic are the latter taken at close range that one can almost smell the dust and feel the mud of the dirt thoroughfares. To see new faces throughout the book, even though all cannot be positively identified, is indeed refreshing. Mr. Milhollen is to be congratulated on his selection of illustrations. Embattled Confederates is an accurate but not a pedantic account interesting but not superficial. It is beautifully written and illustrated and should be enjoyed by anyone who has an interest in Confederate history. Mary Elizabeth Massey Winthrop College The WUd Life of the Army: Civil War Letters of James A. Garfield. Edited by Frederick D. Williams. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964. Pp. xx, 325. $8.50.) The military record of James A. Garfield had much to do with winning him a congressional nomination in Ohio, and thus was a first step on the road to the presidency. For this reason it is appropriate that attention be paid to his military career. This volume of letters shows how he advanced from campaigning with the Army of Ohio in Tennessee and Kentucky in 1861 to a nomination to Congress in 1862 and to being chief of staff in the Army of Cumberland in Tennessee in 1863. Garfield was a complex man, and his letters reveal that he sometimes placed his own interests above all else. With Rosecrans he gambled on victory in Tennessee, but at the same time he criticized his superior to S. P. Chase in a letter, thus apparently trying to protect himself in case of defeat or victory. Praise of Garfield in this military campaign at the expense of Rosecrans was an issue in the presidential election of 1880, and the controversial letter itself was published in 1882 after Garfield's death. These letters are interesting and informative about day-to-day life in the army, certain battles and campaigns, Garfield's personality, and political and military gossip of the time, but they are not literary masterpieces. Colorful observations on personalities or problems of the day are interposed with accounts of routine activities. Obviously the letters were never written for publication. They are well-edited, with an informative introduction for each part, and are footnoted enough to enable the reader to identify persons and events of which he had not previously heard. BOOK REVIEWS215 Students interested in political and military history, biography, and Ohio history will enjoy the volume. They will look forward to the Garfield diaries that the editor and an associate are preparing for publication. Harold B. Hancock Otterbein College The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryhnd, 1862-1864. By Charles Lewis Wagandt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964. Pp. xii, 299. $6.50.) In this well-written history of Civil War politics in Maryland, Charles L. Wagandt has provided a dramatic study in microcosm, which reflects and helps to iUuminate the complexities involved in interpreting the larger national picture. Like other border states, Maryland was "sectionalized." Her northern and western counties (including the city of Baltimore), were largely nonslaveholding areas: a region characterized by a heterogeneous population and "growing towns, bustling industry, and vigorous commerce that strongly contrasted with the static life" of the slaveholding southern and eastern shore counties which dominated the political and economic life of the state. Thus, the Civil War provided free-state advocates in Maryland with a long awaited opportunity to press for the abolition of slavery and to rid the state of an outmoded political, social, and economic order. Maryland's position as a slave state that remained in the Union was anomalous, however, and the justification for emancipating her slaves could...