Daily Life in Civil War America (review)

book reviews175 Southern whites always long, lean, and cadaverous in Northern illustrations? What did that mean? And, in general, what purpose does visual humor serve? Why do we Uke it, and what does it do to us, and we to it? But such questions remain unasked. Still, this is a useful collection of sources. Together with A Reporter's Lincoln, The Lines Are Drawn makes a nice addition to any Civil War bookshelf. Edward E. Baptist University of Miami Daily Life in Civil WarAmerica. By Dorothy Denneen VoIo and James M. VoIo. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 321. $45.00.) Recent studies by Drew Gilpin Faust, James Marten, andJeanieAttie havebroadened the study of the Civil War to include previously marginalized topics. The homefront and civiüans form the core ofthis scholarship. Teachers and reenactors Dorothy Denneen VoIo and James M. VoIo join this body of work by offering their own picture ofnineteenth-century America. DailyLife in Civil WarAmerica explores a broad range of topics, including poUtics, religion, reform, slavery, leisure, homes, food, and fashion. It also contains a section on Civil War soldiers that covers more traditional concerns. Unfortunately, faulty interpretation, historical anachronisms, and numerous misstatements of fact plague this work. In part, this results from the authors' conflation of their own experiences as reenactors with those of nineteenth-century Americans. The Vblos' use of personal photographs of reenacrments instead of those taken in the nineteenth century exempUfies this shortcoming. Likewise, scholars of nineteenth-century America will be disappointed with the historiographical treatment of the period. "The Historians' War," the obvious chapter for a discussion of scholarly debate, lacks an awareness ofthe dynamic debates in the field. Instead ofviewing the past on its own terms, the Vblos project their twentiethcentury sensibilities onto it. The authors reveal this shortcoming when they refer to antebellum ideas about slavery as "absurd" and "preposterous." This continues in their discussion of the era's failed reform movements. The Vblos assume that all people would naturally support abolition, temperance, aid for the poor, and education reform. Consequently, they assert that resistance to reform "was caused by the inabiUty of the activists to articulate the scope and righteousness of their agenda to the public." Furthermore, the authors gloss over complex historical realities. For example, they overlook Southern unionists and claim "unanimity" of support for secession in the South. Despite recent advances in women's history, the authors restrict their examination of women to "traditional" female topics such as fashion, cooking, motherhood , and the household in the antebellum years. "Women and War," a subsection of the section on soldiers' lives, contains the only references to 176CIVIL WAR HISTORY women's wartime experience. Unfortunately, this three-paragraph discussion quickly mentions women as factory workers, as company cooks, nurses, seanstresses, and as prostitutes, while ignoring women's less traditional roles. Confederate and Union female spies appear nowhere, and, although at least four hundred women disguised themselves as men to fight, the authors judge them unimportant because "their number was too small to effect any advantage or disadvantage to the troops." This belies the authors' claim to direct attention away from the miUtary. Similarly, the Vblos only mention female nurses as camp followers, neglecting the thousands who set up hospitals across the South and those who worked for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The realities ofciviUan life and everyday experiences will continue to attract the attention of scholars for years to come. Unfortunately, Daily Life in Civil War America contributes Utile to the field. Lisa Tendrich Frank University of Florida Strike the Blowfor Freedom: The 6? UnitedStates ColoredInfantry in the Civil War. By James M. Paradis. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Books, 1998. Pp. Vu, 203. $29.95.) To the student ofblack military engagement in the Civil War, there is much that is familiar in James Paradis's history of the 6th U.S. Colored Infantry. Though wilUngness among black Pennsylvanians to serve in the Union army was great, recruitment was hampered by ambivalent acceptance of black soldiers by local whites. The black soldiers ofthe 6th were paid less than their white counterparts, denied bonuses and office commissions, and yet performed more laborious support tasks—in this case, digging the...