A Palmetto Boy: Civil War–Era Diaries and Letters of James Adams Tillman (review)

Bobbie Swearingen Smith’s A Palmetto Boy introduces the Civil War–era letters and journals of James Adams Tillman, another dedicated son of South Carolina’s Tillman family. The obscure brother of George and Benjamin Ryan Tillman, James succumbed to his war wounds in 1866 at the age of twenty-four. He gives voice to a lost generation confused by changing social and cultural forces of civil war and silenced by an early death.

Tillman’s account resists falling into a romantic tale of a southern man enraged by national politics and anxious to fight. Discouraged by his inability to become a teacher, Tillman enlisted as a private in the 24th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry in 1862. He garnered his rank in battle, rather than depending on family connections. Defending Charleston’s coastal fortifications in malarial swamps was not his ideal military experience. Drilling and skirmishes led to his involvement in the two battles of Secessionville. Wounded at Chickamauga in 1863, Tillman returned to duty in 1864 to fight under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in Tennessee and North Carolina. A sense of honor and devotion to the Confederate war effort pervades his writing, despite frequent illness and the Confederacy’s lack of resources. The strategy of the Atlanta campaign also caused him to doubt the merits and equity of trench warfare. Forced to live off the land and ravaged by disease, devastating losses at the Battle of Franklin and the subsequent retreat to Mississippi severely increased his company’s depravation. Disillusioned and disgusted with his country’s disgrace, Tillman fell into depression upon the surrender in 1865. His postwar journal provides a raw account of a man thrown back into everyday life, forced to deal with a changed social and cultural landscape. As Federals and African American troops secured peace, Tillman struggled to accept the rights and freedoms of the newly emancipated. While his untimely death precludes the reader from knowing more of Tillman beyond 1866, his life and sacrifice influenced the political careers of his brothers, George and Benjamin.

Smith refrains from editorial remarks beyond an introductory family genealogy and footnotes, which requires readers to provide their own historiographical contextualization. She misses an opportunity to highlight two unsung champions of Tillman’s narrative, Sophia, his mother, and Pete, a manservant who accompanied him to war and delivered money and supplies between lines. Buried at the end of Tillman’s letters and in footnotes, Pete’s untold story, sacrifices, and fate are glaring silences. Sophia is buried in her husband’s genealogical record, despite his death and her management of the family estate since 1849. She and Benjamin even bravely retrieved James from an Atlanta hospital in 1863. Arguably, the family’s ability to provide assistance saved him from the ravages of war, perhaps even death. When Tillman’s voice falls silent as a result of his inability to write due to wounds, sickness, furlough, and the loss of journals to fire, Smith beautifully supplements it with family letters and journals. The result is a rich and seamless narrative of the Tillman family’s experience of war and loss.