An Uncompromising Secessionist: The Civil War of George Knox Miller, Eighth (Wade's) Confederate Cavalry (review)

A P R I L 2 0 0 8 147 half of the essay. To Lawrence’s credit, however, he does bring Brown and his work full-circle, beginning with his upbringing and ending back in Alabama with his ties to family and home. Roger Brown: Southern Exposure is an attractive book, and the full color plates which cover the full scope of Brown’s career have been beautifully reproduced. Additionally, since the book was used as the catalog for a museum exhibition, the forward by Lee Gray and afterword by Lisa Stone are particularly helpful in linking the book’s contents—and Brown’s significance as a native Alabamian—to the works exhibited. MARGARET BROMMELSIEK University of Missouri-Kansas City An Uncompromising Secessionist: The Civil War of George Knox Miller, Eighth (Wade’s) Confederate Cavalry. Edited by Richard M. McMurry. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007. xxviii, 360 pp. $53.50. ISBN 978-08173 -1531-3. Fresh from the University of Virginia law school and imbued with patriotism for a nascent Confederacy, George Knox Miller enlisted with the Mountain Rangers in his hometown of Talladega, Alabama, on the eve of the Civil War. Little did he know of the adventure, emotional toil, and physical challenges that laid before him as he embarked on his military service. Over the course of the war, young Miller matured into a veteran cavalry soldier who, in spite of injury and imprisonment, survived some of the most notable battles of the Western Theater. What knowledge of Miller’s experience we have comes from his personal correspondence collected, annotated, and edited by Richard M. McMurry. Miller’s letters , as McMurry contends, “give us many valuable insights into the life, heart, mind, and attitudes of an intelligent, educated, young, mid-nineteenth -century white Southerner” (p. xii). In essence, An Uncompromising Secessionist humanizes the soldier’s experience and, in doing so, contributes significantly to our understanding of the relationship between war and society during one of the bloodiest epochs in American history. Born in 1836, Miller grew up in a nation clouded by growing regional strife. Although plagued by a recurring illness, young Miller eventually went to school where he acquired a love of reading and theater that remained with him into his adult life. The letters begin in 1860 when Miller was a law student at the University of Virginia and end at his death in 1916. Most of the letters Miller wrote to his cousin and eventual wife Celestine “Cellie” McCann; the remaining documents come from T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 148 friends, colleagues, and newspaper articles. There are few letters to the young soldier and none from Cellie, leaving us with little voice from those individuals in his life. McMurry’s biographical sketch includes descriptions of important figures in Miller’s life, providing readers with a sense of balance. The topic of gender is perhaps the most striking one of the work. While the editor claims that the documents shed little light on gender relations, they do offer evidence into how young, white southern men defined manhood in the late antebellum and Civil War eras. The letters, moreover, reveal the ideological forces that drove a generation of young men to support secession and enlist in the military, issues examined in secondary studies such as Peter Carmichael’s The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005). Miller also lends evidence to Stephen Berry’s argument, in All that Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War (New York, 2003), that masculine ideals sustained men’s participation in the war. In one letter Miller expressed determination “to make my mind and heart both worthy of woman’s love” during his service in the cavalry (p. 97). The correspondence presents significant anecdotal evidence concerning the life of a soldier. Over the course of the war, Miller rose to company captain of the Mountain Rangers, which became part of the Eighth Confederate Cavalry. One of the most compelling aspects of Miller’s letters is his discussion of battlefield dangers and his eventual imprisonment...