The Good Men Who Won the War: Army of the Cumberland Veterans and Emancipation Memory by Robert Hunt (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY author appears blind to any evidence of ethnic prejudices in the portraits. No less than seven images depict in whole or part Jacob Lawinsky, a presumably Jewish orderly designated (apparently by Metzner) as “The Camp Comedian.” In most of the sketches, however , Lawinsky appears to be the target rather than the source of humor, and his portrayal, though bearing some resemblance to a surviving photograph, could easily substitute for a Shylock caricature. Metzner’s half-dozen representations of African Americans are equally stereotypical, with no trace of emancipationist idealism (and no index entry to enable readers to locate them easily). In fairness, even Metzner’s images of superior officers often show elements of satire. If not quite the Civil War equivalent of Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe,” Metzner’s Yankee Dutchmen appear equally sardonic and irreverent toward authority , and show the same stoicism in the face of mud and snow. Walter D. Kamphoefner Texas A&M University The Good Men Who Won the War: Army of the Cumberland Veterans and Emancipation Memory Robert Hunt Robert Hunt’s The Good Men Who Won the War combines two maturing Civil War fields of scholarship, memory studies and soldier studies , to address how veterans of one Union army remembered emancipation. Comprised mainly of soldiersfromthemiddleWestandborderSouth— Buckeyes, Hoosiers, Illinoisans, and Kentucky Unionists—the Army of the Cumberland saw action primarily in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. These western soldiers, many of whom hailed from regions suspected of disloyalty, witnessed and became agents of emancipation in the trans-Appalachian South. Drawing primarily on published sources by former soldiers such as Joseph Warren Keifer, Wilbur Fisk Hinman, and Albion Tourgee, Hunt recovers the voice of a Union army that had neither the headlines of the Army of the Potomac nor the victories and leaders of the Army of the Tennessee. Hunt focuses on regimental histories and memoirs published in 1880 or later, seeking to complicate current scholarship that dates the emergence of sectional reconciliation and the decline of white soldiers’ commitment to emancipation memory to the 1880s. He argues that emancipation remained central to the Army of the Cumberland’s remembered war. Casting Robert Hunt. The Good Men Who Won the War: Army of the Cumberland Veterans and Emancipation Memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010. 192 pp. ISBN: 9780817316884 (cloth), $36.00. BOOK REVIEWS FALL 2011 91 a critical eye on the work of historians such as Stuart McConnell and David W. Blight, Hunt maintains that his western soldiers did not suffer amnesia with regard to slavery and African Americans but instead linked emancipation to Union victory and the salvation of the nation. Many veterans believed that total war and emancipation were part of a national destiny centered on progress. White soldiers also absorbed the liberation theme because it “restored decency and selflessness” to a conflict that became destructive beyond their wildest expectations (74). Although Hunt’s subjects never viewed blacks as social equals, the exigencies of war converted most “Cumberlanders” into “practical abolitionists” who grew to see black emancipation and the quashing of the plantation system as necessary for military victory and the maintenance of the Union. Following historians James M. McPherson and Chandra Manning, Hunt views white Union soldiers as pragmatic agents of change. In the process, they “turned emancipation into part of the comprehensive picture of American war making” (5), even if most veterans evaded the issues raised by the failure of Reconstruction after the war, and did not see the remaking of southern society as vital to their narrative of victory. Hunt insists that the “real war” (or at least their real war) did get into the books. The narratives produced by Army of the Cumberland veterans did not indulge in “literary escapism” (2), but instead constructed an argument about what constituted the ideal citizensoldier and how the war had reshaped the country . Cumberlanders, Hunt insists, saw themselves as protectors of the nation-state and their army as a genuinely revolutionary vehicle. In a bold contention, he claims that Cumberlanders understood emancipation and total war as an indispensable first step in turning the United States into a global power. Hunt’s assertion that the Cumberlanders produced a literature...