That Devil Forrest (review)

Book Reviews105 "moved," not "advanced," for die personal advantage seemed to have lain with those, and the others like them, whose stories are told in this enthralling book. Samuel M. Fahr Iowa City, Iowa They Took Their Stand. By Manly Wade Wellman. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1959. Pp. 258. $4.50.) those who enjoy the unraveltng of complex personalities and tiieir behavior patterns wül find here a storehouse of such considerations. Particularly , They Took Their Stand deals with memorable figures of the Confederacy . Thus, Edmund Ruffin, Thomas Jonathan "StonewaU" Jackson, Mary Chestnut, Jefferson Davis, and others aU come to full capacity in these pages. Presented against a background of events which brought about the secession and founding of the Confederacy, we learn of the degrees of information many of the leaders had about the seriousness of the times. Ruffin, who was an able agricultural expert, did not realize the immensity of the problem when he demanded secession and war. "StonewaU" Jackson on the other hand was realisticaUy aware of events when he advocated both; much of his character could be traced to fierce loyalty. Mary Chestnut, a famous society belle was clear-sighted and brave, whüe Jefferson Davis is described as other than the proverbial extremist stereotype he has often been painted to be. The book opens with the hanging of John Brown on December 2, 1859, and ends with Manassas and the first battle there on July 21, 1861. It is rare for a work of this nature to be popular whüe immersed in facts. Nevertheless, it is aU here, and this reviewer beh'eves that many wül be rereading this book because of its interesting and moving integration of men and events. Arthur Lerner Los Angeles, California. That DevÜ Forrest. By John A. Wyeth. (New York: Harper & Brothers . 1959. Pp. xxvi, 614. $6.95.) the age of chivalry did not die witii the French Revolution, despite what Edmund Burke said. It lasted at least through the dynamic career of Nathan Bedford Forrest, an exciting time when knighthood and chivalry combined with ruthless warfare to glorify the dashing charge of the horse cavalry and deepen its romantic imprint on future American history. The first edition of this book was published sixty years ago and was reissued in 1908; it finaUy went out of print in 1924. Secondhand copies have been sought after by coUectors for a long time. Now Harper's has brought out a handsome reprint. 106CIVIL WAR HISTORY One of the helpful features of That Devil Forrest is the firsthand, eyewitness testimony based on the author's interviews and correspondence with the men who served with Forrest. As to the colorful cavalryman himself, he once said that whenever he saw a pen, he thought of a snake. Yet in this volume , his reports are not only full and vividly descriptive but grammaticaUy correct, a surprising thing when one inevitably recalls the expression, "I got there fustest with the mostest," so frequently attributed to Forrest as the secret of his remarkable success. To assess what Forrest contributed to the Civil War is not a simple task, because he was not only a ferocious cavalry leader who raided and harassed the Federal forces from Sacramento, Kentucky, to Selma, Alabama, but he became one of the leading tacticians of die Confederacy who was as much at home with artülery and infantry as with his beloved equines. In the last phases of the war, the Confederate high command from Jefferson Davis to John B. Hood turned to Forrest in a last sad and desperate effort to apply his magic formula of victory to the hopelessly Lost Cause. Forrest was as equal to the task as the depleted forces of the South would allow. The purpose of Forrest, as this biography points out, was to wear down and disorganize the enemy and to stimulate and maintain the spirit of Southern resistance. He depended on the cavalry for speed and not for victory , but fought his men mosdy on foot. Like Henry Knox, he was a master of mobüe artillery. He used with great effectiveness the surprise raid, the lightning attack, the relentless pursuit...