The Confederate Veteran (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Confederate Veteran. By WiUiam W. White. (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: Confederate Publishing Company, 1962. Pp. 128. $4.00.) There has been considerable in print on the organized Northern veterans of the Civil War, but comparatively little on the Southern survivors as a group. In this slight paperbound monograph Mr. White, however, has perhaps attempted too much in too brief space—a complete survey of aU activities of all Confederate veterans. As a result the work falls into two quite different, and uneven, parts. On the one hand, Mr. White has produced a very useful summary of the activities of the formal organizations of Confederate veterans, based largely upon their own publications. Although the style is pedestrian and the story so often bogs down, tediously going from one isolated fact to another without much pattern emerging so that it has to be read for information rather than enjoyment, there is much of value here. Mr. White is perceptive, and almost lively, in describing these groups simply as social organizations, and he also gives a good account of their charitable and memorial enterprises and of their role as pressure groups for various special favors—although perhaps he treats too kindly their attempts to censor school histories. In explaining their slowness to appear, in contrast with the G.A.R. and similar Northern organizations (with which more comparisons, especially as to possible inspiration and influence, might have been fruitful), more might have been made of the economic difficulties faced by Southern veterans in supporting any society, of the lack of urban life in the region, and of Northern suspicion about any possible Southern intransigence. Yet even so, one feels that Mr. White had here the material for a good substantial article, which is perhaps as much as the subject deserves. But then, presumably to give his subject a wider scope that would make it more significant, he also surveys all the economic and political activities of Confederate veterans in general, quite apart from their organized activities as such. Since the veterans were obviously a major part of the Southern adult white male population, and since Mr. White is unable to resolve how the history of veterans as individuals is to be handled distinct from the history of the society in which they live, this of necessity means writing almost a history of the entire South in the late nineteenth century. Treated in such brief compass, this part inevitably becomes a thin, superficial account of no particular originality, derived from a few standard secondary works and lacking the merits of the other, more detailed section. One feels he has simply padded out his material in an effort to achieve book length. 328 Although the prologue and epilogue will seem overly pietistic to most Northern readers and, one suspects, even to many Southerners of the present generation, these may be merely ritualistic gestures in deference to Mr. White's position at Northwestern State CoUege of Louisiana and to his publishing auspices, the Confederate Publishing Company. ActuaUy, careful reading shows that the body of the text is far less reverent in tone and is at some points even critical, such as when the author suggests that the amount of money spent erecting monuments might better have been used for charitable purposes. There may weU be more to Mr. White than first meets the eye, though it may not be doing him a kindness to make some of his readers aware of the possibility. AU in all, this is a specialized little work, done without much flair or polish, but, as the only compilation of its kind, it does have information which wül be useful to some people. Wallace Evan Davtes University of Pennsylvania Civil War Guns. By WiUiam B. Edwards. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Company, 1962. Pp. 444. $15.00.) After years of research young Mr. Edwards has given us an extremely detailed and comprehensive treatment of Civil War guns. Here is the definitive work on small arms of the 1861-1865 period, a book which Civü War buffs and arms coUectors have been eagerly awaiting for many years. The scope of this book is surprisingly broad; in fact, the title Civil War Guns is...