The Great South (review)

book reviews183 When this dream went sour the Union government turned to conscription or the draft as a means of raising an army and thus established the precedent that every American male owes his country military service in time of war. Historians of the Civil War era have long concentrated on the causes, the leadership, the battles, and the results of this conflict; but few have undertaken the task of searching out how this huge army of men in the mid-nineteenth century was gathered. Professor Murdock's detailed study of the Civil War draft in the North has brought into focus the story of substitution, commutation, bounty brokers, bounty jumpers, draft resistance, and the general frustration that prevailed in administrating the Enrollment Act of 1863. Beginning with an overview of the Civil War draft system, the author describes the various administrative positions that were involved in implementing this almost remarkable and unpopular scheme. In a sensible , clearly written and intelligent style the book unfolds to describe for the reader the difficulty in meeting local draft quotas, the complexity of substitution and commutation, the fate of bounty jumpers, and the "yankee ingenuity" arrangements for getting rich developed by the draft brokers. And yet, the threat of a local draft raised an army for the Union because the local communities did not want die stigma attached to their image. Those familiar with the draft systems of recent decades will read this book in utter bewilderment that such was the case during die Civil War. No reviewer has the right to expect from a book what the author did not intend, but there are several weaknesses in this otherwise scholarly investigation. The Lincoln administrative pressure, the Congressional background, and the workings of the Provost Marshal's Bureau needed to be investigated to give a clearer understanding of the draft. Use of the Muster and Descriptive Book of Recruits, Substitutes and Drafted Men for die Congressional Districts would have provided a deeper understanding of those called before the Boards of Enrollments. There is also a certain amount of, perhaps unnecessary, repetition of examples. Finally, in the area of production, a more accurate indexing, use of full names, preparation of maps, more explicit footnotes, and an appendix of Provost Marshals, surgeons, etc., would have made the book more useful to students of the Civil War era. Hugh G. Earnhart Youngstown State University The Great South. By Edward King. Edited by W. Magruder Drake and Robert R. Jones. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Pp. lxii, 820. $20.00.) The South, far more than any other region of the United States, has been the subject of numerous travel accounts. Most of these accounts are of limited value to historians, and especially do they fail to report 184CIVIL WAR HISTORY the diversity and complexity of southern fife and society that has clearly existed in the South since the days of the Indians. Two notable exceptions to this rule are Frederick Law Olmsted's The Cotton Kingdom and Edward King's The Great South, both of which are comprehensive and incisive descriptions of southern society during the period of sectional turmoil—Olmsted's before the war and King's after it. Although broader in its geographic coverage of the South than The Cotton Kingdom, King's book, unlike Olmsted's account, has remained in relative obscurity since its publication in 1875, and even scholars of the Reconstruction era have not turned to it as an important source of information. This new facsimile edition, with an extensive introduction by W. Magruder Drake and Robert R. Jones, hopefully will go far toward remedying this neglect. A journalist, King provides the student of Reconstruction history with a perceptive, well-written analysis of all aspects of southern life at a time when the Republican regimes in the region were on the brink of collapse. Despite his association with eastern intellectuals and publishers who, having once advocated a new order for the South were now, in 1873-1874, turning their literary guns against the carpetbagRepublican regimes there, King maintained his faith in the efficacy and desirability of federal intervention to protect the rights of blacks. Nonetheless , King could view dispassionately and...