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352CIVIL WAR HISTORY harvesting of all significant extant sources relating to Johnson. The present volume is no exception, and it joins its five predecessors and six projected successors in forming, despite the inherent limitations of its materials , one of the finest works of its kind. Albert Castel Western Michigan University The Diary of James A. Garfield: Volume IV, 1879-1881. Edited by Harry James Brown and Frederick D. Williams. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1981. Pp. 689. $40.00.) Almost fifteen years after the publication of the first two volumes (which together cost five dollars less than this book), the welcome appearance of the fourth and final volume of the Garfield diaries brings to completion a set which now takes its place as one of the indispensable source books for mid-nineteenth century America. As before,'the editors have diligently tracked down each name and event mentioned in the diaries, no matter how trivial or obscure, and identified and described them (with a few minor errors), often in graceful and illuminating little essays. No longer need James A. Garfield or his times languish in the obscurity to which they have too long been relegated. Professors Brown and Williams have done far more than merely chronicle the daily life of an individual who happened to become president of the United States. In this heavily annotated diary they have also cast light on everything that caught Garfield's interest. And because Garfield was a man of omnivorous curiosity, his diary touches on all phases of the world around him: literature, sports, entertainment, religion, manners, and, above all, politics. This being said, it must be admitted that, up to a point, this particular volume lacks some of the intrinsic interest of the earlier books. During 1878 and 1879 Garfield, as congressman, was involved in some of the least exciting struggles of American political history. By now he had surmounted the titillating scandals which lent interest to Volume II and outgrown the adolescent introspection which made Volume I so revealing and had settled down to a useful but essentially placid routine as Republican leader of the House of Representatives. Then, two-thirds of the way through the book, his life explodes with his unexpected nomination for president. Unfortunately, Garfield was too busy at the Chicago convention to maintain his diary and so these important pages remain blank. In partial compensation, the editors have added a bonus in the form of the charming journal which Mrs. Garfield recorded during her brief tenure as First Lady. After so many years of effort the editors can take justifiable pride in a book reviews353 major accomplishment. One's only regret is that they did not see fit to provide a comprehensive index to the entire series. Allan Peskin Cleveland State University The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy. By Ernest M. Lander, Jr. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983. Pp. x, 262. $17.95.) This volume is a thoroughly researched history of the Calhoun family, useful to those interested in John C. Calhoun, in South Carolina, and in southern family history. Drawing heavily on the Calhoun family correspondence , theauthorchallenges recent interpretations ofCalhoun's private life. Both the romantic vision of Charles M. Wiltse and Margaret L. Coit, who stress Calhoun's devotion to his reasonably harmonious domestic circle, and the sharp critique of Gerald M. Capers, who believes that Calhoun's family ran a poor second to his political ambitions, lose plausibility in light of this work. This volume is a meticulous documentation of the declension of a southern family under the burdens of the debt, infighting, and death. Calhoun emerges as a concerned but only marginally effective father who cannot control his underachieving son's expensive tastes, mollify his wife's bitter and divisive suspicions, end the feuding between family members, or buoy his sinking finances. The immense energy he invested in his difficult family held it together during his lifetime but could not prevent dissolution after his death. What bickering and debt began, disease concluded. When Thomas Green Clemson, his son-in-law, willed Fort Hill, Calhoun's seat, to South Carolina for an agricultural college, a few...

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