A Friend to God's Poor: Edward Parmalee Smith (review)

BOOK reviews335 phes are used in words that are not possessives but not used in words that are; and there are several sentences containing extra words or phrases, for example, "After cutting off his enemy's rail links had been severed" (148), and "Lawry's men past were unaware of a cavalry force" ( 1 53). There is a sidebar on Fort Pillow for no apparent reason other than to allow the author to write about it, for it is not put into the context of the Atlanta campaign, nor is it mentioned in the main text. The maps, which appear to be taken from an early Civil War atlas, are useless. The one captioned "Action around Kennesaw Mountain" (95) shows several hundred square miles. It is difficult even to find Kennesaw Mountain on it, and the author made no attempt to indicate the action that took place there. The map labeled "Map of action from Adairsville to Dallas" misses including Dallas on the map by five miles. Incredibly, The Chancellorsville Campaign is even worse. It abounds in errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation; suffers from vague or incorrect pronoun use (e.g., 88, 103); uses apostrophes incorrectly; and uses hyphens inappropriately . A chart copied from another source has no explanation whatsoever, either in a caption or in the text, rendering two of the four columns meaningless (41 ). There are scores of typographical errors (e.g., 63, 71, 80, 81, 91, 127), missing words, and words run together without a space between them. The author takes pains to explain the difference between William Henry Fitzburgh (he meant Fitzhugh) "Rooney" Lee, Robert E. Lee's son, and Fitzhugh Lee, the general's nephew (66), and then confuses the two when he writes, "Fitz Lee moved to the east, where he would perform superb service for his father's army. . . . Rooney Lee chose to withdraw south" (76). The author also trips up on the twenty-fourhour time when he has Sedgwick receive an order fifty minutes before it was written (170). The authors and the publisher of the Great Campaigns series believe the "pedantic writings oftoday's historians" renders academic production unfit for the average Civil War student or buff, and claim this series is intended to fill a "qualitative gap" that exists between works that are either "very serious, highly technical," or "less dry, but merely lightly review the events with the intention of informing and entertaining the layman" (Wilderness, 219; Series Preface). Given the careless editing, poor maps, appalling lack of attention to detail, and the high price, one wonders just what "gap" they are aiming to fill. Judith Lee Hallock Middle Country Schools Centereach, N.Y. A Friend to God's Poor: Edward Parmalee Smith. By William H. Armstrong. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1994. Pp. xiii, 518. $50.00.) In his preface to his study of the life and career of Edward Parmalee Smith, William H. Armstrong asserts that 'To write a biography about a little-known minister with the common name of Smith is to make a statement about the significance of lesser-known people in our history" (xii). Although few of us 336CIVIL WAR HISTORY recognize his name today, Smith was hardly an insignificant figure, especially given the fact that the middle decades of the nineteenth century saw the development and maturation of organized "benevolence" under the auspices of American churches. A Congregationalist minister, Smith was at the center of his denomination's efforts to redeem the nation and the world. As Armstrong sets out in his preface, and supports throughout his text, "Smith's story weaves together some ofthe main threads running through American church history in the mid-nineteenth century: the massive response of the churches to the Civil War and its suffering; their work with the freed slaves, especially in the field of education; and the assistance the churches gave to President Grant's Indian policy" (xii). Armstrong has done impressive research in primary sources, including Smith's vast correspondence, which allows him to recreate the clergyman's career . Smith was drawn away from his New England pastorate in early 1863 when he signed on as a delegate of the United States Christian Commission...