Lee and His Generals in War and Memory (review)

BOOK REVIEWS27I of his fellow Abolitionists and progressive religious leaders. Clearly opposition to slavery translated only in very rare cases directly into "anti-caste" belief, and Fee and his supporters were consequently well before their time (and in many quarters remain so still). Fee's experiment collapsed only in the face of the a 1904 state law that prohibited integrated education. Sears ably summarizes a mountain of primary material to reconstruct the triumphs of the Berea experiment. The majority of his documentation focuses upon its first ten years. Of particular value is his use of black oral history accounts . An unfortunate omission is the lack of any maps to better describe the campus and community layout and scale. A summary "who's who" would have aided the reader in identifying the ever-changing cast of characters. The historian will find the text, generous end notes, and the excellent bibliography to be of great value in broadening their familiarity with the educational and religious contexts of the time. Sears has produced a true labor of love yet has largely distanced his passions and partiality from the work. He has pulled no punches, and his fair and comprehensive treatment offers a great rewards to the interested reader and scholar. James E. Jacobsen Des Moines, Iowa Lee andHis Generals in WarandMemory. By Gary W. Gallagher. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi, 298. $27.95.) This is a small but weighty tome. It applies historiography—in the broadest sense—to the Confederate military effort in the Eastern theater. The thirteen essays, written over a twelve-year span, have been revised to note literature appearing in the interval. Eleven were previously published; although the originals were not obscure, they were scattered, and their collection is a welcome convenience, especially since they offer perspective insights and well-crafted prose. Professor Gallagher here creatively employs historiography to delineate, analyze, and elucidate several ofthe most interesting controversies in Civil War history. Three themes unify the work. The first and by far most basic is Lee himself, who is the sole subject of one essay, of central importance in six others, and at least marginally involved in the remainder. Gallagher traces the rise of Lee's popularity in the public's perception during and after the war until it reached the apotheosis that triggered the predictable debunking attempts ofrecent years. He also provides cameos of the Confederate commander at several critical moments in his career. The Lee that emerges is not faultless. In the Maryland campaign he "erred badly" in standing at Sharpsburg and staying an additional day to offer battle was "sheer folly." Still, the standards set by Gallagher are not impossibly high, as he reveals in discussing whether Lee should have reverted to the defensive on the second day at Gettysburg. After an extensive review of 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY the literature, the author concludes that Lee was wrong, but based on what the Confederate commander knew and intended his decisions were "reasonable." In the end, Gallagher's Lee is believable. And his argument is persuasive that— through both success and aggressiveness—Lee became a significant factor in prolonging the life of the Confederacy. The second theme, the command structure of the Army ofNorthern Virginia, is pursued through seven essays that center on Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Powell Hill, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and somewhat bathetically, John Magruder. Except for Jackson, whose career is viewed entire, the others are captured in moments ofcrisis at Seven Days, Second Manassas, Gettysburg, Wilderness, and the Valley campaigns of 1 862 and 1 864. In each case Gallagher approaches the individual and the event discretely and as a part of the larger picture of the war, in contemporary context and historical interpretation, and with crisp criticism and sympathy for obstacles and obfuscations. The third theme, the perception of the war by participants and their descendants , is central to five of the essays. Gallagher examines the attempt by former Confederates (from Jubal Early to LaSaIIe Picket) to control the war's legacy through the creation of the Myth of the Lost Cause, telling the story in a way that usually exaggerated the truth and sometimes flatly deceived. In the final...