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book reviews179 and in so doing fail to capture fully the reality of the Civil War experience for the Alabama men about whom they write. Henry M. McKiven Jr. University of South Alabama A Texas Cavalry Officer's Civil War: The Diary and Letters ofJames C. Bates. Edited by Richard Lowe. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. 366. $34-95·) James Campbell Bates entered Confederate service as a private in Company H of the Ninth Texas Cavalry and, despite a near-fatal facial wound suffered early in the Atlanta campaign, ended the War as the regiment's Ueutenant colonel, commanding. Nevera slaveholder, Bates was a yeoman-class farmer from Lamar County on what was then the Texas frontier, and, as Richard Lowe observes, was "intelligent, well educated, courageous, physically hearty, burning with resentment of the Yankees, and deeply committed to Confederate victory." Bates was also a remarkably lucid and vivid writer, and his Civil War letters and diary bring to their readers a wonderful sense of immediacy and a fresli— although necessarily limited—perspective onthebattles and campaigns ofRoss's Texas Cavalry Brigade, one of the South's most famous and effective military units. Bates and his regiment played a vital role in many ofthe pivotal engagements oftheWesterntheater, includingElkhornTavern, Corinth, the Holy Springs Raid, and Thompson's Station, as well as numerous nameless cavalry actions northwest ofAtlanta and during Hood's disastrous Tennessee campaign. His account of the battle of Corinth, especially is not only stirring but also offers new detail and insight into that ill-conceived and worse-led Confederate debacle. Bates was also an exceptionally keen observer of other theaters of the War and of the national political scene, as well as a shrewd strategist, often rightly predicting movements and their outcomes with greater foresight and sagacity than those in high command. But in addition to their military content, these letters are a trove ofsocial history, offering glimpses ofa wartime courtship that ended in Bates's marriage, and a discrete but revealing look at the flirtations of a vigorous young man away from home for the first time and enjoying the warsanctioned freedom from social restraint. More seriously, however, Bates was shocked by the war's increasing brutality . As early as May 1862, he was warning his friends at home that the confiscation and destruction of civilian property by Union soldiers and the increasing evidence from captured letters and newspapers proved that the Federal war aim was not simply to "end the rebellion" but to put an end to slavery, crush the poUtical power of the South for all time, and even to appropriate Southern farms as compensation for Union soldiers (123). Bates was revolted by the conduct ofUnion troops, whom he perceived as pilfering or destroying "every species of private property . . . everywhere they go." Especially, he was outraged that Federal ?8?CIVIL WAR HISTORY troops were taking "the last grain of corn & the last pound of bacon from defenseless women & children, leaving them to starve." These depredations, as Lowe observes, helped to make Bates "the most dangerous sort ofenemy to the Union" (132). Unfortunately, Bates's diary was suspended or lost after the entry ofMay 30 1 862, the day that Beauregard evacuated Corinth. He continued, however, to be a prolific letter writer until the end ofthe war, and Richard Lowe's edition of the letters and diary add a sparkling new facet to our knowledge of a regiment that had already boasted three published memoirs—a remarkable rate of literacy for Paris, Texas, in 1861 . Although the editor's comments on the letters themselves is sometimes redundant and occasionally impedes the progress of Bates's chronicle, Lowe does a masterfuljob of lending previous primary accounts with Bates's writings, situating the soldier's experiences within the context of the greater war and transforming a rich letter cycle into a compelling, sustained, and dramatic narrative. Thomas W. Cutrer Arizona State University West ...

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