Blue Hurricane (review)

Book Reviews323 book does not give the reader as much as he would like to know about this unusual person. Butler the man is presented by copious citations from contemporary descriptions; but where one would like something penetrating and revealing , the volume is often anecdotal or even trivial. Stormy Ben Butler whets the appetite for more because Butler, despite his questionable practices, was an important man. A first-rate biography might even sell—Butler would have liked that. William E. Highsmith Gadsden, Alabama. A Letter for Posterity: Alex Stephens to his Brother Linton, June 3, 1864. Edited by James Z. Rabun. ("Emory Sources and Reprints"; Atlanta: Emory University Library. 1954. Pp. 24. $0.75.) the well-known rift between jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens— •the chief executive officers of the Confederacy—is further clarified by this document, which may aid future historians in their estimates of the two men. It was not entirely a matter of ill health which "exiled" the frail Vice President from Richmond during most of the war years; having opposed secession, Stephens favored peace negotiations on the chimerical basis of "a final & total seperation of the States" and in 1863 proposed a harebrained scheme for direct consultation with Union leaders to that effect. His plan had no chance of success . Quite apart from the impending military decisions at Vicksburg and Gettysburg—Stephens apparently viewed Lee's invasion of the North as a deliberate attempt to wreck his peace proposals—the Vice President's cogitations were incompatible with the plans of the Confederate war cabinet, which had long since been committed to the appeal to arms. Even so, by June 3, 1864, Stephens had no qualms in describing Jefferson Davis as an "unprincipled untruthful, unreliable bad man," who "has but one idea and that is to fight it out. He looks to but one mode of obtaining peace and that is to conquer it. Moral or political causes & effects he knows nothing about." Thwarted and angry, often resorting to name-calling, the Vice President branded Davis as an "arch aspirant after absolute power by usurpation a la mode Louis Napoleon" and "a weak, sly, hypocritical, aspiring knave." In view of this letter, one may well doubt the qualities of intellectual brilliance usually ascribed to Alexander Stephens. As shown here, his mind was cloudy, his cherished schemes were quite unrealistic, and the tone of his expressed grievances was querulous, often childishly petulant. Charles T. Miller Iowa City, Iowa. Blue Hurricane. By F. Van Wyck Mason. (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1954. Pp. 307. $3.75.) in blue hurricane, van wyck mason continues his fictional account of the naval history of the Civil War, this time from the vantage point of the Union forces. An historical novelist sometimes feels himself forced, by the necessities 324civil war history of his fictional narrative, to distort or even misrepresent historical events. Since this narrative is not hampered by the demands of probability, the author is happily free from this fault. Mr. Mason's historical reconstruction is satisfactory. He does not portray the total "River War" in the West. Episodes such as that at Belmont, where the Union gunboats apparently acquitted themselves with sometìiing less than distinction, are not part of the action of the novel. But such military events as are shown—notably the remarkable naval victory at Fort Henry, the river action at Fort Donelson, and the naval engagement at Memphis—are ably presented. Social history, particularly life among the profiteering set in St. Louis, seems authentic. If Mr. Mason's historical novel is unexceptionable as history, it is unfortunately not as novel. The plot is preposterous and the characterization crude. Surely it is enough, if not too much, to have a hero discover he is a bastard and kill his father only to learn he is not a bastard and did not kill his father. But Mr. Mason gives us also a heroine who becomes a victim of amnesia, is installed in a house of ill fame, and, retaining her virginity, is the chaste vessel who leads the hero back to the path of rectitude. Other characters appear: the cowardly deserter who regains his courage, the courtesan...