One of Jackson's Foot Cavalry (review)

86CIVIL WAR HISTORY ineptitude as characteristic of an age when few politicians had thought out the problems of a major war, but nevertheless endorses Fred A. Shannon 's conclusion that Cameron proved to be the "weakest cog in the federal machine." But along with weaknesses, the new variety of academic biography does have one strength: a willingness to face the fact, however distasteful, that politicians played the game of politics. Bradley's Cameron is a very good account of how a nineteenth-century political machine was built up through small favors, small pressures, small speculations, and small rewards. As such it is a useful contribution to the realistic study of just how American democracy worked. One wishes that it were at the same time a more revealing portrait of one of the most elusive and influential figures in nineteenth -century American pohtical life. David Donald Johns Hopkins University One of Jackson's Foot Cavalry. By John H. Worsham. Edited by James I. Robertson, Jr. (Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1964. Pp. 207. $5.00.) James I. Robertson, Jr., has added to the great debt every student of the Civil War already owes him, by editing for republication John H. Worsham's One of Jackson's Foot Cavalry. Professor Robertson's editing is in every way worthy of Worsham's classic narrative. Including a well written, informative introduction, and buttressed with footnotes solidly based on the sources (including Worsham's unpublished wartime letters) to clarify obscure points, to identify even the most insignificant member of Worsham's large cast of characters, to correct each of his errors in detail , to cite other points of view where Worsham's own interpretation may be open to argument, and to supply background and perspective whenever the narrative assumes knowledge that may be lacking—the adjective "superb " is not at all too strong to describe Robertson's editorial accomplishment . He has amply succeeded in accomplishing his expressed desire "to convert an exceptionally good Confederate memoir into an even better one." What can be said about Worsham's narrative of his three and one-half years in Company F, Twenty-first Virginia Infantry, that has not been said many times? Douglas Southall Freeman has called Worsham's book "invaluable, excellent in every way," and "among the best of personal narratives." To try to add to such praise from such a source would be presumptuous. Worsham's narrative is free from "over-writing," the pretentiousness , and—if we may use the word—the mawkishness, that make so much of southern writing inspired by the war such dreary reading in this more matter-of-fact generation. He writes simply, and the artless simplicity of his writing adds a dimension of vividness and color and immediacy to his constandy interesting story. And what a story it is! To use BOOK REVIEWS87 the vernacular, it has everything. Worsham's eyes missed nothing, and what he saw, he remembered. From General Lee and President Davis (in that order, of course) acknowledging the cheers of the Twenty-first at Gaines' Mill, to the making of soap by a detail of the regiment; from the roar of musketry in the "Mule Shoe" on the bloody morning of May 11, 1864, to the Twenty-first stripping to the buff to ford the Shenandoah under the watchful eyes of General John M. Jones and of a large congregation , male and female, of Front Royal—Worsham's narrative is all-inclusive . This is a fascinating story of young gentlemen who went into war wearing white gloves on duty becoming ragged, hard-bitten, battle-wise veterans, retaining out of all the elaborate baggage they brought with them in the exhilaration of 1861, only their patriotism and capacity for hero worship . For those whose interest lies in battles and marches, Worsham supplies top-notch eyewitness accounts of the unforgettable Valley Campaign, of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, the Wilderness; but he has even more to give to those who want to know how "Johnny Reb" marched, what he ate and wore and thought, how he lived and how he died. And even how he smelled, for with a minimum of reading between the lines, one can deduce why, at the...