A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoirs of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.) (review)

book reviews169 fight for independence, and although she did not support open defiance offederal orders or flaunting of confederate patriotism, she had no use for Union sympathizers or collaborators either. The diary does not tell us how the family handled the prolongation of the occupation or the ultimate defeat of the South. The impressions that come through this diary are of a very well-educated, bright, and thoughtful young woman who is often as eager to read the newspaper and reflect on current events as to engage in the perpetual rounds of visiting family friends expected of people of her social position. Ultimately the diary may reveal more about Southern social history, especially girlhood romantic friendships and education, than about the effects of the Civil War or about New Orleans Jewry, although it is certainly valuable in these areas as well. It does not give the reader insight into why the Solomon family was so pro-Confederate. Clara hardly mentions slaves and slavery, and charges offederal usurpations of power remain vague. Clara is also not very self-consciously Jewish, although the diary reveals that the family's closest friends attend the same synagogue, and part of Clara's constant anxiety about not being well-liked may have come from her feeling she did not meet conventional Southern standards of beauty. Elliott Ashkenazi's introduction and editorial comments are especially helpful in enabling readers to appreciate the references Solomon does make to persons and practices within the New Orleans Jewish community. Even though the reader wishes for fewer accounts of visiting, more detail on the impact of the war, and, above all, the discovery of diaries covering the remaining three years of the war, this volume is a valuable addition to the growing Southern women's diary literature of the Civil War period. Jan C. Dawson Southwestern University A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoirs ofMarcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.). Edited by Kenneth W. Noe. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. Pp. xxvi, 348. $32.95.) If a purpose ofhistorical inquiry is delivering us from plausible generalization, then the published diaries of Civil War soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee serve Clio well. Daily journals cut through abstraction and, free of postwar nostalgia, project the stubborn incongruity of human lives. For example, the wartime log by John S. Jackman of the Orphan Brigade, published in 1990, reflects nuances of volatile humanity in a Kentucky unit more often memorialized than studied. Now William Marcus Woodcock in A Southern Boy in Blue, an 1865 expansion of campaign journals, proclaims similar departures from stereotype. Moreover, the words of this Tennessee Unionist in a Kentucky regiment ameliorate such scholarly lapses as the recent neglect of federal units from the Bluegrass State, the broad characterization of Southern Unionism, and, more generally, easy assumptions about typicality. I70CIVIL WAR HISTORY On the surface Woodcock's life appears merely to exemplify larger processes . As Stephen V. Ash (1988), Richard Nelson Current (1992), and Kenneth W. Noe, editor of Woodcock's diary/memoir, have established, Tennessee Unionists were legion, and those in the state's midsection evinced loyalism similar to their better-known counterparts in the eastern mountains. Indeed, Woodcock's somewhat isolated native county on MiddleTennessee's northern border shared a web ofconnections with neighboring, and strongly Unionist, Monroe County, Kentucky. Thus the nineteen year old's choice of U.S. colors could be read as a function of community loyalty. Yet Woodcock's implausible, brave choices throughout his three years' service at base represent divergence from regional bonding rather than replication of known patterns. They also enliven familiar concepts like personal growth and commitment to a cause. Accoutered with a childlike patriotism and a homemade Bowie knife, Woodcock was initially a member ofthe Gamaliel (Monroe County) Home Guards in Kentucky. Events soon immersed the untraveled youth in the fear and confusion of 1861 in the commonwealth. While still innocent of war's hard edges, he enlisted in the new 9th Kentucky Infantry (USA). Reality came quickly. Confederates at home persecuted his father, Rebel authorities classified him a deserter, and camp-induced measles nearly killed him. When he finally drew a bead on a Confederate at Corinth...