North Carolina Office of Archives and History

True Tales of The South at War: How Soldiers Fought and Families Lived, 1861-1865 byClarence Poe; Betsy SeymourReview by: James J. GearyThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (January, 1963), pp. 89-90Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23517351 .

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Book Reviews 89

The organization of the book is somewhat along biographical lines, rather than being strictly chronological. Hence, the reader follows in some detail the activities of Daniel Morgan, Banastre Tarleton, Greene, and Comwallis—in that order. While this approach makes for a certain amount of repetition, it is nevertheless refreshing. After all, leaders need to be emphasized; men rather than impersonal forces are the real

stuff of history. The interpretations presented are almost always sound, and they reveal that the author has read widely and intelligently in the literature of the period. Moreover, he has made effective use of certain

important printed primary sources that professional historians some

times neglect, especially Cornwallis' orderly book and Henry Lee's Memoirs. Mr. Davis, whose permanent home is on the edge of the

Guilford Courthouse battlefield, obviously enjoyed doing this book. It deserves a large audience.

Louisiana State University.

Don Higginbotham.

True Tales of The South at War: How Soldiers Fought and Families

Lived, 1861-1865. Collected and edited by Clarence Poe (Betsy Sey mour, Assistant Editor) (Chapel Hill: The University of North Caro lina Press. 1961. Epilogue and index. $2.95.)

Here is a delightfully homey book whose intimacy comes from the

writings—some but a paragraph in length—of nearly two hundred southern men and women who lived the Civil War.

To read this little volume (205 pages), is like hearing first hand,

by the flickering light of burning logs in an ancient fireplace, the vivid tales of long ago. These stories, sketches, and brief observations come

alive with a clarity reminiscent of looking through an old stereoscope. One sees, not the old veterans that are remembered, but the eager

young men and boys and their women in the flux of a great war.

Dr. Poe, a professional editor for more than fifty years, has done a masterful job of extracting gems from the letters, diaries, and reminis censes sent him. The material came in response to an appeal to the

1,400,000 subscribers of The Progressive Farmer which he published and edited in Raleigh for more than fifty years.

The son of a Confederate soldier himself, the Editor has made his

selections with apparently no thought but to let these men and women

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90 The North Carolina Historical Review

tell in their own words of the South's grandest hour and of the emo tions, ecstatic as well as tragic, that it brought to them.

The book is refreshing in that it makes no attempt to focus on the

grimness of war, but rather lets the young soldiers transmit also the

comradeship, humor, and occasional high excitement of their war ex

periences, the memory of which dominated the lives of so many of them. To one of them, Berry Benson of Georgia, looking back fifteen

years after the end of the war, the fading of memories was as if "some

great bundle of treasure-holding years have been torn out of my life some sweet thing slipped out of my grasp—and, like a silver coin drop ped into deep water, I see it slipping away, down, down, sparkling as it sinks, but ever growing dimmer, dimmer. . . ."

Virginia Civil War Commission.

James J. Geary.

Reconstruction Bonds & Twentieth-Century Politics: South Dakota v. North Carolina (1904). By Robert F. Durden. (Durham: Duke Univer sity Press. 1962. Notes and index. Pp. xi, 274. $6.00.)

"Butler, Booze, Boodle and Bonds," headlined the bitter Democratic attack against a resurgent North Carolina Republican Party in 1910. Professor Durden in this excellent monograph carefully unravels and describes a unique bond scheme that furnished part of the background for such Democratic propaganda. Marion Butler, Fusionist Senator in

the 1890's and "Mr. Republican" in early twentieth-century North Carolina, served as the principal target in these attacks. Fusionist Governor Daniel L. Russell, however, was the key figure in the bond scheme, but his death in 1908 allowed him to escape some of the Democratic wrath. The author bases his study primarily on the recently discovered Russell papers now in the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina Library.

Durden traces the story of the bond scheme from the time of its inception during Russell's governorship, 1897-1901. Russell hoped to annoy and embarrass the Democrats and at the same time replenish his badly depleted personal fortune. Like most Southern States, North Carolina repudiated or scaled down its debt in 1879 after the Demo crats had "redeemed" the State from Radical Reconstruction. Russell

persuaded some New York bond-holders to give a few of the pre

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