Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield (review)

Abstract

302CIVIL WAR HISTORY culminated in Hardship and Hope. The anthology gives birth to a multicultural and interdisciplinary approach to an era of dramatic change, not only for the women of Missouri. The selections cover nineteenth- and twentieth-century Missouri women; the sources are "primarily private writings," many of which are out of print and which represent the innumerable significant contributions of Missouri women and the manner in which their lives paralleled many critical historical events. Selections embody letters and unpublished journals of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, Laura IngallsWilder, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, Virginia Fackler Creel, Kate Chopin, CarryA. Nation, and others. Elizabeth Keckley, who was bom into slavery in 1 8 1 8, narrates the scope ofher humiliations as a slave and her feelings of deep affection for Mary Todd Lincoln. Another section sets forth a speech by Phoebe Wilson Couzins as she recounts her experiences as the first female law student at the St. Louis Law School ofWashington University, "the vanguard to a higher civilization, where soul and mind is to be the only criterion of nobility and worth." In 1 887 Couzins was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to become the first woman U. S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Missouri. Waal and Komer have provided introductions to each woman. For clarity, editorial omissions are recorded, mainly to avoid redundancies. Footnotes support the authors' conclusions, and a selected bibliography is included. This collection , taken as a whole, is of high quality and will be of interest to scholars as well as the general reader. Nonetheless, the reader may find that the choices are too brief to present an unambiguous portrayal. These books examine and challenge the stereotypical images of nineteenthcentury women as they introduce the reader to many aspects ofour recent social history. The legacies of these women, written in their memoirs or discovered through their documents, are a substantial heritage for future generations. Issues of women's history, whether categorical or generalized, race related or class divided, need to be scrutinized for details and facts that can add to the overall sum of these parts. We need to find meaning in the smallest and most inconsequential activity of all possible forms of women's history. This means, "that somewhere between the diversity and the similarity lies the substance of women's history." Marsha Maro Campbell Texas Woman's University Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield. By Thomas H. O'Connor. (Boston : Northeastern University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi, 313. $26.95.) This book seeks to fill a significant gap in Civil War historiography and the equally rich literature on Boston. Although the city and many of its notable residents have figured prominently in the study of the sectional conflict, Boston has not previously found a chronicler of its wartime experience. The focus offers opportunities that go far beyond a case study of a large Northern commu- book reviews303 nity, for the conflicts and transformations within the "city set upon a hill) are essential to understanding the development of American identity, including the redefinition ofAmerican nationhood during the Civil War. Inviting comparison to Emory M. Thomas's The Confederate State ofRichmond ( 1 97 1 ) and Margaret Leech's Reveille in Washington (1941), O'Connor strives to connect local and national dimensions in his narrative of the capital of New England. The strongest passages detail the complex response of Irish Americans to the war and emphasize that the Unionism of Catholic Bishop John B. Fitzpatrick and the heroism of Irish American soldiers like Colonel Thomas Cass and the 9th Massachusetts regiment helped to soothe YankeeIrish tensions. Far too often, however, the perspective of Civil War Boston is merely Northern rather than Bostonian. Relying heavily on secondary sources, many paragraphs recount political news from Washington, supplemented with commentary from Boston newspapers; many other paragraphs rehash battles, supplemented with notes on the involvement of Massachusetts regiments. For example, in discussing one of the most dramatic wartime encounters between Boston culture and a competing regional voice, O'Connor devotes two perfunctory sentences to Edward Everett's oration at Gettysburg and eleven sentences to Lincoln's address. A comparable Irish American example is Patrick Gilmore, whose cultural significance Lawrence Levine has highlighted inHighbrow...