Major General Thomas Maley Harris (review)

Abstract

328CIVIL WAR HISTORY century state rights and state sovereignty concepts. But was it a fulfillment of state sovereignty ideology? Or did it illustrate that die South had used such doctrine merely as a rationalization for the protection of slavery and for its declining grip on national power? Lee follows a vulnerable path. As manifestations of state sovereignty he points to the preamble's "sovereign and independent" description of the states, the lack of a general welfare clause, the prohibition of a national protective tariff, and the refusal to give Confederate courts jurisdiction in diversity -of-citizenship cases. But he fails to balance these items with those which undermined state power or enhanced the national authority: for example, retention of the "necessary and proper" clause, the addition of the power to levy export duties, the item veto, and the change to ratifying constitutional amendments by two-thirds instead of three-fourths of the states. And after forty years of shabby constitutional legerdemain, the Confederate framers abandoned the state sovereignty theory of territories and placed them under national control with, of course, protection for slavery. Further, the right of secession was not specifically recognized. Finally, the framers, who borrowed heavily from the U.S. Constitution, significantly retained Article VI, Section 2—the national supremacy clause. While Lee completely overlooks this point, it is doubtful whether the Confederate "Founding Fathers" were so oblivious of its meaning. Southern writers have outgrown some of the old Confederate myths, but apparently not all of them. Moreover, Lee insists on using only those facts which fit his thesis. Too much special pleading passes for scholarship here. The conspicuous protection of slavery aside, the Confederate Constitution primarily preserved a slightly emendated seventy-four-year-old constitution. Stanley I. Kutler University of Wisconsin Major General Thomas Maley Harris. By H. E. Matiieny. (Parsons, W. Va.: McClain Printing Company, 1963. Pp. 296. $9.00.) Thomas M. Harris, an obscure Civil War general, served on the military commission which tried and convicted those individuals implicated in the assassination plot against President Lincoln. This was his only claim to fame, albeit an important one, as some aspects of the assassination and the trial itself are still clouded in mystery. Unfortunately, Matheny contributes nothing new on this subject. The author does note that Harris, toward the end of his life, wrote a vitriolic anti-Catholic tract, based on the fact that Mary Surratt was a Roman Catholic, entitled Rome's Responsibility for the Assassination of Lincoln (Pittsburgh, 1897). Matheny is more embarrassed than intrigued by Harris' propaganda piece, however, and he dismisses it in haste. "The contents of the book," he states (p. 218), "will not be analyzed here. This is a biography of General Harris, and his reasons for writing the book and the results it BOOK REVIEWS329 produced will suffice." Harris' diatribe emerged again in 1960, specially reprinted as an anti-Kennedy campaign document; but, according to Matheny, die general "probably would have objected to it being printed." One can only hope so. The remainder of this study is littie more than a chronicle of the major events in Harris' life—especially his military career which, in the opinion of this reviewer, was not important enough to justify such extended treatment. Richard O. Curry University of Connecticut The Galvanized Yankees. By D. Alexander Brown. (Urbana: University of IUinois Press, 1963. Pp. 243. $5.50.) The term "Galvanized Yankee" was first applied to Union soldiers who joined the Confederacy to escape the horrors of Southern prison camps. Mistrusted by Soutiiern commanders, and with reason, they were used only to a limited extent and with littie success. Usually one tiiinks of Galvanized Yankees as those six thousand Southerners who changed sides during the Civil War and were sent to protect the frontier settlements and the trails crossing the Plains from Indian depredations. In this volume for the first time is told the story of those forgotten Americans who, to escape the confines of Northern prison camps or because of a change of loyalty or for other reasons, enlisted in six United States Volunteer Regiments. Many of these "white-washed Yankees" were of foreign birth or from the hill country, but there was a...