Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870 (review)

Abstract

276CIVIL WAR HISTORY president, a "... low-bred Southerner, consequently an essentially uncivilized man ..." (354). The editors and the press deserve commendation for the splendid work on this volume. The statement on editorial policy clearly lays out how the editors went about their work. The notes fully identify persons mentioned in Olmsted's correspondence. The contemporary illustrations and maps of California are carefully matched to Olmsted's observations of such places as San Francisco, Yosemite, and Mariposa. Victoria Ranney's introduction concisely explains Olmsted's business affairs at Mariposa, and Charles E. Beveridge, in a short comment, helpfully links Olmsted's "Pioneer Condition" to his earlier social survey work at the Sanitary Commission. The editors also took great care to explain how they reconstructed the fragments of "The Pioneer Condition." This is an important series, and libraries should make every effort to collect all the volumes. Those interested in western history should also take note of a side to Olmsted they may not have known existed. James W. Oberly University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870. Edited by Philip N. Racine. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Pp. x, 597. $49.95.) "The journal will be as a looking glass into & to see the past as far as my farm & means are concerned," David Golightly Harris exclaimed on New Year's Day 1868 (454). Harris, a small slaveowner from the South Carolina Upcountry, kept a series of journals between 1855 and 1870. Wofford College professor Philip N. Racine has produced a beautifully edited edition of them, adding an edifying introduction, complete annotations , genealogical charts, maps and photographs. Never as successful as his wealthy father, David Harris lived with his wife Emily and their seven children in a small three-room house, located in Spartanburg District, S.C. Harris, a piedmont farmer, raised mostly foodstuffs with the aid of ten slaves. Piedmont Farmer traces the family through the coming of the war, the war, and the beginning of Radical Reconstruction. When the war came, Harris's first priority was to his farm and family. Taxes, inflation, and shortages soon took their toll. Forced to speculate in the selling of yarn, Harris explained in April 1863, "I do not like to be called a speculater, but I want to make some thing to live upon" (286). Age forty-five, he was able to avoid service until the Conscription Act of July 1863. "Parting with my family will be worse than meeting the yankeys," he predicted in March 1862 (238). He served only six months and later hired a substitute. At one point Harris won a furlough home by capturing a notorious deserter. BOOK REVIEWS277 If most white Southerners, like Harris, went to war to protect their families, then the war itself undermined their rationale for going. Particularly moving are the passages in the journal written by Emily. The task of running the farm fell squarely on her shoulders. Her travails included sickness, a troublesome overseer, recalcitrant slaves, escaped Yankee prisoners in her gin-house, and the threat of an attack by deserters. "A few more years of this kind of life will wear me out," she wrote in November 1864. "I feel old and miserable and ugly. ... I expect no more rest this side [of] the grave. The wants of the family are never satisfied and their wants weigh heavily on me" (350). She even began doubting her sanity, recalling that one of her mother-in-law's objections to their marriage was insanity in her side of the family. The Piedmont Farmer deals with a whole host of important issues, including the treatment of slaves, the adjustment to Reconstruction, and the impact of taxes on white families before, during, and after the war. Harris did not free his slaves until August 1865. He was subsequently unable to find suitable renters, white or black. For Harris one thing remained constant: the burden of taxation. He ended his journal on March 5, 1870 with: "Taxes has come again & as usual, little or no money" (496). We are indebted to Philip Racine for making these important journals available to us. Edmund L. Drago College of Charleston The Creation of...