"A Gentleman and an Officer": A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War.

"A Gentleman and an Officer": A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War. By Judith N. McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xviii, 362. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-19-509312-7; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-19-509311-9.)

Judith McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton provide yet another volume of letters by a Confederate Civil War soldier in A Gentleman and an Officer. James Griffin was a wealthy thirty-six-year-old planter in Edgefield, South Carolina. He owned sixty-one slaves and 1500 acres. He was the father of seven children when the war began; another was born weeks after Griffin went to war and yet another child arrived in 1863. Griffin spent the first year of the war as a field officer in the Hampton Legion. He saw virtually no action until his enlistment was almost over. Griffin was left with plenty of time to write letters, and fifty-eight survive from his first year of service, nearly all to his wife. Like many soldiers' letters they describe the comforts and deprivations of camp life; the unpleasantness of marching, poor weather, and disease; and military rumor and strategy.

Griffin's letters are particularly valuable for the opportunity they offer to observe at close range the election of army officers. Griffin was commissioned a major and promoted to lieutenant colonel during his original enlistment. Apparently he was a stickler for detail, and the editors describe him as "the epitomal man of duty" (p. 7). The letters disclose Griffin's personal ambition, the men's disaffection with his leadership, and the complex jockeying among officer candidates. They also offer insight into the conflict Griffin felt between the need simultaneously to inculcate discipline with the men and to curry favor with them.

Griffin was also torn between his desire to be with his family and his hope of winning military and national glory. The letters reveal his evident homesickness. They are filled with his questions about events and people at home as well as his directions for plantation management. Griffin was devoted to his wife, and these letters offer a direct window into their relationship: he trusted her yet carefully monitored plantation activities from afar. Historians in recent years have debated the extent to which southern white women called their men home from the army in order to fulfill their masculine obligation to provide and protect. These letters suggest that Griffin at least was eager to leave the unpleasantness of war. He allowed his understanding of manly responsibility to draw him home once his original enlistment was up, in spite of his anxiety that he would be conscripted as a private. It is impossible to decide how much his desire to be at home was the result of his defeat in the election. The letters in which Griffin debated his conflicting duties regarding his family and the war effort are among the most interesting in the book. Griffin did go home and served as a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina reserves guarding the coast. He enjoyed a surprisingly comfortable life there even as he struggled with many of the same concerns. The end of the war found him guarding Charleston. Shortly he brought his family to Texas, where he sought with fair success to regain his former economic status, this time as a businessman.

McArthur and Burton's editing is exhaustive. They provide biographical details on every individual mentioned in the letters as well as an introduction that sets the context both for Griffin's life in Edgefield and his military service. A concluding chapter does the same for the family's years in Texas. A Gentleman and an Officer is compelling in content and scrupulously edited. It is a welcome addition to the genre.

MARLI F. WEINER

University of Maine