Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant. (Book Reviews).

Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant. Edited by William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 716. $49.95, ISBN 0-80712411-7.)

"Wars of men are terrible things," wrote twenty-three-year-old Kentuckian Edward O. Guerrant soon after joining the Confederate army in early 1862. "Its external paraphernalia is beautiful--grand--but its inward trials & hardships & suffering & danger & death [are] absolutely awful" (p. 37). In his wartime journal all of these were recorded in great detail by the young captain and recent college graduate.

This journal is one of the fullest kept by a Confederate and among the most eloquent penned as well. Few others cover the theater that included southwestern Virginia, East Tennessee, and brief forays into Guerrant's "erring though loved Kentucky" (p. 171) or detail service with Humphrey Marshall, William Preston, John S. Williams, or John Hunt Morgan. Guerrant was on Marshall's staff and found the 300-pound former congressman to be "a man of considerable talent & decision of character" but sometimes prone to dwell "too much upon the Ego" (pp. 30, 56). After spending much of the war longing to join the legendary Morgan, Guerrant finally got his wish, only to be "thoroughly disgusted & shamed" by the command's pillaging ways (p. 472).

A schoolteacher who aspired to the ministry, Guerrant enlisted out of both curiosity and a sense of "duty to my Country" (p. 15). He believed in slavery and was as fluent in secessionist vernacular as any South Carolinian, damning fellow Kentuckians who preferred "Northern despotism, & association with abolitionists, fanatics & Infidels" (p. 158). Lincoln, whom he called "Old Ape" and a "sacreligious [sic] old maniac" (pp. 133, 446), personified the misguided Union cause. Guerrant was fighting the "Vandal Hordes of Lincoln," "Lincoln's nigger dynasty," and "Lincoln's hireling hordes" (pp. 65, 220, 227). "I should be very willing to stop my Journal, if Lincoln will stop this war," he scrawled in August 1863. "If he don't, I wont.! [sic]" (p. 315).

While the editors deserve praise for finally bringing this massive manuscript to print, historians will question the decision to omit a third of it without any indication of where cuts have been made. Military matters have been given preference over social ones, although substantial social material remains. The transcription and annotation are fairly sound but do contain a handful of bobbles, including the misspelling of Guerrant's future in-laws (p. 514 n. 8). Tracing his budding romance is difficult, since his references to the woman who caught his eye are often incongruously indexed under his nickname for her ("Sunnyside") rather than under her name (Mary Jane DeVault). Such imprecision tends to provoke a raised eyebrow but should not detract from the usefulness of this literate, insightful resource.