General John Bratton: Sumter to Appomattox, In Letters to His Wife.

General John Bratton: Sumter to Appomattox, In Letters to His Wife. By J. Luke Austin. (Sewanee, Tenn.: Proctor's Hall Press, c. 2003. Pp. xviii, 315. $19.95, ISBN 0-9706214-3-4.)

While Father Is Away: The Civil War Letters of William H. Bradbury. Edited by Jennifer Cain Bohrnstedt. Compiled by Kassandra R. Chaney. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 2003. Pp. xii, 386. $40.00, ISBN 0-8131-2259-7.)

John Bratton, a South Carolina planter who served steadily throughout the Civil War, is not a familiar name. Although he eventually commanded a brigade of South Carolinians and fought well at Seven Pines, he either missed or was on the margins of most of the major battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia. William H. Bradbury's war could hardly have been more different. The English immigrant, lawyer, and land speculator from Illinois apparently never fired a gun, traveled by wagon when his army was on the march, and as a headquarters clerk was virtually always far from the fighting.

Bratton comes off as a well-educated, thoughtful, and attentive officer and husband. His letters--which are only excerpted here--contain useful little moments and details. Describing a skirmish, he reported that he and his brother-in-law found themselves taking cover from federal fire. "I remarked to Bev," he wrote his wife dryly, "that it was well our wives could not know our condition" (p. 53). Bratton was wounded and captured at Seven Pines; his account of chivalric treatment on the part of his captors, who, among other things, allowed him to go fishing within sight of Confederate lines, reminds us of the remnants of old-fashioned chivalry that emerged from time to time during the war.

Unfortunately, while the letters seem to be informative and well written, if undramatic, they comprise less than half of the book. The bulk of the volume is a standard narrative of military operations and biographical information. There are too few letters and far too much information about events in which Bratton had no part for this to be considered a simple collection of documents (as the title seems to indicate the book will be). On the other hand, there are far too many block quotes, too few secondary sources, and too little attempt to investigate other primary sources that might have provided an alternative view of Bratton to make this a serious biography. There is no evidence that Bratton was not a good and reliable officer, but when J. Luke Austin profusely thanks direct descendants of his subject for loaning him copies of the letters as well as for financial support, he calls into question his own scholarly objectivity. His preface sets forth an intent that could have been written during the heyday of the Lost Cause: "I hope the reader finds [this book] a fair account of a patriot whose place in his country's history needs and deserves illumination" (p. xii). The biographical portions of the book never achieve a greater sense of historical detachment.

On the other hand, Jennifer Cain Bohrnstedt has carefully edited, indexed, and placed in the necessary historiographical contexts the letters of Bradbury, who, when he was not acting as scribe, was plotting his own transfers, writing letters to Chicago and Manchester (England) newspapers for pay, concocting schemes for making money, and instructing his wife on how to manage their complicated but rather petty business affairs. The bracing frankness of his concern with his own safety and his family's economic well-being--he writes virtually nothing about the Union cause, slavery, or even military campaigns--makes this a unique set of letters.

However, once the reader realizes what Bradbury is about--after the first two or three chapters--the letters become redundant. This could have been avoided by being more selective and by focusing on several of the collection's strengths. For instance, Bradbury's letters and poems to his children are touching and instructive. The rather flowery and patriotic missives he wrote to newspapers differ sharply from his personal letters; something could have been done with this contrast. Bradbury also offers subversive and sometimes amusing descriptions of "shoulder straps"--rear-echelon officers who contribute little to the war effort (p. 54). But these fine points are lost in the overwhelming and redundant sea of details about Bradbury's personal finances.

Another problem lies with Bohrnstedt's insistence on imposing dramatic schemas on the letters. Chapter introductions frequently mislead the reader about the content of the letters. For instance, Bohrnstedt suggests that "a battle of life and death was fought on the prairies of Illinois" and that Bradbury's wife Mary was engaged in a "sheer struggle for survival" (p. 64). Clearly, Mary was lonely and had several children to support. But the letters that follow suggest that Bradbury sent home every cent he could lay his hands on--far more than most privates' families received. These letters also indicate that his request that Mary not accept charity, which Bohrnstedt describes harshly as an unnecessary hardship for his family, did not extend to accepting gifts of food and firewood and was modified when Bradbury told Mary to use her own judgment in such matters. Much later in the book, Bohrnstedt hints that the letters will provide insight into the transition from slavery to freedom of African Americans in Tennessee; in fact, Bradbury barely mentions his brief association with the Freedmen's Bureau and offers no opinions on that transition.

Readers interested in the particular South Carolina units commanded by Bratton and in the minutiae of Civil War-era military red tape may find these books irresistible, but most historians and general readers can be excused from making room for them on their Civil War bookshelves.

JAMES MARTEN 

Marquette University