Journal: John Frederick Weishampel, Jr., Baltimore, MD, 1858-1895.

Journal: John Frederick Weishampel, Jr., Baltimore, MD, 1858-1895. Transcribed and edited by A. E. Weishampel and C. V. Weishampel. Columbus, GA: Brentwood Christian Press, 2007. 146 pp.

"In reading History," wrote John Frederick Weishampel, Jr., in 1862, "we are apt to think that the characters who flourished ... years ago were essentially different from those existing around us. No mistake is greater" (54). Thanks to Weishampel, a Baltimore printer and bookseller during the Civil War, the observations recorded in his journal provide readers a unique perspective on such characters who flourished years ago.

Because he lived in a key border state, Weishampel enjoyed an excellent vantage point to capture the variety of opinions about the war. He held moderate views, seeing abolitionists as "aggressive and unchristian" meddlers (11). However, southern leaders received worse treatment because Weishampel viewed them as ambitious "demagogues" who rebelled "against a good government which has never oppressed them" (36). Weishampel followed the war dispatches closely and summarized these in his journal, resulting in a remarkably keen account of the war. Still, the more interesting parts of his war-related journal entries include his more personal notations, including his conversations with soldiers from farther north passing through Baltimore.

Weishampel belonged to the Seventh Baptist Church of Baltimore, and much of his journal contained observations on the church's work and the sermons of its pastor Richard Fuller, with whom he had a close acquaintance. Likewise, the author chronicled his leadership in the Young Men's City Mission Society and Sunday School Teachers Association. In his work as a printer, Weishampel also related his encounters with John Winebrenner, the founder of the Churches of God, whom he described in his journal as "an ignorant and wilful and arbitrary man" (88) who seemed "too lazy or indifferent to write but not too conscientious to steal" (99) in his creation of a Churches of God hymn book.

Though the journal contains interesting and insightful observations, its chief flaw lies in the format of this edition. Rather than present the journal entries in their original, chronological order, the editors (the great-grandchildren of the author) chose to extract from the journal those entries pertaining to the war and the entries pertaining to church life and present them in separate sections, respectively. Further complicating the edition, in recurring instances it appears that the editors seemingly sever journal entries from a single day and present them in the two separate sections. Undoubtedly intended to help, this editorial decision inevitably and unfortunately obscures the flow of life one tends to see in diaries and journals. Finally, the editors assert in the Preface that they have not added anything to the author's entries, but have "merely extracted those things that we deemed to be of historical interest" (5). This decision sadly diminishes the edition's worth to historians, particularly social historians, since the wealth of the past can lie in the seemingly mundane.

These critical observations should not detract from John Frederick Weishampel's writings. On the contrary, these criticisms merely invite a new, less contrived edition which historians and lay readers alike could use and enjoy to greater benefit.--Reviewed by Richard C. Traylor, associate professor of history, Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, Texas.