Critic’s Corner

The Confederate Reader

By Stephen Davis · Originally published January 2024 · p. 30

Richard Barksdale Harwell (1915–1988) was a distinguished librarian, bibliographer and historian. Dr. Harwell—he was awarded an honorary doctorate from New England College—served as director of the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book Library from 1975 to ’80. During that time I was finishing my doctoral work at Emory and researching for my dissertation; Dr. Wiley had facilitated our introduction. One day I drove to Athens for work at the Hargrett and was reading at a desk when Rick walked up and said, “Come on; I’m taking you to lunch at my club.” (You don’t forget that kind of stuff.) Dr. Harwell also happened to be the first president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table after it was founded in 1949. Several decades ago, when some of us were organizing an annual award to be given by the ACWRT for the best Civil War book of the year, we called Rick and asked if we could name it after him. He kindly agreed, but stipulated that we include his middle name, of which he was quite proud. (Immodesty alert. My two recent works on John Bell Hood won Richard Barksdale Harwell Awards. In accepting it, I told the story of how the Book Award got its name. What goes around comes around, I guess.) Dr. Harwell is best known for the literary classics he edited, such as Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse (1959) and Fitzgerald Ross’ Cities and Camps of the Confederate States (1958). But he also contributed to scholarship of the war era with Confederate Music (1950) and Brief Candle: The Confederate Theatre (1971). Among other notable projects he abridged into one volume Freeman’s fourvolume biography of General Lee. For The Confederate Reader: How the South Saw the War (1957), which concerns us here, he looked at several thousand Confederate publications reposing at numerous libraries, including the Boston Atheneum, Museum of the Confederacy and the Huntington Library in California. From all of those documents he selected a little more than fifty for reprinting in his Reader. We have an account of Fredericksburg from The Southern Illustrated News that emphasizes the Yankees’ frightful casualties. “Piles of Yankee dead” were estimated as numbering 18,000 men (Confederate casualties were said to be just over 2,000). “The field of battle presented a horrible spectacle,” this report declared; “at least six, some say eight, Yankees were found dead for one Confederate. At one place an officer saw what he supposed to be a regiment lying in ambush in a small enclosure. It proved to be dead Yankees.” The story of one of Mosby’s raids was published in Richmond as a pamphlet. Dr. Harwell excerpted a passage concerning Major Mosby’s capture of the Yankee general Stoughton. The major entered his chamber without much ceremony, and found him reposing in all the dignity and grandeur of a brigadiergeneral commanding, whose person and slumbers are sacred. Making his way toward the bed, in the dark, the partisan shook him suddenly by the shoulder. “Who is that?” growled the sleepy brigadier. “Get up quick I want you,” responded the major. “Do you know who I am,” cried the brigadier, sitting up in bed, with a scowl. “I will have you arrested, sir.” “Do you know who I am?” retorted the major, shortly. “Who are you?” “Did you ever hear of Mosby?” Yes! Tell me, have you caught the ------ rascal!” “No; but he has caught you!” And the major chuckled. Evans & Cogswell was a prominent publisher in Columbia, South Carolina. From one of its books issued in 1864 comes this scathing denunciation of Lincoln: His Emancipation Proclamation is nothing more nor less than a premium for murdering men and outraging women. It is the most odious and atrocious outburst of brutal and cowardly vindictiveness that ever emanated from a pagan or “christian” tyrant. The author of it, and the “Christian” people who approve it, are more debased than the besotted savages of the Feejee islands….

Details of the Vicksburg surrender come from a booklet produced in Atlanta, late 1863. Its author, Alexander St. Clair Abrams, was in the city, working on the staff of the Vicksburg Whig. He was thus on hand when, after having been paroled, the Confederate garrison dolefully marched through the enemy lines. It was a mournful and harrowing sight. The soldiers felt their disgrace, and there was not one gallant heart in the mass of men, that did not feel half bursting with sorrow and humiliation at being compelled to march through the enemy’s guards who were stationed on both sides of the road to some distance beyond the entrenchments. But nothing could avert the degradation; so with downcast looks, and countenances on which a knowledge of the bitterness of their defeat could be seen plainly stamped, they filed past the enemy, who gathered in large number to witness their departure. It was a day never to be forgotten by those who assisted in the defense of Vicksburg. So filled with emotion were many of our men, that large tear drops could be seen on their weather-beaten countenances, and ever and anon they would pause in their march, and, turning back, take one last sad look at the city they had fought and bled for. In the spring of 1861 William Howard Russell, correspondent for the London Times, visited Montgomery, where he formed the opinion that “there is no people in the world so crazy with military madness.” This and other observations first appeared in The Times, but were widely reprinted in both North and South. After Beast Butler issued his infamous woman order in New Orleans, General Beauregard issued a broadside urging Confederates to rise up and drive back the “ruffianly soldiers of the North” who were treating “the ladies of the South as common harlots.” A faux menu from a siegestraitened Vicksburg hotel offers a variety of flavors, most of them featuring mule meat (e.g., “Mule side stewed, new style, hair on”); “Genuine Confederate Coffee” was code for no coffee at all, but probably something from acorns. The Rev. Nicholas Davis, chaplain for Hood’s Brigade, composed a notable unit history printed in the Confederate capital during 1863. For The Confederate Reader, Harwell chose Davis’ account of the Texans’ difficult trek to Virginia. Henry Hotze was a member of a Mobile unit which made its way to Virginia. En route he heard so many different variations of “Dixie” as to remark, “It is marvellous with what wild-fire rapidity this tune of ‘Dixie’ has spread over the whole South.” The list of gems goes on and on. “Captures much of the flavor of life and society in the embattled South” is the pithy assessment of The Confederate Reader in Nevins, Robertson and Wiley’s Civil War Books (1969)….and in the embattled Confederate army, to boot. One of Harwell’s concluding selections is the set of resolutions adopted early in 1865 by the men of McGowan’s Brigade in Lee’s army. 1. That the war in which we ae engaged is a war of selfdefence to protect our country from invasion, our homes from desolation, and our wives and children from insult and outrage. 2. That the reasons which induced us to take up arms at the beginning have not been impaired, but, on the contrary, infinitely strengthened by the progress of the war. 3. Our cause is righteous and must prevail. 4. To submit to our enemies now, would be more infamous than it would have been in the beginning. “Therefore, unsubdued by past reverses,” the resolution concludes, “and unawed by future dangers, we declare our determination to battle to the end.” We know, of course, how that battle ended. But reading the contemporaneous words of Southerners at war—as late as April 21, 1865, Kirby Smith was exhorting his men to “stand by your colors—maintain your discipline”—is to sense why Confederates fought on, way past the time when most could see that the war had been lost. Stephen Davis has been writing on the war for well-nigh onto a half-century, having first been published in Civil War Times Illustrated back in 1976. He is the author, among other titles, of a two-volume study of Gen. John B. Hood’s war service (Mercer University Press, 2019-2020). Next year Savas Beatie will publish The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign.