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BOOK REVIEWSI79 Rugged and Sublime is in many ways a book that aims at a popular audience, being promoted evidently by the Arkansas Department of Arkansas Heritage. Thus one obtains a work largely on Civil War battles in Arkansas with constrained writing on economic, social, and political events. Nonetheless, the book is a successful marriage between academic concerns and popular desires. The book is gracefully written, informative in most areas of concern to scholars , and competently researched and documented. It will be welcomed by both the general public and by Civil War historians. James L. Huston Oklahoma State University Voices from the House Divided: The United States Civil War as Personal Experience. Edited by Glen M. Linden and Thomas J. Pressly. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Pp. xxxiv, 276. $14.00.) Glen Linden and Thomas Pressly credit filmmaker Ken Burns with reminding historians that first-person narratives are effective tools in allowing a reader to discover the past. So instructed, the editors of Voicesfrom the House Divided judiciously selected passages from twenty original sources designed to illustrate the effect of the Civil War upon the personal lives of individual Americans caught up in the conflict. The "Cast of Characters" includes soldiers and civilians, men and women, and people of various social conditions from both the North and the South. Because the work is a sampler of diaries, journals, reports, and newspaper editorials, the quality of writing varies. The diaries of Mary Boykin Chestnut, George Templeton Strong, and Maria Lydig Daly reveal the thoughts of articulate members of a privileged elite. These selections contrast sharply with the letters of John and Mariah Cotton, small farmers from Coosa County, Alabama, or the document entries taken from the miscellaneous collection of freedmen's documents housed in the National Archives. While most ofthe selections are of a decidedly private and personal nature, those written by free blacks Frederick Douglass, James Gooding, and Thomas Chester were abstracted from period newspapers and were obviously written with a much larger audience in mind. Entries are grouped together in thematic chapters that follow in a chronological pattern. For example, a chapter based upon reactions to the falls of Gettysburg and Vicksburg is followed by a chapter involving the New York draft riots and the assault on Fort Wagner. At their best, many ofthe selections make for compelling reading. The letters of immigrant soldier Marcus Spiegel reveal his gradual transformation from a partisan Democrat into a mature patriot and antislavery advocate. The letters of Samuel and Rachel Cormany illustrate both the excitement of a military campaign and the horror of witnessing the destruction of one's hometown by an ?8?CIVIL WAR HISTORY invading army. Linden and Pressly masterfully juxtapose Rachel Cormany's description of Early's burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with journal entries by several members of the Jones family written as Sherman's army marched through Georgia. Both Mary S. Mallard and Mary Jones wrote vivid and detailed accounts of their personal terror as enemy soldiers repeatedly entered their isolated homes and left with precious stores of food. The Linden-Pressly sampler will satisfy few. Like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, when you begin a chapter, you are never entirely certain what you might get. But there are some very tasty morsels in the assortment All of the documents were taken from previously published materials. Linden and Pressly thoroughly cite all of their sources. Hopefully, this will allow interested readers to continue a more thorough examination of one or another of the "Cast of Characters ." This short volume should stimulate the appetite of any hungry reader. Thomas D. Matijasic Prestonsburg Community College Jersey Blue: Civil War Politics in New Jersey, 1854-1864. By William Gillette. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Pp. 389. $48.00.) New Jersey has suffered the charge of being pro-Southern before the war and a Copperhead antiwar state during the hostilities. This odium of appeasement has most often been accompanied by a depiction of New Jersey as a border state in the earlier works ofjournalists and historians. Proximity to the slave states on its border, Southern markets for New Jersey's manufactured goods, continual contactbetween Copperheads concentrated in New...

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