Civil War History

BOOK REVIEWS77 a thriving farm of over four thousand acres and almost two hundred slaves. Yet, Hardy enjoyed only a few years of success. In 1837, Hardy, his wife Frances, her aunt, and their three children lost their lives on a steamboat that went down in a hurricane offthe coast of North CaroUna. For the next twenty years, Bryan fought Frances's family in the courts for control of Goodwood. The lawsuit revolved around whether Hardy's legal residence was North CaroUna or Florida and who was the last survivor, Hardy or his son. After twenty long years ofhard work, Bryan had made Goodwood into one of the most productive plantations in Florida. But in 1858 the Florida Supreme Court ordered him to turn it and all of Hardy's real and personal estate over to Frances's mother and sister. The story of the Crooms could have been a fascinating and illustrative one. However, in its current form, it is not useful as either legal history, social history , or economic history. It will also have Utile value for those interested in the Civil War. The Croom Family and Goodwood Plantation will only have interest for those specifically interested int he family or the history of this plantation. Instead ofusing the Crooms, their plantations, and thek legal battles to examine Southern famiUes, master-slave relations, agricultural practices, and legal decisions , the authors lose the importance ofthese people and events in a sea of insignificant details. It seems that every single piece of information known about the family members, thek near and distant kin, and thek friends has been included. Every sale of land or home has been mentioned. The primary focus on the development and management of Goodwood, its white occupants, and thek legal battle is dropped repeatedly as the narrative spins off in multiple directions to cover the minutiae ofthe extensive Croom family members and friends' Uves. Ifthe book had been better organized and focused, it could have recounted the story of an influential Southern family and an important legal case (the Croom case was cited as precedent for years). Furthermore, few works have studied family and plantation Ufe in antebellum Florida. Given the authors' more limited goals, this material would probably have been better presented as an edited coUection of letters and documents. It had the potential to be an important contribution to Southern historiography. Instead, The Croom Family and Goodwood Plantation is only a good genealogy ofthe family and ofthek legal fight for thek plantation. Charlene Boyer Lewis Widener University Lincoln 's Critics: The Copperheads of the North. By Frank L. Klement. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Books, 1999. Pp. xxxvii, 261. $40.00.) In his introduction to this coUection ofessays by the late Frank Klement, Steven K. Rogstad notes that the longtime "Marquette University professor did more to erase myths about Copperheads than has any other scholar" (xi). Few would disagree. By the time of his death in 1994, Klement had published seven books 78CIVIL WAR HISTORY and over fifty articles, more than halfof which dealt with the subject of Northern opposition to the Lincoln administration and its conduct during the war. Central to Klement's work was his revisionist attack upon what he termed the "nationalistic" interpretation ofLincoln's critics. Fkst imposed by the Republican administration itself, this view branded all critics of thek policies as Southern sympathizers and traitors to the country. Such a view would dominate historical interpretations of the anti-war Democrats until Klement's groundbreaking work, The Copperheads in the Middle West, which first appeared in i960. Klement argued that Lincoln's opponents in the Midwest were not seditious conspkators, but instead principled descendants ofJeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats who represented western interests against the revolutionizing influence of the new RepubUcan party. Moreover, Northern Democrats were individuals who opposed the draft, hated black equaUty, and were fearful of what they saw as Lincoln's deliberate effort to deprive them of thek civil Uberties. It was in this last issue where Klement's work has been the most useful. More than anyone else he has grappled with the meaning of a loyal opposition during wartime. Klement spent his entke career trying to untarnish the...