The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 145

Book Reviews

messages and the fiscal reports. They disclose the problems, ac-
complishments, and status of Confederate Texas. In all, the
record offers an interesting combination of military and civil
topics that faced the legislature as it attempted to provide a
program for a half-settled state at war.
Despite several insignificant printing errors and some illus-
trations that add little, the work stands as a fine accomplish-
ment. It is understood that steps are being made to bring the
available remaining legislative journals to press. For his activity
in this project, Archivist Day deserves a vote of thanks from
students of Texas history. Similarly deserving of credit for this
undertaking is the Texas Library and Historical Commission.
ALLAN C. ASHCRAFT
Texas A & M University
Federals on the Frontier: the Diary of Benjamin F. McIntyre,
1862-1864. Edited by Nannie M. Tilley. Austin (University
of Texas Press), 1963. Pp. xv+429. Illustrations, maps, notes,
index. $7.50.
"Sept. 4th, 1862. I bade my loved ones adieu for the uncer-
tainties of a soldier's life," wrote Sergeant McIntyre on the day his
regiment, the 19th Iowa Infantry, marched out of its home town
and boarded a charter steamer for St. Louis and "a mysterious
future." McIntyre's diary, a day-by-day record of the regiment's
marches and battles, is a splendid source book about life in the
Union Army out on the western fringe of the Civil War. It shows
with honesty and compassion and with occasional humor what an
observant man, a carpenter in civilian life, saw during a long
tour of duty that took him from the fighting in Missouri and
Arkansas, through the siege of Vicksburg, to the drouth-ridden
lower Rio Grande country around Brownsville.
Determined to "gather the facts as far as possible," McIntyre
focused his attention on military matters. He wrote with supreme
indignity about the daily diet of "Hard bread and sow belly;" the
exacting marches through "dust Sc heat," "rain and mud" and the
extravagance and stupidities of General John Schofield, who in the
fall of 1862 led the Army of the Frontier against Confederate
forces in Arkansas. With a large, sympathetic heart and an in-
satiable curiosity, McIntyre described the awful plight of Arkansas

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