The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944 Page: 334

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

making a similar study may profitably examine the method,
the organization, and the plan of this work.
JOSEPH SCHMITZ
St. Mary's University
Confederate Mississippi: The People and Policies of a Cotton
State in Wartime. By John K. Bettersworth. Baton Rouge
(Louisiana State University Press), 1943. Pp. xii+386.
Illustrations. $3.00.
This book bridges the gap between the works of Percy L.
Rainwater on the secession movement in Mississippi and of the
late James W. Garner on reconstruction. It is a valuable addi-
tion to the steadily growing literature on the Confederacy that
is being published, and it carries forward vigorously that newer
slant which scholars have given to their studies of this period
of the history of the South. The laudatory style of treatment
which made the Confederate era heroic and dared mention
little that was derogatory came to an end with Nathaniel W.
Stephenson's The Day of the Confederacy, which appeared in
1919. Since that time the attempt to restore the balance has
been steadily going on through the monographic studies of
Albert B. Moore's Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy,
Frank L. Owsley's State Rights in the Confederacy, Ella Lonn's
Desertion during the Civil War, Bessie Martin's Desertion of
Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Louise B. Hill's
Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, and through the works
of various other scholars. Realism has pushed out romance, and
as all new brooms sweep clean, there is the evident danger that
in the zeal of wielding that new broom too much may be swept
out.
Professor Bettersworth has in this instance written a highly
readable and scholarly account of Mississippi in the Civil War,
and the only adverse criticism this reviewer would make is that
the author has overbalanced his work with the seamy side. It
should not be corrected by eliminating anything but rather by
adding to the account of the positive accomplishments and sac-
rifices made in carrying on the war and in maintaining life in
those terrible years. Such subjects as relief of soldiers' families
and other sacrifices for the war, though mentioned, receive only
meagre attention. But this is not to belittle the solid worth of
the content of the book.

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