Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/689

 Reagan : Memoirs 679 Memoirs zcith Special Reference to Secession and the Civil Jl'ar. By John H. Reagan^ LL.D. Edited by Walter Flavius IMc- Caleb, Ph.D., with Introduction by Professor George P. Gar- rison. (New York and Washington: The Neale PubHshing Company. 1906. Pp. 351.) John H. Reagan, " a self-made man ", who rose to high rank under the ancien regime in the South and who was a trusted adviser to Jefferson Davis, evidently experienced much that would not only in- terest the present generation, but add to the sum of our historical knowledge. Besides having passed through such crises as Texas an- nexation, the Mexican War, the compromise of 1850, and the Civil War, Reagan was a man of unusually clear vision, of absolute honesty and few abiding, prejudices. He was, then, a man who ought to have written his memoirs ; and there was double incentive in his own case because he was for a long time the last living member of the Con- federate cabinet, and he realized the ever-growing interest in the events of the war. But the book itself is short, embracing but three hundred and fifty pages of not very compact print. The main topics treated are the writer's early life in Texas, his part in Congress during three or four years prior to 1861, the organization of the Confederacy at Mont- gomery, the Civil War, as viewed by an active and efficient cabinet officer in Richmond, and the problems of reconstruction. The most interesting portion of the book is the plain, unvarnished story of Reagan's hardships and early struggles. He does not blush to tell of his experience as an overseer in Mississippi and to note without concern that he thought it a promotion to be raised from the position of teacher to that of overseer. His frank statements about himself lend weight to his opinions about Davis, Lee, and others with whom he later came into daily contact. The fact that such a man could rise to fame in the South and become the trusted companion of the men who made the Confederacy shows how open was the rank of Southern aris- tocracy. Reagan defends Davis against Joseph E. Johnston, Beauregard, and Alexander Stephens, and takes the ground that no better or abler leader could have been found. If there are men who still regard the Confederate President as having been tyrannical, unfeeling toward his own people, and cruel to Northern prisoners, they will have to stiffen their backs a little after reading Reagan's account of the cabinet meet- ing in which the policy of retaliation for Dahlgren's raid was dis- cussed. The cabinet was unanimously in favor of ordering a number of Federal prisoners shot. Davis declined to act on this advice, saying that he opposed shooting unarmed men on any consideration, that the place for such work was on the field of battle (p. 182). But Reagan's best service to the people of Texas and indirectly to the South was his brave efforts to persuade them, from his cell in