Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/861

 REVIEWS.

Civil History of the Confederate States. With some Personal Remi- niscences. ByJ. L. M. CURRY, LL.D. Richmond, Va.: B. F. Johnson Publishing Co., 1901. Pp. 318.

DR. CURRY is one of two surviving members of the body that organized the Confederate government. It is an appropriate labor of love for him to present his associates in the light in which they regarded each other, and in which each was justified in his own conscience. The main contention is, of course, familiar to all Americans over fifty years of age, and to all younger readers of our history. In a word, as the author expresses it (p. 69), "the seceding states were not dissatis- fied with the constitution, but with its administration, and their avowed and manifest purpose was to restore its integrity and secure in the future its faithful observance." The South claimed that the North had vacated fundamental features of the constitution : that the North had thus violated the compact which the constitution contained, and upon which the federal union was formed; that the only recourse was resumption by the aggrieved states of the sovereignty deposited by them in the union, under guarantees which had been defaulted.

Two facts have prepared the way in the North for a tolerant and even somewhat sympathetic reading of this argument. On the whole, however, it will hardly convince even its author that the conclusion should vary very much from the formula: splendid men in gallant championship of a gigantic mistake. In the first place, many typical southern men and women are now well known in the North. People schooled to regard the South as the last standing-ground of oppression have seen the genial, gracious culture and chivalry of representative southern homes. They have compared views with southern leaders in different departments of public activity. They have discovered the superb qualities typified by these descendants, or perhaps survivors, of the generation abhorred as "rebels" and "traitors." They have found themselves obliged to reconsider some of their opinions, and have tried to restate the case with proper regard to these new perceptions. They cannot be content with historical judgments which dispose of such men as they find the southern gentleman to be, on the theory that they were given over to base motives.

847