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Book Reviews
73
in which the precepts of Antoine Henri Jomini shaped the conduct
of the Civil War. They surpass previous historians in their perceptions of the influence of logistics on Civil War strategy; particularly they make clear that in the western theater the Union’s
inability to go on making consistent use of river lines of communications after Shiloh had a crippling effect on further offensives. In detailing the logistical realities, they go far to rehabilitate
Henry W. Halleck as a general with an especially acute grasp of
those realities. They show that Halleck was also among the first
Civil War commanders to recognize that a strategy of annihilating
enemy armies in the classic, Napoleonic fashion would no longer
work because the rifled firepower and the maneuverability of Civil
War armies as well as their size made them almost impossible to
destroy within any politically acceptable time limits and with an
acceptable casualty rate on one’s own side.
The authors conclude that because of the failure of a classical
strategy of annihilation, Grant, Halleck, and William T. Sherman
devised a war-winning “strategy of exhaustion,” which defeated
the Confederacy by stripping it of the economic ability to supply
its armies, especially through Sherman’s marches and through
destructive cavalry raids. While this reviewer will not emulate
the authors’ style by stating categorically that their conception
of the decisive effects of a strategy of exhaustion is in error, nevertheless their judgment must be considered dubious. The fact remains that the destruction of southern resources essential to
carrying out Hattaway’s and Jones’s version of a strategy of exhaustion could not begin to be achieved on a scale adequate to
Union purposes until the Confederate armies had already been
substantially destroyed, whatever the costs of a strategy of annihilation.
The authors’ strategic analysis, however, cannot be quickly
dismissed. All Civil War students should read the book and ponder
its arguments for themselves.
Temple University, Philadelphia
Russell F. Weigley
Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 18621884. By Victor B. Howard. (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1983. Pp. viii, 222. Notes, sources, index. $23.00.)
Victor B. Howard states that it is his intention t o write an
“integrated” history that incorporates the previously neglected
experience of blacks into the whole of Kentucky’s history, and he
has achieved this objective admirably. The book is an exemplary
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Indiana Magazine of History
study of the day-to-day impact of the Civil War on the people and
institutions of one state.
Kentucky was distinctive, if not unique, in a number of respects. It was a border slave state which did not secede and which
became a battleground between Union and Confederate forces.
Only in Virginia and Georgia was there a larger number of slaveholders. Kentucky did not emancipate its slaves by state action,
and in a gesture of frustration it refused to ratify the Thirteenth
Amendment, although by that time slavery was in reality dead.
The book is a good study of what the war did to whites and
white attitudes as well as to blacks. It shows the complexity and
diversity of the slave issue in relation to the preservation of the
Union. A minority of Kentuckians, while loyal to the Union, opposed emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation shook the
faith of some of the most determined Union men, but a minority
favored emancipation from the beginning.
The best parts of the book are those which deal with the
erosion of slavery. Due to the initiative of blacks themselves slavery began to collapse as soon as the war started. Slaves flocked
to the Union camps and to the states north of the Ohio River. The
war soon converted Union soldiers to abolition as a practical, not
a philosophical, matter, and they openly flouted rules that required them to return slaves to loyal masters. Once enrollment
of blacks into military service began, large numbers of slaves
sought to enroll (thereby, of course, reducing draft calls upon
whites). Other measures of the Union government, including the
repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, combined with black initiatives
to hasten the demise of slavery in the state which, by the end of
1864, was “the only significant outpost of legal slavery in the
nation” (p. 72). Vigorous efforts by the Union government to recruit slaves for military service further weakened the institution.
Important, too, was the act of Congress, late in the war, freeing
families of black soldiers. The military issued orders to recognize
the legality of slave marriages. Concern for their families had
prevented some slaves from volunteering. “The desire for secure
family life was unquestionably the first priority of the prospective
black soldier” (p. 11). A chapter on “Families in Transition” illuminates the importance of the family to blacks and the importance of blood relationships.
Meanwhile large numbers of other slaves had simply left
their masters and moved to towns or across the Ohio. Slaves had
begun to demand wages as early as 1862. The entire labor system
in parts of the state where slavery was important was disrupted.
After the war a contract system developed which, however, was
often disadvantageous to the freedmen.
Book Reviews
75
The merit of this book is that it is based on massive and
painstaking research, done over a long period of time, in primary
local sources-newspapers, personal letters of soldiers, diaries-as
well as government documents.
Butler University, Indianapolis
Emma Lou Thornbrough
Kentucky Profiles: Biographical Essays in Honor of Holman Hamilton. Edited by James C. Klotter and Peter J . Sehlinger.
(Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1982. Pp. x, 204.
Illustrations, notes, bibliographical essays, index. $19.95.)
Kentucky Profiles is a memorial volume in honor of Holman
Hamilton. It contains limited biographical material about Hamilton, a bibliography of his varied and substantial writings, a
partial list of his numerous addresses, and several essays, by
former students, concerning topics related to the history of Kentucky. Son of a Fort Wayne, Indiana, doctor, of Scotch-Irish immigrant ancestry from the pioneer era, during the 1930s and
1940s Holman Hamilton largely divided his time between reporting and editorial writing on the Fort Wayne Journal -Gazette
and preparing a biographical study of Zachary Taylor. He served
three years in World War 11, rising to the rank of major.
Hamilton’s interest in history was considerably influenced
by the writings of Claude G. Bowers, his precedessor as editorial
writer for the Journal-Gazette. This interest was enhanced and
fostered by the growing local collection of historical books and
other items about Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the Lincoln
National Life Foundation, Fort Wayne. This reviewer, while a
member of the Indiana University Extension Center at Fort
Wayne, first met Holman Hamilton when he was about to publish
his Zachary Taylor: Soldier of the Republic, which appeared in
1941. This volume won Hamilton immediate recognition as a n
historian of promise. The second volume, aided by a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 1946, appeared in 1951, winning substantial additional acclaim for its author, who had never had a graduate
course in history. In that year Hamilton, then forty-one, with his
wife and daughter, crossed his professional Rubicon and began
graduate study at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Three
years later he received his doctorate and was appropriately named
to the history faculty of the university, which position he maintained until his retirement in 1975. He died five years later.
Holman Hamilton was a highly motivated and a n extremely
versatile individual. He was a journalist, soldier, historian, professor, academic counselor, public lecturer, civic-minded citizen,