| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Blood Image: Turner Ashby in the Civil War and the Southern Mind. By Paul Christopher Anderson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. xxiv, 258 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8071-2752-3.)

The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia. By Brian Steel Wills. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. xvi, 345 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8139-2027-2.)

The Civil War was in fact many wars. While big armies battled on blood-soaked fields, an often nastier conflict raged in smaller venues. Countless military clashes on every frontier drew Americans into a tangled web of rebellion and suppression. No area proved more violent than the Shenandoah Valley. This arena thus provides a fitting location for events chronicled by Paul Christopher Anderson for the series Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the Civil War, edited by T. Michael Parrish. Across Virginia, the small coastal town of Suffolk provides the stage for Brian Steel Wills's volume for the series A Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History, edited by James I. Robertson Jr.

In the Shenandoah Valley, a strange knight, Turner Ashby, became the chosen champion of those who supported the Confederacy. Tragically, or perhaps fittingly, he fell early, in the heat of combat in June 1862. Anderson admits that modern scholars often know little more about Ashby than his grim distinction of being the only Confederate general to be photographed after he died. To the people of his era, though, especially those who lived in the valley, Ashby was much more. Anderson does not provide a simple narrative. The facts of Ashby's life are scattered throughout the book, providing context for an analysis not only of the fallen knight but also of the expectations that created the environment for Ashby's secular sanctification. This book often provides much more information about the Shenandoah Valley than it does about Ashby, and so it far surpasses many traditional biographies.

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