Book Review

Canada and the United States

In this volume, Mark E. Neely, Jr., details what Civil War historians familiar with wartime primary sources have long observed: civil liberties in the Confederacy were never as secure as southern white civilians liked to think they were, nor as inviolate as political and military leaders claimed. Yet the myth of Confederate adherence to constitutional protection of civil liberties has been tenacious, and, as Neely points out, "dangerously untested by documentary research" (p. 9). To address this issue, so often ignored in Civil War historiography, Neely has divided his study of political prisoners into four parts: "Liberty and Order," "The Confederate Bench and Bar," "Dissent," and "Jefferson Davis and History." The core of his research comes from 4,108 records of "civilian prisoners held by military authority in the Confederacy" (p. 1).

1

Part one analyzes the abuses of civil liberties by General Thomas Hindman in Arkansas. Hindman's reign in the Trans-Mississippi area demonstrated in microcosm the challenge faced by the Confederate government in Richmond. Hindman took upon himself the task of getting frontier Arkansas on its feet both economically and militarily, and he accomplished much without worrying about trampling on civil liberties. Neely argues that the myriad complaints against Hindman's excesses did not prevent Jefferson Davis from recognizing the necessity of his general's course. Neely cites the use of martial law to control abuses of alcoholic beverages as another example of necessity ruling the thinking of Confederate officials.

. . .