Book Review

Was Jefferson Davis Right? By James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. (Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1998. 352 pp. Paper, $16.95, isbn 1-56554-370-X.)

The field of Civil War history sometimes has an odd, almost schizophrenic quality, a byproduct of its simultaneous popularity among professional historians and the general public. On any given library shelf dedicated to the subject, one may find sophisticated scholarly studies alongside works with only the most tenuous grasp of basic historical research and methods.	1
Joseph Allan Frank's With Ballot and Bayonet is an example of the former; it is a well-researched and serious work of history. Employing his expertise in statistics and political science to analyze 1,013 letters and diaries, Frank asks a relatively simple question: What motivated Civil War soldiers to fight? He found the answer in politics. "Politics was the defining feature of the people's armies of the North and South," Frank argues. Union and Confederate soldiers were "thinking bayonets," recruited and motivated to fight by political means and for political ends.	2
Frank sees the Union army as primarily an arm of radicalism, pointing out that "the most politically articulate federal soldiers called for a revolutionary upheaval in the South." As the war turned into an increasingly apocalyptic struggle with escalating levels of violence, the Union army's rank and file ratcheted up political rhetoric, which called for the waging of total war on the Confederacy. Confederate soldiers also voiced political concerns but in a different context. According to Frank, Confederate soldiers' political awareness manifested itself in heightened feelings of class resentment directed toward their officers and political leaders. "The Civil War soldier was a more reflective soldier," he wrote, "meshing ideas and action for gaining universal political ends."	. . .