and his eloquence. Dahlgren’s raid, for instance, “remains a blot even upon the page of this uncivilized warfare.” DeLeon is not above criticizing Confederate naval “policy”—Congress stinted appropriations that could have speeded completion of the Virginia; not enough emphasis was placed on privateers, even after the early successes of Semmes’ Sumter; and too much money and labor were spent on building flimsy river gunboats, o “frail wooden shells.” Through it all, however, dutifully and heroically Southern sailors held their posts, “at the bitter endin no man nor woman in the broad South but believed they had done their devoir—honestly— manfully—well!” In his chapter “The Failure in
Finance,” DeLeon makes the argument that at the start of the war, the government could have on faith bought up the year’s cotton crop, promptly shipped and sold it in Europe, accrued a treasury for purchasing supplies and for repayment in coin of bondholders, thus circulating specie in the economy. The argument is not new, of course, but in DeLeon’s telling of how cotton, “auriferous in every fiber,” could indeed have been
king, it becomes more persuasive than ever. By the way, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville are related in just ten pages, far fewer than are given to the author’s consideration of the Confederate economy. This is just what you’d expect from a civilian living in a crowded city beset by food shortages, inflationary spiral, a hoarding speculators. Our author, of course, knew well the ultimate outcome of Grant’s contest with Lee in the spring campaign of 1864. This does not prevent him from adding sly licks to his narrative of it. Grant is derided as nothin but “a pertinacious fighter,” Civil War Artillery Book 392 page, full-color book, Civil War Artillery Projecti – The Half Shell Book. For more information and how to order visit
far from deserving a title such as strategist, much less great soldier. His fighting from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor is termed a “disastrous series of blunders” in which he lost seven men to every one of Lee’s. DeLeon has some fun with Butler’s ancillary campaign that Grant ordered while he toughed it out with Lee. Butler, preparin to ascend the James, is equipped with “a fleet of iron-clads, doub enders, gunboats and transports sufficient for a war with England and still fails. “Grant’s civiliz warfare,” shelling Petersburg’s helpless civilians, fails utterly deter loyal Southern women from their quiet labors in support of soldiery. Later, the depredations
of Sheridan’s “barn-burning and railroad-tearing cavalry” are
likewise belittled as ineffective in turning the people against the cause. In that other vital contest, t one in Georgia, both Johnston and, surprisingly, Sherman are given high marks, the former for prudently husbanding his strength while giving up ground, the latte for not wasting his manpower in Grant-like assaults. DeLeon thus criticizes the government’s removal of Johnston outside Atlanta “for wholly inexplicable
reasons,” as he puts it. As for Hood’s failure to hold Atlanta, the author complains that in his campaign report “neither his theories nor their carrying out are made comprehensible to the public.” Cooper DeLeon was in Richmond when it fell; he writes touchingly of saying goodbye to a friend who apparently did not survive the last days of the war. Hence we are to value all the more his telling of the Union occupation. He writes movingly how, after the Federals opened their commissary to the hungry and needy, Richmond’s ladies swallowed their reluctan to accept charity from their conquerors, and “received small
rations of cornmeal and codfish bearing them home to be eaten with what bitter seasoning they might of tears from pain and humiliation.” Such was the war and its outcome. Like Father Ryan, Cooper DeLeon was prepared to furl and bury that conquered banner, but not before hailing one last time:
But is that proud flag— with the glory and the pride wrought into its folds, by suffering, honor and endurance unexcelled— really “furled forever?” The dust of centuries may sift upon it, but the moth and the mold may harm it not. Ages it
may lie, furled and unnoted; but in her good time, histori
Justice shall yet unfold and throw it to the breeze of immortality; pointing to each glorious rent and to each hol drop that stains it!
It is because of such soarin prose as this that Dr. Weaver deems DeLeon “a literary artist He was a Rebel, and proud of it, even in defeat. David Eiche commented on Four Years in Rebel Capitals, “highly partisa and at times bitter, the accoun
nevertheless manages to convey a good deal of information.” This assessment, I think, misse the mark, for it is DeLeon’s
Confederate partis and Southern pride (I don’t see “bitterness”) that makes DeLeon’s memoir notable in the first place—an erudite, polished, and entertaining look back on how ex-Rebels could still view their fight as noble even in failure. When today the entire Confederate experience i being dismissed in one or two slurs, getting at the thoughts and feelings of an intelligent, educated Southerner a generatio after the war is more than time travel; it’s a cultural encount
Stephen Davis of Cumming, Georgia, is author of seven boo
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