Cross-Racial Class Protest in Antebellum American Literature by Timothy Helwig (review)

Abstract

The cumulative effect of this book is disquieting. The very power of the primary texts and photographs calls for more careful and sensitive framing if we are meant to read the book as an argument and not a catalog. In fact, the publication may have been more useful if it had been formulated as a source book or catalog. Willis could have summarized historical events to introduce sections comprised of fully documented texts and images. Either format would have called for an expanded bibliography inclusive of recent scholarship by other, often younger writers. Instead, Willis’s bibliography is lean and relies heavily on a few secondary sources, especially Edwin S. Redkey’s A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-65 (1992). Most helpful are her citations of lesser-known online collections such as the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland and the National Library of Medicine. The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship compiles a riveting archive of the Civil War’s volatile, disparate utterances and images. As a linear narrative, however, the book is disturbing because so many dissimilar texts and photographs are placed side by side without explanation. Further work is required to address the many issues raised both by these primary documents and the gap between what words and images can do. We urgently need books about these African Americans who courageously fought for a justice that has yet to be attained. This publication makes us want to see more, but this fact is both its weakness and also its strength. As always, Willis highlights a corpus that will inspire further, crucial work.