Cities and Camps of the Confederate States

by Fitzgerald Ross, Richard B. Harwell

Reprint of the original, first published in 1865.

Genres: History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives details about life in the Confederate States of America and Cuba. The author could not be a more earnest advocate for the Confederacy and slavery if he were paid. Checked this book out through interlibrary loan for the Arizona State Universary Library.

[Jan Mc · Rating 3 out of 5]

The English were on the side of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and supplied them with many necessities in exchange for cotton. Ross was a travel writer from England who spent a few months in the less-than-united states during 1863 and 1864. This account was first serialized in a magazine, then made into book form and published in 1865.

The accounts of his travels were interesting for the ways and means he describes. The book really plays up the Confederacy and the Southern way of life, and condemns the Union and northerners mercilessly.

He met many Confederate officers and stayed with wealthy southerners during his trip. He makes slaveholders sound like benevolent farmers just trying to make a living:
"One remark of Colonel Faulkner’s struck me at not quite in accordance with the view of the treatment of slaves which Abolitionists indulge in.
He assured me that through he was a large slaveholder himself, and always lived amongst slaveholders, yet he had never in the course of his life even heard of a grown-up slave being whipped. He said, too, that a man guilty of cruelty towards his slaves would incur such odium as he would never survive."

And every Confederate, of course, was a gentleman in both thought and manner.
"Teetotallers will rejoice to hear that none of the Confederate soldiers ever touch spirits, and they get on very well without. Wherever the army marches, the bar-rooms in the surrounding towns and villages are closed by the authorities, and no one is allowed to sell intoxicating liquors to the soldiers. Of course, a great many do drink whenever they can find an opportunity, but opportunities are very rare. I do not recollect ever to have seen a drunken private soldier in the South, though perhaps once or twice I may have seem on officer a little “tight.”
FOOTNOTE: Here Ross’s determination to show the Confederacy in the best possible light, down to the last detail, exceeds his trustworthiness as a reporter. Certainly his statement is belied by court-martial records."

At the same time, Ross slammed the northerners—and especially immigrants—for being course and uncaring.
"This part of the country, I must remark, is entirely removed from the seat of war, and the Yankee raid had been made solely for the purpose of plundering and destroying the property of the poor unoffending inhabitants."

While "embellishing" his own story of the hospitality and good manners of every southerner, he wrote things like this:
"Most Northern newspapers make it a rule never to tell the truth if they can help it, and it requires a great deal of ingenuity and practice to interpret them correctly."

Understanding the author's viewpoint and his contemporary opinions is essential to reading history, and this is a perfect example.

There were a few funny sections, especially those describing the conditions under which he travelled.
"Of course all the drinks here are made of very bad whisky; and I did think it very nasty at first, but one gets used to everything.
[A few paragraphs later, after a near miss with a Yankee gunboat…] The Major proposed “a drink,” and I thought the whisky this time really delicious."

In any case, read it with a huge grain of salt, and you will dig out a few gems of 1860s attitudes and travel.