The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955 Page: 313

Book Reviews

produced too many "anarchists," and cohesion and loyalty were
lacking even under pressure of defensive war. There is some evi-
dence that the Confederacy might have failed even if the erring
sisters had been "let alone."
One must conclude with superlatives in commending the book.
It is the peculiar genius of the author to put elaborations in digest
forms. The chapter of 26 pages on "Economic Disintegration" for
instance, seems to encompass and even supplement the i 2. pages
of Ramsdell's Behind the Lines in The Southern Confederacy,
the parent study. The jacket on the attractive format properly
assigns the volume to an enduring place in Civil War annals, and
it will be a long time before any scholar improves either the con-
tent or literary style of this book. It is indispensable as a teaching
aid in survey or seminar and for bibliography and leads for further
research. This is the one account with which a layman who reads
for interest and a student who reads for instruction would both
begin and end.
J. HORACE BASS
A. and M. College of Texas
George Mercer Papers: Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia.
Edited by Lois Mulkearn. Pittsburgh (University of Pitts-
burgh Press), 1954. Pp. xxxviii+731. $10.00.
The appearance of the papers of George Mercer of Virginia is
an important contribution to the history of the American colonies
from Pennsylvania southward on the eve of the French and Indian
War. These papers, which make up the nucleus of the Darlington
Library at the University of Pittsburgh, have been kept from
research historians for at least a half dozen years and have pre-
vented related research. The Ohio Company of Virginia, to which
most of these papers pertain, worked closely with the Virginia
government: it was the Ohio Company settlement and activities
around the present site of Pittsburgh which brought on hostilities
between the French and English in 1754.
The volume is divided into four parts, two of them copies or
reproductions of the original papers of the Ohio Company and
the Mercers, and two of them commentaries and annotations of
those documents. The papers in the Darlington Library are copied
first and are followed by a facsimile of a printed case history of

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