Univ. Of Miss., 2002, $45, ISBN 1-57806-462-7, 412 pgs., hardback

Give Assoc. Prof. Harold Wilson credit for researching the hell out of Confederate cotton mills and clothing factories. You get a year-by-year, state-by state, and sometimes mill-by-mill recounting of how many bolts of cloth, number of shirts, and pairs of shoes the South produced during the American Civil War. You even get to know how many were delivered to depots and armies. The problem with hell is that it's the one place you'll get to on the author's road of good intentions.

Don't get me wrong; working lists of numbers is hell to try and convert into prose. Each chapter contains 100-200 footnotes. Indeed, 69 pages out of 412 are these footnotes--mostly a source, but sometimes with additional numbers. The bibliography alone runs 28 pages. As I noted, Confederate Industry is well researched.

Tucked in and around all these numbers is some analysis of the Confederate Quartermaster Department. Here, bits and pieces of Wilson's study of logistics receive a cordial welcome, if only as a respite from the hellacious onslaught of figures. However, these respites are altogether too short, and the analysis becomes segmented and ultimately lost.

Also, the title is slightly misleading. Despite the word "industry," you should read, "cotton mills and garment manufacturers." There's precious little about iron, shipbuilding, and other heavy industry.

Battles, commanders, and campaigns lend themselves more towards storytelling than the number of card clothing produced by a mill or a state or a region. And my eyes rolled into the back of my head over many a section of numbers. Just because one numeric example is good doesn't mean 50 examples are great. I sympathize with the research effort, but such overkill dilutes the key components of Wilson's study and makes it boring as hell.

Sometime in the future, I would hope Wilson revisits his work and strips out all those numbers into an appendix or two. Then, he can rework his premise into prose and concentrate on historical interpretation and analysis, with an example or two in support. Oh, and change the title, too.

"War is hell," said General Sherman, and so too are some books--especially those with tantalizing topics that don't connect for one reason or another, but project so much promise and potential, they just beg for a tweak. As Confederate Industry stands now, its appeal is limited to connoisseurs of Confederate clothing procurement. That small audience, in light of the research involved, deserves to be wider.

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