GOD, GUTS, AND GALLANTRY

A biography of Maj. James Lide Coker, a Southerner who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and became a champion of civil rights.

Coker was born in 1837 in Darlington County, South Carolina, a half century after the nation achieved its independence. He was a Southerner by birth and temperament, and when the Civil War broke out in 1861, he immediately volunteered and fought with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the First Battle of Bull Run. He was a courageous solider and badly wounded. Despite the extraordinary damage, economic and infrastructural, done to the South during the war, he managed to lead a “dynamic business life” in the war’s aftermath. Joslin—Coker’s great-grandson, ably captures the tumult of the time and Coker’s considerable place in it—more than just a successful businessman, he was a community leader who made significant contributions to the spread of education, establishing his own school, Coker College, in 1908. The author paints a nuanced picture of the war and its causes. He rightly observes that while the issue of slavery was certainly an important one, there were many others, including the punitive imposition of tariffs on the South by the Lincoln administration. Moreover, Joslin limns meticulously Coker’s moral transformation from a man who once owned slaves to one who became an “active and courageous civil rights advocate for the last 53 years of his life.” This is a loving tribute to a family member and so has its hagiographic tendencies; the author acknowledges some of Coker’s flaws and missteps but also forgives him for these. Too often, though, he seems in search of new and inconsequential ways to heap adoration upon his subject. Here Joslin’s reports the praise of Joslin’s son: “He was very neat in dress and always made a good appearance. It was his habit to have two excellent suits of clothes a year, made of the best material, and by the best tailor in Charleston. He was a better dresser than any of his children.” Despite Joslin’s efforts to make this biography hit more universal notes, this is ultimately a narrowly personal account that most likely won’t sustain the interests of those who don’t have any relation to Coker.

A thorough if too laudatory biography with a limited potential audience.