Category Archives: Books

The Lumpkin Daughters

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While not strictly Civil War related, this book – reviewed here in the NY Times – shows the legacy of at least one die-hard secessionist upon his daughters. This sounds like a fascinating family history.

These are just snapshots of a densely braided biography spanning eight decades, not counting the Lumpkins’ forebears and the rediscovery of the sisters’ work by late-20th-century feminists. The book also draws together the strands of Hall’s own career as a distinguished historian of Southern labor and an activist on behalf of women and civil rights.

Hall is a herculean researcher whose sources include security files she sued the Department of Justice to access. Her interviews with the elderly Lumpkins, and reflections on why and how she tracked the sisters over decades, lend an appealing journalistic and personal touch to what might otherwise be an unleavened diet of detailed scholarship.

Source: The Daughters of the Confederacy Who Turned Their Heritage to Political Ends – The New York Times

O Captains, My Captains

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The Washington Post has offered a comparison of Lincoln’s speeches with Trump’s. It’s depressing reading – as one commenter puts it, “We’re comparing apples and feces, here.” – but maybe skip the Trump parts and revel in the beautiful humanity of Lincoln’s words. I particularly liked this quote about immigrants. As a Canadian living in one of the world’s most diverse cities, it rings true. Happy Canada Day!

I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them . . . If they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming, and I bid them all Godspeed.

Source: O Captains, My Captains – The Washington Post

Book Review: The Impeachers

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As they watch modern day Washington with a wary eye, Impeachment proponents can find some aspirational reading in a new book about Andrew Johnson’s proceedings. The Guardian reviews it here.

Implicit or not, parallels abound with current American life. Johnson’s “Swing Around the Circle” railroad trip featured rallies at which his language was (at best) strong and intemperate, including personal attacks on Congress. During the trip, the president even told a supporter: “I don’t care about my dignity.” Senator John Sherman of Illinois complained that Johnson had “sunk the presidential office to the level of a grog-house”.

Unsurprisingly, analogies to the current situation are emphasized, however subtly, throughout Wineapple’s book.

The author writes that “the highly unlikeable President Johnson was impeached … by men who could no longer stand his arrogance and bigotry, his apparent abuse of power, and most recently his violation of law.”/blockquote>

Source: The Impeachers review: Andrew Johnson and the men who nearly trumped him | Books | The Guardian

Armies of Deliverance

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A glowing review for a new Civil War book, Armies of Deliverance, by Elizabeth Varon. I usually avoid quoting last paragraphs of the articles I link, but this is quite the parting comment by the reviewer.

While Varon doesn’t quite deliver on her argument about deliverance, she narrates battles and campaigns with an unusually deft, at times even gorgeous touch. This is some of the finest battle writing around, and a sweeping analysis of both United States and Confederate strategy and tactics. While the book can’t displace James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom,” still perhaps the single greatest volume ever written on the Civil War or even on United States history, it belongs beside it on the shelf. Give

Source: Book review of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War by Elizabeth R. Varon – The Washington Post

Impeachment, the First Time Around

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There’s a new book about Andrew Johnson and his impeachment, and the New York Times has given it a rave review. I’ll have to pick it up, but I might wait to see how the current Constitutional crisis shakes out first. I’m not sure it’ll make for consolatory reading.

By February 1868, President Andrew Johnson had forced the moment to a crisis. As Brenda Wineapple recounts in her new book, “The Impeachers,” Johnson had been goading legislators with his accelerating attempts to rule by decree, daring them to “go ahead” and impeach him — which the House voted to do by an overwhelming majority, 126 to 47.

The author of award-winning works about Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emily Dickinson, among other books, Wineapple started to research her history of the country’s first impeachment trial six years ago; she briefly mentions Presidents Nixon and Clinton but not the current occupant of the White House. She doesn’t have to. The relevance of this riveting and absorbing book is clear enough, even if Wineapple’s approach is too literary and incisive to offer anything so obvious as a lesson.

Source: Impeachment, the First Time Around – The New York Times

Courting Mr. Lincoln

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I gave up on fiction a few years ago, but I’m curious about this new book. Lincoln’s live-in friendship with Joshua Speed is a topic I find endearing, and a great novelist can often make fiction feel like real history. (See also: Gore Vidal’s Lincoln.)

Abraham Lincoln is irresistible to writers. Historians have delved into Lincoln’s depression, his team of rivals and the hunt for his killer. Now, more than 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, novelist Louis Bayard weighs in with “Courting Mr. Lincoln,” a rich, fascinating and romantic union of fact and imagination about young Lincoln, the woman he would marry and his beloved best friend.

Source: Book review | Abraham Lincoln, his suitors give heart to warm tale – Entertainment & Life – The Columbus Dispatch – Columbus, OH

David Blight on Frederick Douglass

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David Blight’s voice has become very familiar to me – I listened to his entire Yale iTunes U course on the Civil War, and have sought out his podcast appearances since then. This is the first time I’ve seen him speak, and this brief clip from a 2009 interview beautifully summarises Douglass’ life. By all accounts, Blight beautifully expounds on Douglass’ life, too, in a weighty new biography released recently.  I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Political Violence

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Mother Jones interviews Joanne Freeman, author of The Field of Blood, examining physical violence in Congress in the run-up to the Civil War. If the book is as fun as the interview, it promises to be a rollicking read!

That’s a great example both of the performative aspect of it and the ways in which it’s more than performance. Both North and South had an enormous response to the caning, partly because it came after a string of Southern attacks against Northerners, partly because of the brutality of it, and the fact that it took place within the Senate chamber itself—which Brooks tried to avoid. He tried to catch Sumner outside so that he could avoid precisely what happened, which is the symbolism of a Southern congressman striding into the Senate and beating an abolitionist to the ground. I remember reading through Sumner’s letters, and letter after letter after letter, from adults, from schoolchildren, [they’re] not even sure what to do with their emotions, talking about crying when they heard what happened. The power of that moment for Northerners is easy to underestimate.

The same goes for the other side of the equation. Many Southerners took abolitionism generally—and abolitionists specifically—as an insult, as well as a threat and a danger. There was a feeling that Brooks gave Sumner just what he deserved. Sumner had stood up and made a rousing speech attacking the spread of slavery into Kansas, had insulted the South, had even insulted a few Southern congressmen. So to many Southerners, their response was, “Thank you so much for defending our honor and our interests and silencing him.” There was one letter I found from a woman who was a Northerner, and I believe she married a Southerner, and she says in the letter, “If Brooks had done it anywhere but in the Senate and not over the head, then nobody would have any objections at all.”

Source: If You Think Congress Is Bad Now, You Should Hear About What Happened in 1838 – Mother Jones

A Few of My Favourite Things

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I responded to a Reddit user’s call for Civil War book suggestions, and it occurred to me that – in this time of gift buying and giving – I could cross post my list here. In no particular order, I give you:

* Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering deals with the mass death and the effect it had on grief, grieving, burial and memory on America

* Bell Irvin Wiley’s amazing two-part Billy Yank and Johnny Reb take a look at the life and living conditions of the average soldier. Hardtack and Coffee is a similar study.

* I admit, I haven’t read Race and Reunion yet, but I’ve listened to many of David Blight’s lectures on the Civil War in American memory and they are always fascinating. If ever I can find another job this one’s at the top of my wish list.

* Been in the Storm So Long was a book assigned in university that I barrelled through without waiting to find out which chapters were being covered. It investigates the aftermath of slavery in an admittedly depressing though very informative history.

* Team of Rivals deserves every award it racked up. It’s history, biography, and a non-fiction drama all rolled into one.

* Lincoln’s Men is one of my favourite biographies, and it’s a two-fer, though admittedly John Hay – with his extensive c.v. and long life, gets more pages than his friend John Nicolay. If you’ve ever read a touching anecdote about Lincoln in the White House, it was probably recounted by his secretaries. These are fun men to spend time with, and I can see why Lincoln was so endeared to them.

* Co. Aytch was featured in the Ken Burns series, and for good reason. It’s a quick read and really, really entertaining. Sam Watkins had some amazing experiences and tells them with both good humour and poetic sadness.

* I’ve read a few books by Burke Davis and they are always good reads. Not so thin as to be flimsy but definitely a much speedier read than the “heavy artillery” of Shelby Foote or Jim McPherson’s weighty tomes.

* Having said that, the Shelby Foote Narratives are worth the effort it takes to plow through them. It took me longer to read than the war took to fight, but his writing is wonderful. (Be warned: If you’re reading these with the intention of using them as research Foote’s works will not be accepted as historical references, as I learned the hard way in university!)

* Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is both a depressing look at life as a slave woman and an empowering realisation that slave women could sometimes use their own skill, cunning and talent to escape and make something of themselves. (See also: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth)

* Mary Chesnut’s Diary served as one of the “voices” in the Ken Burns series. She was a well to do slaveowning society lady from South Carolina, and had access to the Confederate top brass during the war. (Note that her original diary is public domain but the C Vann Woodward edition is considered definitive.)

* Women are also central to the narrative in When the Smoke Cleared at Gettysburg. It’s a really eyeopening account of what was left behind after the armies moved on. Much as I enjoy reading about the war, military actions don’t interest me as much as the social effects and changes those battles wrought. There are a lot of really fascinating angles explored in this “over-published” historical event.

Lots and lots of excellent books out there. I wish you much happy reading for 2017!

American Ulysses

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There’s a new Grant biography for us all to enjoy. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant is here reviewed very favourably by the Chicago Tribune. Given the fuss and fury of this year’s election campaign, it might be nice to spend 850 pages immersed in the company of a genuinely nice man. (Though the chapters dealing with corrupt and predatory businessmen might be a jarring reminder of our current situation.)

No presidential biography can avoid serving as a comment on its own time. In this regard, White’s book is an invaluable gift. The Grant he finds is, in every regard, the antithesis of what has come to be viewed as the modern politician — humble, modest, self-made; known as “the quiet man,” he spoke little, but thoughtfully and judiciously (he also wrote his own memoirs, of which Gore Vidal stated, “the author is a man of first-rate intelligence. … His book is a classic.”) He was fair, altruistic, loyal (sometimes to a fault and at his own expense), honest, decent, and deeply honorable. He was magnanimous in victory, concerned for the welfare of his country and his fellow citizens, open-minded, curious about the world and others. He fought against the nascent Ku Klux Klan, and for fair dealing with Native Americans, causing Frederick Douglass to conclude, “To him more than any other man the Negro owes his enfranchisement and the Indian a humane policy. … He was accessible to all men. … The black soldier was welcome in his tent, and the freedman in his house.”

Source: ‘American Ulysses’ tries to set the record straight on the Civil War general – Chicago Tribune