Benjamin "Beast" Butler: Unlikely Liberator

Benjamin “Beast” Butler was not a great officer, but he did amass some notoriety during the war by, among other things, authorizing Union troops to treat women in New Orleans as prostitutes (which earned him that “Beast” designation) and later getting “bottled up” in the Bermuda Hundred. Most of all, he acquired some fame as the first Union officer who refused to return to their masters slaves who escaped to Union lines, on the theory that they were “contraband property of war.”

James Oakes book Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 is a delight, not least for his recounting of incidents such as the circumstances under which Butler, having been exiled by Winfield Scott to Fortress Monroe at Hampton Roads, made and sought approval for his decision in May 1861.  But I enjoyed even more Oakes’ brief recap of Butler’s pre-war biography, which made him the most unlikely of liberators. A military wannabe who was unable to secure an appointment to West Point, Butler instead became a lawyer and Democratic politician in Massachusetts. In the late 1840s and early 1850s Butler flirted with Free Soil Democrats and Conscience Whigs, but later in the decade he returned to his Democratic roots, going so far as to support John Breckinridge for president in 1860:

Rather than embrace the new antislavery Republican Party, Butler went back to the Democrats. He campaigned for James Buchanan in 1856, endorsed the proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, supported the Dred Scott decision, and appealed to white workers with racial demagoguery. At his party’s tumultuous 1860 nominating convention in Charleston, South Carolina, Butler voted more than fifty times for Jefferson Davis and ended up supporting John Breckinridge, the proslavery Democrat. Butler even apologized for having once flirted with the Free Soil Party. The best that can be said of Butler’s antislavery record is that it was unimpressive.

As Oakes goes on to explain, secession and Fort Sumter – coupled, perhaps, with the opportunity to realize his long-suppressed dreams of a military career – turned Butler around. And having acquired the opportunity, Butler, although no great military man, was smart enough to understand the logic of war, and of the Republican Party:

[P]roperty of whatever nature, used or capable of being used for warlike purposes, and especially when being so used, may be captured and held either on sea or on shore as property contraband of war.

About the illustration at the top of the post, entitled The (Fort) Monroe Doctrine (1861):

On May 27, 1861, Benjamin Butler, commander of the Union army in Virginia and North Carolina, decreed that slaves who fled to Union lines were legitimate "contraband of war," and were not subject to return to their Confederate owners. The declaration precipitated scores of escapes to Union lines around Fortress Monroe, Butler's headquarters in Virginia. In this crudely drawn caricature, a slave stands before the Union fort taunting his plantation master. The planter (right) waves his whip and cries, "Come back you black rascal." The slave replies, "Can't come back nohow massa Dis chile's contraban." Hordes of other slaves are seen leaving the fields and heading toward the fort.

The second image is a pictorial envelope.  The figure says, "By golly massa Butler, I like dis better dan workin' in de field for ole Sesesh massa."

The third image is also a pictorial envelope, entitled Contraband of War; or, Volunteer Sappers and Miners From the "F.F.V." shows "African-American men with mining tools in-hand, volunteering to join the Union Army." The figures say, "Massa Butler, we's jest seceed from de 'meen-asses junction,' and wants to 'list in the counterband regiment. We's no great hands at fightin' , but we kin run 'most as fast as our old massas did toder night, Now, ef you wants any trenches or forti'cations made, we's de niggers to call upon in dat ar line."   "F.F.V." seems to refer to First Families of Virginia.

In the fourth image, an "African-American boy clings to the leg of General Butler. Butler extends his sword to fend-off slave owner with whip and dog."  General Butler says, "can't see it."

The fifth image is an 1861 print on an envelope that

shows a slave at the Union fort taunting his plantation master. The planter (left) waves his whip and cries, "Come back you black rascal." The slave replies, "Can't come back nohow massa Dis chile's contraban." Other slaves are seen leaving the fields and heading toward the fort. On May 27, 1861, Benjamin Butler, commander of the Union army in Virginia and North Carolina, decreed that slaves who fled to Union lines were legitimate "contraband of war," and were not subject to return to their Confederate owners. The declaration precipitated scores of escapes to Union lines around Fortress Monroe,

Of Guelzo, Gettysburg, Meade and Natural Born Citizenship

Over at Bull Runnings, Harry Smeltzer has a great interview with Prof. Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College on the occasion of the release of Prof. Guelzo’s new book on the Battle of Gettysburg, entitled Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. Prof. Guelzo is a fine writer and a wonderful speaker, but I hadn’t considered reading yet another Gettysburg book until I saw the interview.

While I won’t supply too many spoilers, I particularly enjoyed Prof. Guelzo’s take on George Gordon Meade. I, like most people, I suspect, have never given much thought to his personality or political views. Other than being aware of the old “Snapping Turtle” sobriquet, suggesting a short temper and perhaps a didn’t-suffer-fools-gladly outlook, I didn’t give him much thought, assuming he was an apolitical do-your-duty career officer type in the best Army tradition. Prof. Guelzo, however, paints a startling portrait of a McLellanesque Democrat who believed that radical Republicans were intentionally prolonging the war and who was not above giving advice to the Confederate peace commissioners on the talking points they should use in their negotiations. Yikes!

I do, however, want to correct, and at the same time reassure, Prof. Guelzo on one point. In the interview, Professor G (if I may be so familiar) asserts that he became a “harmless drudge” writing history after he learned that he could not become president:

I am an Army brat (born in Yokahama, Japan; when I discovered in 5th grade that this disabled me constitutionally from being president, I was left with nothing better to do in life than write history).

Well, Professor G, assuming (as I do) that your mother was a United States citizen at the time of your birth, you are wrong. A child born of an American citizen is constitutionally eligible to become president even if he or she is not born on U.S. soil. Here is an excerpt from a post by NRO’s Ed Whelan on the subject:

As this Congressional Research Service report sums it up (p. 25; see also pp. 16-21), the “overwhelming evidence of historical intent, general understandings [in 18th-century America], and common law principles underlying American jurisprudence thus indicate[s] that the most reasonable interpretation of ‘natural born’ citizens would include those who are U.S. citizens ‘at birth’ or ‘by birth,’ . . . under existing federal statutory law incorporation long-standing concepts of jus sanguinis, the law of descent.” In other words, there is strong originalist material to support the semantic signal that “natural born Citizen” identifies someone who is a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of his birth – as distinguished from someone who is naturalized later in life as a citizen

.

So no more books about the Civil War or that boring old Abraham Lincoln, Professor G. 2016 awaits!

Jeff. Sees the Elephant

I ran across a reference to this illustration, entitled Jeff. Sees the Elephant in a catalog of William Reese Company, a high end New Haven, CT dealer of used books and printed materials.  I hadn't seen it before, and it looks particularly interesting because it seems to prefigure Thomas Nast's later use of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party.

According to the catalog, the original was an 11 by 15 inch colored lithograph created by E.B. Kellogg and E.C. Kellogg in Hartford, CT circa 1861-1862.  The description continues:

A . . . humorous political cartoon satirizing the Confederacy, and quite likely the first instance in which an elephant and a donkey were used to symbolize competing political entities in the United States.  The Union is symbolized by a power elephant, who wears a blue coat and shoes and stockings decorated in the manner of the American flag.  He carries the Constitution in his pocket and holds a sword in his right hand and eight cannons in his left.  Behind him are more cannons, a pile of cannonballs, the flag, and the U.S. Capitol.  The elephant stares at a donkey in the left side of the image.  The donkey, dressed as a dandy and symbolizing Jefferson Davis, raises a monocle to peer at the elephant.  He holds a plumed helmet decorated with a skull and crossbones.  Behind the donkey stands an army of donkeys, carrying rakes, pitchforks, brooms, and scythes.  A gallows in the background between the elephant and the donkey portends a bleak future for the Confederacy,  The phrase "seeing the elephant" gained popularity during the Gold Rush and meant "seeing it all."  In this instance, Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy see the fully array of Union might.

I don't vouch for it, but this site asserts that the elephant was first used as a symbol of the Republican party during the 1864 presidential campaign:

Despite a common assertion that the elephant first appeared representing the Republican Party in 1860, the first political cartoon using the elephant for the Republican Party was in 1864. The 1860 cartoon was actually just a shoe advertisement that happened to be on the back of a political magazine. During Abraham Lincoln's 1864 presidential campaign, a pro-Lincoln newspaper used the 1860 advertisement image to announce the news of a U.S. military victory over the Confederacy. Later that same year, the image was used to predict Lincoln's re-election based on the Republican Party's success in state elections.

Thomas Nast later popularized the connection beginning with his November 7, 1874 cartoon The Third-Term Panic:

So if all this is true, did "Jeff. Sees the Elephant" serve as the inspiration for the identification of the elephant with the Republicans?

William Henry Chase Has His Habeas Suspended

You may know that in the beginning months of the Civil War President Lincoln issued a series of directives suspending the writ of habeas corpus.  Most of the suspensions were geographically defined (e.g., "at any point on or in the vicinity of the [any] military line, which is now [or which shall be] used between the City of Philadelphia and the City of Washington, via Perryville, Annapolis City, and Annapolis Junction").

But did you know that one suspension was directed toward a single individual?  On June 20, 1861 Lincoln sent a letter to Gen. Winfield Scott authorizing the suspension of habeas as to one "Major Chase, lately of the Engineer Corps":

To Winfield Scott

State Department, June 20, 1861.

The Lieutenant-General Commanding the Armies of the United States: You or any officer you may designate will, in your discretion, suspend the writ of habeas corpus so far as may relate to Major Chase, lately of the Engineer Corps of the Army of the United States, now alleged to be guilty of treasonable practices against this government.  ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD

So who was "Major Chase"?  The Lincoln Log identifies him as  "Major William Henry Chase [, who] resigned from the U.S. Army, October 31, 1856.  In 1861 he was commissioned colonel and major general of Florida state troops in the Confederate Army."

Wikipedia has an entry on Chase, although, strangely, it does not mention his unique recognition by the president.  Born in 1798, Chase was 63 years of age at the beginning of 1861.  Wikipedia describes his activities in Florida at the time of that state's secession that presumably resulted in Lincoln's order:

As the outset of Civil War became inevitable in January 1861, Chase sided with the Confederate partisans in Pensacola and was commissioned a colonel in the Florida militia. On January 8, two days before Florida officially seceded from the Union, Florida Governor Madison S. Perry authorized Chase to seize all federal forts in Pensacola. He was active in securing the surrender of the Navy Yard on January 12. On January 15, he and a small party rowed out to Fort Pickens, where Union forces had relocated, to demand surrender from Lieutenant Adam Slemmer. As recounted by J. H. Gilman, Chase said the following to Slemmer:

 "… It is a most distressing duty to me. I have come to ask of you young officers, officers of the same army in which I have spent the best and happiest years of my life, the surrender of this fort. I would not ask it if I did not believe it right and necessary to save bloodshed; and fearing that I might not be able to say it as I ought, and in order, also, that you may have it in proper form, I have put it in writing and will read it." He then took the manuscript from his pocket and began to read, but, after reading a few lines, his voice shook, and his eyes filled with tears. He stamped his foot, as if ashamed of exhibiting such weakness, and said, "I can't read it. Here, Farrand, you read it."

After the demand for surrender was read, Slemmer and Chase discussed what chance of success the 800 Confederate troops would have in seizing Pickens by force. Chase insisted that a defense would be futile:

"I could carry it by storm. I know every inch of this fort and its condition. … If you have made the best possible preparations, as I suppose you have, and should defend it, as I presume you would, I might lose one-half of my men. … You must know very well that, with your small force, you are not expected to, and cannot, hold this fort. Florida cannot permit it, and the troops here are determined to have it; and if not surrendered peaceably, an attack and the inauguration of civil war cannot be prevented. If it is a question of numbers, and eight hundred is not enough, I can easily bring thousands more."

Slemmer refused to surrender and held the fort until reinforcements could arrive. Pickens remained under Union control throughout the war.

Chase was promoted to brigadier general and later major general of the Florida forces, but due to his age and health, he had little active role in the war.

He died at his home at the southwest corner of Palafox and Wright Streets (now the site of Episcopal Day School) on February 8, 1870.

 In Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War, Stephen C. Neff observes that Chase "thereby obtained whatever degree of immortality a footnote is capable of conferring."

"The Compromise of 1850 must be judged a success"

I have also discussed in more than one post whether the Compromise of 1850 was a good thing or bad thing.  This breaks down, as I see it, into essentially two counterfactual questions.  Would war have erupted in 1850 or 1851 if the Compromise had failed?  And, if so, would the North have won?

In his new book on the Compromise, Fergus M. Bordewich answers the first question in the affirmative, the second in the negative.  He therefore concludes that "the Compromise must be judged a success."  (He qualifies this with the proviso, "albeit a temporary one," but that's another story. Millard and the other men who crafted the Compromise in 1850 had no way of predicting, for example, Bloody Kansas.)

As to the first issue, Bordewich has no doubt that "[f]ailure . . . meant war."  As I have argued before, he is convinced that the first shots would have been fired in Santa Fe.  But even a desultory border scrimmage between Texas and U.S. forces or New Mexican militia would have drawn in volunteers from other southern states and widened into a general war:

Failure would have meant war, with its first shots fired at Santa Fe instead of Fort Sumter.  Even if Texas had suffered an initial defeat, southerners were ready to rush to her aid. . . .  Large numbers of southerners had come to accept secession as politically reasonable, economically rational, and morally justified.

Intertwined with this issue is Bordewich's response to the second question.  The North would have lost, he maintains, primarily because it would not have put up a serious fight:

The North, if it had any stomach for war at all in 1850, would likely have lost. . . .  [F]ew northerners . . . were prepared to fight a war for the Union, much less to end slavery.  There was nothing in the North to compare with the flaming war fever that was epidemic in the newspapers of the South, and the fiery letters that war-hungry men from South Carolina to Mississippi sent to the leaders of Texas, begging for a chance to fight for slavery.

During the 1850s northern industrial resources grew by leaps and bounds.  Although this may also have contributed to the Union's victory a decade, but the crucial difference was "will":

During the decade that was purchased by the Compromise of 1850, the North's advantages in population, industrial production, and transportation steadily grew. . . .  But it took more to win the Civil War than factory output: it required will.  In the course of the 1850s, as slavery continued to gnaw at the nation's political vitals [other southern outrages omitted]. white Americans [in the North] increasingly understood that the erosion of their own rights was tied to the fate of enslaved blacks . . ..

Finally, Bordewich evocatively describes what might have happened if northerners like President Fillmore had taken the moral high road in 1850 and lost:

Had secession taken place peacefully in 1850, the South would have set a precedent that in time might well have splintered what remained of the United States still further.  The United States might then have evolved into a congeries of states - a Pacific Republic, a federation of New England, another of the upper Midwest - competitive with one another, vulnerable to foreign interference, and perhaps chronically at war.  A truncated United States would never have become a globe-striding power, or a beacon of liberty for the rest of the world, but more likely a second-tier state like Germany or France. . . .  That none of this happened, we owe to the compromisers of 1850.

Why Millard Blew It

In a post entitled Van Buren at Lawyers, Guns & Money, Erik Loomis refers to "a study that correctly notes the tendency of historians to give high rankings to presidents who kill a lot of Americans in wars during their tenure."

While Erik worries about more important things, such as whether this phenomenon creates an incentive for modern-day presidents to start wars, I of course am fixated on Millard Fillmore.

Millard, as you know, gets hammered as a cross between a nebbish and the anti-Christ for facilitating and signing the bills that are collectively known as the Compromise of 1850. If only he'd sabotaged the Compromise and started a war that killed as many as died starting eleven years later.  Then maybe he'd be as revered as the Railsplitter!

William Seward's April Fools Memo: The Prequel

As you may know, in his somewhat wacky April 1, 1861 "April Fools Memorandum", entitled Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration, Secretary of State William H. Seward recommended to President Abraham Lincoln, among other things, that the United States declare war on Spain and France:

I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once.

I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention.

And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France,

Would convene Congress and declare war against them.

In her beautifully written book, A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman provides evidence that Seward had been contemplating the possibility of war as a means of diverting secession for almost two months before he delivered his memorandum to Lincoln. On the morning of February 3, 1861, "Seward paid a surprise call on Lord Lyons," the British envoy to the United States in Washington. In a confidential memorandum to his government, Lord Lyons reported that, during the meeting, Seward indicated that a foreign war would not displease him. Lyons reported that

Seward also repeated to him a recent conversation with the minister from Bremen (one of the smaller states of the German Confederation), "no doubt for my instruction." The hapless diplomat had complained about the Republican Party's election promise to place tariffs on foreign imports, saying that such a move would turn Europe against America at the moment when she most needed friends. Seward claimed to have replied that nothing would give him more pleasure, since he would then have the perfect excuse for an international quarrel, "and South Carolina and the seceding states would soon join in."

Brigadier General John Gregg, CSA

Mrs. Elektratig and I were in Longview, Texas over last weekend for a wedding. Longview, it turns out, is in Gregg County, named for John Gregg, a member of the Texas secession convention, a Confederate congressman, and a Confederate officer who fought in both the western and eastern theaters. He ultimately rose to the rank of Brigadier General and was killed in action outside Richmond in 1864. I noticed that there was a memorial to him in town, and we made a visit.

As a northerner who doesn't get south alot (they don't let me out much), I still find it weird that there are public memorials to secessionists and Confederates. I therefore thought I'd document our visit and the memorial with some pictures, which I've posted at Flickr. A few of them are also included in this post.

The memorial, which is outside the Gregg County court house, included two inscribed markers. The first, commemorating the Texas secession convention, read as follows:

Texas Secession Convention.

This meeting, which had John Gregg as a key member, was extra-legal governing body of delegates from over Texas. Held January – March 1861. Drew up secession ordinance – ratified by 3 to 1 popular vote. Selected delegates to convention of southern states in Montgomery, Ala. Declared office of anti-secessionist governor Sam Houston vacant, putting in Lt. Governor Edward Clark. Ratified C.S.A. Constitution. Raised troops to seize U.S. property, getting $3,000,000 worth by surrender. Placed troops at outposts to protect frontier.

The second memorialized Gen. Gregg:

General John Gregg 1828 – 1864.

Born Alabama. Came to Texas 1854. Judge, Confederate congressman. Organized 7th Texas infantry as Colonel 1861. Captured at Fort Donelson, Tenn. 1862. Promoted Brigadier General after exchange. Commanded brigade Vicksburg campaign 1863. Severely wounded Battle of Chickamauga Oct. 1863. Returning to action 1864 led Hood's Texas Brigade in heavy fighting in Virginia. Killed in action at Richmond, Oct. 7, 1864. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy erected by the State of Texas.

Town Line, NY Really Did Secede from the Union in 1861

Several years ago I posted an entry referring to a report that, at the outset of the Civil War, the town of Town Line, New York, located in Erie County near Buffalo, had seceded from the Union: Did Town Line, NY Really Secede from the Union in 1861? In the post I questioned whether the report could possibly be true.

Correspondent Jeff Cooke has helpfully pointed me to a recent article in the Buffalo History Gazette that appears to confirm the truth of the report: Hamlet of Town Line "Heads South" in 1861: Nearby Hamlet Left Union in Civil War Days. According to the article, in late 1861 or early 1862 the eligible voters of the town voted by a count of 80 to 45 to secede from the Union. The reasons the town did so seem to be lost to history:

Why Town Line left the Union is a mystery. It's [sic] residents at that time were sons and daughters of pioneers who came from Vermont or Germany. Such ancestry would almost guarantee an abhorrence of slavery, but Town Line then was a Democratic stronghold. There was little economic reason for such sympathy, for Town Line residents were either farmers or woodsmen.

Town Line remained out of the Union, according to the article, for eighty-five years. On January 24, 1946 town residents decided to rejoin the Union by a vote of 90 to 23.

 

The picture, taken from the article, purports to show the "Old School house, now a Blacksmith shop, where Town Line voted for the Stars and Bars of the South."

The Hampton Roads Peace Conference

At the beginning of February 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met with old friend, former fellow Whig, and then Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens of Georgia at a “peace conference” on board the River Queen at Hampton Roads, near Fort Monroe, Virginia. (Other attendees were Secretary of State William H. Seward with Lincoln and former United States Supreme Court Associate Justice John A. Campbell of Alabama and former United States Representative and Senator and Confederate Secretary of State and Senator Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia representing the Confederacy.) In America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield recounts the beginning of the Hampton Roads meeting:

The following morning, February 3, Stephens boarded the president’s steamer and greeted Lincoln warmly. Stephens seemed rather frailer than the last time the two former Whigs met, nearly seven years earlier. The Confederate vice president wore a thick gray overcoat that descended to his ankles and threatened to swallow him. He had always looked cadaverous, but the coat made his appearance even more ghostly. A Union soldier guarding the gathering exclaimed, “My God! He’s dead now, but he don’t know it.” Stephens doffed his overcoat, and Lincoln chuckled, “Never have I seen so small a nubbin come out of so much husk.” The atmosphere immediately relaxed, and the two men chatted amiably about the old days before settling down to business.

But that is amusing prelude. What I really wanted to focus on was Lincoln’s remarkable advice to Stephens concerning the Thirteenth Amendment, which had passed the House of Representatives just three days earlier, on January 31, 1865. Stephens’ home state of Georgia, Lincoln suggested, should ratify the amendment prospectively, “so as to take effect, say, in five years”.

During the conference, Seward told the southern representatives of the recent passage of the amendment, and “Lincoln saw that the announcement rattled the [southern] commissioners perhaps more than any other disclosure that day.” He therefore “offered some advice to Stephens”:

“If I were in Georgia, I would go home and get the governor of the state to call the legislature together . . . and ratify this constitutional amendment prospectively, so as to take effect, say, in five years. Such a ratification would be valid in my opinion.” That way, Lincoln explained, southerners “will avoid, as far as possible, the evils of immediate emancipation. Lincoln, according to Stephens, pledged “to remunerate the southern people for their slaves,” on the grounds that both North and South were responsible for slavery.

William C. Harris's article on the meeting, The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership, provides additional context:

Later, when the issue of emancipation was again raised, the president gave a lengthy explanation of his own antislavery history, beginning with his opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories and repeating his reasons for acting against the institution during the war. The president concluded his account, as Stephens later wrote, by maintaining that he had always favored emancipation but not immediate emancipation, even by the states, because of the "many evils attending" it. The Confederate vice president also wrote that Lincoln then declared that if he were Stephens, he would go home to Georgia, "get the Governor of the State to call the Legislature together, and get them to recall all the State troops from the war; elect Senators and Members to Congress, and ratify the Constitutional Amendment prospectively, so as to take effect—say in five years." "Such a ratification," the president allegedly said, "would be valid in my opinion." Lincoln went on to say, again according to Stephens, "that whatever may have been the views of your people before the war, they must be convinced now, that Slavery is doomed. It cannot last long in any event, and the best course, it seems to me, for your public men to pursue, would be to adopt such a policy as will avoid, as far as possible, the evils of immediate emancipation."

Harris expresses substantial doubt as to whether Lincoln in fact endorsed “prospective” ratification, both because the endorsement would have been inconsistent with other statements the president had made and because another participant, Campbell, did not mention the statement in his account of the meeting.

I am not so sure. Stephens published his account in 1868, only three years after the event. While it is possible that Stephens's memory was faulty, his recollection of the meeting and Lincoln's comments seems to have been quite distinct. The other statements that Stephens attributes to Lincoln (concerning his history of opposition to immediate emancipation and his belief that the north as well as the south was responsible for slavery and that southerners should be compensated for the loss of their slaves) are entirely consistent with Lincoln's known history. And there is no apparent motive for Stephens to have lied about this otherwise trivial detail of the conversation.

Moreover, as Harris himself admits in another context, Lincoln was clearly concerned at the meeting to convey the impression “that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South”:

One of the Confederate commissioners then mentioned "the evils of immediate emancipation," specifically, as Stephens later wrote, the hardships that many blacks "who were unable to support themselves" would face in freedom. The president "fully admitted" that the sudden end of slavery might produce severe dislocations, but, instead of elaborating on the point and describing his expectations for the former slaves, he illustrated his view with a rather crude anecdote. Drawing upon his reservoir of rural Midwestern stories, Lincoln told of an Illinois farmer who informed a neighbor that he had discovered a way to save time and labor in feeding his hogs. "What is it"? asked the neighbor. "Why, it is," said the farmer, "to plant plenty of potatoes, and when they are mature, without either digging or housing them, turn the hogs in the field and let them get their own food as they want it." "But," the neighbor inquired, "how will they do when the winter comes and the ground is hard frozen"? "Well," replied the farmer, "let 'em root."

This anecdote, which appears in both Stephens' and Campbell's accounts and which Lincoln later repeated to his portraitist, reveals a harsh side to Lincoln, perhaps caused by his desire to reassure the Confederates that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South. The story also belies Lincoln's earlier expressions of sympathy for black refugees from slavery and his approval, one month after the Hampton Roads Conference, of the Freedman's Bureau bill providing temporary aid for the former slaves (and white refugees) in their adjustment to freedom.

Indeed, earlier in the meeting, when Seward first mentioned the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln raised no objection to Seward's incredible suggestion that the confederate states should rejoin the Union in order to defeat the amendment:

At this point, Seward produced a copy of the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, which had not been seen by the commissioners. He declared that if the South abandoned the struggle, the amendment probably would fail to receive the necessary approval of three-fourths of the states for ratification. Seward inferred [sic, should be “implied”], according to Stephens's account of the conference, that if the Southern states quickly rejoined the Union, they could assist in voting down the amendment.

I find Lincoln's statement on prospective ratification, if true, fascinating for at least two, maybe three reasons. First, there is the abstract legal question. I suppose it is possible for a proposed constitutional amendment to provide by its terms that, upon ratification, it will not go into effect until some time thereafter. But can a state ratify “prospectively”, in the sense described by Lincoln, an amendment that contains no such limitation? And what if an amendment were ratified by three-quarters of the states, but one-third of those votes in favor included “prospective” provisos specifying various different periods (e.g., one year, three years, five years, ten years) before the amendment would become effective? Whose period, if any, would control? Or could opponents maintain that a state’s ratification subject to such a proviso was no ratification at all, much as Federalists argued in 1788 that conditional state ratification of the Constitution would be equivalent to rejection?

Second, the incident is remarkable because it suggests that Lincoln was prepared to send the slaves and freedmen back into captivity, at least for a period. Lincoln no doubt understood that the Emancipation Proclamation, as an exercise of war powers, would lapse following the cessation of hostilities. And what if southern states then began demanding the return of slaves who had fled to Union lines and thence to northern states under the Fugitive Slave Clause? The mind reels.

Finally, one wonders what light this incident sheds on the hypothetical actions of a Reconstruction Abe. Lincoln defenders generally sheepishly admit that his actions and words before his death indicated that he was planning a relatively quick and gentle (and Andrew Johnson-like) Reconstruction, but tend to emphasize the president’s flexibility and capacity for growth, leading them to claim that southern intransigence would have quickly moved him toward a firmer and more “radical” policy. Ironically, Harris in his article provides a perfect illustration of this mode of thought. After recounting Lincoln's “harsh” Illinois farmer story (described above), Harris immediately proceeds to suggest that he would have changed his mind. I provide the complete paragraph for context (emphasis added):

This anecdote, which appears in both Stephens' and Campbell's accounts and which Lincoln later repeated to his portraitist, reveals a harsh side to Lincoln, perhaps caused by his desire to reassure the Confederates that he did not seek a social revolution in the postwar South. The story also belies Lincoln's earlier expressions of sympathy for black refugees from slavery and his approval, one month after the Hampton Roads Conference, of the Freedman's Bureau bill providing temporary aid for the former slaves (and white refugees) in their adjustment to freedom. Still, Lincoln, like most Americans at the time, optimistically expected emancipation itself to be "the king's cure" for blacks in the South. Lincoln believed that a free person, now including blacks, should be able to make his way in America through his own ability and effort without the assistance of the state. Though he had admitted the difficulties of the white and black races living together in freedom (his earlier support for black colonization reflected this concern), the president envisioned a limited role for the federal government in protecting and aiding blacks after the war. Had he lived to witness the postwar threat to black freedom, Lincoln might have changed his mind regarding federal responsibility for black liberty.

Abe might have arrived at a more radical position on Reconstruction. But the fact remains that if, two months before his death, Abe was prepared to send the slaves back into slavery, he sure had a long way to go before he got there.

Russell McClintock on "Seward's Folly"

I rarely have anything good to say, here or anywhere else, about the New York Times, but it's been doing a nice job with its Disunion series, which "follows the Civil War as it unfolded." I believe I've read just about every piece, and they've been of uniformly high quality.

I mention this now to highlight one of the most recent articles, Seward's Folly, tracking the back-room maneuverings of that most enigmatic of figures, New York Senator and incoming Secretary of State William Henry Seward. The piece is written by Russell McClintock, the author of a fine book on the North during the secession crisis, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession. If the Disunion series or other sites that have sprung up to follow the Secession Winter 150 years after the fact, such as The Long Recall, have piqued your interest in this fascinating period, Dr. McClintock's book would be an excellent starting point.

The hanging nature of the piece suggests that Dr. McClintock will be contributing more articles on Seward's machinations to the Disunion series. If so, I look forward to them. For a prequel, I invite you to try my What the Hell Happened to William Seward?

About the illustration, entitled Letting the Cat Out of the Bag! (1860):

A figurative portrayal of the rift within the Republican party resulting from the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. Here New York senator and would-be nominee William H. Seward watches as the radical antislavery senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner releases a snarling cat, the "Spirit of Discord," from a "Republican Bag." The cat bolts toward New York "Tribune" editor Horace Greeley and Lincoln, who wields a rail in his defense. Greeley exclaims, "What are you doing Sumner! you'll spoil all! she aint to be let out until after Lincoln is elected,--" Lincoln, also alarmed, rejoins, "Oh Sumner! this is too bad!--I thought we had her safely bagged at Chicago [i.e., the Republican national convention at Chicago], now there will be the old scratch to pay, unless I can drive her back again with my rail!" Sumner replies, "It's no use talking Gentlemen, I was'nt mentioned at Chicago, and now I'm going to do something desperate, I can't afford to have my head broken and be kept corked up four years for nothing!" The mention of his broken head refers to the widely publicized 1856 beating inflicted on Sumner by South Carolina congressman Preston S. Brooks. (See "Arguments of the Chivalry," no. 1856-1.) Seward warns, "Gentlemen be cautious you don't know how to manage that animal as well as I did, and Im afraid that some of you will get "scratched." Henry J. Raymond, editor of the "New York Times," stands in background shouting, "Scat!--scat!--back with her, or our fat will all be in the fire."

Photographs of Civil War Soldiers

The Smithsonian has uploaded a set of almost 700 gorgeous and poignant photos of Civil War soldiers. I picked the one above more or less at random. The caption reads, "Unidentified young soldier in New York Zouave uniform."

The Long Recall: An Aggregator of The Civil War

Many thanks to Fred Ray at TOCWOC for pointing out The Long Recall: An Aggregator of the Civil War.

As Walter Russel Mead explains in an essay describing the project, The Long Recall is, for now at least, a blog "present[ing] a daily digest of the news and commentary that an intelligent American might have had accessible 150 years ago."

We will use a modern form to present the daily news: our Civil War aggregator that combines a short daily summary of the news along with links to articles that a well-informed Civil War-era reader would have wanted to read. Our goal is to allow readers today to get a feel for what it was like to experience the conflict in real time, to hear the many voices trying to make sense of the conflict, and to sift through sometimes confused and misleading news accounts to try to discern what was actually taking place.

This is an outstanding project. 150 years ago, Americans were trying to make sense of the reports and rumors of movements toward secession in South Carolina and elsewhere in the south. I spent a good deal of time last evening reading the entries for just the past several days, and the articles linked in those entries. They convey the confusion and uncertainty that people were experiencing. What was going on in the Palmetto State? In Virginia? What did Kentucky think? Would there be some sort of southern convention, and if so what did that portend? Was secession economically feasible? Why had the south failed to develop its own manufactures, and would it be able to do so now? Would there be a peace conference? Should there be? What was Buchanan's position? What about Millard Fillmore? Who was Lincoln? Maybe he was more conservative on slavery than generally assumed?

Wonderful stuff. I'll be reading The Long Recall daily, and I suggest you do so too.

About the illustration, entitled South Carolina's "Ultimatum":

In late December 1860 three commissioners from the newly seceded state of South Carolina met with lame-duck President Buchanan to negotiate for possession of Fort Sumter, a federal installation in Charleston Harbor. Buchanan's attempts to stay the situation and South Carolina governor Francis Pickens's insistence on Union evacuation of the fort are ridiculed here. Pickens (left) holds a lit fuse to a giant Union cannon "Peacemaker," which is pointed at his own abdomen. He threatens, "Mr. President, if you don't surrender that fort at once, I'll be "blowed" if I don't fire." Buchanan (right) throws up his hands in alarm and cries, "Oh don't! Governor Pickens, don't fire! till I get out of office." In the background a steamer makes its way across Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter. The print probably appeared early in 1861, amid mounting tensions over the fate of the fort and uneasy relations between Washington and South Carolina.

"We never will consent to allow any foreign Power to control the mouth of that great highway of commerce"

Isaac Newton Morris was a two-term Democratic Representative from Illinois (1857-1861). I can find no picture of him, but I imagine that he must have looked very much like his father, Senator Thomas Morris of Ohio – a fearless bulldog of a man – for that is certainly the impression conveyed in a remarkable speech that Isaac Morris delivered in the House on January 16, 1861. His denunciations of and imprecations against the sinners and traitors against Union ring out like those of a Biblical prophet. The Republicans, Buchanan, the secessionists – no one is spared. He demands that Union men of all parties awaken and take action:

It is time, sir, that we should arouse. Men of America, why stand ye still? Arouse! Shake off your lethargy! All considerations of party should be lost with us, when our country is in danger. I am with every man who is for the Union, and against every man who is against it; and I am ready now to march up to our national altar, and swear: “The Union: it must be and shall be preserved, by the Eternal!” If its enemies bring war out of it, it must be so, though none would regret it more than myself.

And judgment, he warns, is coming:

Let disunion be consummated, and some of us will live to see the dark pall of death settle upon the “cotton states.” I wish the direful calamity could be averted, and pray it may be; but it will come as inevitably as destiny itself. When they venture into the Red sea, like Pharoah [sic] and his hosts, they will be overthrown; and instead of reaching the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, will only find bitter waters and the stinging of serpents.

But the most interesting part of his speech is his discussion of the pivotal importance of the Mississippi River to the northwest. The upper midwest, he warns, will never tolerate loss of its access to the sea. If a “foreign Power” takes control of the lower Mississippi, millions of northerners will rise, “and blood will flow like water:”

I live, sir, in the heart of the valley of the Upper Mississippi, and on the banks of that mighty river which rises in the far latitude of the north, and moves on with slow and silent grandeur to the sea, bearing upon its placid bosom our surplus productions. I live where the Democratic masses love the Union, and are conservative, and where the rights of all are respected.

But I tell the South, especially the inhabitants of the Lower Mississippi, that we already have, in its upper valley, ten million people, and that we never can, and we never will, consent to allow any foreign Power – and they will be foreign when they leave us – to retain possession and control of the mouth of that great highway of commerce. We do not wish to boast; we do not intend to threaten; but we do mean to protect ourselves.

Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Livingston, when the latter was minister to France, upon that country repurchasing the Louisiana territory, in 1802, from Spain, instructed him to say to the French Government that it would never be allowed to occupy the mouth of the Mississippi. All trouble, however, of the ownership and occupancy by France was fortunately obviated by the purchase of the territory from Napoleon I, in 1803.

We of the upper valley view the matter just as Mr. Jefferson did; and will permit none others than ourselves to exercise ownership over that gateway to the oceans. The enemy that shall attempt to keep it from us will find an army opposing him far more numerous than any that ever besieged imperial Rome, and blood will flow like water.

This will be one of the results of disunion. Civil war between the North and the South will be another; and soon the whole land will be convulsed with discord and deadly strife, and clothed in the habiliments of woe.

"The grievance is not about the Territories"

A reference in Shearer Davis Bowman's At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis, led me to take a look at remarks made by Texas Senator Louis Trezevant Wigfall on Saturday March 2, 1861.

Wigfall was, as they say, a piece of work (as Jefferson Davis found out during the war), but judging from his comments no dummy and a skilled polemicist. While making clear that the issue of slavery lay at the heart of the secession crisis, his discussion of the remedy both characterized the north as the aggressor and asserted that nothing less than the meaning of representative self-government was at stake (some paragraph breaks added):

Now as to this talk which the Senator from Minnesota [Henry M. Rice] indulged in early in the evening. He pretended to say – and I suppose really he was sincere about it, for there are none so blind as those who will not see – that the whole difficulty had grown out of our being defeated in a presidential election; and that if Mr. Breckinridge had been elected, there would have been no dissolution of the Union.

Of course there would not. Mr. Breckinridge ran as a candidate for the Presidency upon a platform which declared explicitly that slaves were property, and, like all other property, were entitled to protection wherever the Federal flag floated, wherever the Federal Government had jurisdiction. Had that sentiment been indorsed, north and south, east and west, this Union would have been saved; but when you elected a man upon a platform which declared in substance – I do not pretend to quote it – that slaves were not property; and that, instead of protection, it should meet confiscation wherever the flag floated or this Government – our common government – had jurisdiction, we said to you, we would live under no such Government; and we have made good our words. We have dissolved the Union; mend it if you can; cement it with blood; try the experiment.

We do not desire war; we wish to avoid it. We are not interfering with you; and have no objection to the people of Massachusetts living, from this time until the last trump[et?] sounds, under such a form of government as she sees fit. We have no objection to New York living under such a government as she sees fit; and so as to all the other States. What we are willing to accord to you, we want to secure to ourselves – the right of self-government. We invade not your soil in order to subvert your institutions. We will not be invaded because you wish to subvert ours. We assert that the right of self-government is the only right that was established by the Revolution; that it is the only right that is set forth in the Declaration of Independence; that it is a right inalienable to freemen, and terrible to tyrants only.

***

It is better, then, to look this matter in the face, and see what is the grievance. The grievance is not about the Territories. It is the denial that slaves are property, and the declaration that the Federal Government has a right to settle that question. Nothing short, I believe, of an amendment to the Constitution declaring that each State has the right to secede – which is admitting the right of self-government to the people of each one of these sovereign States – will give satisfaction. I am sure, if you are talking about reconstruction, and expecting any one of these Gulf States to come back, that nothing short of that would induce them even to entertain your propositions.

You must admit that the masters are free; that they have a right to live under such a Government as they see fit; that they can peaceably, quietly, constitutionally change their government, if they see fit. When you do that, then they will entertain the proposition as to whether the form of government you offer them is satisfactory or not. But while you deny the right of secession, while you deny the right of self-government, those men will not consider whether they are are to be well governed or badly governed; and they should not.

Admit the right to govern themselves, and then offer amendments to the Constitution securing the right to their property in this Government, and then they will entertain the proposition. Nothing short of that, I am satisfied, would induce any one of the confederate States again to secede from that confederation, and come back into this.

"It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal"

I have long thought that the worst decision made in the Civil War was the first: Jefferson's Davis's directive to open fire on Fort Sumter. According to Pleasant A. Stovall, Confederate Secretary of State Robert A. Toombs of Georgia agreed with me:

Secretary Toombs was one man in the Montgomery Cabinet who was not deceived by Seward's sophistries. He knew the temper of Mr. Lincoln better than Mr. Seward did. He appreciated the feeling at the North, and gave his counsel in the Davis Cabinet against the immediate assault upon Sumter. There was a secret session of the Cabinet in Montgomery. Toombs was pacing the floor during the discussion over Sumter, his hands behind him, and his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both conditions." But just as President Lincoln overruled Secretary Seward, so President Davis overruled Secretary Toombs.

Donald Stoker Gets Two Right

Having given Donald Stoker some grief in a recent post, I feel duty bound to report that in the following pages of The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War he makes two very nice points in quick succession.

First he pinpoints what I believe was the most bone-headed decision of the war: the determination to shell Fort Sumter:

Robert Toombs had warned of the consequences of firing on the fort, believing it would “inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. . . . You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from the mountains to the oceans, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”

Not only was Toombs correct regarding the effects of the bombardment, both immediate and long-term, he was also insightful regarding its futility. The South did not need to attack Sumter when it did . . ..

Second, Prof. Stoker crystallizes nicely a key difference – perhaps the key difference – between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis:

The Union had no real strategy when the war began. Lincoln quickly approached his professional military leaders for guidance . . .. Even in the conflict's opening days, Lincoln was asking Winfield Scott what plans he had for winning the war. Lincoln always pondered how to achieve victory, and . . . was willing to do what was required. David, historian David Potter argued, “always thought in terms of what was right, rather than in terms of how win.” Lincoln tried to get his generals to figure out the path to victory. If they could not, he would try to figure it out for them. By contrast, “there is no evidence in the literature that Davis ever at any one time gave extended consideration to the basic question of what the South would have to do in order to win the war.” This is perhaps the most important difference in how these men led.

Donald Stoker Gets the Small Stuff Wrong

If you're going to write a “big” book, you'd better get the small stuff right, or you're going to lose me pretty fast.

In the opening pages of The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, Donald Stoker has already raised my eyebrows several times. Neither misstep may be central to his study, but still the nagging thought enters my mind: if I can't trust him on the small stuff that I, a mere history buff, happen to know something about, why should I trust him on anything else?

Example no. 1 is Stoker's characterization of Jefferson Davis as a “rabid secessionist[].” The context suggests that this was Davis's position throughout the 1850s: “The compromise's [the Compromise of 1850] tenets cut the feet out from under rabid secessionists such as Davis, at least for a while.”

But William Freehling and others have explained that Davis was anything but. Ironically, the opening pages of the first volume of The Road to Disunion refer to the fundamental differences between an essentially conservative politician such as Davis and radical disunionists such as William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett:

How Rhett must have winced as citizens [of Montgomery, Alabama] screamed approval [in February 1861 upon hearing that Davis had been selected to be provisional president of the confederacy]. For Jefferson Davis had long cooperated with Disunionists' foe, the Southern National Democratic Party. Whether manipulating presidential cabinets or maneuvering the United States Senate, Davis had usually advocated the National Democrats' main line – that disunion was folly because the South could rule the Union through the party. In 1858, when Davis came close to breathing northern territorial heresies, Mississippi's legislature had demanded explanations. In November 1860, he had warned Rhett against disunion. Would he now lead a retreat back into the Union?

Example no. 2 is Stoker's portrayal of Abraham Lincoln as all-wise statesman with fixed ideas from shortly after his election as to how to respond to threats of secession (emphasis added):

As 1860 swept to its end, a New York journalist asked the president-elect how he would deal with secession. Lincoln said [on December 29, 1860], “I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue.” Clearly, Lincoln's mind was made up on the North's initial strategic response . . ..

But anyone who has read Russell McClintock's Lincoln and the Decision for War will know that the assertion that Lincoln had made up his mind about anything in December 1860 is ludicrous.

It is certainly fair to say that Lincoln's instinct was to hold or retake the forts, and it is equally fair to say that he ultimately acted in accordance with his instinct when he directed the resupply of Fort Sumter four months later. But the real-life Lincoln was assailed by doubts and indecision before he gave the fateful order. Here, for example, is McClintock on the state of Lincoln's thoughts as of about March 21, 1861, when he sent several people to South Carolina to collect information on public opinion there:

Plainly Lincoln was torn. On the one hand, even if the fort [Sumter] could be provisioned without starting a war, which did not seem possible, it could not be held indefinitely. It had no real military value, and could not even be used for collecting the revenue offshore. Evacuation would remove the primary irritant to Southerners and, by signaling the administration's pacific intent, strengthen Southern unionism by cutting the ground from under those who charged coercion. It would also remove the danger that a successful attack would invigorate disunionism. On the other hand, evacuation might embolden secessionists and could have a demoralizing effect on the already strained Republican Party. The results of evacuating Sumter were simply impossible to predict. Would it encourage border-state loyalty and lead to the peaceful restoration of the Union, as Seward and his Southern friends believed? Or would it encourage disunionism and cement the existing division, as Blair and the stalwart Republicans insisted? Lincoln wanted as much information as possible before making his final determination.

Update: Post edited to change "March 21, 1860" to "March 21, 1861", and "was" to "wanted".

Confederate Generals in the Western Theater, Volume 2

Confederate Generals in the Western Theater, Volume 2: Essays on America's Civil War (Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., eds.) is a worthy successor to the first volume of essays, which I discussed in earlier posts. I am sure that one or more of the Civil War sites dedicated to such things will provide a comprehensive review, so I will content myself with highlighting a few of the essays I particularly enjoyed.

The standout, for me at least, was Stephen Davis's “John Bell Hood's Historiographical Journey; or, How Did a Confederate General Become a Laudanum Addict?” The essay focuses, as the title suggests, on unraveling the origins of the story, reported in some histories, that Gen. Hood's Chickamauga stump might have led, or probably led, or did lead him into opiate use – opiate use that might have been, or probably was, or actually was one of the reasons for the debacle at Spring Hill, in which a doped up (or possibly inebriated) general went to bed for the night without insuring that his army was positioned properly to block the escaping Federals. Prof. Davis's review is both amusing and an instructive warning on how an isolated and undocumented speculation can morph over time into a fact.

The frustrating enigma that is Joseph Eggleston Johnston quite naturally draws the volume's attention, and the editors appropriately provide contrasting essays on different periods of his Civil War career – a critical examination by Terrence J. Winschel of Johnston's activities during the Vicksburg campaign (“The Absence of Will: Joseph E. Johnston and the Fall of Vicksburg”), and a more sympathetic portrait by Craig L. Symonds of Johnston during the war's final months (“Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina”). Prof. Winschel's essay, in turn, forms a negative counterpoint to Archer Jones's more forgiving analysis, in the first volume, of Johnston's actions as commander of the Department of the West beginning in December 1862 (“Tennessee and Mississippi, Joe Johnston's Strategic Problem”). Because I believe that Johnston's faults outweigh his virtues (while acknowledging the difficulties he faced), I think that Prof. Winschel is closer to the mark, but the joy of Joe Johnston to historians is that the debates will continue so long as the Civil War remains a topic of study.

Although (or because) I am no Joe Johnston fan, Prof. Symonds relates a detail that epitomizes, I think, the man's maddeningly contradictory qualities. When Johnston was appointed in February 1865 to take charge of the effort to oppose the Sherman juggernaut, he assumed that Jefferson Davis had named him to the post “only to ensure that would be the one to bear the opprobrium of the final surrender.” His reaction was anger and defeatism. After receiving the order, “he replied morosely: 'These troops form an army too weak to cope with Sherman.'”

Even so, Johnston, to his credit, did his duty and ;assumed the post. Then, “much of the self-pitying pessimism . . . evaporated in March” when Johnston learned that Robert E. Lee had made the appointment over Davis's objection. “'Be assured,' [Johnston] wrote to [Texas Senator Louis] Wigfall, 'that Knight of old never fought under his king more loyally than I'll serve under Gen. Lee.'” “For Joe Johnston,” Prof. Symonds observes. “the campaign in North Carolina was less an opportunity for victory, than a chance for redemption.”

UPDATE: At Civil War Books and Authors, Andrew Wagenhoffer has added his more thorough and, in my view, entirely fair review here.