Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

Would Serve as an Excellent Introduction to the Civil War

Originally published in 1981.

Bruce Catton (1899-1978) was the top Civil War historian throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His particular skill was not uncovering new research or having particularly keen new insights, although he did help move the Lost Cause narrative out of the mainstream. He was, first and foremost, a historian with a real gift for writing for the regular reader. He broke down the complex things and made them understandable and interesting.

Reflections on the Civil War was published after Catton passed away. It was pulled largely from tapes of Catton discussing various aspects of the Civil War and then edited by John Leekley. Leekley co-created the Civil War mini-series The Bue and the Gray with Catton.

Catton starts out with the standard discussion of what caused the war and then moves into other topics like why men joined up, daily life for the soldiers in the war, the  was like for the men, how the two armies geared up for the war (mostly as it was already being fought), and more before he gives a short summary of the war. 

Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

The last section concerns some drawings that had recently been uncovered. A young man joined the army in the first rush of enthusiasm after Fort Sumter and had decided to draw everyday pictures of camp life. He was hoping to sell them to newspapers or magazines as part of their war coverage. It turns out that he could not sell any because they were simply too mundane - not enough action and too much regular camp life. Of course, that makes them solid gold for historians.

Catton took the extra step - he researched the soldier and told about his experiences in the war based on the young soldier's writings and regimental histories. I thought this was going to be tedious, but it turned out to be the best part of the book.

This book is very well done. Like I noted before, the book was edited from audio recordings of Catton's lectures and question and answer sessions. He knew his topic so well and the book just flows wonderfully. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

LINCOLN'S GENERALS (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Collection) edited by Gabor S. Boritt

Published by Oxford University Press in 1995.

Lincoln's Generals is a collection of 5 essays written by scholars of various aspects of the Civil War. In this case, they focused on how Lincoln worked with his various generals, mostly the generals of the Army of the Potomac. They are organized in roughly chronological order.

The first essay was very well-written. It was by Stephen W. Sears and concerned Lincoln and McClellan. The weakest, for me, was the second essay, ostensibly about General Hooker. It's focus was really the macho culture of the time that required men to prove themselves manly by exposing themselves to fire. It wasn't a bad essay, but it really was not about the relationship between Lincoln and Hooker.

The other three essays were about Meade, Sherman, and Grant. 

I got an appreciation for the difficulties of Lincoln's political position, especially as the election of 1864 approached. Viewing things from 161 years later, it seems like it was all pre-ordained. The reminder that it was a close thing was welcome.

I rate this collection 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lincoln's Generals (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Collection) edited by Gabor S. Boritt.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty

Originally Published in 1943.
The edition I read was a re-print published by Scholastic in 1966.

While not a terribly deep dive into Lincoln, Daugherty's (1889-1974) very readable small telling of his life has some of the most poetic prose I have ever read in a biography. 

There are a couple of factual errors in the book. One example that I noted is the assertion that Robert E. Lee replaced a wounded James Longstreet at the head of what became known as the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. It was Joseph E. Johnston. That bears very little bearing on the story of Lincoln, even though I am sure he would rather Johnston would have been in the fighting rather than Longstreet. 

Here is an example of Daugherty's excellent prose (concerning Lincoln's early days as a lawyer): 

For the long, bony, sad man who was Billy's partner, the law office became a sanctuary and a refuge and a workshop, where through the years he slowly grew and learned and thought out the dark meanings and drifts of a troubled time. (page 55)

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty.

AMERICAN HERITAGE NEW ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: VOLUME 8: THE CIVIL WAR by Robert G. Athearn

Published in 1971 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

This book was part of a series intended to be a supplement to a history curriculum as part of a classroom library or in a school library. It is part of a multi-volume series. When I was a kid, I would see books like this used for extra credit (outline chapter X, etc.) when I was a kid.

Positives:

The pictures are great. The book title says it is illustrated and it does not lie. There are pictures on almost every page and many of them are the most famous photos, paintings, and drawings of the war.

There is an "Encyclopedic Section" at the end of the book. It has biographies of prominent people of the war and explanations of some of the big ideas, and events of the war. Before the internet, these little encyclopedias about a dedicated topic were extremely helpful.

There is an essay from Bruce Catton between the regular text and the Encyclopedic Section. It is excellent.

Negatives:

There is literally no explanation of the events that led to the Civil War. The first sentence of the book is: "The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter sparked a great military conflagration that was to blaze in America for four bitter, bloody years." Then, it proceeds to talk about the post-Sumter military build-up. Page 2 discusses Bull Run and page 3 talks about Fort Donelson. Iti is almost like the war just happened. 

Slavery is almost entirely ignored. Because of this, I would describe this book is a "Lost Cause" lite history. The facts that are presented are accurate, but when you ignore the role slavery played in the Civil War, you are slanting things towards the Confederacy. It's not advocating "Lost Cause" points, but it lends itself towards that interpretation. This is not surprising for a book written in 1971.

The Reconstruction section is also tilted to the side of the former Confederates. 

I rate this mixed bag of a book three stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN HERITAGE NEW ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: VOLUME 8: THE CIVIL WAR by Robert G. Athearn.

VICKSBURG, 1863 by Winston Groom

Originally published by Knopf in 2009.

Winston Groom will always be best known as the author of Forrest Gump, but he should be equally well known as the author of a series of well-told American histories. Included in those histories is a trilogy of Civil War histories that focus on the Western Theater of the war.

Vicksburg 1863 is the second book in the trilogy, but it can be easily read as a stand-alone history. After a short introduction to the war itself, it follows Grant's campaign to take the Mississippi River away from the Confederacy, beginning with a mess of a battle in Missouri that proved nothing of any importance except that Grant was game to fight and push forward, even if the conditions were not perfect.

That, it turns out, was pretty much the key to Grant's eventual success in this campaign and in the war.

From there, we follow Grant through Kentucky, into Tennessee and the terrible Battle of Shiloh. Although ultimately successful, this marked a low point for Grant because he nearly lost his army. His immediate superior came to Shiloh to supervise him and killed most of the momentum of the campaign

Eventually, Grant regained his command (his superior officer was promoted to a desk position in the Eastern Theater) and began his campaign to remove the last major obstacle for Union control of the Mississippi River - Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Vicksburg was a challenge due to its location on an imposing cliff on a massive bend in the Mississippi River. The Confederate military placed cannons on the cliff that threatened any ship that dared to try to pass by. This book details the many efforts he made to bypass Vicksburg, including attempts to build a canal to reroute the Mississippi and an attempt to go through the swamps around Vicksburg. Eventually, he crossed the river south Mississippi and quickly moved his army to cut off Vicksburg, lay siege to it while also engaging and driving away any Confederate troops that could have helped to lift the siege.

Some people will argue with Groom's assertion that Grant did have bouts of drunkenness during the campaign. He describes a rather wild bender featuring Grant cruising through the swampy rivers north of Vicksburg during a lull during the siege, switching boats, and looking for more and more booze. Grant's defenders will deny it all, Grant's detractors will claim it was probably even worse. I go with the simple knowledge that addiction is powerful and Grant often brought along people that kept him accountable. If those people weren't around, I can easily imagine him falling off the wagon. Whether it was a wild run through the swamps or a binge drunk in the corner of a cabin...well, that depends on who told the story back then and who is writing the story now.

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5. It reads as easy as a novel. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Vicksburg, 1863 by Winston Groom.

See my review of Groom's Shiloh, 1862 here. 

DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA (audiobook) by Steve Inskeep

Published by Penguin Audio in 2023.
Read by the author, Steve Inskeep.
Duration: 8 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

It's been said that no American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if that it is true, but I do know that it is pretty tough to come up with a new angle on the 16th President. In Differ We Must, NPR reporter/host Steve Inskeep has managed to do just that.

Inskeep follows through Lincoln's life and sees how he dealt with people that he had disagreements with. Some of them were major, some were minor. Sometimes, Lincoln responded to these disagreements by befriending the people he disagreed with, sometimes by patiently arguing his point of view, sometimes by appearing to accommodate them only to slowly change their minds, and sometimes by arguing fiercely against his opponent.

And, sometimes, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln realized he was wrong and changed his mind as was the case with Frederick Douglass (and other black dignitaries) and black men serving as soldiers and him dropping his insistence on sending freed slaves to Africa.

One is left to wonder, as always how Lincoln would have reacted to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction - the ultimate test of his ability to work with people that he disagreed with. We know that his successor, Andrew Johnson, failed that test in a spectacular way, but we will always have to wonder how Lincoln would have done.

While this was a unique entry into the collection of Lincoln biographies, I found it to be merely an "okay" biography. I listened to the audiobook and Inskeep's pleasant reading voice didn't hold my attention particularly well. I rate this biography 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA by Steve Inskeep.

McCLELLAN and FAILURE: A STUDY of CIVIL WAR FEAR, INCOMPETENCE and WORSE by Edward H. Bonekemper, III

 

Originally published in 2007.
Published in 2010 by McFarland and Company, Inc.

If you are a student of the Civil War, George B. McClellan is a conundrum at best.

After the Frist Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) in July of 1861, the poorly trained Union Army had fled back to Washington, D.C. They were basically a semi-organized mob awaiting someone to take the lead.

Lincoln looked around and felt that the leadership team that lost at Bull Run was not going to provide a credible lead general so he looked around the Eastern Theater for anyone else with the aura of success.

George B. McClellan had a bit of success in Western Virginia and wrote a lot of reports that made him seem an even better General than he was so Lincoln looked to him to retrain and refit the Army of the Potomac (the main Union Army in the East.)

Statue of McClellan outside of the
city hall in Philadelphia. It was 
dedicated in 1894.  I have no idea
why they felt he deserved this honor.

When I have talked with students about McClellan, I like to compare him to a nervous guy who restores cars. He finds a junker with lots of potential, restores it, and then is afraid to take it out and drive it (the entire purpose of a car) because it might get wrecked again. His men loved him for that - they didn't want to go out and fight and die in a pointless battle. But it was up to McClellan to find a way to take the fight to the enemy and the purpose of an army is to fight, to kill people and blow up things, not to drill and drill and drill while the enemy sits just a few miles away in the middle of the war. 

McClellan took over 8 months to rebuild the army before he took it out to fight. It was the largest army of the entire Civil War and was magnificently well-supplied.  His predecessor had only been in charge of the same army for about 6 weeks when he took to the field. 

Bonekemper documents McClellan's excuses, his time wasted on political lobbying, writing political advice to the President, and his constant inflation of the size of Confederate armies. Bonekemper also makes a strong case that McClellan didn't want to push too hard against the Confederacy because he was pro-slavery and that he let another Union Army be defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August of 1862 out of jealousy.

Once again - the most important general in the U.S. Army refused to engage the enemy because he sympathized with their war aims and he let an entire Union army be defeated when he was ordered to provide assistance because he was angry that the other army had an independent command.

Did McClellan make up for that by being a brilliant field general? No. His own men (generals and even privates) noted that he led from far behind the lines and rarely directed the men once the fighting started.

His last battle of any size was Antietam. Have you ever seen a karate movie where the group of bad guys engage the good guy by taking turns so he can defeat them all one at a time? That's how McClellan engaged with Robert E. Lee's much smaller Army of Norther Virginia - one brigade at a time and Lee basically fought them all to a draw - one brigade at a time.

In a modern army, McClellan may have had found a place dealing with logistics and training - procuring supplies and recruiting soldiers, training them and sending them to the front. But, that was not how things worked in the Civil War.

Of course, Bonekemper lays all of this in detail with the original sources and quotes. A lot of historians give McClellan a pass of sorts. To be honest, I don't know why. This book makes it clear that they shouldn't - he was among the worst of the Union generals.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: McCLELLAN and FAILURE: A STUDY of CIVIL WAR FEAR, INCOMPETENCE and WORSE by Edward H. Bonekemper, III.

STORM OVER the LAND: A PROFILE of the CIVIL WAR by Carl Sandburg

 

Originally published in 1942 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

I read a 2009 re-print published by Konecky and Konecky.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

In 1940, the famed poet, journalist and author Carl Sandburg won a Pulitzer Prize for his four volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (published in 1939.)

In 1942, his publishers came to him and asked him to re-work the biography into a history of the Civil War in response to America's recent entry into World War II. 

The result is a pretty solid history of the Civil War from basically the Union point of view. 

Carl Sandburg is best known as a poet and that shines though with some of his prose. From time to time, he comes up with a different and interesting way of telling the story of the war. 

The most obvious weakness to this history is the story of African-Americans in the war - the free, the enslaved, the recently freed, the soldiers and others. He mentions them, but does not look at them very hard. To be fair to Sandburg, this book was published 81 years ago and he covered the topic about as well as any mainstream history would have.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STORM OVER the LAND: A PROFILE of the CIVIL WAR by Carl Sandburg.

SHILOH, 1862 by Winston Groom

 

Published by National Geographic in 2012.

443 pages.

Winston Groom is best known as the author of the novel that inspired the classic Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump. Most people don't know that Winston Groom wrote several histories, including three about the Civil War.

****Synopsis****

Shiloh, 1862 is, of course, about the Civil War Battle of Shiloh, sometimes known as Pittsburg Landing in southern Tennessee very close to where Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi touch. 

The commanders were Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Don Carlos Buell for the Union and Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard and Braxton Bragg for the Confederacy. 

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

Grant was on a roll of sorts. He was the only winning Union commander, having won the Battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Kentucky in the winter of 1861-62. These welcome victories not only buoyed the sagging morale of the Union after the loss of the first big battle of the war, Bull Run, but it also opened up Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama to invasion following the river systems of the area.

This is how Grant ended up at Pittsburg Landing in southern Tennessee in April of 1862 and this is how this almost unknown location became the site of the first truly large battles of the war with casualties rivaling those of later battles such as Antietam and Gettysburg. Much like those battles, there were also a lot of questionable decisions made by the principal generals during this battle.

****My review****

This is one of the finest histories of the early days of the Western Theater of the Civil War that I have ever read. This is the 144th book that I have reviewed that has been tagged Civil War and I honestly cannot think of a more approachable and well-written history as this one. 

Highly recommended.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SHILOH 1862 by Winston Groom.

THE AMERICAN STORY: CONVERSATIONS with MASTER HISTORIANS (audiobook) by David M. Rubinstein

 

Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Voice work by various historians hosted by David M. Rubinstein.
Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

David M. Rubinstein is an avid amateur historian and financial supporter of history-related projects. He organized a series of 16 interviews of historians by the Library of Congress with the intended audience to be actual members of Congress with invited guests. 

He picked historians who have written popular and professionally respected histories and biographies of famous Americans such as Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton), David McCullough (Adams and Truman), Cokie Roberts (Abigail Adams) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln) and just let them discuss the person they studied.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

The audiobook consists of the actual audio of these interviews with a little introduction

The interviews were all solid, but could have been better if Rubinstein had not insisted on inserting himself in the middle of them so often. So many times the historian would be discussing an interesting topic and Rubinstein would interrupt to ask a question that totally changed the trajectory of the conversation. I noted to my wife that Cokie Roberts and Doris Kearns Goodwin were best at fielding his questions and then going right back to the topic they were pursuing. Perhaps they have a lot more experience with men interrupting to say something that was not relevant. 

This is still a good listen and I do recommend it. I did remove 1 star for the interruptions. Yes, I found the interruptions to be that annoying.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE AMERICAN STORY: CONVERSATIONS with MASTER HISTORIANS by David M. Rubinstein.

THE PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose

 

Published in 2014 by Lyons Press.

This is my 142nd Civil War-related review. When I heard about this book, I found myself wondering how no one else thought to write this book before.

Former presidents have their own political power and impact current events. Nowadays, you can see this with Jimmy Carter's modeling of volunteerism and his attempts to be a peace mediator in the 1980s and 1990s, Bill Clinton's maneuvering to remain relevant, George W. Bush's refusal to endorse or approve of anything done by Donald Trump, the calls that the Biden Administration is really just the third Obama Administration and, obviously, the 45th President's refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election.

DeRose starts with a rundown of the political careers of each politician involved: John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln. 

Then, he discusses how they reacted to Lincoln's candidacy, the break up of the Democrat Party in 1860, Lincoln's election and the Secession Crisis. 

John Tyler, the 10th President (1790-1862)

To a man, they were all critical of Lincoln's handling of the Secession Crisis. John Tyler surprised me, though. Tyler was from Virginia and owned slaves and had a working slave labor plantation so he was never going to be supportive of Lincoln who was philosophically against slavery but only against expanded it into new territories and/or states as a matter of policy. 

Tyler left the presidency politically unpopular and seemed to have relished in the attention he received during the Secession Crisis. Suddenly, people were seeking his opinion on the most important issue of his lifetime. Tyler came to D.C. and led a peace conference hosted by Virginia in the Willard Hotel. 

Nothing came from the conference. Tyler operated as a proxy for the Confederacy, in my opinion, and his proposals were ridiculous. Tyler was elected to the Confederate Conference and served in the Provisional Confederate Congress until his death. He remains the only President that ever served in a government at war with the United States. 

I was amused by the constant thread of James Buchanan's post-presidency - he was going to write a book to explain his actions during the Secession Crisis. He claimed over and over again that he would be vindicated once everyone knew all of the facts and ... he never was. It was almost like a running gag throughout the book. Even today, he is universally acknowledged to be the one of the worst presidents of all of the presidents. 

The book continues on with reactions from each of the surviving presidents to the events of the war such as Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, the fall of Atlanta, Lee's surrender and, finally, the assassination of Lincoln. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose.

THE BROKEN CONSTITUTION: LINCOLN, SLAVERY, and the REFOUNDING of AMERICA (audiobook) by Noah Feldman

 

Published in 2021 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by the author, Noah Feldman.
Duration: 11 hours, 14 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Broken Constitution Feldman argues that the Constitution as it was known to Congressman Abraham Lincoln (he served in the Congress from 1847-1849) was already a broken Constitution and maybe had been broken since it had been ratified in 1788. What caused this break? No real surprise - slavery.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Feldman details the compromises that had been in place to induce the Southern states to join a stronger Federal union and how those compromises were re-hashed in the decades that followed in acts like the Missouri Compromise (1820), the Nullification Crisis (1832-33) and the Compromise of 1850. The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857 only heightened tensions between the slave states and the rest of the union. Feldman's point is that if the Constitution were not already broken, these crises wouldn't have been so dramatic and wouldn't have actually have been crises.

When the Confederate states start seceding after Lincoln's 1860 Presidential election, it was really a continuation of the ongoing series of crises. Feldman details all of those crises and also tells how Lincoln's rising political career was affected by them. 

Feldman then details how Lincoln often broke the rules of the Constitution in the name of restoring U.S. Constitutional government to the Confederate states. Lincoln's political evolution during the war paved the way for the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The 14th Amendment (1868) in particular changed the relationship between the Federal government and the citizens of the United States and made the Federal government the ultimate guarantor of Civil Rights.

This is not a book for readers who are not already very aware of the issues that created all of the crises I mentioned above and eventually caused the Civil War. Feldman spends almost no time talking about the fighting in the war. He assumes the reader knows all about them and can follow along without anything more than a reminder.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It was an interesting take.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE BROKEN CONSTITUTION: LINCOLN, SLAVERY, and the REFOUNDING of AMERICA by Noah Feldman.

THE MYTH of the LOST CAUSE: WHY the SOUTH FOUGHT the CIVIL WAR and WHY the NORTH WON by Edward Bonekemper III

 

Published in 2105 by Regnery History.

Edward Bonekemper (1942-2017) was a lawyer by day and historian in his spare time. He worked for the federal government in a couple of regulatory departments. Imagine an attorney coming into a conference room and telling you that you have regulatory issues and then proceeding to lay down one document after another after another that proves it until you have a pile of papers covering your table.

Bonekemper brings that tenacity to his history books as well. He often comes with a point to prove and he brings tons of proof.

In this case, he goes after "The Lost Cause". What is The Lost Cause? It was (and still is) an apologist movement for the Confederacy that says that slavery was not a primary cause of the war and, besides that, slavery was not that bad. Robert E. Lee was the best general of the war (maybe American history) and his personal honor was unimpeachable and his only fault was that the trusted men like his subordinate General James Longstreet who betrayed him at the Battle of Gettysburg. Grant was a butcher who simply used brute force, superior numbers and more supplies to complete the task of overwhelming the brave defenders of the Confederacy who were clearly the more superior soldiers. Throw into this mix the myth that literally thousands of African Americans joined the Confederate army, formed units and actively participated in combat in great numbers. 

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
and Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)

Bonekemper is devastatingly thorough in his arguments. He argues quite convincingly that Grant was the most brilliant general of the war. To be fair to Grant's reputation, it should be remembered that there were only 4 complete armies that surrendered during the war and Grant took 3 of them. Bonekemper decides to make his argument about the skill of Grant by re-telling the details of his Vicksburg campaign. Typically, Lee's performance at Chancellorsville is often highlighted as the best performance by a general in a battle, but Grant's 6 month plus long Vicksburg campaign is simply an amazing example of initiative, diversrion and speed. This campaign led to the surrender of an entire army, opened the Mississippi as a save way to ship goods into and out of the Midwestern United States, severed of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas from the Confederacy, destroyed the capitol of Mississippi and defeated of a second Confederate army. All of this while mostly avoiding direct assaults and being outnumbered by the total number of Confederate troops in the field. 

Bonekemper is very critical of Robert E. Lee's skills as a commander - both strategically and tactically. He makes good points especially on a strategic level (big picture, the entire country view), but I think he is a bit tough on Lee, especially on his performance during the Seven Days Battles in 1862 when Lee took over the Army of Northern Virginia in the middle of a campaign because its original commander was severely wounded (he was sidelined for more than 5 months).

Interestingly, this book is published by Regnery History, a publisher that mostly features Lost Cause Civil War history. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MYTH of the LOST CAUSE: WHY the SOUTH FOUGHT the CIVIL WAR and WHY the NORTH WON by Edward Bonekemper III.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2016.

This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long. 

Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered?

To be honest - nothing.

But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language. 

There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize.

I rate this kindle book 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, for what it is. Nowhere near a complete biography, but a solid place to start.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History.

CIVIL WAR BLUNDERS by Clint Johnson

 

Published by John F. Blair in 1997.

There are several books like Civil War Blunders on the market. History books are full of interesting, odd stories that add a little spice to the narrative and there is a certain logic to having a book of just the spice. 

This book is organized in a loose chronolgical order, rather than by theme. Sometimes the stories blend into each other, sometimes not.

There was nothing particularly good or bad about this collection. Some of the stories are more amusing than outright blunders and there is a bit of anti-Union and anti-Lincoln bias that can be detected, especially at the beginning. But, not enough to derail the book.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Civil War Blunders by Clint Johnson.

WHY THE NORTH WON THE CIVIL WAR edited by David Donald

 

Originally Published in 1960 by Louisiana State University Press.

Five Civil War historians were asked to present papers at the Annual Civil War Conference at Gettysburg College. While these were all experts on the Civil War, each had a slightly different topic to create a more well-rounded discussion in Why the North Won the Civil War.

The first essay, God and the Strongest Batallions by Richard N. Current, looks at economic factors that gave the North a decided advantage and how the North exploited them. It also looks at things the Confederacy failed to do to maximize their strengths.

T. Harry Williams wrote the second essay. It is entitled The Military Leadership of North and South.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889)

Norman A. Graebner's essay Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality actually looks at both Northern and Southern diplomatic efforts. This one interested me because it took a hard and sustained look at the responses of the governments of Russia, Great Britain and France to the Civil War.

Died by Democracy by David Donald looks at the Confederacy's extreme emphasis on individual liberty from the lowliest private refusing to follow orders to state governments refusing to help the national government to cabinet members actively working against President Jefferson Davis. 

In a similar vein to the fourth essay, Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat by David M. Potter focuses on Davis and how his choices and his personality made the factors previously mentioned by David Donald even worse.|

These are 5 solid essays and are well worth the time of any student of the Civil War.

I rate this collection of essays 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: WHY THE NORTH WON THE CIVIL WAR edited by David Donald.

LINCOLN and the FIRST SHOT (Critical Periods of History Series) by Richard N. Current

Originally published in 1963.

27 years ago I took a night class about the Civil War offered by Ball State University in a middle school off campus. It was a great class and Lincoln and the First Shot was the first book that we discussed. The book covers the two month period from the day that Lincoln arrived in D.C. after he was elected President and the day that P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina.

When the Confederate states seceded they took over all Federal property, including forts and military bases. Two forts were not surrendered - Fort Pickens in Pensacola and Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was always the most argued over because of the symbolism of being smack in the middle of the main port of the first state to secede. 

Lincoln refused to give up the fort because he refused to give up any of the seceded states. South Carolina demanded the fort because they insisted they were part of a new country and they did not want a foreign power to have a fort blocking a port in their new country.

South Carolina was ready to fire on the fort but did not want to look like they were provoking a fight. A peaceful separation might still be possible. Lincoln was preparing to reinforce the fort if he could - but without provoking a fight. After all, the country might be peacefully reunited. 

Fort Sumter immediately after its surrender
to South Carolina troops in April, 1861.

Neither side wanted to fire the first shot, but both sides could foresee the rush of patriotism that follow if their side were fired upon.

Historian Richard N. Current's description of the situation faced by both the North and the South at the beginning of the crisis was excellent and well done. But, his description of all of the plotting, fake peace proposals and sometimes outright confusion felt like he was stretching out the story to fill the pages of this book - like there was a minimum number of words he had to reach to fulfill his book contract.

So, I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found here on Amazon.com:  LINCOLN and the FIRST SHOT (Critical Periods of History Series) by Richard N. Current.

ULYSSES S. GRANT: A VICTOR, NOT A BUTCHER by Edward H. Bonekemper III

 

Originally published in 2010.

Re-published in 2017 by Regnery History.

Do you remember back in school when you would get a topic to argue for in an essay? That's pretty much what this book is. The topic is "Grant has the reputation for wasting his men in useless attacks. Is Grant's reputation as a butcher justified?"

Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher might be mistaken as a biography of Grant, but it is not. What it is is a fantastic defense of Grant's record in the Civil War.

Bonekemper was a federal government regulatory attorney for 34 years before he started writing books, delivering lectures, hosting discussions and teaching classes on the Civil War as a second career after he had retired. All that practice of 34 years of digging through books and digging through stats and regulations shines through this book.

You would think that what I just described is a boring book, but it is well-written and flows smoothly from one campaign to the next. Very readable.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

Bonekemper digs through all of the stats and shows that Grant consistently inflicted a greater percentage of losses than he suffered. Only 4 armies surrendered during the Civil War. Sherman took one. Grant took the other 3 - in 1862, 1863 and 1865. Grant has a reputation of being a hard charger that just made his men charge headlong into the enemy. But, if you just look at the Vicksburg campaign you hardly see any headlong charges (sadly, they happened in every theater under every commander because they were sometimes very effective) and you do see a lot of different, creative strategies that resulted in an entire army surrendering and a second army defeated, retreating and its commander removed.

Grant gets a bad rap for his time as the commander against Lee (May 1864-April 1865). The Army of the Potomac suffered more losses from all of the previous commanders combined than under Grant and were no closer to beating Lee then when they started. Grant had more losses per day, but he finished it in less than a year. 

To be honest, I am surprised that Regnery History publishes Bonekemper's books. They usually feature a lot of books that go wholeheartedly with the "Lost Cause" tradition of Douglas Southall Freeman and Bonekemper's certainly do not. But, I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am just glad they're being published. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ULYSSES S. GRANT: A VICTOR, NOT A BUTCHER by Edward H. Bonekemper III.

OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner

 

Published in 2008 by W.W. Norton and Company.

This series of essays was most likely compiled to be the text for college-level classes by Eric Foner, a historian well-known for his expertise on the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, American Slavery and Reconstruction. Lincoln, of course, sits astride all of these issues.

There are 11 essays covering four broad topics: 

-Lincoln as "The President", looking at such things as how he acted as commander-in-chief and how Lincoln protected (and failed to protect) civil rights during the war.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

-Lincoln as "The Emancipator", focusing on his view of slavery, citizenship for African Americans, his zeal for colonizing freed slaves and his hot and cold relationship with abolitionists. 

-Lincoln "The Man" with essays about his writing style (and how it changed as the war went on), his views on religion (and how it also may have changed as the war went on) and his family life (his birth family and his married life).

-Lincoln in "Politics and Memory". This is the shortest section and the most politically charged. The author's comments on the Bush administration only make me wonder what he would have said about the Trump administration.

On the whole, this was a solid collection, but like all collections, not all of the items in the collection are equal. One essay was about Lincoln's control of how his physical image was shared through paintings, sculpture and photographs and I found it to be so tedious that I started skimming it and finally just skipped to the next essay. The three essays on the Lincoln as The Emancipator were all excellent, but they also had a lot of overlap. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner.

THE CIVIL WAR REMEMBERED: OFFICIAL NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HANDBOOK by various authors

 

Originally published in 2011 by Eastern National

Eastern National is the publisher of the official books published by the National Park Service. Their books are on display in National Park gift shops in visitor centers across the country. Most are pretty good - I've bought more than my share of them because they are compact volumes, full of great, pertinent illustrations printed on glossy paper and their information is solid. The problem is that the writing is always solid, if not particularly engrossing. 

The Civil War Remembered is an exception that pattern because the authors are historians who are also name brand Civil War authors - some are authors that have hit the top of the non-fiction best seller lists and you don't do that if you write dense prose.

There are 16 essays in this 175 page book. Each one covers a specific topic that makes for a rough narrative telling of the history by exploring themes such as America before the Civil War, what it is was like to serve in the military in the Civil War, how the war changed from a war to only preserve the Union to a war to end slavery in order to preserve the Union, industry in the Civil War, the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Some of the big names include James McPherson, Edward L. Ayers and Eric Foner. 

This book would serve as a great introduction to the Civil War for anyone. I was very pleased to see a review on Amazon that said that their college professor used this in class. This volume is that good. 

Highly recommended.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE CIVIL WAR REMEMBERED: OFFICIAL NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HANDBOOK.