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.

STAR SPANGLED SCANDAL: SEX, MURDER, and the TRIAL THAT CHANGED AMERICA (audiobook) by Chris DeRose

Published by Blackstone Audio in June of 2019.
Read by Traber Burns.
Duration: 8 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

In February of 1859, Daniel Sickles, a sitting U.S. Congressman, shot and killed a man in Washington, D.C. across the street from the White House.

Why is this not just a weird moment in American history?

Five reasons.

#1) Daniel Sickles went on to become the highest-ranking Union officer in the Civil War that did not graduate from West Point. He performed very well at the disastrous Battle of Chancellorsville and performed bravely, but with great controversy at Gettysburg, where he lost a leg.

#2) The victim was Phillip Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. Phillip Barton Key was also the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.

#3) Key and Sickles' wife had been carrying on a long-term adulterous affair and Sickles had just discovered this fact.

#4) The new technology of the telegraph spread this story to newspapers across the country and it became THE scandal story of its era. Some newspapers sold literally tens of thousands of copies when this story was on the front page. Record numbers of telegraph messages were sent out across the country - totals only eclipsed by the Civil War just a few months later.

#5) It was the first time the temporary insanity defense was used successfully in the United States and kicked off a wave of similar defenses in adultery cases for most of the next century.

For me, an enthusiastic student of the Civil War, Star Spangled Scandal should have been an amazing book. A future Civil War general is defended in a murder trial by the future Secretary of War during the Civil War (Edwin Stanton). A few days before the murder Sickles, his wife and her lover had all been at a party hosted by Rose O'Neal Greenhow - the future famed Confederate spy who used her parties during the war to gather information. Abraham Lincoln was fascinated by the case and discussed it back home in Springfield, Illinois. Later, he and his wife became friends with Mr. and Mrs. Sickles.

But, this book gets bogged down with long passages from the trial. He literally quotes the opening and closing statements from the trial at great length with no analysis - just copies and pastes it into the book. That might have been all right, unless you have read anything from the 1850's. Verbose and flowery speech abounds. Everyone comes off as a self-important, pompous windbag. It is tedious to listen to. If it could be said in 10 words, they were sure to use 50 or 60.

Here is a great example. This single sentence with more than 90 words was written to the New York Herald by Daniel Sickles to complain that they were writing about his personal life, but they didn't know any of the details and they should just butt out:

"The editorial comments of the Herald of yesterday, although censorious, (of which I do not complain whilst I read them with regret) differ so widely in tone and temper from the mass of nonsense and calumny which has lately been written concerning a recent event in my domestic relations, that I cannot allow a mistake, into which you have been held by inaccurate information, to pass without such a correction as will relieve others from any share of the reproaches which is the pleasure of the multitude at this moment to heap upon me and mine."

An artist's rendering of the murder from Harper's Weekly
 in March of 1859.

If you enjoyed that sentence, you would love the extended quotes from the trial transcript threaded together with an occasional comment for page after page.

I did not enjoy the narration in this book. I only have a couple of readers I will not listen to. Before this book, I only had one reader. Traber Burns has made it two. The reader has the perfect voice for pompous, self-important commentary. He is perfectly suited for this style of writing.

So, I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. Just too many quotes. I get the value of letting the people actually speak for themselves, but this was too much.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: STAR SPANGLED SCANDAL: SEX, MURDER, and the TRIAL THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Chris DeRose.

Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, The Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation by Chris DeRose

A refreshing perspective on the Founding Fathers

Published 2011 by Regnery History

I am an avid reader of American history and one of my favorite areas to study is the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. There is no shortage of books about the build up to the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War and Washington, Jefferson and Adams (as of late) but there is a real scarcity of books about the difficulties experienced by the Articles of Confederation government and the debates that led to the creation of the Constitution. Of course, there are the famed Federalist Papers and the lesser-known Anti-Federalist Papers but not much written as a study.

James Madison (1751-1836)

In Founding Rivals, DeRose tells the story as a parallel biography of Madison and Monroe - two Founding Fathers, two future presidents, both close friends of Thomas Jefferson. This is more than a bare bones biography but there were times that I found myself wanting more such as when DeRose discusses Monroe's trips to the frontier. I would have been interested in hearing more about how that influenced his decisions later on in life. For Madison, mentions in one brief sentence that he wrote or co-wrote 29 of the Federalist Papers as part of the debate in New York about the ratification of the Constitution. I would have thought that his essays would have been explored a bit since they do show insight into his political philosophy but there is only the one sentence.

But, the book is not meant to be a complete dual biography, it is the story of one election to Congress and how that election impacted America. That part of the story actually occurs relatively late in the book. Once DeRose has finished demonstrating the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and why Madison (known as the primary author of the Constitution) wanted to scrap it (no one had more experience with the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation than Madison) we are easily two-thirds into the book. Frankly, I was starting to wonder when the "Rivals" part was going to kick in. In a way, it really does not. Madison and Monroe were friends. They respected one another's experiences and opinions and their rivalry seems to have been a gracious one. Interestingly, they did not seem to harbor any ill feelings towards one another during and after the election.

James Monroe (1758-1831)

They strongly disagreed on the new government created by the Constitution. Anti-Federalist Monroe wanted to go to Congress to limit the ability of the Congress to directly tax the people and create a Bill of Rights. Madison wanted to be able to directly tax the people and was one of the few Federalists that also wanted a Bill of Rights. Madison was bothered by states (like his native Virginia) that had an official religion and taxed its residents to pay for that religion and he had a long record of opposing those sorts of laws.

Madison wins the election and is one of the leaders of the movement to add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. DeRose persuasively maintains that if Madison had not won the election, there would not have been enough support from Federalists to pass the first 10 amendments to the Constitution and that is how this election "saved a nation." It's a strong argument and the book presents an interesting look at the Founding Fathers and the arguments and friendships that created America.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe.

Reviewed on December 7, 2011.