APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew

Originally published in 2001.

The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg.

No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War?

For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?"

For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself. 

There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states seceded over differences in culture and differences in attitude and the disagreement over federal tax policy. If you think so, I encourage you to read the Ordinances of Secession (basically Declarations of Independence) from Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. They are full of all sorts of reasons to secede, but they keep coming back to slavery-related issues. These are wonderful resources because they are frozen in time, before the loss of the war by the Confederacy. Many post-Civil War authors who fought for the South obscure the importance of slavery, perhaps realizing it was a great moral wrong, or perhaps simply being cognizant that slavery had become politically incorrect and it would hurt their overall argument. Let's face it - many Union soldiers became proud of their role in ending slavery long after the war ended, being indifferent to or even mildly pro-slavery during the war.

 Several of the seceding states did more than issue their own Declarations of Independence. Some of these states sent out ambassadors from their newly independent states to try to convince the other slave states to join them. They were generally referred to as Southern Secession Commissioners. The title of this book, Apostles of Disunion refers to them. The Apostles of Jesus were sent out to teach about Jesus. These apostles were sent out by several secessionist states to to convince the other slave states to join them. Just the fact that they were only sent to slave states should serve as a major clue as to what caused the Civil War.

The texts of their letters and speeches make it very clear that their main arguments were these: fear of the abolition of slavery by "Black Republicans", fear of slave revolt, the loss of the investment of money in their slaves, fear of former slaves having the power to vote and the fear of race mixing. William L. Harris, the Commissioner from Mississippi sent to reach out to the state of Georgia said on December, 17, 1860: "Mississippi is firmly convinced that there us but one alternative: This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery; or, slavery under old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us. If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate." (p. 87)

He followed up with a comment about how Mississippi would "...rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile, than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race." (p. 89)

Stephen F. Hale (1816-1862. He served Alabama
as a Secession Commissioner and as a Lt. Colonel
in the 11th Alabama. He died of wounds sustained
during the Battle of Gaines' Mill in 1862.
Hale County, Alabama is named for him.

Stephen F. Hale of Alabama sent a letter to the Governor of Kentucky to convince him to push for secession. In the letter he calls Lincoln's election "...nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassination and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans."

He continued: "What Southern man, be he a slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white stripped by the heaven-daring had of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?" (p. 98)

The author of Apostles of Disunion included plenty of similar quotes throughout the book and also includes the entire text of the Harris speech and the Hale letter. He found snippets of speeches and letters from the other Commissioners in newspaper articles and journals and found similar comments to the ones in the complete texts. Combine these texts with ambassadors hand-picked by the newly-seceded states and the Ordinances of Secession and you have the answer to why the Civil War started.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew.

STARSHIP TROOPERS (audiobook) by Robert A. Heinlein

Originally published in 1959.
Audiobook published in 1998 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by Lloyd James.
Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

Winner of the Hugo Award for best sci-fi novel of 1960.

Way back when - when I was in high school and Ronald Reagan was President, I used to read a lot of Robert A. Heinlein. Now, as an adult, I find myself all over the place with my ratings of Heinlein, mostly average. With this book, I will have two 5 star ratings, two 3 star ratings and two 2 star ratings. That makes a very mediocre rating of 3.333 out of 5. That would be a C+ on a grading scale and I agree with that assessment.

This book marks the transition in Heinlein's professional career from writing science fiction for kids and young adults to writing for adults. This book was originally supposed to be for kids but the original publisher rejected it so Heinlein shopped it around, found a new publisher and never wrote for kids again.

The book Starship Troopers is a rare book in my opinion. It is a book where the movie is absolutely better than the book, even though the movie is clearly only loosely inspired by the movie. Some sources say the movie was written and the title of the book was attached to it after the fact, and even if that is true, the movie is still better than this book.

Robert A. Heinlein

What's wrong with the book?

-The ratio of literal fascist political lecture by classroom teachers to actual battle action in a book called Starship Troopers is about 2:1. It could just as easily have been called Starship Fascist Lectures.  The lectures go on and on about how democracy was a doomed system and the only way to lead a people was by a system led by people who had served in the military. Throw in a half hour discussion of the proper way to raise children with the threat of a good old fashioned public flogging and you've got the makings of a real disappointment. 

-More than one-third of the book is about basic training. How far they ran, what they ate, where they slept and more for several hours. Sadly, two of the better characters in the book are Johnny Rico's drills sergeant and his captain.

-There was nearly as much in the book about the how the officer's dining room worked on ship as there was actual military action. Just so you know, the army sits on one end of the table, the navy on the other and they sit by descending order with the most junior officers meeting in the middle. Don't give a crap? Neither did I, but Heinlein goes on and on about it like it's extremely important. Maybe it should have been called Starship Dinners.

The audibook was read by Lloyd James. He was fine, but the audio production was sometimes clumsily edited. There were times when you could hear the recording equipment being turned on and off and there were clunky edits where the Lloyd James had gone back and re-read part but it was much quieter and not as crisp sounding as the rest of the book.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. The final (and very short) fight scene saves it from being a complete 1 star fiasco. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

LEVI COFFIN, QUAKER: BREAKING the BONDS of SLAVERY in OHIO and INDIANA by Mary Ann Yannessa

Originally printed in 2001.

One of my favorite people in history is Levi Coffin. I have visited the Levi Coffin House (an official Historic Site maintained by the state of Indiana) so many times that it feels like I am making a semi-annual pilgrimage when I go.  The thing is, I find myself inspired every time I visit - both as a history lover, a champion of individual rights and as a Christian.

Levi Coffin was an instrumental figure in the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement. He was not simply  a theoretical supporter of the movement that wrote letters and collected donations. He helped more than a thousand slaves escape, many of them spending time in his own home. His home in Indiana was even modified so that he could hide ten or more people at a time, if necessary.

Here is a picture that I took of a great quote from Levi Coffin that is on the wall of the visitors center at his house in Fountain City: 

This short book tells an interesting story of his life from his beginnings in North Carolina to Indiana and finally on to Cincinnati. During his entire life, even as a young man still living at home in North Carolina, he helped slaves escape. He viewed it as his responsibility as a Christian.

But, he even went further than that. He and wife operated a store in Cincinnati that sold goods that were completely free of slave labor, pioneering a concept that many think as a modern incarnation with things like conflict-free diamonds.

During the Civil War, he and his wife opened their home up as a hospital for wounded soldiers, helped find work and schooling for newly freed slaves and helped feed the non-stop flood of refugees streaming away from their masters.

After the war, he continued his efforts for the Freedmen until he finally was too old to do anything any longer.

This book is very approachable and quite an enjoyable read. I am in the midst of a book purge, but this book is staying on my shelf.

I rate this simple book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LEVI COFFIN, QUAKER: BREAKING the BONDS of SLAVERY in OHIO and INDIANA by Mary Ann Yannessa.

DRUNKEN FIREWORKS (audiobook) by Stephen King

Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Tim Sample.
Duration: 1 hour, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen King uses the voice talents of Tim Sample, a humorist that specializes in talking about Maine. Fans of Stephen King know that the prolific author loves to set his stories in his home state of Maine. This one is set on the corner of a lake surrounded by vacation homes.

Two families are part of a year-after-year fireworks contest. One is a family from Rhode Island. The other is an older mom and son who grew up in the area and bought their dream home on the lake. They don't know each other well, but their sense of pride get in the way as their desire to "one up" each other gets more and more ridiculous as the years go along.

The folksy manner of the narrator makes this predictable story a lot of fun. It is the perfect matching of author and narrator.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Drunken Fireworks by Stephen King.

SLEEPING GIANTS (Themis Files #1) (audiobook) by Sylvain Neuvel

Published in 2016 by Random House Audio.
Multicast performance.
Duration: 8 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

One of my favorite audiobook bloggers wrote a gushing review of this entire trilogy. It was such an enthusiastic review that I almost got all 3 books in the trilogy based on his word alone.

I am glad I didn't.

****Warning: Spoiler Alert****

Sleeping Giants is derivative of two other works of science fiction - and they're not the finest bits of sci-fi. Imagine a mash-up of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Pacific Rim and you've pretty much got this book.

It is like Pacific Rim in that you've got a giant robot weapon that has to be operated by two people at the same time to work. It's like Power Rangers in that certain people have been randomly "chosen" to operate this robot and possibly defend the earth from alien attack.

The chosen ones get to suit up and use the
mighty morphin powerbot in this audiobook.

****Spoilers continue****

The alien threat never materializes and there's an awful lot of weird Cold War politics going back and forth as the United States literally violates the air space of every country on the planet in its quest to find all of the parts of this gigantic mighty morphin powerbot. 

Most of the book, however, doesn't include any action at all. The book is designed to be read as a series of government reports and interviews read and heard one after another to tell the story. Imagine all of the action of reading a report or listening a government after action interview and you get the idea.

This is not to say that this book has nothing going for it, but it is too slow, too unrealistic.

On top of that, I really hated the voice of the unnamed character that I called "The Interrogator". He over-enunciated everything and interrupted constantly. It was the part as written, but the actor just botched all of the interruptions. They didn't sound natural - they sounded like when a bad high school actor reads an interruption in an under-rehearsed play.

****Even more SPOILERS****

And, worst of all - the book isn't even internally consistent. For example, at one point a character puts on the helmet to interface with the robot and all of her bodily injuries are immediately and painfully healed. When another robot operator is horribly injured, no one even discusses using the magical healing helmet. Not once.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SLEEPING GIANTS (Themis Files #1) (audiobook) by Sylvain Neuvel.

BULL'S-EYES and MISFIRES: 50 PEOPLE WHOSE OBSCURE EFFORTS SHAPED the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Clint Johnson

Originally published in 2002.

As the title states, in Bull's-Eyes and Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped the American Civil War, Clint Johnson has found 50 people from the Civil War (25 from each side) who played an important role, but are generally speaking, not big names. So, you won't find Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman or Stonewall Jackson in this book, except in passing. All of those men would have admitted that they didn't win (or lose) the war by themselves. It was a big war and it involved literally millions of people inside and outside of the military and even outside of the government. Some of those were very helpful and are labeled as "bull's-eyes". Some people, though, got in the way more than they helped. They are the "misfires".

Some of the misfires and bull's-eyes that Johnson lists are clearly misfires or bull's-eyes. For example, the first person listed in the book is Union Major William F. Barry. He misidentified Confederate troops at a critical moment in the First Battle of Bull Run as Union troops and stopped Union artillery from potentially breaking the Confederate line and wiping out Stonewall Jackson's unit before they made the stand that gave Jackson his famous nickname.

Captain Sally Tompkins (1833-1916)

Others are a judgment call. Lew Wallace is called a bull's-eye, but he could have just as easily have been called a misfire for his bungled march during the Battle of Shiloh. For the record, I agree with Johnson's anlaysis, but Ulysses S. Grant never thought much of Wallace's military ability after Shiloh.

The story of Captain Sally Tompkins was an eye-opener to me. Sally Tompkins ran a hospital out of her own home in Richmond and had an incredible success rate - the lowest mortality rate in any hospital in the war on either side. Jefferson Davis made a rule that all hospitals had to be ran by a military officer (because there were some pretty bad private operators). But, Jefferson Davis wanted to make sure that Tompkins' hospital stayed open so he made her a captain in the Confederate Army - possibly the first female officer in any American army. For the record, she served without pay and refused a pension after the war. Personally, I was amazed that Jefferson Davis could be that flexible in his thinking - he was not known for that quality. I was also pleased to read that Tompkins treated all wounded equally in her hospital - Union or Confederate. She even treated African-American Union soldiers, which was enough of an oddity that people commented on it.

I am an avid reader of Civil War histories and I only knew and could identify about 20 of these people (meaning I could make a good guess as to why they were listed in this book) before reading this book.

I have only three complaints.

1) The book is heavily biased towards the Eastern Theater of War.

 2) There is a slight anti-Lincoln bias present in the book. Not the biggest deal, since the book is about the smaller players in the war.

3) The biggest complaint I have is that there are times when a person was listed because they got into a professional squabble with another person and forgot the larger picture. Then, a few profiles later, the squabble was presented a second time because it was a profile of the other guy in the fight. For example, there were two discussions about the creation of the C.S.S. Virginia, the first Confederate ironclad ship. Two men were sure they were responsible (Porter and Brooke) and the reader gets to read the story twice, with a slightly different take the second time.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BULL'S-EYES and MISFIRES: 50 PEOPLE WHOSE OBSCURE EFFORTS SHAPED the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Clint Johnson.

LIVE LONG and...WHAT I LEARNED ALONG the WAY (audiobook) by William Shatner and David Fisher

Published by Macmillan Audion in 2018.
Read by the author, William Shatner.
Duration: 5 hours, 11 minutes.
Unabridged

William Shatner gets personal in this look back at his life. He offers advice, although to be fair you have to know his first piece of advice - don't take his advice. Why not? Because his life is his life and you are you and the situations are different.

That being said, he does offer one really good piece of advice - say "yes" to new opportunities.

Besides the advice, he fills the book with stories of his life and discussions of situations he faced and how he dealt with them. He is brutally honest about his childhood and his lifelong inability to make real friends. Leonard Nimoy was one of his few friends, but at the end of his life Nimoy had refused to talk with him for five years.

The author, undoubtedly being overly
dramatic - and also interesting.

Sometimes he drifts into sort "old man" ramblings about life in general and repeats himself, but most of the book is quite interesting. Say what you want about William Shatner - he's never boring for very long. His stories of his career right after the cancellation of Star Trek tell something about how badly he wanted to be an actor. His story of his drive from New York City to Chicago in a blizzard is worth the price of the book all by itself, in my opinion.

Shatner read this audiobook himself. Did you expect anything less?

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LIVE LONG and...WHAT I LEARNED ALONG the WAY (audiobook) by William Shatner.