Tag Archives: history

Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War, by Jerome Loving *****

Posted on by

confederate bushwhacker Good things come to those who wait. Jerome Loving established his credentials as an academic and historian a long time ago. I haven’t read the other biographies he has written, but they’re going on my list now.

Here’s what you have to know going into it: if you are looking for the sound bite, the cut-to-the-chase, you can’t have that wish. Loving uses induction rather than deduction, and brick by brick he builds toward his conclusion, taking the time to set context in a way that only a specialized biography such as this one, which focuses on the single year 1885, can do. And since I received this gorgeous little hardcover book as a Goodreads.com First Reads giveaway, I was impatient at first. “What the heck. Where’s the bushwhacking? Where’s Grant?”

Uh uh uh. No. Go back, reread. Everything that is in this book is there for a reason. If you hustle through the first part to get to the second, you may leave too many holes in the foundation. Do you want the wall to fall down? Of course not.

What I noticed, as I marched through with my sticky notes, is that the clusters were initially sparse, as the stage was set, and then suddenly ramped up around page 100, and by the end of the biography I was putting a sticky on every page and sometimes on facing pages.

I could tell you what he has to say; I went back and looked at all of those notes, but then, why would I wreck it for you? An author who builds up to the last page does not need a reviewer to hand over his punch line for him.

Instead, I can tell you that this is a careful, painstaking, well-documented analysis of a complex character. Twain’s ideas evolved between his 20’s and the end of his life, and of course, for most of us they do, but perhaps because his mind was open and searching, or perhaps because of his great fondness for “Sam” Grant, he watched what took place–including the Haymarket martyrdom, which I never knew had been an interest of his–and revised his ideas accordingly. Smart people can do that.

Perhaps the greatest measure of the success of this work is that it not only makes me want to see what else Loving has written, it also makes me want to revisit Twain. I had avoided much of Twain’s philosophical writing because of his anger toward the “damn human race”, to which I am much attached, thanks. But I want to see more about the connection between the events that played out during this time period and his changing perspectives.

One small correction is in order to Loving’s work, though I know this is a tiny, picky detail: Loving states that a huge redwood tree had been named for Grant. Ahem. It is a Sequoia tree. It is immense, but it is General Sherman’s that is the largest in the entire world. Sequoias belong to the same family as redwoods, but they are different. Having driven several days from Seattle to Southern California to see the tree; survived a four-car pile-up, rescued my luggage, bandaged and iced myself and my children, hired a rental car and driven onward to fulfill my mission, I can’t let it go by without mentioning it. Two great huge trees in honor of my two favorite American generals of all time. Sequoias. A hint is that they are located in Sequoia National Park. Makes sense, no?The biggest tree in the world! 50%

If you are reading this exclusively for the Civil War aspect, I will tell you that most of the book is not devoted to that time period; it says it is about 1885, not 1865, and when examining the book’s jacket, a knee-jerk reaction will leave you dangling. There is a small but meaty portion in which Twain discusses his part in the American Civil War, but this is not a Civil War history.

For those who read memoirs and biographies as rapaciously as I do, this is a must-read. For those who enjoy American history and literature, and most of all Twain, it is highly recommended. If you like Grant and maybe have even plowed through his remarkably readable autobiography, even better! But you can easily understand this book without it.

Many of my Goodreads.com First Reads will eventually be given away to my daughter’s school or some other good cause. Not this one; it will retain a place of pride in our home library. Thank you for writing it, Mr. Loving, and thanks to the University Press of New England for the free copy.

War On the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 by James McPherson *****

Posted on by
This was my Mother’s Day gift from waronthewatersmy spouse last May, and boats are HIS thing. I thought, Psssh. RIGHT. But since I strive to be a scholar of the American Civil War and the navy is about the only stone (as opposed to gravel, metaphorically) that I’ve left unturned, I started in. No, I FELL in.

First of all, it has to be recognized that McPherson is undeniably the USA’s #1 living Civil War scholar. His status as professor emeritus at Princeton has been well earned. When he decides to delve into some aspect of Civil War history, he finds his primary sources wherever he has to go. So, though he is an old man, he went on those waters. He walked where soldiers trod in order to get to the forts he, too, visited. He believes that in order to understand how any battle unfolded, on land or sea, you’d better get a sense of the geography. This is what a serious scholar looks like.

Then he tracked down the letters and journals of the key players. Once his tools were out and he was ready to go, he stated his bold thesis and then methodically proved it. And it is something of a startling thesis to me. He says that without the navy’s contributions, the war could not have been won.

When Grant says it, one wonders if it was a diplomatic gesture toward the seamen who so tenaciously pounded away during the siege of Vicksburg. How many times have you heard someone who is receiving an award say, “I would not be here tonight if it were not for the support of…” (whoever)?

When McPherson says it, I sit back and say, “Whoa.”

He takes his case and spins it into an enjoyable narrative, for those interested in the American Civil War. There are maps with just exactly the right amount of detail to prove the point. Photographs are clear as a bell (remember that this is the first U.S. war in which photography was available, though not so much for action shots…but for a naval battle? Certainly!).

So although my husband never reads anything on this site, Honey? Sorry to have misjudged you. And I forgive you for stealing it back to read when I was thirty pages from the end. Do you forgive me for stealing it back? You can finish it now if you like!

And to other readers who are Civil War buffs: why are you still on this page? You should be on another screen, ordering the book!

Alex’s Wake: A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of Remembrance, by Martin Goldsmith *****

Posted on by

alexs wakeHolocaust memoirs take on added urgency right now, between the revisionists who want to rewrite history and claim that the entire thing was either a hoax or dreadful exaggeration, and the fact that the eye witnesses and survivors are nearly all dead now. Martin Goldsmith retraces the journey, both academically and where possible, literally, to the places his Uncle Helmut and grandfather Alex were taken. It’s quite a story, and would be a fun read if it were not so horribly, terribly true. As it stands, Goldsmith’s narrative pulls his readers in one slim finger at a time, until we are held firmly to the text and must remain until it’s done.

The narrative starts out introspective and almost dreamlike. If I were not reading this free courtesy of Net Galley in exchange for my review, I think I might have set it aside about twenty percent of the way in and not returned, thinking to myself that of course, I know the Holocaust was real, but do I want to read about it again? It’s not an enjoyable topic, and what good can it do to revisit it? Furthermore, I started to believe that this particular narrative was not so different from other heartbreaking stories, and might be more of interest to the writer and his surviving kin than to strangers like me.

I am glad I kept reading, because just past this point is where we quit the runway and the story takes wing. The writer starts with the visits, first to the Holocaust museum, and then to Europe. He is greeted warmly in his family’s former homeland, and he makes speeches and accepts certificates and expresses appreciation to the family who now occupies what was once the family manse for their clumsy token gesture. The current owners clearly understand that circumstances have skewed things badly, and they want to make it up in some impossible way. They were wondering what he would think of a nice plaque on the building’s exterior noting its place in history and recognizing his family.

He understands these folks aren’t the ones who stole from him. He says and does the right things, but the edge is unmistakably there, as part of him longs to say that if they really want to make things right, to give him back his family’s home. Like many who lost wealth and/or family in the Holocaust, he waxes nostalgic, looking with poignancy at the beautiful place that should rightfully be his.

Here I squirm a bit. I don’t read rich people’s stories for a reason. I don’t believe anybody is entitled to vast wealth. It’s why the only memoirs I avoid are those of the ruling rich.

But another more important principle trumps my usual one: nobody, nobody, nobody should be disenfranchised of even a penny on account of their ethnicity or race. If anyone at all in Germany gets to have a big fancy house, then Goldsmith’s family should. His resentment is righteous; he has the moral high ground here. I think back to an old bumper sticker I once saw, courtesy of the American Indian Movement during the 1960’s that read, “AMERICA: love it or give it back.” And thus is the untenable yet irreparable theft of the Holocaust’s descendents. We can’t fix it, so here’s your framed letter, your trophy, your plaque, your award. His ambivalence runs deep and is clear and harsh. It should be.

From there, Goldsmith’s family saga telescopes out in a way that is so deft, I don’t even catch the transitions. This is rare. I spent years of my life teaching teenagers how to make transitions in their writing, and usually when it is well done in professional writing, I sit back and admire it, like the French paintings he describes. I love to watch good transitions happen, but the very best are noteworthy in that I am so deeply into the text that they float by unseen. It’s almost magical. And so, as the family’s tale is told, we see the larger picture of France and French fascism.

Many of us today want to believe that all of France and much of Germany was simply too afraid of the fascists to resist, but Goldsmith unflinchingly grabs us by the hair, makes us look. There are cheering throngs that are thrilled when the fascists take power. They aren’t trembling; they are overjoyed. This is how fascism works, in demonizing a sector of the population, others believe themselves lifted up.

In the end, I was glad to have joined Goldsmith on his journey. For anyone with a serious interest in World War II; the Holocaust; the face and effect of fascism; or contemporary European history, this gem is not to be missed.

I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary, by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak *****

Posted on by

IkissyourhandsPoignant and painful; beautiful and wrenching…Szegedy-Maszak takes us through a time and place in a way nobody else could. If you are a serious historian, please consider this a must-read.

When I applied to receive this story as a Goodreads giveaway, I did so as an historian, conscious of a blind spot in my own education. I knew too little of Hungary and its past, apart from that it had become a part of the Soviet block at some point, and then became independent once more. I wanted to learn more about the country’s political and economic history, and if I had to read a love story to do that, then I would.

When the book arrived, I gasped as I pulled it from its envelope. Beautifully bound in hardcover with folio-cut pages and a pearlescent cover featuring the family about which she writes, I held it in my hands, showed it to my family, and then swore my head would not be turned by the beauty on the cover, and the painstakingly aesthetic manner in which the interior is designed. The family tree at the start of the book actually turns out to be essential, because many people are mentioned many times here, and to keep them straight, I would have to keep flipping back. But I didn’t know that yet. I saw the literary (and as it turns out, highly appropriate) quotes that adorn each chapter’s beginning, along with images from the past, snapshots of what is no more.

So…incredibly good taste, and no expense has been spared. But can she write? Oh yes! And by the time I was done, I had no fewer than fifty sticky-noted pages, and worse, every single one of them marks a passage that seems really important. Now I must pick and choose, which is a dreadful predicament.

Be aware that this is a hyper-literate read, not necessarily accessible to every reader. And to get to the good part, you’ll have to do a lot of work at first, plodding through the dull stuff at the start and trying to remember who everyone is.

Though it tells a good deal of what took place behind the scenes before, during, and after the second world war in Hungary (albeit from the very conservative perspective of considerable material interest and self-involvement), it is also a deeply personal story, told well by an already accomplished writer with a literary pedigree a mile long and granite solid. This is her first book, but Szegedy-Maszak is already a respected writer and journalist. Her love of family and the details that governed their lives in Hungary, Europe, and the USA are what makes this memoir compelling. For many, this will be a more palatable way to learn history as well.

Because of the role of extended family, which is inextricably intertwined with that of her parents, the reader must wade through lengthy genealogy in the beginning. I have read other reviews saying that the reviewer gave up on the book because of the initial level of detail, and indeed, at first it is tempting to wonder why anyone who is not related to the author would have an interest. Though the author has doubtless already hacked away at the introductory chapters and removed portions that it hurt her heart to pull and cut, a little more pruning at the start would make this book more readable. It’s a 4.5 on my very picky scale anyway, though, because what comes after its somewhat tedious beginning is remarkable and well told. It is a very scholarly yet heart-felt telling of how world events have impacted her family, and vice versa, and it is when she describes poignant experiences in a painterly, often painful way that her family’s story becomes most absorbing.

The writer grows up in a multigenerational household in which children are almost irrelevant, seated below the salt at the long formal dinner table. Everything the elders value and discuss has come and gone. Her mother descends from the Weiss and Kornfeld (later to become “de Kornfeld”) families, and her mother’s grandfather was once the most wealthy industrial and agricultural baron in all of Hungary. Now most of the empire is gone, and the family sighs wistfully and speaks about the past, when they were someone, when a mere phone call or visit from Weiss or Kornfeld could cause a policy change, or change someone’s life.

*consider everything after this to be a spoiler alert*

Her parents had been very different people. Her mother had grown up in a vacuum of sorts created by immense wealth and privilege. Even as the Nazis stormed across Europe, Hungary was, by the author’s telling, insulated for a long time, unlike their unlucky neighbors, the Poles. Hungary wanted the land that had been lost to Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Trianon following the First World War, an immense piece of real estate inhabited primarily by Hungarians, and which had been taken from them. When Nazi tanks rolled into Austria and boundaries were redrawn, the Hungarians held their breath. They understood that with the USSR fighting as an Allied nation, they would see no restitution of land from the Allies. Thus, they became an Axis power, at first tentatively, with the hope that if enough munitions were produced by the Manfred Weiss Works, makers of tanks, munitions, and later in the war, airplanes, the Germans would see no need to invade and supervise Hungary. And this was the Hungarian argument against occupation: we can do so much for you independently, oh Germany. Don’t trouble yourselves coming here. It’s all good.

In the midst of all this, Hanna Kornfeld, the writer’s mother, meets a brooding intellectual and politician, Aladar Szegedy-Maszak. When he signs his letters to her—first formal, then impassioned, but with the restraint decorum required—he concludes with “I kiss your hand”, which is merely the equivalent of the Western “yours truly” (when we aren’t) or “sincerely” (even less so). It was a format, until it was more.

He is an intellectual, a scholar, and a very busy man. He is anti-fascist, and trying to somehow involve the Allied forces, so that Hungary can make its separate peace with Britain and the US, but Britain holds off, regarding Hungary as not of primary importance strategically (and in fact, they are surrounded by fascists, so it would be a stretch by the time Hungary makes its entreaty), and also, Hungary is regarded as opportunist.

Here the author bristles, and I think she doth protest too much.

My sense is that the time to contact the Allies was when Hitler invaded Poland. One doesn’t offer Hitler endless munitions, and then complain to the Allies when he sends his troops in to do exactly what they’ve done everywhere else in Europe.

Aladar, however, is not offering endless munitions; he is trying to persuade anyone who will listen to him that the fascists must be resisted at all costs. He is arrested for his anti-fascist activities and sent to Dachau. He survives , partly because he is treated as a political prisoner, which for some reason is considered a relatively (RELATIVELY!) privileged category, and also because the fascists don’t cast their eye toward Hungary until near the end of the war.

And when they come, they do it in the way only fascists can. The Danube runs red with blood. This is not allegory, but a literal reference. Despite every record that was burned, every photograph that was destroyed, there is still plenty of documentation, and the author provides it all, the child of the scholar become scholar herself. The bibliography at the book’s end, along with the notes for each chapter, is impressive.

Once Aladar is free, his experience leaves him brooding, nearly broken, and overcome with survivor’s guilt. It is with trepidation, then, that he contacts Hanna once more when the war has ended, because as he tells her, he is not the same man he was before the war; he has no money and no job; yet the one thing he knows is that he loves her and wants to marry her if she is still interested. He kisses her hands many, many times.

Interestingly, Hanna is fine. Her family has swung a deal. They will sign over all of the factories, the real estate, in fact the large majority of the family fortune, in exchange for their lives somewhere outside the Nazi realm. Let us go to a neutral country, and you can have it all.

The fascists want to hold a few of the family back as hostages. It is here that the writer’s aunt blanches and almost does not sign. Yet the family understands that there is really nothing to keep the Nazis from taking everything and having every last one of them killed. With the coolness that generally characterizes the ruling class, the family cuts its losses and runs. Who can blame them? Others would surely have done the same, given the chance. They go to Portugal initially; later some will try to rebuild a life in Budapest, others in Switzerland.

But it is Aladar whose political practices and courage open the door to the United States. It is remembered after the war that he has pleaded all along, from the very beginning, for Hungary to become a part of the Allied umbrella. He had met Hitler, and he had heard him speak. He knew the guy wasn’t someone you wanted to rule your people. He did everything he could to take Hungary into Allied hands, but it didn’t happen. He nearly died in the undertaking, and now, the US gazes at him with a bit more focus. He is a friendly face in war-torn Europe, and might make an excellent liaison with the new Hungarian government

When the war is over, is appointed minister to Hungary for the USA. With a moue of distaste at the notion of leaving Europe, and understandable grief at leaving her family at such a wrenching time, Hanna agrees to marry Alastar and move to the USA. Numerous family members will later follow.

But small countries all lose when enormously powerful countries sit down, victorious, to divide the post-war map, as if it were a smallish birthday cake where everyone at the table ought to get a little piece. Hungarians will not determine the fate of Hungarians. The USSR has paid dearly in human flesh and material loss, and now it will build itself a buffer zone to protect its turf against future incursion.

The Allied nations understand the nature of Stalinism (and this is my own historical interpretation; the writer embraces the Cold War era view of “totalitarianism” with regard to the now-moribund USSR). It is ultimately conservative; the USSR was not interested in expanding across the globe, only in holding onto its own power base. Just as France gained back land it had lost, and just as the US experienced unprecedented power and influence over the globe, so would Mother Russia see to it that her own needs were met. Hungary was diced up even finer, since a fair amount of anti-Stalinist sentiment prevailed there. When they were finished, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and other satellite states stood like sentries on the Soviet perimeter.

As for the heroic Aladar, he refuses to recognize the new Hungarian government. He welcomes the wife of the deposed head of state, one who was friendly toward a capitalist system. The Smallholder Party that Aladar favored has gone down, but he is not out of the fight yet. Soon, the newspapers in the Stalinist orbit will display a photograph of the Hungarian minister kissing the hand of this woman as she leaves the US, and he is branded a traitor.

His courage gets him nothing in the US except the opportunity to remain with his family as a US citizen (small potatoes for the writer’s family, yet something that is held dearly and hard to get these days!)
I was chagrined to see that he went to work for the right-wing (my characterization, not the author’s) Radio Free Europe. He had the integrity to resign when he learned this enterprise was CIA-run, but the Voice of America cannot be regarded by a Marxist (of the non-Stalinist variety) such as myself.

The writer is at her strongest when she injects the deeply personal moments into her narrative: a family member explains to her that when she views the photographs of bodies piled high at the death camps, she searches the faces of the corpses to “see if one knows anyone.” Suddenly the Holocaust becomes up close and personal in a way only trumped by Schindler’s List and Night. Family members have died there; this was not as clean an exit for her family as it is made out to be in the press.

Though despondent over the loss of his country’s autonomy; his own survivor’s guilt, including his inability to save the members of his family in Hungary who were killed or hurt by the Stalinists in retaliation against his activities abroad; and finally, the death of his and Hanna’s first-born and namesake, Alastar still travels to Hungary with the writer, his daughter, in the late 70’s, and he is still sharp enough mentally to shush her when she naively inquires about the number of police all over the airport. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak points out that he must have been clinically depressed, but not enough medical advances had been made for him to have anything to help him beyond Valium, a drug that’s great for anxiety, but doesn’t really do much for depression.

Though the writer seems perhaps most deeply attached to the female members of her family, I find myself more taken with her father, who despite his political leanings that are almost opposite to my own, was clearly a man of principle and integrity, and who knew how to roll up his sleeves and do what needed doing. In retirement, he finds that he needs to see things grow; he loses himself in the family garden, and visitors mistake him for the gardener.

There is so much more to see here, and this is clearly a work wrought from love of family and origin rather than something done primarily for fiscal gain. For those interested in the Holocaust; Hungarian history; or for women like Szegedy-Maszak (and me) who find that we understand our mothers so much better only after they grow old and die, this book should not be missed. The first few chapters are slow, but forge on, and you will be rewarded.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair *****

Posted on by

thejungleIt’s not your best beach read, but it’s an important bookmark in the history of American literature.

The second wave of immigrants who came to the USA around the turn of the century (our setting is 1905) came mostly from Eastern Europe. Political turmoil and poverty were the push factors for myriad Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Turks and others who needed to get away, and the still vivid hope of the American dream, the possibility of social mobility unthinkable in Europe, was the pull factor. The Statue of Liberty still meant something back then.

It wasn’t as simple as it seemed, though. One of the primary large cities to which immigrants flocked was Chicago, and one of the chief industries that would offer them work–as usual, work that those born here would not do–was meatpacking. It looked like good money, even after meeting coworkers who had fewer body parts at the end of their tenure at the packing plant than they’d had going in. It was bloody, nasty, inhuman, and heartless, both toward the workers and the animals. And the stuff that landed on the conveyor belt went into the product to be sold at the supermarket, whether it belonged there or not.

I’ll let that sink in a moment.

Sinclair’s novel was intended to be a workingman’s call to arms. Cast off the bonds of wage slavery. Let the people who do the work own the means of production, set the time tables, and divide the spoils. He’d been reading Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and believed his book would be a revolutionary vehicle. After all, working people read back then, and their attention spans had not been reduccd by the instant gratification that television and video games would later provide. He hoped it would be effective.

It was, but not the way he planned. When Americans read about all of the disgusting stuff that was landing in what they intended to serve for dinner, they revolted, and the Food and Drug Administration was born.

Today, meat packing workers are still among the most injured and the lowest paid, and they are still largely manned by immigrant workers.

The bottom line: read this for its historical importance and its place in American literature, but don’t expect to enjoy the experience. It’s pretty grisly material, but rightly so.

I Freed Myself: African-American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era, by David Williams *****

Posted on by
IfreedmyselfWilliams is smoking hot when it comes to the role of African-Americans in the American Civil War. The overstatement that Lincoln freed the slaves rubs many of us, and his thesis that not only did the slaves largely set themselves free, but were pivotal to the Union’s ultimate victory, is a strong one.

In Marxist organizations, there is an expression for a political over-correction. It’s called “bending the stick too far back”. The idea is that you want the stick to be straight up, but sometimes when something has been done wrong, and once the evidence piles up until the reader cannot believe that anyone was dumb enough to think otherwise, it can cause other mitigating facts to be obscured; thus, the stick is bent too far the other way. And although I really like the work Williams has done here, and am making my 4.5 rating round up to 5 lest anyone not read this scholarly, well documented work, I do think he has made an error or two by disregarding the dynamics of the war and the decision-making process. It’s easy to do.

Actually, when I taught about this subject, I treated Lincoln and his role in it largely the way Williams does here, and that was a mistake. I used the same quotes Williams uses, and said that every American president basically does whatever he is pressured to do by those who hold the economy in their grip.

I was mistaken, and Williams is too, in this one way. Lincoln was such a friend to the Black man, in fact, that his name did not even appear on Southern presidential ballots (according to Catton, who notes it in the first volume of his trilogy). It was exactly because of this known fact that South Carolina gave notice of its secession even before Lincoln was inaugurated. And when Lincoln was being smuggled from his home to Washington, DC, plans for what to do once in office were prefaced by the qualifier, “If you live…” Because, despite the things Lincoln had to do to set the wheels in motion and set the stage for Emancipation, he was going to see the slaves freed.

The first thing Lincoln had to do, though, was protect the integrity of the Union. This was not a racist error; it’s hard to read about the things he said and did, but if the South were allowed to secede, or succeeded in its mission, it would become entirely dependent upon Britain for its manufactured goods, and largely so for its cotton market, and the slaves might well have remained in bondage much longer than they did.

The most graphic way to see it is this way: take a very basic political map of North America. Draw a line where the states end and territory begins as of 1861. Color all of Canada, which was a protectorate of Britain, red. Now color all of the Confederate States red. Mark the Border States with red stripes. Draw red arrows toward the eastern coast of North America pointing toward the USA. And once you have done all of this, put some red question marks on all of the western territory, and color the remaining Union states blue.

The result will be a very small piece of blue in the middle of all that red. If Britain were able to dominate North America so overwhelmingly, it would only be a matter of time before she began arming the borders, to the north, to the south, occupying harbors, and proceeding to take her “colonies” back. (Remember this had been attempted just 50 years before the Civil War during the War of 1812, when Britain burned the US Capitol to the ground.) So in many ways, this war started out being about maintaining national sovereignty, and could only be about freeing the slaves—which HAD to be done in order for Feudalism to die and capitalism to move forward, as history demands—once it was clear that the Union was safe. And the starting point there was keeping Maryland and Kentucky in the Union. (Color Maryland red and you will note that the entire Capitol city is now surrounded by the enemy; with the president and Congress on hostile soil, the war ends pretty quickly, and the slaves are still slaves, at least for the time being.) So I think that Williams is too harsh in his judgment of Lincoln at the outset of the war. It was like a chess game, in which everything had to be done in order. Had the South remained in the Union, slavery would still have had to end, and perhaps with less bloodshed. Most of Europe had ended slavery through government buy-out programs, and Lincoln quietly probed for this alternative several times, even after South Carolina had announced its secession. But the southern power brokers were having none of it.

But this does not diminish (as US history texts do) the role of the slave, the role of the free Black man, the role of the former slave, in the victory of the Union. And I learned a lot from Williams, because written US history has largely suppressed slave revolts, noting only the Nat Turner rebellion, and of course, the one led by John Brown, the only Caucasian male for many, many years that would fight and die for Black people. Williams fills out this missing piece of the puzzle admirably, and to my knowledge, no one else has adequately done so.

For the vast number of incidents documented here in one body for the first time that I am aware of, and done in such a methodical and scholarly fashion, all the while drumming away at Black empowerment and the role played by people of color, this book is worth your buck. If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War; American history; or Black rights, this book should grace a place in your personal library.

And oh teachers, if you don’t have a copy of this in your classrooms—never mind that there is some difficult vocabulary here; when something is important enough, students will access the material—you should definitely dip into your classroom supply kitty, or if you don’t have one, your own wallet if necessary. African-American students have such a hard time dealing with the humiliating details surrounding slavery and the Civil War. They need to see this. They need to see that those who came before them stood up.

Black American leadership started during the American Civil War. Over 200,000 African-American men served as soldiers, and countless others did manual labor, served as spies and saboteurs, or simply walked away from the plantations. Others took ownership, literally, moving into the empty plantation houses and taking what they had already more than earned. (Would that the US government had enforced Reconstruction and kept it alive; but that is another story, a different book.)

Get this book. Read it. If you can afford to do so, get two copies so you can highlight one and write in the margins, and keep the other copy clean for visitors or family members. Its place in American Civil War history is unquestionable.

Tipperary, by Frank Delaney *****

Aside

review “The most eloquent man in the world”? It’s entirely possible.

This hyper-literate narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative unfolds as a simple tale at first, then becomes more complex as this deft tale-spinner pulls the scope out one notch at a time.

In addition, we are provided with a passionate re-telling of the atrocities visited on the Irish by the Anglo and Irish-Anglo ruling class. Delaney puts such genuine feeling into the narrative of the republican movement as it progressed in the early 20th century that I am surprised the writer doesn’t find himself on the do-not-fly list. His honesty and appreciation of the struggle is refreshing, at times surprisingly witty, and disarming.

At the story’s beginning, I really do not care much for Charles O’Brien and his stalker-like behavior toward April Burke. No means no. What’s WITH this guy?

But then later, the narrator (who is a character within the story) says more or less the same thing, and in due time, I find myself warming toward this awkward but well-meaning fellow. And as the narrator’s camera zooms out and encompasses so much more, I read more closely.

Occasionally I made the error of trying to read it AFTER I took the sleeping pills, and found I had to go back the next time and reread. It is not a story for the short attention span or one who wishes to multitask; it is absorbing, and requires one’s entire focus. But I found it rewarding enough to devote the necessary time and attention, and even found myself doing web-crawls to see how much of one or another historical detail was true, and how much was fictional or unknown.

In the end, my book was jammed full of sticky notes, and I felt as if I had traveled over oceans and centuries. An eloquent story, indeed!

Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, by SC Gwynne ****

Posted on by

rebelyell

Available now! I had a sneak peek from Net Galley and Simon and Schuster; thank you twice, to both of them. Reblogging this for Memorial Day.

Gwynne describes his biography of Jackson as an amateur effort, and as such, it is a strong one. He documents meticulously, using both primary documents and highly respected secondary sources. It is a sympathetic portrait of Jackson, generally speaking, although the author maintains a reasonable professional distance and objectivity. Sometimes his point of view is that of the dispassionate observer, and at other times, he speaks as if he were Jackson’s friend, a quirky touch that I found oddly endearing.

Although I have read a good deal about the American Civil War (and taught about it), I have never read a Jackson biography before, so I don’t have a basis for comparison. This is a bare spot in my own Civil War scholarship that I hope to rectify.

I encountered one obstacle in reading this otherwise well written work, and also what I believe is a flaw. The obstacle–and it’s happened more than once and is no fault of Gwynne’s–is that history can’t be read really well on an e-reader. Elaborate battle plans are described, and then this teeny weeny map pops up. Even if I had been able to use the zoom feature (which on a galley is not offered), I still would have needed to see the whole picture at once to really understand what he did. If you are a reader who is satisfied to know that he did something unconventional and brilliant, this may not bother you, but much of the biography is devoted to specific military tactics, since it is primarily this that brought Jackson his fame. It only whetted my curiosity, and in one way or another, I will follow up at a later time and get maps of those battles on paper in a readable size. If you feel the same, and if you get this book, I strongly advise you to buy the hard cover edition rather than e-reader or audiobook (unless it goes to paperback, which would be both useful and more affordable).

The other thing that bothered me is that Gwynne tries to do too much. The first twenty percent or so goes off onto unnecessary tangents, trying to provide us with a thumbnail version of the entire Civil War from its inception to the time of Jackson’s death. This is both off topic, since the book is a biography, not a Civil War history, and of course also an inadequate history. At the end of the book he does the same thing, trying to thumbnail sketch the ultimate fate of every player in the parts of war in which Jackson participated, and some others also.

On the one hand, maybe this makes it more approachable to someone unfamiliar with the Civil War, but really nobody should plunge into a biography of a Civil War general without first becoming familiar with the basic facts of the war. I would have preferred he consider the basic outline of the Civil War to be assumed knowledge, and move forward, focusing exclusively on Jackson and whatever other information is necessary to set context.

I felt he did well in his detailed sketch of Jackson. His religion was an integral part of his personality, and though I am an Atheist, I have known others who have had the same capacity to carry their faith into everything they do. They don’t remind others constantly to give God the credit for whatever achievements bring them praise, but this is a different time; the period just after the Industrial Revolution saw a much wider and more visible Christianity throughout the US. Others were assumed to be Christians unless they went out of their way to say otherwise. Therefore I agree with Gwynne’s assessment that Jackson’s religious behavior was not a sign of mental illness, but merely a personal trait distinguished by its consistency.

Like other heroes of the Civil War such as Sherman and Grant (my own favorites), Jackson was not successful until the war broke out. He grew up poor and by his own determination succeeded in procuring a military education, which was tuition free. Afterward he became a teacher, but was by all accounts just dreadful. His delivery was mumbled and unenthusiastic, his discipline harsh even for the time, and his instruction consisted of assigning students to memorize passages of the text without his first explaining the meaning of the text or offering a chance for students to ask questions. Students called him “Tom Fool” behind his back and made fun of him in his presence.

The war transformed him, and somehow when it came to training soldiers, he was a wonderful teacher. Anyone who did not seem to understand what to do was drawn aside by Jackson and given one-on-one training. He wanted to invade the Northern states right away, under a black flag (so shoot everyone and take no prisoners). He found this entirely consistent with his religion, since like so many warriors before and after, he was persuaded that God was on his side. His most famous quote, perhaps, is to the affect  that it is good that war is so terrible lest we grow to love it too much. By all accounts, it lit him afire, with a light in his eyes that occurred at no other time. In modern times, he’d be known as an adrenaline junky, I suspect.

His men at first despised him for his long, forced marches through all kinds of terrible weather and terrain, but it was victory that made them love him. Most of them were young, and what better way to march into manhood than a structured situation in which one is guided in his actions, and meets with nearly immediate success? The battles were traumatic, to be sure, but given the circumstances, they would have been drawn into battle, one way or the other. Under Jackson they found an unassuming leader who took no luxuries for himself and didn’t ask his men to do anything that he himself would not do. He became the ultimate father figure for many.

His campaign in the Shenandoah Valley made him famous; his successes at both battles at Manasses (Bull Run), the 7 Days battle in the Wilderness, and others too numerous to list–in fact, I was surprised how many, since I had come to regard Jackson as a star who had shown brightly but briefly–made him a hero even Union soldiers would cheer, and the Confederate news source that claimed that “Stonewall” would become as much a legend as “Old Hickory” (Andrew Jackson) actually understated what posterity would hold for this humble man.

His fearlessness was due to his absolute and utter conviction that God had sent him on a mission, and nothing could happen to him until God was satisfied that his purpose had been fulfilled.

This gives me pause. At what point does one draw the line? He didn’t do anything clearly foolhardy such as jumping into raging rivers or leaping off cliffs, and yet he thought nothing of exposing himself to a hail of bullets near the front of the battle, convinced that he was covered by a magical shield provided by an omnipotent God. Again, I don’t say he was crazy, but it makes me curious. This is one character for whom I’d love to go back in time and have a conversation.

Gwynne’s writing style is lively, his transitions smooth as butter. Another book of his, which I’d like to read, was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and that word-smithery is evident here also. He turns a compelling narrative that at times may make one forget that this is nonfiction, not unlike The Guns of August (by Barbara Tuchman). If he were to refine his format to a more laser-like focus on Jackson, maybe he’ll be nominated again; hell, maybe he will anyway.

A wonderful read; get it in paper format!

Gettysburg, by Stephen Sears *****

Posted on by
gettysburgThis is the most thorough and brilliant account of the Battle of Gettysburg (all three days, plus the approach and the departure) I have ever read.

I have to laugh at the reviews that claim there is too much detail here. Hey, folks, look at the title, and look at the number of pages. If you aren’t ready to have the complete, detailed account, you should know before you buy it or check it out from your library that this isn’t for you.

I used to teach about the American Civil War, and it continues to be a strong area of interest for me. I wouldn’t have wanted this to be my first, second, or third book about this war; actually, for the serious reader who is just getting started, McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom (which won the Pulitzer) is the best starting point. For those not interested in as thorough an account, it may be easier to start with historical fiction, and then move to nonfictional accounts of the war to help you straighten out the facts from the frills.

For me though, I was ready to get down and resolve some conflicting ideas I had read. Some who specialize in the Confederate angle blame JEB Stuart for not coming in when Lee expected him with the intelligence that was needed. Some blame Longstreet for not enthusiastically embracing and supporting Lee’s plan of attack. And still others say the buck stopped with Lee, who after all was in charge and made the call.

Sears says this was overall (from the Confederate side) a case of great overconfidence. Earlier in the war,Stuart had ridden all the way around Union commander McClellan’s forces twice to upset him and cut off his communications. This was intended to be trip #3, and it was expected to net similar results, apart from the foraging. The rebels were looking forward to gaining food and other supplies from the well-fed Pennsylvanians. Indeed, when Stuart did finally return–too late to do any real good regarding Gettysburg–he had an enormous trainload of wagons filled with the things Lee had sent him to get. But the Union’s forces had cut Stuart off, had come between him and Lee, and he and his cavalry had the very devil of a time safely making their way around the Union and back to Lee. Overconfidence; Sears makes a convincing case.

Another blunder attributable to overconfidence was in waiting an extra day to attack, if they were going to attack without further intelligence from Stuart. Sears makes an excellent case that if they were going to attack Union forces, it should have been later (once Stuart was there to fill them in) or right away, because there were a lot of Union forces making their way toward Gettysburg (and the Confederates knew this much) that would be there the following day–when the battle actually began–who were not yet there. And Ewell, in general a strong commander, makes a terrible, terrible blunder in telling Lee that the Yankees who occupy Cemetery Ridge will be rendered harmless because Jubal Early is occupying the hill that is east of them, and higher. He reasoned that if the rebels had Seminary Ridge to the west and Culp’s Hill, the Union would be wedged in between opposing forces and rendered harmless. But the critical mistake is in giving Jubal Early “discretionary” orders to occupy this hill, and not telling Lee this. Early waits, deciding to send another force under him, headed by Johnson, to occupy Culp’s Hill, and in the time wasted, the Union takes the ground, changing things dramatically.

Shifting to the Union perspective, we see that the forces are led overall by Meade, who has led the Army of the Potomac for exactly four days. Through intrigue among the generals below him, Hooker, a good general whose rank and file loved him but whose immediate inferiors found abrasive, was robbed of the glory of taking the field after he had made the plans and set them in motion.

On the second day of battle, Sickles, a political general (meaning that he was given command because of his high governmental office, rather than military leadership or experience) refused Meade’s orders repeatedly. And this is one thing I greatly appreciate about Sears: some writers will tread softly when criticizing a commander who later becomes a casualty, as though printing word of the officer’s stubbornness or stupidity and its consequences for the men beneath him might be a breach of etiquette.

But the fact is, a lot of men there got dead because of the stupidity or wrong-headedness of those who exercised authority over them, and in the case of this battle, both sides have let their own men know that flight or failure to fight will result in their summary shooting, so it isn’t as though a man could just duck behind a log and wander away from battle, as happened in some other really poorly conceived fights. The truth should be told exactly as it occurred, and in a thorough, well-documented, linear way, Sears lays the story, the exact truth unvarnished, before us.

As things unfold, the carnage for which this three day battle is known takes many of the bravest and best down right away. John Reynolds, one of Meade’s ablest generals who was offered overall command and refused it,was shot through the throat and died within the first hour of battle. John Bell Hood was injured and incapacitated, but recovered to fight again, but not at Gettysburg.

The most notable action on the second day is the Union’s Chamberlain’s decision not to retreat or surrender when faced with the fact that they are surrounded and completely out of ammunition. Looking down at the desperate rebs trying to climb that hill, he shouts, “Fix bayonets!” and with this, the rebels surrender. A heroic moment!

On the second day, Union efforts are hampered by the “continued obtuseness of Slocum” and Sickles’ failure to occupy the ground assigned. By the time Meade gets to Sickles in person after Sickles has refused orders sent to him multiple times, it is too late for Sickles to move, and the damage is done. When Sickles loses his leg,an officer in the Second Corps remarks, “The loss of his leg is a great gain to us, whatever it may be to him.” Hancock, a far more capable commander, is placed in command, and he does the job right.

The statistics, both regarding loss of able leaders on both sides as well as the rank and file, particularly for the rebels on the third and most gruesome day, are appalling. Many times Sears refers to this as “Fredericksburg in reverse”, and indeed, Union soldiers can be heard crying out, “Fredericksburg!”

The aftermath is controversial. Initially, Lincoln was gravely disappointed to hear that Meade had let Lee and the rebels that still lived “escape”. Yet I cannot help but wonder, if he had stood in the pouring rain that came down on a sea of bodies, one acre of which was completely covered with corpses, some three days dead, and more than one body thick in places; if he had seen that there were only four of the original ten commanders still alive and fit to serve; if he had watched the 17-mile long hospital train of wounded Confederates that groaned away toward the Mason-Dixon line; if in viewing all of this, Lincoln himself would not have said, “Enough. Enough for now. Let’s bury our dead and treat our wounded, and get in out of the rain.”

I hope I have conveyed the level of detail you can expect from this tome. If my review is a mite lengthy, you may not want to read five hundred pages plus notes on the topic. Sears writes better than I do, of course, but this is a study only for those who can already tell Sickles, Slocum, Sykes and Sedgwick apart. If you are still getting to know the players, this ballgame may be too long for you. But it is the ultimate detailed account for those who know some, but don’t feel they know enough.

I often am forced to give books away because of the finite amount of space in the home library my family has collected, but this particular volume will retain a place of pride as long as I am here.

Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings, by Craig Symonds *****

Posted on by

Eloquent, thorough, focused, and well documented; Neptune, by Craig L. Symonds, is a definitive work regarding maritime’s most immense project, the invasion of Normandy during World War II.

That said, I urge the reader to get a hard copy of this book, because the e-reader version as I saw it had charts that were useless; in addition maps, so important to a work like this, are simply impossible on a tablet. For a book of this importance that should hold a place of pride on the shelves of any professional or serious personal library, it is worth the investment to procure a hard cover copy.

Symonds’ narrative opens with strategizing and secret diplomacy regarding American aid to Britain, which is in far worse condition during the war against Nazi Germany than I had ever understood. Just as a plan begins to gel, word comes that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Months of careful planning must now be carefully reexamined and new plans made. Should the USA fight on one front, or on two? Should it attack Japan first, or go straight to Europe (as most US advisers were inclined to do), or follow Churchill’s suggestion that the fight begin in Northern Africa? Americans tended toward quick action and massive investment of resources; the British were careful in husbanding materials and preferred to examine every aspect of every possible plan before moving forward. Frankly, I am glad I didn’t have to be there during the debate.

Symonds has put together a narrative different from any other I have read regarding this period, and the only work I have read that deals exclusively with the invasion of Normandy from the naval viewpoint. I have also never seen any writer try so valiantly to balance the perspectives, the strengths and challenges of both Britain and the USA. It was in reading the ways in which cultural attitudes not only created friction but directly impacted military positions that I realized how completely American I am. He further explains how the decisions that were made came about and all of the careful compromises and considerations that went into the events as they unfolded.

Because this is such a momentous work, I found myself marking far too many pages—a weakness when I become overly enthusiastic—and now it would be too much to go back and refer to all of them. The vantage point was enormously enlightening, and I came away feeling as if I had only just begun to grasp the enormity of this horrific conflict.

Highly recommended…in hardcover, not tablet form.