Book Reviews

Book Reviews — October 2018

Originally published October 2018 · pp. 36–41

Booth’s Definitive Biography Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth. By Terry Alford. Notes, index, photos, 454pp., 2018. Oxford University Press, www.oup.com/us, $21.95 paperback. Reviewed by Joseph Truglio

First published in 2015, this is the paperback edition of Terry Alford’s Fortune’s Fool. I have read both editions and they are the same. My presumption is this edition was made to reach a wider audience. It is a worthy effort. As most students of the Lincoln assassination will attest, there have been numerous volumes concerning this event from a variety of perspectives. Most are excellent and give valuable insights into the causes and reasons relating to this momentous event. It would seem nothing has been left out of the story. Yet none of these books deals with how Booth came to his decision to kill Abraham Lincoln. We know how he plotted and planned the action, yet no one has delved into the psyche of the man himself and how he came to these decisions. Well, now we have perhaps the only full biography of Booth’s life. Mr. Alford tells the story of Booth’s life in painstaking detail.

Nothing is left out. Presented in chronological order, we follow his family history from arrival in America to his ultimate death at the hands of Thomas “Boston” Corbett. Along the way, many obscure facts are presented and a plethora of myths dispelled. The book is amply annotated to corroborate the author’s statements. At 340 pages of text, it is moderate in size and the thirteen chapters delineate his life fully. As the story progresses we learn of a very complex man who seems to travel the road to despair. He is fiercely independent, charismatic, domineering and manipulative. His politics slowly interfere with his passion for the theater and lead him down a dark trail. His love of the South and his hatred for abolition steel him towards a deep hatred for Abraham Lincoln. All this is presented without opinion, a refreshing aspect. The majority of this book is about Booth’s life and only the last hundred or so pages deal with the assassination. One gets a thorough insight into the man before his dastardly deed, and you are able to form an educated opinion as to how and why he perpetrated the “crime of the century.” Mr. Alford has given us the definitive biography of John Wilkes Booth for some time to come. It is entertaining and precise in detail. With the addition of a paperback edition it should reach many more students and find its way into their libraries. I highly recommend it. Joseph Truglio, of Manchester, N. J., is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table.

Restoring Women’s Antislavery Fiction Her Voice Will be on the Side of the Right: Gender and Power in Women’s Antebellum Antislavery Fiction. By Holly M. Kent. Notes, bibliography, index, 204 pp., 2017. Kent State University Press, www.kentstateuniversitypress.com. $55 hardcover. Civil War News book reviews provide our readers with timely analysis of the latest and most significant Civil War research and scholarship. Contact Stephen Davis, Civil War News Book Review Editor. Email: [email protected].

Reviewed by Tracy J. Revels

For American women of the antebellum era, seeking a voice in the great reform movements was often an exercise in frustration. Denied suffrage, women were also discouraged from having public platforms. Respectable middle-class women did not address “promiscuous” (mixed gender) audiences. They could act behind the scenes, but any attempt to openly shape public opinion or engage in debate resulted in severe criticism. Women had a limited domestic sphere; however, as literary culture was considered within that sphere, abolitionist women raised their voices by crafting fiction that depicted the plight of the enslaved, especially women and children. Most Americans would recognize Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the premier work in this field, but Holly M. Kent demonstrates that Stowe’s famous novel built upon a vast foundation of stories and novels written by less-heralded women. Beginning in the 1820s, abolitionist women penned fiction featuring the conflict between the institution of slavery and the nation’s moral ideals. Writing emotional, religious, and uplifting stories, they sought to draw attention to slavery’s injustice. As others turned away, considering the problem of slavery moot, Northern antislavery women kept up the literary pressure, hoping to inspire husbands and sons to work for abolition. Women writers believed, initially, in the power of feminine persuasion, and with each passing decade, they grew bolder in their critique, even daring to condemn the United States government’s blindness to human suffering and offer veiled warnings that slaves might eventually use violence to seek their freedom. Unfortunately, their heartfelt work was often limited by the small numbers of subscribers to abolitionist magazines and journals, where most of their stories and novels appeared. Reaching a female audience in the South— an audience they assumed shared their maternal drives and distaste for cruelty—was also difficult, and often impossible. By the 1850s, and despite the great success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many writers were disheartened. Their womanly ideals for peaceful emancipation seemed destined to be overrun by the brutality of war. Kent’s work resurrects dozens of forgotten women writers and examines how their tales changed over time. Literature responded to hopes, fears, and major events like the Nat Turner rebellion. White women created black characters with great sympathy for the plight of slaves, if little understanding of how African Americans viewed themselves. The plots were often melodramatic and cliché-ridden; a modern reader would struggle with these maudlin narratives. African American women writers carved out a space for their fiction as well, and crafted more realistic characters, but their work was usually overshadowed by patronizing whites, who emphasized novelty rather than recognizing talent. White readers preferred memoirs or true-life stories from African American women, and ignored their fictional renderings of what life after emancipation might look like. Working in decade-long units to note important changes, Kent has produced a tight exploration of a largely unknown world, and has situated her thesis—that women abolitionist writers used the world of their imagination to create a strong sense of difference feminism—firmly amid the historiography of abolition, feminism and antebellum literature. Her Voice Will be on the Side of the Right is an essential work for a scholarly library and would add new insight to a college class on American reform and feminism. For the casual reader, however, the dissertation-quality writing might be a challenge. Because Kent works with stories that have never been consumed by the general public, her discussions of their narrative twists and turns might only confuse those unfamiliar with abolition literature. There is little detail about the lives of the women writers, who remain largely faceless holders of quill pens. Even an academic reader longs for a few portraits or some of the artistic renderings that accompanied abolition fiction, to enliven the dryness of the text. Her Voice is a scholarly addition to the growing catalog of works on women writers and abolitionists. It is also a reminder that great books and ideas are often the products of individuals who are marginalized by society, but refuse to be silenced. Tracy J. Revels, professor of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., is author, among other works, of Grander in Her Daughters: Florida’s Women during the Civil War (2004).

Worthwhile look at Native Americans and the Civil War The Civil War and the Subversion of American Indian Sovereignty. By Joseph Connole. Maps, photos, index, 223 pp. 2017. McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com. $35 softcover. Reviewed by Robert Patrick Bender

Rare Florida Union Regimental History The 1st Florida Cavalry Union Volunteers in the Civil War: The Men and Regimental History; and What That Tells Us About the Area During the War. By Sharon D. Marsh. Notes, appendices, bibliography, index, 360 pp., 2017, self-published, w w w. s h a r o n d m a r s h a u t h o r. com, $32.99 hardcover, $19.99 paperback. Reviewed by Paul Taylor

The Federal government’s Indian Policy has long been a topic for lively and even heated debate for more than a century, as advocates and critics explain the relevance of innumerable ideological, social, and economic factors that contributed to the policies which ultimately lead to removal of American Indians from their traditional and historic lands. The pre-war policies and practices of removal, particularly those initiated during the Jacksonian Era against the Five Nations via the Trail of Tears, as well as the final stages of the Indian Wars in the 1890s, have dominated most of the historical attention for decades. The Civil War years, however, were rife with turmoil over Indian land rights, competing negotiations and alliances, as well as divided loyalties between and within Native tribes. In his recently released work, Joseph Connole hopes to focus new attention on the Civil War as it relates to the decline and fall of

American Indian sovereignty via the loss of tribal lands through conquest and subterfuge. The book is well researched, steeped in a deep bibliography and the thesis is well presented. It does not suffer from any major or insurmountable flaws, but there is enough awkward grammar sprinkled throughout that suggests the manuscript would have been benefitted from a closer proofread or editor. Although his work is not groundbreaking, Connole does a good job of leading the reader through a series of battles, events, and historical personalities in the otherwise under-appreciated Trans-Mississippi Department. For example, in his discussion of the 1861 Confederate victory in southwestern Missouri at Wilson’s Creek and the 1862 Union victory at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas, Connole shows how such events exercised varying degrees of impact on Native, Confederate, and Federal relations, in addition to their traditional military significance to the war in the Trans-Mississippi. For those readers interested in an introduction to the subject of treaty, land and sovereignty, Mr. Connole’s book serves the purpose. Readers can also peruse his bibliography for works that explore the concept in more depth. Robert Patrick Bender graduated from the University of WisconsinLa Crosse and the University of Arkansas. He is a tenured Instructor of History at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell. His publications include Like Grass before the Scythe: The Life and Death of Sgt. William Remmel, 121st New York Infantry (University of Alabama Press, 2007) and Worthy of the Cause for which they Fight: The Civil War Diary of Brigadier General Daniel Harris Reynolds, 1861–1865 (University of Arkansas Press, 2011). He has also contributed numerous articles to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

Florida’s planter elite voted to secede from the Union on Jan. 10, 1861, becoming the third Southern state to do so. That Rebel spirit was far from unanimous, however, for within the sparsely populated state, anti-secession sentiment was not uncommon. This was particularly notable among the rural, nonslave- owning farmers who lived in Florida’s western panhandle. These were the men who eventually made up the bulk of the 1st Florida Union Cavalry. They hailed from nine counties in western Florida and southern Alabama, a region where small yeoman farmers significantly outnumbered plantation owners. Slavery was present, of course, but it was more commonly used for household labor or in smallscale industrial work, rather than the traditional gang labor plantation system. Most of the men from this region who initially enlisted into the Confederate army or were later conscripted were sent to the western theater. When General Braxton Bragg ordered Pensacola abandoned in 1862 and anything of possible use to Union troops destroyed, he created an inevitable disaster that did not go over well with much of the local citizens left behind. One angry letter to the state’s governor complained of this “wanton and atrocious vandalism” against facilities needed to produce food, such as grist mills. Predictably, food became scarce. Those Florida women whose men were away in the army could not produce enough to feed their families as well as supply the ubiquitous Confederate impressment agents. Following the near simultaneous Confederate defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July 1863, the desertion rate within those armies began to accelerate. The seeds of the 1st Florida were planted in October 1863 when Union Brig. Gen. Alexander Asboth was placed in command of the District of West Florida at Pensacola. By the end of the year, Asboth was convinced that based on the sheer number of refugees and deserters streaming into the area, he could raise several loyalist regiments that would help clear the region of the Rebel enemy. Over the next six months Asboth recruited enough men to form six companies—about 600 men—which led to their first action in July 1864. It became the first of two cavalry regiments organized in Florida that fought for the Union within the state of Florida. For the remainder of the war, the 1st Florida Union Cavalry played an integral role in disrupting Confederate efforts along the upper Gulf coast. Author Sharon Marsh is a descendant of a man who served in the 1st Florida, and as she readily acknowledges, this deeply-researched book is as much a genealogical reference work as it is a traditional Civil War regimental history, if not more so. It is truly a labor of love that the author spent close to two decades researching. The first quarter of the book is mostly a history of the region and the regiment’s formation, including the skirmishes it took part in. The author primarily utilizes the Official Records and a few Florida-oriented secondary sources. Marsh gives a summary of each small skirmish the regiment was engaged in along with both the 1865 and present-day location of the affair. In addition, she lists those 1st Florida men known to have participated in each given encounter. What is truly enlightening, however, is her use of 1860 U.S. Census records, muster rolls, and pension records to fully flesh out her 240-plus-page roster of the men who served in this regiment. It is more than mere names and service dates. Marsh includes a genealogical summary of each man’s life and wartime enrollment, including any Confederate service, desertion dates (if applicable and known), as well as soldiers’ and widows’ pension numbers. An additional chapter identifies those men in the regiment who were family members, whether brothers or father and son(s). Using census data, Marsh analyzes and then paints an illuminating socioeconomic portrait of the men who rode with the 1st Florida Union Cavalry, together with an analysis of the region they hailed from. The author illustrates that they were not all bushwhacking deserters, as many Southerners would have had you believe. Of the 704 men who served in the regiment, 256 of them were identified as enlisted in or conscripted by the Confederate Army at some point before deserting. Nor were they all bounty jumpers (though some were), or rock-solid loyal Unionists. Just as General Robert E. Lee agonized over his 1861 decision to accept command of the Union army or to secede with Virginia, these hardscrabble farmers faced their own moral dilemmas: remain with a failing Rebel army while knowing their family was starving, or desert to rescue their home and loved ones? Kudos to author Sharon Marsh for this illuminating look into the historical, social, and economic backgrounds of the men and region that helped create the 1st Florida Cavalry Union Volunteers. Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of seven books pertaining to the Civil War era, including Discovering the Civil War in Florida: A Reader and Guide. His new book is titled “The Most Complete Political Machine Ever Known”: The North’s Union Leagues in the American Civil War and has just been published by Kent State University Press.

“Old soldiers never die, The Leaders at Shiloh, by the Numbers they just fade away.”

Into the Gray Vale: Registers of the Georgia Confederate Soldiers’ Home Atlanta Georgia 1901-1941. By Ted O. Brooke. 592 pp., self-published in 2012 by Ted Brooke. georgiacracker3@ yahoo.com. $35.00 hardbound. Reviewed by Frank Clark There was life after war, at least for those fortunate enough to escape the hunger, exposure, weaponry and prison life that stalked many of the boys in gray during their service. Those that came home rebuilt their lives as professionals, businessmen or politicians. Others followed the plow to their destiny. Still others reached the latter stage of their lives with scant means of support. A cursory examination of Confederate pension records reveals the poverty which followed many of these vets into their twilight years—into the “Gray Vale.” Promises were made to them, but the state was bound by the politics of the purse and many old soldiers languished, seemingly forgotten. This book, a hardbound volume of thumbnail biographies of the Atlanta Soldiers’ Home residents with multiple indexes, begins with a very short re-telling of what Henry Grady and the newspapers labeled a crime against Georgia’s veterans: the inability to fund a home for the veterans. When the home finally opened in 1901 and the first of 1,164 applicants walked through the door, the story was taken down by the Home Secretary and placed in his folder. It is from those files that this book was derived. It is printed as it was originally taken, in three registers, each representing 13-14 years of the Home’s history. The information recorded typically includes county of origin, date and place of enlistment, rank, commanding officers, battles, wounds or captures and next of kin. Along the way you might find personal tobacco habits, death dates, cemetery and next of kin addresses and daughters’ married names. Some of this information can be found in Lillian Henderson’s Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia, 1861–1865, or mined from Find a Grave, ancestry or Confederate service cards. Those who have used Henderson are well acquainted with the phrase “no later record.” In the second half of the war, government was often in the saddle and many records were lost. At least for those soldiers who lived at the Soldiers’ Home, this book provides their previously unknown postscript. Along with the obvious surname index, there is a geographical index grouping states, counties and cities. There is also a “Military Service” index listed by state and regiment. Not just a home for those of Georgia nativity, the Atlanta Soldiers’ Home was the final residence for Southern soldiers from fourteen different states. When the last soldier passed on, the facility was used for Confederate widows, but their information is not included here. Prior to this book being published, the information contained herein was available at the Georgia State Archives, where they have both the original papers and the pages on microfilm format. Also, in 1964 a stapled listing of the names of the residents was published by Willard E. Wright. This book brings all the information together in a user-friendly fashion for the first time. As a reference book it is of great value for both the historian and the genealogist. Frank Clark is the co-founder and curator of the Col. Hiram Parks Bell Research Center for Southern History and Genealogy in Cumming, Ga. He has spoken to and written for various Heritage and Confederate groups and recently found himself included on the Abbeville Institute web page.

The Generals of Shiloh: Character in Leadership, April 6-7, 1862. By Larry Tagg. Photos, maps, 246 pp., 2017. Savas Beatie, LLC, www.savasbeatie. com. $32.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Brad Butkovich

One definition of military leadership, among many, is how a commander reacts to the events unfolding before him. For the historian, studying that leadership involves examining the choices commanders make in the face of those events, and how they came to their decisions. Larry Tagg’s The Generals of Shiloh does a great job of providing a detailed sketch of commanders from army to brigade level, but falls short of analyzing their leadership decisions. The book is laid out efficiently by sections. Starting from the top, each commander is given a biographical sketch, and then a history of the unit he led and its actions during the two-day battle in April 1862. This continues down the chain of command. On the Union side, with no corps structure, a division and its brigade commanders are examined in both the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio. For the Confederates, with their corps structure is added that extra command level. Most of the biographies include a picture of the officer. There are only two maps throughout the book, which is understandable given its purpose. There are no footnotes or endnotes. Instead, the author includes a Critical Bibliography. This is actually very nice, as it highlights other books about

Shiloh from authors such as Sword, Cunningham, Daniels and Smith. However, the lack of citations might limit its usefulness for authors or readers wanting to use the book as a springboard for their own research. The book does not have an index. The commanders’ biographies are excellent. Many were, and are, relatively unknown and any information about them is a welcome addition to the historiography of Shiloh. However, what’s lacking is in-depth critical analysis. It’s not that Tagg does not mention the leaders’ faults. For example, he takes Ulysses Grant to task for leading from the front more than he should have, and almost losing at Shiloh— only to pull back from the brink of disaster at the last moment. But he does not attempt to explain why this happened. Also, controversies are overlooked. Perhaps more accurately, they are described, but no attempt is made to explain the commanders’ decisions leading up to the them, their reactions, their motives or their consequences. One of the main controversies of the battle is whether the Union generals were surprised by the Confederate attack that early April morning. Tagg devotes one sentence in William Sherman’s biographical section to him scoffing at the prospect of the Confederate army being nearby. He does not mention the surprise attack at all in the unit history section of his division. Nothing is written about why Sherman didn’t think the enemy was near, how that influenced his decisions that first morning, or how he attempted to explain this deficiency after the battle.

Some of the unit histories are inconsistent. In one paragraph, the author describes the deployment of John McClernand’s Division as piecemeal; “each regiment advanced into Confederate fire coming from many directions, and many broke immediately.” In the next, he more accurately describes the successful deployment of the division’s brigades along the Crossroad position and their subsequent breaking only after the Confederate attack. Tagg also puts forth certain conclusions that are not backed up by any critical analysis, or with any notes. He paints John McDowell as a personally brave but lax brigade commander and offers up his brigade’s percentage of missing casualties, 70 men out of 1,939, as a source to back it up. However, he makes no such charge against fellow brigade leader Jesse Hildebrand, who lost a similar 65 out of 1,833. In fact, McDowell kept his brigade relatively intact throughout the battle, while Hildebrand’s disintegrated. The lack of notes hinders a reader’s ability to research or understand how Tagg arrived at these conclusions. If a reader wishes to have a handy biographical resource for the officers and commanders at Shiloh, in a vein similar to Ezra J. Warner’s Generals in Blue/ Gray, then Generals of Shiloh is a very good investment. However, readers and historians looking for in-depth leadership analysis may be disappointed. Brad Butkovich, of Lilburn, Ga., is the author of several battle studies of the conflict in Georgia, including Pickett’s Mill and Allatoona Pass.

Civil War histories have often brushed past the final days of the Civil War, pointing out basic reasons on how the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac moved deliberately toward the trenches at Petersburg and the unavoidable end to the American Civil War. Petersburg To Appomattox offers nine essays that together provide a concise, provocative and approachable view of the last days of fighting in the Civil War’s Eastern Theater. Several contributors bring new insight on familiar themes, while others introduce several original aspects of the final approaches to Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. The historians challenge many popular beliefs about the reasons how the fighting came to an end and the theories behind what Appomattox meant to both the North and the South. The initial two essays focus on an entire army, the Army of the Potomac, and a single brigade, the Texas Brigade. In “Grant Finally Takes Command,” William Bergen reminds readers that after three years of fighting, the ultimate Union defeat of the Confederacy was far from assured. He contends that the Union triumph happened only after Grant brought about many changes to the fighting styles of the Armies of the James and Potomac after taking command of all armies in 1864. Unlike Lee, Grant had to first become familiar with his soldiers and officers, and then change the philosophy of caution that had previously originated under General George B. McClellan. In “We Can Keep All the Yankees Back That They Can Send,” Susannah Ural successfully details that one of Lee’s best fighters, the Texas Brigade, lost many men throughout the Civil War but allegiance to the Confederacy sustained the men as well as their families. One of the highlights of this excellent book is the writers’ outstanding use of personal accounts from numerous soldiers and officers. She allows the Texans to tell a story showing how men injured returned to the front to fight for the independence of their cause. The middle three essays concern the fighting that took place at Five Forks, the role that Union General Philip Sheridan played with the cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley and the Appomattox Campaign, and finally how Lee, Breckinridge and Campbell attempted to bring an end to the fighting. In “A Whole Lot of Blame to Go Around,” Peter S. Carmichael articulates alternatives to traditionally accepted views on the Confederate collapse at Five Forks and whether Generals George E. Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee truly were to blame. He describes Lee’s orders as poorly worded and asserts that his “hold Five Forks at all hazards” order was unrealistic. On the other hand, Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh’s monograph, “Lucky Inspiration,” offers an effective examination of how Union General Philip Sheridan’s leadership helped his officers succeed in Virginia campaigns. The historian scrutinizes how Sheridan’s administrative reforms, and also making the Spencer repeating rifle the standard arm of the cavalry, helped his independent command perform admirably in the Shenandoah Valley. Finally, the prolific William C. Davis, in “The Confederate Peacemakers of 1865,” concentrates on Lee, Breckinridge and Campbell’s efforts to bring about a diplomatic settlement of the war short of a complete capitulation. The final four essays explore the relationship between the Appomattox Campaign, Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, the memories and consequences to Southern and African American soldiers as well as Union General Sheridan. In “Many Valuable Records and Documents Were Lost to History,” Keith Bohannon reveals that many of the Confederate records were lost to history during the final fighting prior to the surrender at Appomattox, and after Union forces captured Richmond. Caroline Janney writes “We Were Not Paroled,” and elucidates that while close to 30,000 Confederates anticipated to be released so they could go home, many from the Army of Northern Virginia fled hoping to continue the conflict. She argues that many men escaped hoping to avoid the humiliation of surrender. In the end, the survivors of the “Lost Cause” would contend how few men remained at Appomattox and how many were missing during the final days of the Confederacy. Professor Stephen Cushman emphasizes in “Sheridan’s Personal Memoirs and the Appomattox Campaign” that while the general was the hero of the Appomattox Campaign, he also was insubordinate to Grant’s orders. His celerity and success ultimately led to Lee’s surrender. In the final compelling essay, “The Last Hour of the Slaveholders’ Rebellion,” Elizabeth Varon elaborates an important belief among African Americans that Lee’s surrender marked the end of slavery and the beginning of freedom. The

The Two Revolutions: Liberty vs. Tyranny and Equality vs. Privilege Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic. By John M. Murrin and Andrew Shankman. Endnotes, 407pp., 2018. Oxford University Press, www.oup.com/ us. $34.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Wayne Wolf

Last Days of Fighting in the Civil War’s Eastern Theater Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia. Edited by Caroline E. Janney. Bibliographic essay, endnotes, figures, maps, index, 320 pp., 2018. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress. org. $35 hardcover. Reviewed by David Marshall

John Murrin and Andrew Shankman have compiled eleven essays which offer a fresh look at the racial, economic and political forces that shaped the impetus for the American Revolution, the collapse of the British empire, and the creation of a federal Constitution. The first shots heard round the world at Concord were not a spontaneous eruption. Rather, they had at their base questions of liberty versus tyranny, equality versus privilege, and corruption versus morality. The authors argue that historians must reconsider the emergence of an American identity, but not on the basis that the colonists suddenly thought of themselves as Americans with a common aim to resist everything British. Rather, it was the severity of imperial policies on internal commerce that energized radicals in the colonies to proclaim that they had enough in common with each other to resist England. Yet this commonality of interests that began the Revolution was never as strong as the bond the Confederate States shared which impelled secession and Civil War. The resulting shared interests of the Confederates led them to commit more of their resources to the war, fight harder, and think of themselves as a nation more than the thirteen colonies did any time before 1787. For Civil War scholars, this book synthesizes the justification colonists used to sever their ties with Britain and demonstrate how many of these attributes foreshadowed secession in 1860. The American Revolution was radical, anti-imperial and Whiggish. A second revolution in the election of 1800 replaced Federalist ideology with Jeffersonian Republicanism. These rural values, rather than concentrated power, also included a resistance to evangelical moralism and an adherence to the principles of popular sovereignty. Thus, these principles led to a belief that secession was legal, that an elite was not entitled to be a ruling class, and that a true union could not be sustained by force. Men could not be whipped into freedom as defined by the North. The South was compelled to invoke secession mostly by outsiders who never gained control of the government they created. Confederate leaders were not the firebrands that defined the reasons for disunion. As were the colonial radicals (e.g., Samuel Adams), Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens were moderates. They stood by their anti-federalist backgrounds, tried to create a sense of national identity out of local value systems and were willing to fight for popular control over government, anti-corruption and individual equality. This book explains why in both colonial and Civil War eras what began as constitutional arguments, which the vast majority of citizens believed could be resolved by compromise and contained within the current political unions, eventually exploded into two wars that destroyed a monarchy and a centralized government and replaced them with untested, struggling governments that needed to find their place in the chaos they created. Rethinking both the causes of the American Revolution and the similar arguments used in 1860 will assist the reader in understanding the coming storm of both disunions. It is a highly recommended book for the serious student of intellectual history. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of numerous Civil War books and articles including Heroes and

Rogues of the Civil War. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable and is currently researching previously unknown soldier’s letters to better understand the average Civil War soldier.

USCT’s role in Lee’s capitulation at Appomattox made many black soldiers believe that their valor and loyalty to the Union enabled the United Sates to be victorious in the Civil War. This book offers a variety of scholarship on various features of the end of the War in Virginia. Each essay is tremendously valuable in presenting notable understanding into the topics covered, and significantly adds to the literature of the Civil War. This tome does not include all strategic and tactical action or analysis of all command decisions made between the summer of 1864 and April 1865. Caroline E. Janney continues the outstanding editing that Gary W. Gallagher started in this series, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Each essay is accompanied by helpful notes. The writing is first-rate and balanced, and the research and readability is excellent. On a negative note, the book only includes 3 maps and 13 images. Yet both academics and students will gain from reading this outstanding title from this important series. I highly recommend this important work to all enthusiasts of the Civil War. David Marshall has been a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-one years. A life-long Civil War enthusiast who became interested during a family visit to Gettysburg when he was 10, David is president of the Miami Civil War Roundtable Book Club.