This is the second volume of the Nathan I. Huggins lectures at Harvard University that I have read. The first, as eminent as this volume, Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory by Harold Holzer, examined the impact of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of freedom at the time it was issued and how its meaning has changed since.
This second contribution eloquently objects to charges of racism and political opportunism levied against Lincoln. The volume originated as the 2012 Huggins lectures.
In recent years, Lincoln’s reputation
James W. King enlisted as a private in the 11th Michigan infantry in September 1861. Just 19 years old, King began a long correspondence with his future wife, Sarah Jane Babcock, whom he affectionately called Jenny.
King’s letters offer richly detailed descriptions of the places he saw, including towns like Louisville as the “Great Emancipator” has been under attack by historians and others who view his proclamations as political gamesmanship.
Allen Guelzo effectively refutes these allegations and places them in a contemporary framework. He revives the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s reputation as an antislavery advocate.
While noting Lincoln’s flaws, including his belief that recently freed blacks were unprepared for full citizenship, Guelzo explores the myths surrounding his proclamation. He discusses the relevance of self-emancipation and congressional attempts to take the lead on emancipation away from Lincoln.
Guelzo even explores the issue of reparations for slavery. After reading this book (and Holzer’s Emancipating Lincoln), no one will be able to rationally deny Lincoln’s anti-slavery sincerity.
Guelzo opines that Lincoln still deserves the title of Great Emancipator because he was a positive force for race relations: “Lincoln is a piece of African American history as much as Civil War history; and the fate of African Americans is tied to the fate of all other Americans. Inequality, as William Julius Wilson reminded us, is a problem for blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians together as Americans, as citizens, as friends. For ultimately, we are indeed all in this together.”
The author explains his rationale by making several major points.
First, he explains emancipation’s significance and finds overwhelming evidence that Lincoln was deeply
and the mountainous regions of Tennessee and Georgia. Just like a tourist, King could not resist sitting in “the old armchair presented to [Andrew] Jackson by Washington” when he visited The Hermitage, near Nashville.
Throughout his enlistment King exhibited a strong desire to fight until the war was won, and he showed little reluctance to criticize the generals. Don Carlos Buell, in his estimation, was a “traitor.”
And when George B. McClellan was relieved of command in November 1862, King wrote, “we have tried such generals too long. This standstill policy I do not believe in, never did. I hope our new leaders will not follow in the tracks of their predecessors.”
King’s experiences in the army included a minor engagement with Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan, as well as the battles of Murfreesboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge. “I have seen sights that would make the blood curdle in one’s veins,” he told Jenny.
In some cases he chose not to describe what he saw. But editor Eric Faust wisely included some of King’s most colorful accounts from Charles E. Belknap’s History of the Michigan Organizations at Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Missionary Ridge (1897). These include a description of King’s wounding at Missionary Ridge on Nov. 24, 1863.
Throughout the correspondence King often reflected on the terriblecommitted to ending slavery. Carefully choosing his words, Guelzo contextualizes Lincoln’s statements and character.
He adds that the “problem with our apprehension of Lincoln’s antislavery is that he seems to have gone about it in what we would regard as a bafflingly obtuse fashion.” This is because Lincoln did not initially view slavery as primarily a racial issue – but one that was political and economic.
Second, Guelzo argues that Lincoln lacked racial empathy because he was “the wrong man for expressions of empathy on almost any subject.” Many, including myself, will disagree with this.
Addressing the controversy surrounding demands for reparations for slaves’ descendants, Guelzo states that “reparations” were in fact paid by the gigantic cost of the Civil War in death, suffering and dollars. He says the war’s initial mission was reunification but it changed to both reunification and emancipation during the conflict.
Finally, the author concludes that Lincoln himself readily admitted his dependence on God when he said in 1864, “I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. At the end of three years of struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.”
This is a first-rate book that describes a major historical event and its relevance today.
ness of war; yet he never wavered in his commitment to serve out his enlistment.
Southerners, in his view, had brought this “destruction” on themselves — and he would see to it that they got what they deserved.
“The monster secession entered the sacred circle,” he wrote of one abandoned home in February 1863. “The home is left to the mercy of the Northern soldier who, to avenge himself against some brother’s wrong, applies the torch, and the consuming flames speedily do their work…. Ah Jenny there is an awful penalty resting on the heads of the leaders of this rebellion. May each of them meet a traitor’s doom.”
A number of topics arise in King’s letters, including his hatred of Copperheads and his views of women. Southern women, he noted, “have one very bad habit, and that is nearly all use tobacco & snuff to excess.”
When Jenny apparently suggested that women might serve in the military, he replied that their nature was “an embodiment of peace and gentleness” and that women were “not fitted to pass through the trying scares which war always brings.”
But when Jenny told him that she had been learning to farm, James replied playfully, “You would make a pretty looking farmer Jenny.”
Only 15 men in the 11th Michigan volunteered to reenlist in 1864, and King was not among them. In July 1864, he was wounded in the shoulder by a Confederate shell that
Kansas Frontier Guard Was First To Defend Washington
Just when you think that everything has been written about Abraham Lincoln, another obscure subject comes to light. This is the history of first responders, The Frontier Guards, a group of Kansas veterans who came to the aid of Abraham Lincoln and defended the capital from Confederate attack in the earliest stages of the Civil War.
This book lucidly describes the unit’s history and the activities of its leader, James Lane of Kansas. It details their performance in “Bleeding Kansas” and the efforts made to deceive the Confederacy into not attacking Washington City at its most vulnerable time.
Although the text is only about 200 pages, the book contains considerable information on their activities and
Ulysses Grant: Youth to Uniform by Joe Krom
This historical novel illustrates Grant’s boyhood in southern Ohio up to his entry into
the army as a lieutenant. Ulysses shaped his country. What events shaped him? What
early influences molded his character?
exploded above him while he was leisurely reading a book. After recovering, King returned to Michigan with his regiment in September and was discharged in October.
Rather than remain up north, he returned to Chattanooga, where he worked as a clerk for the assistant quartermaster.
King returned to Michigan in the fall of 1865 to marry Jenny. Soon thereafter he settled in Tennessee to try his hand at growing cotton. Jenny spent some time there with him and some time back in Michigan.
Throughout 1866 they corresponded with one another and with other family members, with topics ranging from farming and land speculation to race relations and national politics during Reconstruction. By 1868, however, the Kings had had enough of the South, and threats of Klan violence forced them to return to the North.
Conspicuous Gallantry is capably edited and annotated by King’s great-great-grandson. The inclusion of both wartime and postwar correspondence makes this worthwhile reading.
Reviewer Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and author of several books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Visit his website at www.jonathanwhite.org.
even more on the relationship of Lincoln and Lane. Lane was quite influential in Lincoln’s political life.
The remaining 200-plus pages contain detailed and interesting biographies of the unit members and their fates before, during and after the war.
This is a well-written and informative history of an obscure unit and a relatively unknown aspect of the war. It provides much information on Lincoln’s early-war political aspirations.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and believe it deserves a spot on your book shelf. I highly recommend it.
Reviewer Joseph A. Truglio is president and business agent for a motion picture film technicians local union and a lifelong student of the Civil War. His memberships include the Lincoln Group of New York and New Jersey Civil War Heritage Assn. He is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table in Wayne, N.J.
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For 19 days in February 1861, 131 delegates from 21 states met in Washington in a quixotic attempt to prevent the Civil War. Mark Tooley has written a significant and entertaining book describing the often-overlooked efforts of the Washington Peace Conference. Upper South and Border slave states, as well as Northern free states, were represented.
Tooley’s most valuable contribution is to confirm that the national crisis was all about slavery. He says, “Nearly all the Peace Conference was a desperate attempt to protect slavery and assuage Southern worries about Northern Republican encroachment on Southern political prerogatives.”
He cites a Washington Star article that said the arriving delegates faced the “only question upon where (sic) there bids fair to be any considerable difference of opinion — the territorial slavery question.”
The author describes the delegates, contemporary Washington, its clergy and churches (not really necessary), proposed compromise provisions, counting of the presidential electors’ ballots, Abraham Lincoln’s arrival and tangential involvement, the conference’s agreement on proposed constitutional amendments, the immediate undermining of them by ex-President and conference president John Tyler, and congressional inaction on them.
The conference agreed to recommend congressional initiation of constitutional amendments that would •reinstate the Missouri Compromise boundary between free and slave territories; •require a majority of slave state senators to approve new territorial acquisitions; •prohibit congressional interference with slavery where it existed; •affirm fugitive slave laws; •ban importation of slaves, and •require unanimous approval of the states to revoke any of these provisions.
It is significant that, like the unsuccessful Crittenden proposals of the preceding month, these conflict-avoidance proposals dealt solely with slavery-related issues.
At the conference’s close, Tyler pledged to present these proposals to both houses of Congress because it was “my duty to give them my official approval and support.”
By the next evening, however, he had taken his seat as delegate to Virginia’s secession convention, denounced the proposals and called the conference a “worthless affair.”
Tooley does not contend that the conference was insignificant. He points out that it probably delayed secession by Virginia and other Upper South states, helped prevent Border states’ secession, and arguably provided a cooling-off period that enabled the electoral vote counting and Lincoln’s inauguration to occur peacefully.
Despite a few minor historical errors, this book is a marvelous exposition of a significant, generally unknown occurrence in the series of events that occurred between Lincoln’s election and inauguration. It is highly recommended.
Reviewer Edward Bonekemper is Civil War News Book Review Editor and author of six Civil War books, including The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.
MILITARY MATERIAL 1775 thru 1945 April 30th - May 1st, 2016 – Saturday 9-5 & Sunday 9-3 Richland County Fairgrounds, Mansfield, Ohio U.S. 30 & Trimble Road Exit Located 7 Miles West of Exit 176 (US 30) on I-71 750 Tables of Military Items, Books, Prints, etc. for Buy, Sell, Trade & Display.
Lee White, is a recently discovered diary about Confederate division commander Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s movements through Alabama and northern Georgia at the commencement of the campaign.
Next is an accounting by Stewart Bennett of the battle of Allatoona Pass, Georgia. This is an exciting description of the bloody contest. John R. Lundberg tells of the Battle of Spring Hill, Tenn., and the aftermath of the clash, when Gen. John M. Schofield’s troops slipped by the Confederate army, escaping to fight again at Franklin.
There are two essays about the Battle of Franklin. First is “The Destruction of the Army of Tennessee’s Officer Corps.. .” by Andrew S. Bledsoe. Following is an essay examining the psychology of killing as it pertained to Franklin, where there was a lot of killing and much close-quarter fighting
On the two-day Battle of Nashville, there are four essays. Brooks D. Simpson writes of the pre-battle communication difficulties and misunderstandings among Gens. George H. Thomas, Ulysses S. Grant and Henry W. Halleck. In “Where Genius Cannot Exist,” Paul L. Schmelzer scrutinizes Thomas’s generalship in light of German military writer Carl von Clausewitz’s standard for military “genius.”
D.L. Turner and Scott L. Stabler
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describe “The Fight for Freedom by the U.S. Colored Troops at the Battle of Nashville.” Co-editor Steven E. Woodworth describes the actions of Gen. Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Smith’s command at Nashville. John J. Smith writes about civilians’ actions during the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.
Co-editor Charles D. Grear tells of “Texans’ Reactions to Hood’s Tennessee Campaign.” Finally, Timothy B. Smith and Jennifer M. Murray, respectively, describe battlefield preservation at Franklin and Nashville, Tenn. Although the salvation of the battlefield land and buildings at Franklin got off to a late start, its story is positive. Unfortunately, the preservation of land at Nashville is the story of a true “lost cause.” Except for Shy’s Hill and a few forts, redoubts and monuments, the battlefield of Nashville has been largely taken over by urban sprawl. Little remains of the fields where Thomas’s and Hood’s troops once struggled.
This book is a valuable addition to a Civil War library. Although it does not contain as detailed descriptions of the campaign as other volumes, these essays provide fresh insights.
Reviewer Robert L. Durham spent most of his career at the Defense Logistics Agency. He has written book reviews and articles for numerous historical blogs and publications.