Lincoln’s Final Hours: Conspiracy, Terror, and the Assassination of America’s Greatest President. By Kathryn Canavan. Photos, notes, index, bibliography, 248 pp., 2018. University Press of Kentucky, www.kentuckypress.com. $19.95 paperback.
Reviewed by Joseph Truglio
Lincoln’s assassination is perhaps the most studied and written-about aspect of his life. One wonders what new information can be uncovered in yet another book.
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In a relatively short volume the author presents a unique take on various events leading up to the calamity, the event itself and the aftermath. The story unfolds in 25 chapters, each covering a particular aspect. An epilogue presents short biographies of major participants. At only 183 pages of text we get a broad overview rather than a typical micro-managed presentation. An ample bibliography gives readers good sources for further research.
I found this to be a unique effort in the plethora of Lincoln books. It seemed to me to be targeting an audience of novice students. It is simple in style and the information is not cluttered with detail. I must admit I did garner several nuggets of information, particularly about the Peterson family. It does have appeal to the more seasoned student.
Overall, I found this to be a worthy effort—easy to read and full of information. I highly recommend that you get a copy for a young student and put him or her on the path to discovering a defining moment in American history.
The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America. By Erik Mathisen. Images, notes, bibliography, index, 240 pp., 2018. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org. $34.95 cloth.
Who qualifies as a citizen? How is citizenship determined? Can one lose citizenship? If so, how does one get it back? How closely related are the ideas of loyalty and citizenship? The answers to these questions continue to evolve in American politics and society. However, few if any periods in American history had a greater impact on who is considered a citizen and what that means than the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
Legally recognized citizenship has presented obstacles to traditionally marginalized individuals over the years. For example, at one period in American history only white property-owning males had citizenship status. And even then, elements of citizenship remained fuzzy as far as state-versus-nation loyalty and sovereignty. Obviously, citizenship has come to include many different groups of people in the years since the Civil War. However, much of that change had its foundation in the crucible of the conflict.
The Loyal Republic: In Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America, Erik Mathisen uses the Mississippi Valley as his geographical area of focus. That region is an excellent choice due to all of the change it experienced during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Although Mississippi was the second state to secede, there were pockets where loyalty to the United States remained strong, and it was home to individuals who were unwilling to claim allegiance to the newly formed Confederacy. This situation presented intriguing issues. Among those that did side with secession, the author examines the murky world of whether one’s greater loyalty was to the state of Mississippi or to the emerging Confederate nation. On the surface this may seem one and the same, but various issues arose that hardened those lines and often made for difficult situations for many.
Mathisen explains that this era brought previously unavailable opportunities for African Americans to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. By fleeing their owners and entering Union lines, either to provide labor or enlist as soldiers when finally allowed to do so, they opened new doors toward citizenship. Blacks would ultimately use their loyalty during the Civil War as a leverage point in Reconstruction’s initial years. The formerly enslaved, especially those who had fought in USCT regiments, demanded recognition as citizens as reward for their service and sacrifice. Those demands were realized in the form of Constitutional amendments (14th & 15th), which in turn bred resentment among former Confederates.
One area that Mathisen could have probed further is the idea of fluid allegiances and what those meant in terms of one’s citizenship. It would make for fascinating analysis to examine those areas of the Mississippi Valley that were initially under state and Confederate control but fell to Union occupation, and how residents’ loyalty followed prevailing authority. It would have been equally intriguing to examine how those who exercised a fluid allegiance during
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the war were later received in their home communities during Reconstruction.
The Loyal Republic is a well-researched, thought-provoking, and timely work that makes one reexamine preconceptions of loyalty and citizenship and how we came to our current understanding of those terms. With Americans presently debating hot issues like immigration reform, entitlement rights, voter regulation and other citizenship-related concerns, it is important to understand the history of citizenship and how it has evolved over time. Joining other important works such as Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003) and Paul Shifting Grounds: Quigley’s Nationalism and the American South, 1848–1865 (2011), The Loyal Republic is a significant addition to the growing list of scholarship on this topic.
Tim Talbott is the Director of Education, Interpretation, Visitor Services, and Collections at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va. He is currently researching the various combination of elements that led to emancipation.