Tuesday, February 22, 2022
In the Review Queue: Voices of the Army of the Potomac
Thursday, February 17, 2022
In The Review Queue: Lincoln and the Fight for Peace
By John Avlon
A groundbreaking,
revelatory history of Abraham Lincoln’s plan to secure a just and lasting peace
after the Civil War—a vision that inspired future presidents as well as the
world’s most famous peacemakers, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and
Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a story of war and peace, race and
reconciliation.
As the tide of the
Civil War turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous
two-week trip to visit the troops on the front lines accompanied by his young
son, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves in the ruins of Richmond,
and comforting wounded Union and Confederate soldiers.
Lincoln and the
Fight for Peace reveals how Lincoln’s character informed his commitment to
unconditional surrender followed by a magnanimous peace. Even during the Civil
War, surrounded by reactionaries and radicals, he refused to back down from his
belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. But he also
understood that peace needs to be waged with as much intensity as war.
Lincoln’s plan to win the peace is his unfinished symphony, but in its existing
notes, we can find an anthem that can begin to bridge our divisions today.
About the Author
John Avlon is
a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. He is an award-winning columnist
and the author of Independent Nation, Wingnuts, and Washington’s
Farewell. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The
Daily Beast and served as chief speechwriter for the Mayor of New York during
the attacks of 9/11. He lives with his wife Margaret Hoover and their two
children in New York.
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
In The Review Queue: The Black Man's President
Abraham Lincoln, African Americans,
and the Pursuit of Racial Equality
by Michael
Burlingame
Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the
black man's president” as well as “the first who rose above the prejudice of
his times and country.” This narrative history of Lincoln’s personal
interchange with Black people over the course his career reveals a side of the
sixteenth president that, until now, has not been fully explored or understood.
In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Lincoln's assassination,
Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black
man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as
men.” To justify that description,
Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and utterances, like the
Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the
president’s own personal experiences with Black people. Referring to one of his White House visits, Douglass said:
"In daring to invite a Negro to an audience at the White House, Mr.
Lincoln was saying to the country: I am President of the black people as well
as the white, and I mean to respect their rights and feelings as men and as
citizens.”
But Lincoln’s description as “emphatically the black man’s president”
rests on more than his relationship with Douglass or on his official words and
deeds. Lincoln interacted with many other African Americans during his
presidency His unfailing cordiality to
them, his willingness to meet with them in the White House, to honor their
requests, to invite them to consult on public policy, to treat them with
respect whether they were kitchen servants or leaders of the Black community,
to invite them to attend receptions, to sing and pray with them in their
neighborhoods—all those manifestations of an egalitarian spirit fully justified
the tributes paid to him by Frederick Douglass and other African Americans like
Sojourner Truth, who said: "I never was treated by any one with more
kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man,
Abraham Lincoln.”
Historian David S. Reynolds observed recently that only by examining
Lincoln’s “personal interchange with Black people do we see the complete
falsity of the charges of innate racism that some have leveled against him over
the years.”
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
In The Review Queue: Crosshairs on the Capital
In an era of battlefield one-upmanship, the raid on the Nation’s Capital in July 1864 was prompted by an earlier failed Union attempt to destroy Richmond and free the Union prisoners held there. Jubal Early’s mission was in part to let the North have a taste of its own medicine by attacking Washington and freeing the Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout in southern Maryland. He was also to fill the
This new account focuses on the reasons, reactions and results of Jubal Early’s raid of 1864. History has judged it to have been a serious threat to the capital, but James H. Bruns examines how the nature of the Confederate raid on Washington in 1864 has been greatly misinterpreted—Jubal Early’s maneuvers were in fact only the latest in a series of annual southern food raids. It also corrects some of the thinking about Early’s raid, including the reason behind his orders from General Lee to cross the Potomac and the thoughts behind the proposed raid on Point Lookout and the role of the Confederate Navy in that failed effort. It presents a new prospective in explaining Jubal Early’s raid on Washington by focusing on why things happened as they did in 1864. It identifies the cause-and-effect connections that are truly the stuff of history, forging some of the critical background links that oftentimes are ignored or overlooked in books dominated by battles and leaders.
ISBN 978-1636240114, Casemate, © 2021, Hardcover, 256 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Maps,End Notes & Index. $34.95. To purchase this book click HERE.
Saturday, October 23, 2021
In The Review Queue: Hold at All Hazards (A Novel)
By late January of 1863, the 9th Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery has been stationed within the Washington, D.C. defenses the entirety of its five-month existence. The soldiers are badly demoralized, inadequately trained and poorly disciplined. When the inept captain of the battery believes that he’s about to be fired, he hastily resigns, and the governor of Massachusetts promptly selects a twenty-three-year-old artillery officer with battlefield experience to take command.
Captain John Bigelow institutes strict discipline and rigorous training which causes the men, including Chief Bugler Charles Wellington Reed, to consider him to be a heartless tyrant. However, Captain Bigelow’s methods rapidly improve their capabilities and Reed reluctantly gains respect for the new captain. Nevertheless, subtle conflict between captain and bugler remains in a manner only constrained by military protocol.
In late June of 1863 the battery is collected by the Army of the Potomac as it passes the Washington defenses to thwart an invasion by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. After days of hard marching, Bigelow’s Battery arrives on the Gettysburg battlefield in the forenoon of July 2, 1863. Within hours they are immersed in violent combat during which the officers and men of the battery fight like veterans against the Confederates. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he will twice disobey a direct order from Captain Bigelow before the day is out.
When furious fighting reaches a crescendo, the inexperienced light artillery battery is ordered to hold its position at all hazards, meaning until it’s overrun. Without hesitation the batterymen stand to their guns and sacrifice their life’s blood to gain the time necessary for a second line of artillery to be formed behind them, thus helping to prevent a disastrous defeat for the Federal Army on Northern soil. Charlie saves his captain’s life and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.
About the Author
David H. Jones is author of the award-winning novel Two Brothers: One North, One South. He is a former U.S. Navy officer and business executive, born in West Virginia and always engrossed in the study of American history.
ISBN 978-1636240602, Casemate, © 2021, Paperback, 272 pages. $22.95. To purchase this book click HERE.
Friday, October 22, 2021
In The Review Queue: The Horse at Gettysburg
Horses are one of the many unsung heroes of the American Civil War. These majestic animals were impressed into service, trained, prepared for battle, and turned into expendable implements of war.
There is more to this story, however. When an army’s means and survival is predicated upon an animal whose instincts are to flee rather than fight, a bond of mutual trust and respect between handler and horse must be forged. Ultimately, the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in thousands of horses killed and wounded. Their story deserves telling, from a time not so far removed.
About the Author
Chris Bagley hails from Canton, Ohio, where he resides with his wife Becky. Chris has been a Registered Nurse for 31 years and currently works as a surgical nurse. He became a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park in 2016. He always had a love and fascination of horses from childhood which continues to this day.
ISBN 978-0999304969, Gettysburg Publishing, © 2021, Paperback, 224 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Maps, Appendix: Order of Battle, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $26.95. To purchase this book click HERE.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
In The Review Queue: Lincoln and Native Americans
By Michael S. Green
President Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution of Indigenous people in American history, following the 1862 uprising of hungry Dakota in Minnesota and suspiciously speedy trials. He also issued the largest commutation of executions in American history for the same act. But there is much more to the story of Lincoln’s interactions and involvement, personal and political, with Native Americans, as Michael S. Green shows. His evenhanded assessment explains how Lincoln thought about Native Americans, interacted with them, and was affected by them.
Although ignorant of Native customs, Lincoln revealed none of the hatred or single-minded opposition to Native culture that animated other leaders and some of his own political and military officials. Lincoln did far too little to ease the problems afflicting Indigenous people at the time, but he also expressed more sympathy for their situation than most other politicians of the day. Still, he was not what those who wanted legitimate improvements in the lives of Native Americans would have liked him to be.
At best, Lincoln’s record is mixed. He served in the Black Hawk War against tribes who were combating white encroachment. Later he supported policies that exacerbated the situation. Finally, he led the United States in a war that culminated in expanding white settlement. Although as president, Lincoln paid less attention to Native Americans than he did to African Americans and the Civil War, the Indigenous population received considerably more attention from him than previous historians have revealed.
In addition to focusing on Lincoln’s personal and familial experiences, such as the death of his paternal grandfather at the hands of Indians, Green enhances our understanding of federal policies toward Native Americans before and during the Civil War and how Lincoln’s decisions affected what came after the war. His patronage appointments shaped Indian affairs, and his plans for the West would also have vast consequences. Green weighs Lincoln’s impact on the lives of Native Americans and imagines what might have happened if Lincoln had lived past the war’s end. More than any many other historians, Green delves into Lincoln’s racial views about people of color who were not African American.
About the Author
Michael S. Green, an associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is the author or editor of three books on the Civil War, including Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (Southern Illinois University Press) and Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War, and several books on Nevada, as well as dozens of articles and essays. He is on the editorial advisory board of the University of Nevada Press and is the executive director of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.
ISBN 978-0809338252, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2021, Hardcover, 176 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $24.63. To purchase this book click HERE.
In The Review Queue: Matchless Organization, The Confederate Army Medical Department
The Confederate Army Medical Department
By Guy R. Hasegawa
During and after the war, the medical department of the Confederate army was consistently praised as being admirably organized and efficient. Although the department was unable to match its Union counterpart in manpower and supplies, Moore’s intelligent management enabled it to help maintain the fighting strength of the Confederate army.
About the Author
Guy R. Hasegawa, a retired pharmacist and editor, is the author of Villainous Compounds: Chemical Weapons and the American Civil War and Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs.
ISBN 978-0809338290, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2021, Paperback, 282 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Appendixes, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $26.50. To purchase this book click HERE.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
In The Review Queue: Lincolnomics
Author John F. Wasik tracks Lincoln from his time in the 1830s as a young Illinois state legislator pushing for internal improvements; through his work as a lawyer representing the Illinois Central Railroad in the 1840s; to his presidential fight for the Transcontinental Railroad; and his support of land-grant colleges that educated a nation. To Lincoln, infrastructure meant not only the roads, bridges, and canals he shepherded as a lawyer and a public servant, but also much more.
These brick-and-mortar developments were essential to how the nation could lift citizens above poverty and its isolating origins. Lincolnomics revives the disremembered history of how Lincoln paved the way for Eisenhower’s interstate highways and FDR’s social amenities. With an afterword addressing the failure of American infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how Lincoln’s policies provide a guide to the future, Lincolnomics makes the case for the man nicknamed “The Rail Splitter” as the Presidency's greatest builder.
About the Author
John F. Wasik is the author of nineteen books, including Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla. His columns, blogs, and articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Forbes, and Bloomberg News. In 2018, Wasik was named an Illinois Road Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council. His speaking engagements on technology, history, investing, and innovation reach global audiences. He lives in Grayslake, IL.
ISBN 978-1635766936, Diversion Books, © 2021, Hardcover, 320 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, End Notes & Index. $31.99. To purchase click HERE.
Friday, September 11, 2020
In The Review Queue: Civil War Alabama
by Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr.