1 comments about Belle Boyd In Camp And Prison.

1. I thought that this book was wonderful, it's content was direct and to the point while still telling a wonderful story of this woman's struggles of keeping secrect among the Union soldiers. I love this story and I would recomend it to anyone that has an inerest in the Civil War.

5 comments about All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery.

1. This is the last and probably the best book completed by the late Henry Mayer.

   Mayer admired Garrison, the most important leader of the abolitionist movement. In this book, he succeeds in renovating the reputation of a great reformer and activist who has often been neglected or written off as a crank.

   Garrison and the abolitionists were originally hardly more popular in the North than in the South. They were seen as disrupting the Union and were regarded with suspicion for their pro-black beliefs - public opinion in the North was only marginally less racist than in Dixie. Garrison's courage and consistent refusal to trim his convictions for popular acceptance led to a career with an outsized share of controversy, oppobrium, and in several cases physical danger.

   Some reviewers have felt the book is too long, and it is hefty. But the length is necessary for Mayer to give a full portrait, which shows not only the man, but also the era he lived in. In particular, Mayer writes extensively about abolitionism as a movement. Abolitionists, and Garrison himself, struggled with many problems - whether to compromise by supporting politicians whose platforms called for less than full abolition, evolving from a paternalist movement of mostly privileged whites to a movement in which free blacks and escaped slaves could play a meaningful role, and reconciling the pacifist leanings of many to their role in a war against slaveholders - that will be of interest to contemporary political activists. Mayer also shows how, after abolition was accomplished, former abolitionists seeking new causes worked for other advances, including the first stirrings of the women's suffrage movement.




2. Let's just get the obvious criticisms out of they way. First, the author pretty much flat out states that The Civil War was fought only because of slavery--and in the preface! Yawn. Will I ever be able to find a Northerner who can write a book that examines both sides of the conflict? I mean southern writers do it all the time. The second problem is the assertion that the Texas Revolution was some kind of government conspiracy--from Pres. Jackson on down to Sam Houston--to perpetuate slavery and continue manifest destiny. While I'm sure some men fought for those reasons, this moronic conspiracy theory about secret government shenanigans has no basis whatsoever. In fact, I would recommend the wonderful biography, Sam Houston, by James Haley. It expertly destroys that awful line of thinking that has somehow survived all these years.
   
   But, being from Texas, I tend to be sensitive to such things. For most people it won't matter.
   
   I still highley recommend All On Fire, though. It is very well written and researched. But most of all, it is the only real biography on Garrison worth reading. And say what you want about the author's biases, he can't muddle the fact that Garrison was one of this country's great patriots, willing to stand up to anyone to free his fellow man. He dedicated his entire life to this noble cause--and except for a few references in some Civil War books--is largely forgotten. What a shame.



3. William Lloyd Garrison was a man ahead of his time. Not by years or even decades, but centuries. In the 1830s he was an outspoken proponent of not just the abolition of slavery (many advocated various ways to deal with the South's "peculiar institution"), but called for the immediate abolition of slavery with complete and full civil rights for African-Americans. He dreamed of a time when a black woman might succeed a black man as Secretary of State a decade before the Supreme Court ruled that blacks were something less than human in the infamous Dredd Scott decision. He was also an early advocate of women's rights, labor reform, temperance and civil disobedience, as well as an outspoken critic of organized religion (Garrison was what we might today call a fundamentalist "born again Christian" who recognized no formal church other than Christ's teachings).
   
   Given Garrison's role as founding father of the abolitionist movement, his passion for the cause, longevity in leadership and terminal impact on the greatest political issue of the nineteenth century it is puzzling that he has left such an obscure historical legacy. As author Herbert Mayer notes, Martin Luther King Jr. cited Gandhi, Thoreau and the Gospel as his inspiration and motivation in the Civil Rights movement with no reference to the man whose peaceful agitation did more to eradicate bondage than any other -- and who in turn may very well have been Thoreau's inspiration in writing "Civil Disobedience."
   
   So why the obscurity? Mayer's biography does little to address this paradox. In fact, his book makes Garrison's general absence from the mainstream of American history all the more tenebrous. The man that emerges from the pages of "All on Fire" is a moral giant, a crusader in the purest and best sense of the word, who risked -- indeed, welcomed -- verbal and physical abuse, a life of indigence and scorn, all in pursuit of a truly noble cause. Garrison grew up in New England and never traveled further south than Baltimore until after the Civil War, yet he dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery with an intensity and zeal that surpassed dissident southern whites (such as the Grimke sisters) and even some blacks that had escaped from bondage themselves. Because of his central role in establishing and leading the cause, "All on Fire" is, as the full title suggests, as much a history of the entire abolitionist movement as it is a biography of its leading agitator.
   
   However, a close reading of "All on Fire" also reveals a hidden side of William Lloyd Garrison that Mayer, unfortunately, never fully explores: a man of extreme ambition, vanity, and conceit. Garrison fought tenaciously to keep himself at the front-and-center of the moral movement he came to regard as his own. One senses that the fame and notoriety he gained by his agitation came to mean quite a lot to him. In this sense, Garrison reminds one of a contemporary political gadfly increasingly enamored of his high-profile image: Michael Moore. Perhaps Garrison's attraction to celebrity never fully outweighed his commitment to the ultimate prize of freeing three million humans from bondage, but it certainly meant more than the pious Christian in him would have liked to admit -- and certainly more than biographer Mayer is willing to concede. Again and again throughout the narrative Garrison experiences a painful and personal falling out with some of his closest friends and coadjutors: Frederick Douglas, Wendell Phillips, the Tappan brothers, etc. And time after time Mayer attributes the rift to simple misunderstandings or the result of the stress and pressure of the times. That Garrison might have been something less than the Galahad on ante-bellum America is left unexplored.
   
   Nevertheless, for anyone with a desire to know more about America and especially to learn about a man that was once one of the most controversial and well-known figures of his century, only to sink to near anonymity, this National Book Award finalist can be highly recommended.



4. Now a book that shows two sides of slavery that all white people were not all for slavery .Like Dr.martin luther king was saying that slavery was not about black against white ,but justice againt injustice.Because if all men and women are not free then we are all in chains.Books like this one has giving us a balance look at one of america darkest sides. But men like Garrison showed us that their were men and women that were a light of hope that all men are created equal . And being a black man I must say thank you to all the blackmen and women and white men and women of the past for fighting a fight that many of us still fight for today .And that is for an opportunity to live as we were when God created us in the beginnig as, a human being thank you.



5. Bad
   
   A. The narrative pace is just awful. I don't know what it is about this book I almost didn't make it past the first 40 pages because the begining moves so slowly.
   B. The idiotic "conspiracy theory" idea regarding the Texas Revolution. Someday right minded people everywhere will be able to laugh conspiracy nuts right off the street.
   Good
   
   The book has a great deal of information regarding the beginnings of an organized abolitionist movement in this country. Garrison was the focal point for this when the movement started to move beyond isolated groups of idealists and Quakers and started to be taken seriously as a genuine force for social change.
   
   Overall-Once you get into the book it is amazing, but you have to be in the right mood to do so.

No comments about Ulysses S. Grant: Confident Leader and Hero (Cobblestone the Civil War).

1 comments about The Lincoln Trail in Pennsylvania: A History and Guide.

1. A thoughtfully detailed and entertaining narrative with lots of captivating photos of the key people and places of Lincoln's visits to the Commonwealth. I also liked the appendix which provided guidance on how to follow and experience the Lincoln Trail. I'm not a Lincoln expert, so the accounts of his experiences here were new to me and fascinating to read... but that also means my rating is just a reflection of how much I liked this book, not a comparison to other books about Mr. Lincoln. It is unquestionably well-written.

1 comments about His Soul Goes Marching On.

1. the essays contained within Finkelman's books are well written and well argued, just watch out because they contain an anti-Brown slant. These works are far from impartial and for a history text, some of them don't follow the traditional road to research of primary source, secondary, and so and so forth. The text is excellent if are looking to read good essays, but they are not impartial.

2 comments about The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769-1828.

1. Evan Cornog has crafted an expert depiction and analysis of the life of DeWitt Clinton: the early nineteenth century mayor of New York City, governor of New York State and champion of the Erie Canal. Cornog puts this man in historical perspective; he ruled at the twilight of the age of elite, privileged politicians and the dawn of the age of popular democratic mass politics. Ironically, Clinton, the quintessential product of the former political age, helped usher in the latter by championing election reform, public education and the canal itself.

   The historical ironies of the canal expressed by Cornog are insightful. Clinton was a proponent of federal funding for internal improvements yet the success of the canal as a state subsidized project discouraged massive federal public works projects for more than a century. Its success also led to a certain canal-building fever for other states. But later canal construction came when private railroads were gaining steam. This untimely investment, coupled with the Panic of 1837 actually frightened off and discouraged future state, federal and foreign investment in internal improvements.

   A final unforseen result for Clinton was the social transformation which flowed quickly from the canal and led to the end of the elite age of New York politics.




2. DeWitt Clinton's accomplishments have long been trumpeted in New York City and State, and for too long his canal has been perceived as a local triumph. Thanks to Evan Cornog's study, "The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769-1828" the many triumphs of Clinton's career are given the national and historic scope they deserve.

   NOTE: This is a study of Clinton's contributions to New York's and America's emergence as a world power, especially in terms of an economic power. This is NOT a biography in the ordinary sense of the word. Unlike McCullough's "John Adams" or Chernow's "Alexander Hamiltion", we do not get a full-length portrait of the man. Partly because DeWitt Clinton was much more reserved and reluctant to show his feelings than others of his time and partly because his diary entries, as Cornog points out, are very mundane, we mostly see the public DeWitt Clinton: DeWitt Clinton the politician, DeWitt Clinton the scientist, DeWitt Clinton the philanthropist, etc. So intensely private in some ways (his mother wondered if he was dead or alive because he never wrote her while he attended Columbia), it is remarkable that he would seek such a public career.

   But it was to New York's and America's benefit that he did.

   Although he never achieved the Presidency, he often influenced (directly or indirectly) every President in office during his lifetime. He clashed with some of the mightiest men of his day: Aaron Burr, Daniel Tompkins, Ambrose Spencer, et al. As Cornog points out, not all his confrontations were rooted in ideology; DeWitt Clinton was a political animal, even though the political realm he operated in was rapidly changing, often leaving Clinton behind. Clinton also could often be extremely self-centered, snobbish and vindictive. And, yet, this contradictory man also had long-reaching visions and programs for the benefit of the poor as well as the merchant and upper classes. He supported free education for all New Yorkers. He supported artists, writers, and scientists. Most importantly, his dogged determination to get the Erie Canal built provided jobs for immigrants, provided a market for farmers, provided work for New Englanders, and helped build the great cities along the canal's path. And as the canal propelled New York State and New York City into economic powerhouses, it also propelled America's westward expansion and its status as a world-class nation.

   Well-written and well-documented, Evan Cornog's "The Birth of Empire" captures the feel of the early decades of America, with all its growing pains. And it puts DeWitt Clinton in American history's spotlight where he belongs.

No comments about Lee and Grant.

No comments about The Butcher Burbridge.

2 comments about The Military Memoirs of General John Pope (Civil War America).

1. Peter Cozzens rightly compares General John Pope's memoires with those of U.S. Grant and W.T. Sherman. This is a highly readable account from one of the participants in some of the least-understood episodes of the Civil War.

   Of course, Pope's writings are not "new." As Cozzens relates, the entries which make up this book appeared in the National Tribune and other Reconstruction-era publications. However, they have spent the last century forgotten by the general public. Cozzens and his colleague, Gerardi, have done a great service both to Civil War scholars and to the casual Civil War buff by bringing Pope's reminiscences and analyses to life.

   What is most surprising is the humor, candor and generosity of a man who has gone down in history as a narrow, bitter mediocrity. For example, devotees of General Lee, whose comments largely consigned Pope to history almost as a barbarian, will be surprised to read Pope's poetic evocation of the beauty of Virginia and the nobility of its citizens.

   In a similar vein, readers will benefit from a "fresh" take on a wide range of issues -- such as the relationships between Lincoln, Stanton, Halleck and McClellan -- from a player very much in the know, but whose views have gone largely unremarked.

   My only cautionary note would be that an appreciation of this volume depends upon a basic understanding of the events of the war, and perhaps also upon an introductory familiarity with the post-war debates on those events.




2. Peter Cozzens and Robert Girardi provided an excellent service to Civil War scholars by assembling the collected newspaper essays that General John Pope wrote in way of reflecting on his Civil War career. Best known for his stunning defeat at Second Bull Run and his bravado, a very different Pope emerges here. Often witty, Pope left excellent sketches of President Lincoln (an old friend of the family), Edwin Stanton, as well as numerous commanders of both the North and the South. Pope is excellent in capturing the chaos and incompetence of John Fremont's command in Missouri in the first days of the war. His scathing attack on Henry Halleck's torturously slow move towards Corinth reveals the extent of this wasted opportunity. But Pope is best known for two battles: Island Number 10 and Second Bull Run. His account of Island Number 10 is a bit rushed though certainly through. While Pope does an excellent job of describing the layout of his forces at the start of the Bull Run campaign, he relies on official records a bit too much and seems willing to let the matter slide. That is understandable, after all Pope was humiliated by Lee at Second Bull Run. The problem is that the Second Bull Run campaign was Pope's moment in the sun and he has little to say on it. With the large exceptions of George McClellan and Fitz John Porter, who Pope believed deliberately undermined his command, there is little bitterness. Even Nathaniel Banks, who picked a fight at Cedar Mountain against Pope's orders and was mauled by Stonewall Jackson, comes off relatively unscathed. It seems as if all of Pope's fire was being saved for McClellan and Porter, as can be seen in the memoirs as well as in a correspondence with the Comte de Paris which is included in an appendix. The memoirs reveal Pope to be much more intelligent and witty than his traditional blowhard persona would indicate though the bile is still there certainly in the cases of Porter and McClellan. One can see from these memoirs why so many men, including Grant and Sherman, seemed to like and respect Pope and while others had no use for the man. All in all, an interesting and revealing memoir to some long neglected parts of the war though be warned the main course, Second Bull Run, remains a bit bland.

No comments about Sherman's March: An Eyewitness History of the Cruel Campaign That Helped End a Crueler War.