No comments about Lincoln's White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O.Stoddard.

No comments about General Sherman and the Georgia Belles: Tales from Women Left Behind.

No comments about Personal Traits Of Abraham Lincoln (1912).

No comments about Grandpa's Gone: The Adventures of Daniel Buchwalter in the Western Army, 1862-1865.

No comments about Civil War and Reconstruction (Eyewitness History Series).

1 comments about Life in the Confederate Army, Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the American Civil War.

1. I stumbled across this after devouring Sam Watkins' COMPANY AYTCH and wanting more of the same. While this is a first person account of a Confederate soldier, don't confuse this with the more entertaining COMPANY AYTCH.
   
   Watson was an Irish mechanical engineer who made his living repairing cotton gins prior to the Civil War. He also tends to come across as a bit of a racist and not so subtly hints that African-Americans were incapable of learning his trade. Funny, I wonder what my mechanic, air conditioning repairman, and plumber would think of that. Anywho, luckily his thoughts of African-Americans is limited to a few pages out of this book and the rest is not so offensive.
   
   Unlike COMPANY AYTCH, the writing style here is more formal. Gone is the friendly tone and one of superiority is used. Watson complains throughout the book about everything he encounters (even the boat back to Ireland). By the end of the book, you're glad he goes home and quits writing.
   
   Not to say it's all bad. The encounter he has with General Butler in New Orleans is humorous. His experience at Wiloson's Creek is interesting. And the demeanor of the populace of New Orleans while occupied by Northern troops is a neat insight as well. But, these few pages of detail don't undo the rest of the book.
   
   If you're a re-enactor, forget this one. It won't help your impression. If you're a Civil War biff, there are better books out there. But, if you're looking for an insight of what a visitor to the South thought during that war, this may fill the bill.

2 comments about Sojourns of a Patriot: The Field and Prison Papers of An Unreconstructed Confederate (Journal of Confederate History Series, Vol 19).

1. Sojourns of a Patriot is a compelling read. It esentially follows the life a Confederate infantryman, Corporal A.P. Adamson, throughout his tenure of the War Between the States. The book is composed primarily of his letters home and a journal he kept for the last year of the war. Secondarily, the editors provide comment and explanation to some of the entries. Most revealing were the roles that camp gossip played in his thoughts on the morale of the Southern troops. Also quite interesting were the false or incomplete pieces of "news" that reached Southern camps. This aspect of the book provides the reader with an insight that is often not present in regimental or campaign histories. Often, readers know the outcome of the battle, the makeup of the casualty list, or the result of a particular election. The letters in this book permit the reader an escape from that biased knowledge and to live through the life of the writer. The love of the writer for his home, his yearning for a return to his previous life, and his concern for the future are poignantly brought to the fore through his letters to various family members. However, some of the best writing is not included in these letters, but is in his later journal. These entries are poetry disguised as prose. The images brought forth by his writings are disturbing, comforting, melancholic, and often heart-wrenching. Brief though they are, they are some of the most powerful writings of the War this reader has encountered. The only detractor to the book is in the commentaries by the editors. They focussed a little more than was perhaps necessary on the personal histories of peripheral protagonists. Some of the information was repititious. However, in their defence, the editors do warn the reader of this in the beginning and they do have personal bias to this information. Additionally, the other commentaries they provide would be useful to readers who may not be as familiar with the conflict (in fact, these could have been expanded somewhat, but there is a conscious effort by the editors to provide suggested readings which are appropriate for each entry). Overall, I highly recommend this book to any person interested in the War Between the States. It will be especially appealling to readers with interest in the personal experiences of the war and an informative diversion to those readers who generally limit themselves to straight histories.



2. The editors have tried to add value to this rather unexciting collection of letters and brief diary by interspersing their own comments among the letters. This is all very well when they stick to facts, but too often they inflict their own 20th-century political beliefs upon the readers. That's particularly annoying considering the lip service paid to "objectivity" in the foreword.

   The letters themselves are not exactly thrilling. The soldier in question saw little action and his letters (typically of Civil War letters) concern themselves mostly with relatives he's met and what he wants to have sent from home. His prison diary is interesting mostly in that its tone differs markedly from that of the letters; it's emotional and romantic, whereas the letters are downright dull. Still, the diary offers little factual information -- though he does undermine his editors' hoopla by stating that he was actually treated reasonably well. Whether he was "unreconstructed", as the editors claim, is unknown, because no post-war writings of his own are included.

   I'd skip this. The editing is annoying and the primary material adds nothing new or entertaining to the wealth of Civil War primary sources already in print.

No comments about On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier II: New and Revised Biographies of African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917.

No comments about Van Dorn: The Life and Times of a Confederate General.

3 comments about Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage.

1. This is at least the 5th biography of the Civil War Northern Belle, Kate Chase (daughter of Lincoln's Treasury Secretary), and it takes good advantage of material not available to prior researchers. It continues the revisionist trend from the last bio ("Kate Chase for the Defense", by Sokoloff) of trying to humanize this ambitious woman and portrary her in a more sympathetic light than the first several books. The author makes as good a case as one can for her point of view, and candidly admits to favoritism (she announces in the prologue that she will ever be a Kate supporter, and discloses an unmitigated hatred of Kate's husband William Sprague). But the gender politics angle grows tiresome after a while and detracts from the story. One wishes the book were told in a more dramatic manner; there is certainly more than enough raw material for that.

   The best new stuff here concerns the hitherto unknown extent to which the Roscoe Conkling-Kate Chase relationship continued well after the famous "shotgun" incident in which the cuckolded Sprague threatened to blow Conkling's head off, setting off a national scandal. I was particularly intrigued by materials indicating that Kate continued to press the case for Conkling to President Chester Alan Arthur, urging Arthur to give her lover a high-level position in his administration at a time when it should have been obvious that this was not in the cards. Indeed, much of the new research material merely bolsters the picture of Kate Chase as a ceaselessly calculating individual, almost oblivious to what others thought of her. The author is not averse to calling her subject on a number of things, particularly her public prevarication following the shotgun incident, but the sense is that Kate is let off a bit too lightly on this and other matters. And the effort to explain much of Kate's behavior as stemming from a serious, substantive concern for liberal Republican values is not terribly convincing; there is little hard evidence that Kate's political activity was based on anything other than a desire to see her and her loved ones (her father, Conkling, even Sprague) attain positions of personal and political power. That is how virtually all of her contemporaries who knew her saw her (even friends such as John Hay), and the modern biographer bears a heavy burden in trying to impeach that conventional view. (the one vignette I wish the author had included is Hay's diary account of how Kate virtually pleaded with him to dine with her and Conkling a few years after the scandal; Hay made up an excuse for declining).

   While early biographers went too far in painting Kate Chase as a cold, ambitious, cutthroat personality, this book tilts a bit too far in the other direction. We could now use a full-bodied, objective bio of this fascinating woman which makes use of the wealth of new material that seems to keep turning up and does not lose sight of the powerful drama that attended her life and times.




2. I've read every biography on Kate Chase Sprague that's around today, and this one, by far, is the best. Peg Lamphier combines the historical background with the characters of Kate and William, and masterfully brings both of them to life in a way I have yet to see in other books. I was so impressed that I've read this book more than once, and each time I find something that makes me remember, Kate was a real person, and a "glorious girl", and what happened to her could happen to anyone.
   
   Kate's life is one that makes me want to go back in time and shake her, but then, we all have to live our lives and do the best that we can with our choices and paths we take.
   
   This biography is well-written, well-researched, and extremely interesting. The author comes across as being much more sympathetic towards Kate than some I've read do, but that's okay. It fits in this book. This is definitely not a novel and not easy reading at times, but I highly recommend it for any serious student of Kate Chase, her marriage to William Sprague, and for those curious about gender and gender differences during the Victorian Era.
   
   Cindy Obermier



3. An excellent book! The author really knows her subject and makes this history book as readable as a romance novel. An amazing amount of history that a lot of us might have skipped over in another book. Once I started this book I couldn't put it down.