How I spent my summer vacation

Well, it hasn't been a vacation really: a half day here and there. But I am awaiting a book delivery that will enable me to conclude my McClellan-Lincoln Illinois Central RR research/writing and I am terribly pleased at what I have found so far. I'm not stopping for nothing ... I think I have run out of material.

When you put the scraps together, the dots produce wonderful surprises. Stay tuned.

Author Conclave July 28-30

The Savas-Beatie author conclave convenes shortly. It's free and these are wonderful authors.

Some Sam Hood interviews

My intention was to dissect some of the Wiley Sword assertions about Gen. John B. Hood using author Sam Hood's new book and the OR references Sword used. But there is a lazy way out: link to some good Hood interviews given in 2012.

Here is Eric Wittenberg's with its overview of the content of the discovered Hood family papers.

Kraig McNutt, part 1, is not an interview with Hood but a collection of reactions from authors with "skin in the game" to the discovery of the papers. Sword has two responses, well worth reading, and the authors in general are very protective of the established work. Hood responds to them in the comments section.

Kraig McNutt, part 2, offers a single question and answer with the author and presents comments with responses from Hood.

(Here's a link to all of the relevant McNutt postings.)

I am impressed by Hood's criticism of Sword's handling of sources in John Bell Hood, but I say that as one without familiarity with the relevant material. I should also confess that how deeply I hate pop culture outbursts like these Swordisms collected by Hood for what might be called the Beauregard edition. Page numbers are in parentheses:

"Beauregard was thoroughly shocked" (107); "exasperated" (107); "very much disturbed" (107); "fuming about the callous treatment by Hood" (107); PGTB was "determined to retaliate" (110); "callous treatment by Hood [caused] smoldering resentment until finally another heated confrontation occurred" (110); Beauregard was "livid" (111); "frustrated" (110); "exasperated" (110).

The best parts of this new book is watching author Hood disassemble each emotional assertion using Sword's own sources. And Sword is not the only one getting this treatment. Our problem in Civil War history is much bigger than Wiley Sword.

Wiley Sword - an interesting historian

From Sam Hood's John Bell Hood. The author is quoting from Sword's book The Confederacy's Last Hurrah and has added the emphasis:

"Already when en route to South Carolina, he [Gen. Hood] had passed through Augusta and probably met with a distant relative, Gustavus Woodson Smith, the crusty old army engineer who was Hood's good friend. Hood apparently poured out his bitterness to Smith, who then may have published the long, rambling article that appeared in the Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist on February 5, 1865."

Now that's history made interesting!

Cannonballs are terrifying...

... if you don't know shot from shell.

You wonder how artillerymen mustered the courage to handle these mysterious, unstable and unpredictable items of "ordinance."

(H/T R. Bonds.)

Fuller and Hawthorne on older generals

From JFC Fuller's Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure:

In my book – The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant – I pointed out that, in 1861, the average age of twenty Federal and Confederate officers who, as generals, played leading parts in the war, was thirty-eight and a half years. [...] In war it is almost impossible to exaggerate the evil effects of age upon generalship, and through generalship on the spirit of an army. In peace time it may be otherwise, but in war time the physical, intellectual and moral stresses and strains which are at once set up immediately discover the weak links in a general’s harness. First, war is obviously a young man’s occupation; secondly, the older a man grows the more cautious he becomes, and thirdly, the more fixed become his ideas. Nothing is more dangerous in war than to rely upon peace training: for in modern times, when war is declared, training has always been proved out of date. Consequently, the more elastic a man’s mind is, the more it is able to receive and digest new impressions and experiences, the more commonsense will be the actions resulting. Youth, in every way, is not only more elastic than old age, but less cautious and far more energetic.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne's article "Chiefly About War Matters":

... we were received by the commander of the fortress [John Wool] with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the only pair, so far as my observation went, that adorn the shoulders of any officer in the Union army. [...] There can be no question of the General's military qualities; he must have been especially useful in converting raw recruits into trained and efficient soldiers. But valor and martial skill are of so evanescent a character, (hardly less fleeting than a woman's beauty,) that Government has perhaps taken the safer course in assigning to this gallant officer, though distinguished in former wars, no more active duty than the guardianship of an apparently impregnable fortress. The ideas of military men solidify and fossilize so fast, while military science makes such rapid advances, that even here there might be a difficulty. An active, diversified, and therefore a youthful, ingenuity is required by the quick exigencies of this singular war.[...] It is a pity that old men grow unfit for war, not only by their incapacity for new ideas, but by the peaceful and unadventurous tendencies that gradually possess themselves of the once turbulent disposition, which used to snuff the battle-smoke as its congenial atmosphere.

(Wool would have been 78 during Hawthorne's visit.)
p.s. Of related interest...
General Wool writes a letter
Generals who faint
"Why senior military leaders fail"

And for a blow-by-blow account of Wool's machinations against McClellan during the first Richmond campaign, see the most recent volume by the late, great Cap Beatie.

Trenton Iron Works - some notes and conjecture

It was something like a couple of decades ago that Trenton historian Charles Webster and I were sitting in that city's library speculating about the oddities of G.B. McClellan being posted to Trenton and then being buried there (along with his wife and father-in-law Randolph B. Marcy, sans Mrs. Marcy).

Charlie proposed that the outcome was tied to Trenton Iron Works, where Marcy had served as an Army inspector and where the owners had been influential Democrats. He didn't have anything specific but was working on it. We filed what "explanation" we had under "ties to the city."

I am not sure Charlie called it Trenton Iron Works. We locals called the site "Cooper Iron Works" and the business went through name changes. At one time there was a 19th Century companion firm, same owners, called Trenton Steel and Iron Works. For purposes of this post, I'm going to refer to the complex as Trenton Iron Works.

To get where we are going, we'll need a timeline.

1838 - New York's illustrious Albany Regency ends with the defeat of William Marcy (D) at the hands of William Seward and Thurlow Weed (W) in the NY governor's election.

1847 - Trenton Iron Works is incorporated by Peter Cooper (photo, right), Abram Hewitt, Edward Cooper (son) and James Hall, strong, moneyed New York Democrats.

1848 - The barnburners split the Regency, burying this Democrat faction. Peter Cooper is a barnburner.

1849 - Capt. Randolph Marcy, of the Regency Marcys, blazes the Marcy Trail, from Fort Smith to Santa Fe.

1851 - Marcy is on the Belknap expedition in Texas.

1852 - Marcy and McClellan are on the Red River expedition.

1855-1859 - Maj. Robert Anderson is "... assigned to the light duty of inspecting the iron beams produced in a mill in Trenton, New Jersey for Federal construction projects."

1856 - Gustavus Woodson Smith (a civilian) becomes chief engineer of the Trenton Iron Works (Odyssey of a Southerner). Marcy is on a Texas survey. G.W. Smith introduces McClellan to Abram Hewitt, co-owner of Trenton Iron Works and director of the Illinois Central Railroad (McClellan's War, Odyssey of a Southerner).

1857 - Marcy wars on the Seminoles and then "received national fame for a winter march of over a thousand miles" during the Mormon war. McClellan resigns from the army for a position with the Illinois Central (McClellan's War). G.W. Smith becomes a director of the Illinois Central (Odyssey of a Southerner). McClellan begins his supervision of a contract railroad attorney named Abraham Lincoln.

1858 - Marcy prepares his book The Prairie Traveler. G.W. Smith goes to work for Peter Cooper, co-owner of Trenton Iron Works, as the deputy NYC Streets Commissioner. Cooper resigns after six months and Smith steps up to the full title(Odyssey of a Southerner).

1859 - Marcy becomes a regimental paymaster. Peter Cooper founds Cooper Union.

1860 - Peter Cooper sells out his stake in Trenton Iron Works to the other owners. McClellan takes up the presidency of the Ohio & Mississippi RR Eastern Division through the good offices of S.L.M. Barlow, Democratic activist.(McClellan's War). Barlow is a member of New York's Union Club as is Edward Cooper, co-owner of Trenton Iron Works. Abraham Lincoln is offered position as staff legal counsel to the New York Central Railroad based on his work for McClellan and the Illinois Central (Abraham Lincoln as a Railroad Attorney and, better, Ellis and Ellis in Billings).

1860 - (Worth its own entry and emphasis) G.W. Smith becomes Chairman of the National Democratic Committee for the City and County of New York. (He backs the Breckinridge ticket.)

Perhaps this is too nebulous for many readers, but I find it interesting. One missing piece here is Randolph Marcy. His whereabouts are given to show what few opportunities he would have had to be posted to the Trenton Iron Works, as Charlie believed he had been. The Marcy-Trenton connection remains mysterious.

Anderson's place here might also confuse but there is a familial McClellan connection that appears in Whitelaw Reid's history of Ohio in the ACW. Robert Anderson, worked with Smith, the Coopers, Hewitt, and Hall for years. As McClellan settled into Cincinnati society in 1860 (his entrée into the principal literary club having been managed by John Pope), his military future is taken up by the city's business roundtable headed by one Larz Anderson II, nephew of the major. Larz and company petitioned both Gov. Dennison and Ohio's politicians in Washington for McClellan's leadership of Ohio troops. Perhaps there was an Ironworks connection at work.

Lincoln's possible connection to the Trenton Iron Works is a notion "under development," if it ever gets developed. The offer of a job with the NY Central would have come from the company of a powerful New York Democrat, Erastus Corning, who knew the Regency, likely had dealings with some combination of Barlow, Cooper and Hewett and who certainly had many dealings with Lincoln backer Thurlow Weed. Interlocking boards? Word of mouth? And from where? More work to do.

Democrats Edward Cooper (Peter's son) and Hewitt would both eventually serve as mayors of New York, Hewitt gaining fame as the man who planned for a city subway system. The New York mayor who opened the subway system for business was Max McClellan, the general's son. Will the circle be unbroken? Not in 1904, anyway.

Meanwhile, here's Marcy's obit. The Trenton burial is not explained although we know GBM has predeceased him and we guess his daughter has committed to be buried in some future time next to her husband. Could this be the motivation for siting Marcy's gravesite?

We have not solved the mystery of McClellan's (or Marcy's) posting to Trenton but have some meat for informed speculation - the best kind.

The Ironworks were a political mill where power, money and Democratic politics mixed with military celebrity.

Ethan Rafuse

Ethan Rafuse has opted "to spend my time in other ways than blogging." This is a good thing since he is one of a small number of Civil War authors doing new and interesting books. We need the books more than the posting, so I have wished him a good riddance from Civil Warriors.

Earlier this year, Brooks Simpson linked to an interesting paper by Rafuse that I intend to write about here. I have also sketched notes for a long post collecting what we know about McClellan's supervision of Lincoln before the war -- relying much on Ethan's research and the work of another, more obscure author.

So, one can still be in the blogosphere without having to be of the blogophere.

Hood on Hood

Sam Hood weighs in at Kevin Levin's blog on the subject of my book review of a few days ago.

p.s. I have a medium length post in preparation illustrating the sins of Wiley Sword ennumerated by author Hood.

Comic book heroes

I thought this painting by Ann Null was over-the-top.

But then I looked at the source/inspiration. Super Stonewall comes to you courtesy of Manassas National Battlefield Park.

Guelzo's immense power to disappoint

Anytime you think Allen Guelzo cannot disappoint more (and more and more), he's back with another surprise. Mitch Hagmaier writes from Pennsylvania,

I noticed this book in the "books others bought" list on the page with your review of that Hood book. The more historically-minded inhabitants of Chambersburg would be astonished to be so informed that the 1863 Gettysburg campaign was "the last invasion", presumably by a Confederate army of a northern state.

(And now that I google a bit, I see I'm not the first one to make that joke... sigh.)

And it looks like Guelzo was fool enough to respond that the two Early incursions were exempt because they were "raids" and not an invasion. As if Lee's 1863 campaign was anything other than a raid of monumental proportions. I suppose it's more respectable to kidnap people and seize vast amounts of goods under color of foraging than to straight-up ransom towns against the threat of arson.

I myself also notice on Amazon one reviewer complained that

Allen C. Guelzo accepts the Sickles, Butterfield account as gospel. This book is an account of the Gettysburg Campaign that the anti-Meade faction would love. Every discredited story from Mine Run to the Staff Meeting is here. The idea that Meade was dragged kicking and screaming into battle is the heart of the book.

Treating controversy as settled history is "fresh," "exciting," "new" (taken from Amazon quotes).

Harry Smeltzer recently interviewed Guelzo who appears to have taken a strong dislike to Meade based on the man's correspondence and politics. However, the intriguing part of the interview has Guelzo complementing himself for adding what could be an interesting twist:

I think Gettysburg (and the Civil War in general) could benefit hugely from being understood in a larger international context, especially when it comes to military thinking and tactical doctrine (which is, after all, a species of intellectual history). The Civil War did not occur in a vacuum; the experiences of the Crimean War (1854-56), the Sepoy Mutiny (1857-58), the North Italian War (1859) all offer important illumination for why Civil War generals thought as they did. That’s why Gettysburg: The Last Invasion is constantly invoking comparisons to the Alma, Solferino, and Koniggratz. In that sense, I’m trying to claw away from the blinkered view imposed on the Civil War by American exceptionalism.

One of the charming stories about McClellan's railroad period is that he had maps of the Franco-Austrian Italian war spread out all over his office and well marked. His marks were based on the newspaper stories that may have been followed by any number of other officers and ex-officers. To make the connection between those newspaper stories and the military punditry flowing therefrom would make for ... uh... scholarship. But I see from a review of this book, that is not what is going on here. In John Derbyshire's book report, he notes, for instance, that Lee (according to Guelzo) had good reason for Pickett's charge:

The assault failed, as military actions often will, but Guelzo denies it was the egregious folly it has sometimes been portrayed. He raises encouraging precedents surely known to Lee: Lord Raglan’s successful assault on even more formidable Russian lines in the Crimea, for instance, during which:

...the Russians were not only driven back, but driven away in “such a confusion as no person ever saw.” The same tactics had won the day for the French at Magenta and Solferino in 1859…. If Lee needed a rationale for the attack on July 3rd, he did not have far to look for it, [Confederate corps commander James] Longstreet’s objections notwithstanding.

Wouldn't Lee's personal experiences outweigh the recollection of some distant newspaper reports? He wouldn't even have to go back to his Mexican War time for frontal assault memories. Anyway, wouldn't we want to see references to foreign triumphs in his correspondence if there's a connection? Isn't this attribution by implication an astonishingly fatuous and lazy use of contemporary history?

Meanwhile, the many blurbs and reviews on Amazon fail to impress. I want to see the Gettysburg buffs weigh in. Guelzo has done very well to reap so many reviews in a downtrend for ACW reviews but look at the quality:

As for Gettysburg I have (sadly) only four books on my shelf, Stephen W. Sears excellent study and Harry W. Pfanz’s trilogy; and on top of that, I have never read any of the four from cover to cover. I skim and pick and choose based on my interest or research specific needs.

So with this in mind I cracked open Guelzo’s book and prepared myself for a good hour or so of reading before I tossed it onto my stack of stuff and maybe got to a review a month or so from now… but then it happened! I encountered a master storyteller who captured my imagination.

Good grief. The wise author would ditch this audience.

This posting is not a review of the book but a reaction to its public effects. If I have to eat crow, let me know.

Goodwin speaks about/at/to Gettysburg

... on the topic of this and that. Tony Lee is outraged at the orgy of self praise and prattle. I feel sorry for the saps who paid her monumental speaker's fee (click on fee code next to "6").

We noted some years ago that in terms of fee structure, DKG is now classed with "motivational speakers." At Gettysburg, you wonder whom she was motivating.

Savas Beatie Lolapalooza omnibus author tour

No cost tours "will be led by your favorite Savas Beatie authors, including: Tom Clemens, George Newton, J. David Petruzzi, Lance Herdegen, David Shultz, Eric Wittenberg, and Jim Morgan."

Sunday, July 28: Gettysburg (4 different tours)

Monday, July 29: Gettysburg (4 different tours)

Tuesday, July 30: South Mountain, Antietam, & Ball's Bluff.

I may lurk.

Hood and history

My Amazon Review:  JOHN BELL HOOD: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General

This is a book that examines that series of claims made about Gen. Hood which define him in modern pop history. Author Hood's system is to lay out a representative assertion, examine its sources and then allow the reader to decide if the "common wisdom" has merit. The demolition of Wiley Sword and his ilk is awe-inspiring and I hope it puts the fear of God into that great careless pack of out-of-control nonfiction writers who dominate best-seller lists. They will be held to account somewhere, sometime.

Gen. Hood's haters might reasonably argue that author Sam Hood is weaker in dealing with interpretations than in outright claims. Since outright claims make the bulk of the brief against the general, rebutting interpretations is not a major part of the book. Author Hood also spends more time on Gen. Johnston's military record than is directly relevant to the project at hand. Fault noted, but some of his anti-Johnston material is quite interesting.

Despite these quibbles, this is a choice piece of historiography that applies a little shock to those who think they know John Bell Hood and his last campaigns. We need more of this across the board. No one who has read or collected Atlanta or Nashville campaign books should do without this.

Historiographic Notes and Asides

A book that begins with this quote from Cicero is one that you know is way out of step with Civil War history:

The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare to utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

Take away partiality, malice and suppression, and we don't have much ACW history left.

Speaking of which, I am partial to Sam Hood and this work for reasons obvious to those who have read me over time. In 1997, I began compiling and publishing examinations of the claims made against McClellan. My motivation was rage. Having binged on ACW pop history 1994-1997 after 30 years of reading good European history, I found ACW standards so primitive, so insulting, so outlandish as to require outrage.

Author Hood comes at this from a saner, gentler place. His interest in the ACW starts as a kinsman of the general, one with access to troves of family documents that historians have never seen. The emotion apparently came later, in encountering a uniform depiction of the general (in recent times) in a paint-by-the-numbers way in colors of spite, contempt, and ignorance.

In my readings, the treatments of McClellan (and other "unsuccessful" generals, including Fremont, Johnston, Hood, etc.) were a red flag signalling disaster within the whole genre. Revisionist authors did not get this. Steve Newton made a compelling case for the revaluation of Johnston's Richmond defense while resorting to every pop history cliche available to contextualize the rest of his story. The critical eye, his own and other revisionists', was reserved for a chosen subject and averted from the general malaise. By the same token, the many regimental and tactical level works that came out in the late '90s that overturned common knowledge were accompanied by authorial rationales and apologies where discoveries did not fit the master narrative. Let us also not forget all the authors who continue to choose to argue revision of a discrete point: that this one conclusion needs to be fixed in order for the glorious whole to be perfect. (Examples abound in previous posts - no need to recount them here.)

This is not what Sam Hood does. This is one of those rare revisions that clearly recognizes Civil War history itself is broken. At the same time (unlike this blog), author Hood does not use a particular element (Gen. Hood) to organize a lengthy general indictment of the field. The indictment is incidental to his main task, repudiation of bad work about the general. But the big picture is there and he does not skirt the issue. Witness:

Unfortunately, by the middle of the twentieth century, the second and third generation Civil War books came to rely more and more on the opinions and facts (often biased and erroneous) of earlier authors rather than simply the historical record written by the men and women who lived it.

This phenomenon is part of what I have called Centennialism and Thomas Rowland has called it Unionism.

Sam Hood lists the symptoms of the Civil War history illness: opinions are given as facts; retellers fail to research sources of claims; "factual errors" are passed on; "innacurate and misleading paraphrasing" of material is used to make points; and there is the "concealment of historical facts." At one point he formulates five points of malpractice dogging presentations of the general:

1. Making factual statements without providing a source;

2. Making a factual statement and providing a source that has no relationship whatsoever to the "factual" statement;

3. Offering long complete verbatim quotes from sources that support the author's viewpoint or argument, but abbreviating quotes from witnesses whose testimony weakens the author's viewpoint or argument;

4. Inaccurately paraphrasing or distorting the context of a primary source;

5. Inserting an unsourced assertion of fact into a paragraph containing multiple factual statements supported by correct sourcing.

We can add to that list selective sourcing, overweighting sources, discounting sources, ignoring sources, and most toxic, failing to engage critics of your interpretations.

I have been dwelling on the broader points here without adequately conveying how much excitement there is in
author Hood's specific takedowns of weak claims and garbage citations. I don't know how Hood authors will be able to appear in public after this (but perhaps I underestimate the shamelessness of Civil War authors). If you enjoy the pointed historiographic criticism appearing occasionally in this blog, this book is for you. Here General Hood has been done a service as has ACW history.

In his review of the pathology of Civil War history, Sam Hood coined a neologism: malportrayal. He intended it as an antonym to hagiography. Civil War history suffers from both but of the two, malportrayal is epidemic.

---

p.s. Anticipating that critics might call his book "unbalanced," the author suggests that the entire field has tilted one way and that this book is the balance.

Those who wish to post their own pop history opinions on my blog likewise suggest this blog is unbalanced. They need to understand Hood's point: this is the balance.

Maxwell's "Copperhead"

Ron Maxwell's new movie Copperhead is based on the esteemed Harold Frederic novel of the same name. Hollywood Reporter says, "...examines the price of dissent amid the hysteria of war..."

This synopsis dates from a year ago. Releases in four days - still looking for venues.

Seen in the papers (cont.)

Early last year, the University of Illinois Press issued David Work's Lincoln's Political Generals. Work sees his book as a corrective to Thomas Goss's The War Within the Union High Command (see this blog, 5/07/2004). Work sees Goss as missing the larger picture of Lincoln's policy by focusing on a small set of "political generals." He also notes that Goss's focus on issues surrounding West Point professionalism make this earlier work something other than a study of Lincoln's appointment policy. In his introduction, Work singles out Brooks Simpson's views on political generals in a way that merits further comment here, in some future post.

And speaking of Brooks Simpson, he was part of a very odd project launched by the Library of America in 2011(The First Year, The Second Year, The Third Year). Simpson and Stephen Sears divided up the compilation work to produce some big books. Given the flood of regimental histories and diaries since the 1990s, it makes sense to collect from these the most interesting bits. My fear is (without having seen these works) that the editors might have been tempted to dip into their existing stock of material, previously used to write books decades ago. My additional fear is that Sears, a very active polemicist, would not miss this opportunity to advance his unbalanced views of the first two years of the war. I don't associate LOA with textbooks: this appears to be a project aimed at the leisure reader.

Since part 1 of this topic was published a new Claremont Review arrived with the Simpson/Sears series advertised again. Good for LOA. This issue also advertised:

Claiming Lincoln: Progressivism, Equality, and the Battle for Lincoln's Legacy in Presidential Rhetoric by Jason Jividen
There seems little to add to such a descriptive title except that the point of the book seems to be about contextualizing what is often quoted out of context. From the blurbs, Jividen seems to split the difference between making AL a Straussian vs. a Lockean. If true, that won't fly here.

The Maltby Brothers Civil War by Norman Delaney
Three Texan brothers, one Unionist, two Confederates. You might bring your cliche radar for this tome from Texas A&M Press.

This post would have been longer if I read the Civil War Times, I suppose. Ads aside, we'll soon get to to writing about the backlog of good books published and received here.

Seen in the papers

Lots of ACW titles are appearing in display ads. Everything below has appeared in the two issues of the Claremont Review of Books closest at hand (Harry Jaffa is an editor).

These have piqued my interest for better or worse.

Praeger released these a year ago and I missed them.

Antietam 1862: Gateway to Emancipation by T. Stephen Whitman
The high price, the blurb from James Marten, the lack of reviews on Amazon tell me this is assigned reading for resentful students who must learn to connect two dots.

The Seven Days' Battles: The War Begins Anew by Judkin Browning
"The work contains sufficient depth of information to serve as a resource for undergraduate American history students while providing enjoyable reading for Civil War enthusiasts..." I like this part, "...both sides committed many errors that could have affected the outcome..." The errors recounted look like an executive summary of Cliff Dowdey's book.

Civil War Journalism (Reflections on the Civil War Era) by Ford Risley
Promises an "introductory view" of Northern and Southern journalism in just 154 pages priced at $35.15.

It's interesting that a publisher could commit financially to three ACW titles and come up with this set.

SIU Press, a great source of Lincolniana, issued these titles at the end of last year.

Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln by Jason Emerson
Bob Lincoln's conduct of his affairs at the tactical level I find very impressive. On the strategic level, I find him blundering abetted by his father's friends and their shallow judgments. (His mother's involuntary commitment was a great mistake). This book might clarify my thinking, given its four-and-a-half star Amazon rating and its publisher's ad copy promising new discoveries, but at 640 pages, the author asks for a commitment I may not be able to give.

Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency: The Eight Judicial Circuit by Guy C. Fraker
You might think that here's a book written by a lawyer (Fraker) for lawyers. However, this book covers the important and unknown period of Lincoln's casework for Illinois Central and for his boss George B. McClellan. A peek at the index disappoints, however. There are only 15 references to the Illinois Central and only eight to GBM, two of those being contextually asynchronous. Recall that McClellan built the first U.S. ro-ro network and Lincoln played a role in helping win relevant land rights.(I will run a post or two on Lincoln's period as McClellan's employee: shame on historians for their neglect of this.)

Lincoln and the Constitution by Brian Dirck
Longtime readers will recognize the author as a former blogger who has made good, or at least "pretty good." This book was consigned to the purgatory of a series ("The Concise Lincoln Library")and (given its academic mission) has scored no reviews at all on Amazon, due perhaps, to the recalcitrant nature of students everywhere. To add injury to insult, Amazon displays it with full-blooded works on the same topic: Lincoln's Constitution by Daniel A. Farber (four stars); and Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War by Mark E. Neely (no reviews but blurbs out the wazoo).

The Concise Lincoln Library contains other titles that have been advertised.

Lincoln as Hero by Frank J. Williams looks (from its dust jacket copy) like grammar school stuff. "Lincoln extolled the foundational virtues of American society" blah, blah, blah. Williams is not happy with the old grammar school indoctrination (Lincoln was great because he freed the slaves). Instead, he argues that Lincoln displayed heroism at every stage of his life. Readers will recall Frank Williams "Admits Copying Inadvertently." See also Ferguson's sketch of the man in Land of Lincoln.

Lincoln and Medicine by Glenna Schroeder-Lein
I was expecting, from the title, a volume explaining how AL had cured all diseases and saved millions of lives but this is a book compiling all his maladies. The author promises to review (pro and con) the case made for each malady ever proposed.

Lincoln and Race by Richard Striner
"Did Lincoln fight a long-term struggle to overcome his personal racism? Or were his racist comments a calculated act of political deception?" Did I mention that Lincoln freed the slaves? Will pass on this one.

To be continued ...

The Unpopular and the Embattled

Savas Beatie has reissued The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln as a paperback titled The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln: How Lincoln Mastered his Enemies to Win the Civil War, Free the Slaves, and Preserve the Union. This republication deserves praise. Behold: a good publisher backs a good book with a softcover edition.

In the great body of Lincoln literature, the main gap is in contemporary criticism. Here author Larry Tagg gathers up a broad sampling of Lincoln criticism in which the reader can experience something like total immersion. What we normally get from our Lincoln authors is some tiny snippet of disgruntlement badly summarized and knocked down like any good little strawman. What Tagg has done in his book is to better to round out the reader's sense of Lincoln's burden by enumerating the attacks against him. Lincoln fans need not feel threatened; this author appreciates Lincoln deeply.

Tagg has done a greater service to historiography, however, in preparing the ground for some future (deep) analysis of Lincoln criticism that sorts the merited complaints from the unmerited, charge-by-charge in extended discussion. This would exceed the limits of a popular work and make for a really big book that few readers are ready for. Lincoln studies will not mature without such analysis and it will be impossible to begin it until readers (and authors) come to grips with what Larry Tagg has prepared as a first step: surveying Lincoln's unpopularity in the press and speech of the time.

This is a very important book. Once again, bravo.

(Harry interviewed Larry in 2010: "The most serious challenge in writing The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln was not to find material. That abounded — I ended up including in the book only the '10s' on a 1-to-10 scale of slurs I found on Lincoln.")

Spielberg and Lucas comment on "Lincoln"

From The Hollywood Reporter:

[P]rice variances at movie theaters [are coming Spielberg said], where "you're gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln."

"I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they're going to be on television," Lucas said.

"As mine almost was," Spielberg interjected. "This close -- ask HBO -- this close."

Spielberg added that he had to co-own his own studio in order to get Lincoln into theaters.

Mary Lincoln's mental health

Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History does well to offer a superset of what was previously available in contemporary documentation. But author Jason Emerson does no favors to Mark Neely and R. Gerald McMurtry. He mentions their 1993 work The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (still available) as representing a subset of his own document collection.

This is typical. There's not much more of a literature review here than the occasional mention of previous works.

But Emerson also does well to drain the partisanship out of his editing and lay his material out for readers to decide. The Neely/McMurty book was painted by marketing with an anti-Robert Lincoln brush. It took the serendipity of document discovery into the dark alleys of advocacy.

Emerson's was a surprisingly good read. I came to it with the thought that there was controversy around Mary's insanity. The early parts of the book (and its repetitive news articles) presented a slam dunk for "crazy." Where's the controversy, I wanted to ask. But this changed with reading.

Not to recount the whole case, here are a few ideas of my own gleaned from reading Emerson.

(1) Robert Lincoln had lower tolerance for his mother's eccentricities than did others.
(2) Robert mixed up defense of his mother's reputation with defense of his own.
(3) Robert made a bad decision when he allowed the court to appoint him his mother's (financial) conservator. A third party would have kept him clear of his mother's wrath.
(4) Mary's deep suspicions of Robert's financial motivations are well worth examining and here are given very short shrift.
(5) Mary was odd enough to convince clinicians of her madness yet functional enough to get along in the world for decades after her release from Batavia.
(6) None of the predictions about her self-destructiveness or future embarrassment came true after her release.
(7) Mary's involuntary commitment was an overreaction that humiliated her and the Lincoln name.
(8) Mary's involuntary commitment, and the related sensation, smoothed her way in the world after release. It reduced the novelty of her eccentricities.
(9) Mary medicated herself in ad hoc ways with stuff including narcotics.
(10) Mary's dress-buying habit would compare favorably to my book-buying habit.

Mary's early discharge from commitment and her high functioning in the real world to the end of her life remind me of the de-institutionalization movement in mental health in the 1970s. Released to the care of her family, she represents the success the psychiatrists of that era strove for.