Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 721 lorsville the British were sure the South would win, that northern industrialists were afraid the war and their profits would cease, that Lincoln's order to supply Sumter "caused" the war, that in all probability had Davis been in command at First Manassas he would have taken Washington, that (the bad) Johnston was completely at fault at Vicksburg, and that the war "most likely" would have ended with Gettysburg "except for the indomitable will and courage of Jefferson Davis." These points of view can be defended with less anguish, however, than the implied extra-sensory perception of the Confederate President. Strode never seems to understand that Davis' many quarrels were historic not because he was right or wrong but because he indulged in them at all. The gallant Mississippian made his share of mistakes and his biographer would do him a greater service by admitting a decent human frailty rather than always carefully preparing a way to get him off the hook.One can excuse petty slips in definition of the Black Belt and the Delta, but even the most confirmed southern patriot is bound to gag with repeated allusions to Virginia and southern gentlemen, blue bloods, bluestockings, thoroughbreds (human), and the "gilded youth of the aristocracy" -who graciously volunteered along with the hillbillies -to the exclusion of the yeomen who, after all, fought the war. The author cannot deny his obsession with the First Lady as an "instinctive hostess" with a "woman's vision," with Joe Brown's "self righteous twang," or with (the good) Johnston's countenance illuminated by "good qualities of heart and mind." Though irritating, these imperfections are indeed minor, except for their frequency. The basic trouble with both volumes is that the reader must take so much on faith ; he is forced to rely on Mr. Strode's sense of calm reason.