Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War by James McPherson
Like most other students of the war I read about Jefferson Davis before, both as a biography and also his presence in other books of the war. I've been to the Confederate White House in Richmond. I knew this book was a concise biography of Davis. The beginning made it seem like it would be less biographical and instead focus on analyzing his decisions. I was really excited to hear that. However the book did not live up to that early message. Instead it served as a short biography with only a tiny amount expended on analysis. I can easily pinpoint the amount as well, it was a 10 disc book, with 10 tracks each. The last 3 tracks focused on analysis. So 3%. Not what I was expecting.
Overall I'd say that yes this is a good book for someone wanting a concise biography of Davis. If instead you'd rather skip that and dive into analysis, assuming the reader has the background info for the analysis, then this book falls far short.
Showing posts with label audio book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio book review. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Disease in the Public Mind book review
My most recent book on tape was "A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War" by Thomas Fleming
Basically this is a book about slavery as the cause of the war. It starts off with the John Brown raid, then goes back to the creation of Constitution and follows the time line back through the end of the Civil War.
I thought it was a good book that covered many events of the first 100 years of the country. I would have one dispute though. Calling this a "new understanding of why we fought the Civil War" is far from accurate. Slavery was considered a cause of the war from the moment it happened. At various times other interpretations have emerged. Directly after the war the defeated Confederates tried to cast it as a conflict over states rights. It feels like slavery was diminished as a cause for quite awhile and sometime around the centennial made a comeback to its rightful place. At this point I'm not sure that anyone taking up a new study of the causes, without any bias, would not think that slavery was the main cause of the conflict. I'm not sure the point where this interpretation took hold but from my own experience I'd say this is far from a recent development.
So quibbling with a subtitle is my main complaint. Other than that I thought it was a good book.
Basically this is a book about slavery as the cause of the war. It starts off with the John Brown raid, then goes back to the creation of Constitution and follows the time line back through the end of the Civil War.
I thought it was a good book that covered many events of the first 100 years of the country. I would have one dispute though. Calling this a "new understanding of why we fought the Civil War" is far from accurate. Slavery was considered a cause of the war from the moment it happened. At various times other interpretations have emerged. Directly after the war the defeated Confederates tried to cast it as a conflict over states rights. It feels like slavery was diminished as a cause for quite awhile and sometime around the centennial made a comeback to its rightful place. At this point I'm not sure that anyone taking up a new study of the causes, without any bias, would not think that slavery was the main cause of the conflict. I'm not sure the point where this interpretation took hold but from my own experience I'd say this is far from a recent development.
So quibbling with a subtitle is my main complaint. Other than that I thought it was a good book.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Hour of Peril book review
Another audio book I've listened to lately is "The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War" by Daniel Stashower. This was a great book. Much of the book is about Allan Pinkerton and his detective agency, from his start as a bumbling investigator in rural Illinois to the national organization he was running quite well at the time of the Civil War. Pinkerton is too famous for the time period to not have previously read about him but much of my connection with him was during his time with McClellan in 1862. I knew far less about his start and how deeply he was involved in ferreting out the 1861 plot in Baltimore to kill Lincoln on his way to Washington DC for the inauguration.
I don't want to give away too many of the twists and turns in how Pinkerton did this. It is a good spy story, I think it would make a great movie. But I can share some of the back story. Pinkerton was hired by one of the railroads that ran thru Maryland (name of which escapes me at the moment) but the railroad owner was worried about the secessionists damaging his railroad, either as part of a plot to prevent troops, or Lincoln, from reaching DC or as just simple destruction.
Pinkerton got his network of spies in the area and slowly they uncovered that there was a plot in Baltimore that was much greater than destroying a railroad, they were going to try to kill the president. Once they fleshed out enough of the plot to know real particulars Pinkerton then faced the daunting prospect of making Lincoln believe it, while on a railroad tour that was getting closer to Baltimore everyday. Time was of the essence and obviously Pinkerton pulled it off in the nick of time.
In some respects that's the tough part of the book. We all know that Lincoln is going to get through Baltimore safe. Most of us also know that he did change his plans at the last minute and slipped through town in the middle of the night instead of following the publicized plan. We all know the conclusion of the story but it is a fascinating story to get that to that already known conclusion.
I don't want to give away too many of the twists and turns in how Pinkerton did this. It is a good spy story, I think it would make a great movie. But I can share some of the back story. Pinkerton was hired by one of the railroads that ran thru Maryland (name of which escapes me at the moment) but the railroad owner was worried about the secessionists damaging his railroad, either as part of a plot to prevent troops, or Lincoln, from reaching DC or as just simple destruction.
Pinkerton got his network of spies in the area and slowly they uncovered that there was a plot in Baltimore that was much greater than destroying a railroad, they were going to try to kill the president. Once they fleshed out enough of the plot to know real particulars Pinkerton then faced the daunting prospect of making Lincoln believe it, while on a railroad tour that was getting closer to Baltimore everyday. Time was of the essence and obviously Pinkerton pulled it off in the nick of time.
In some respects that's the tough part of the book. We all know that Lincoln is going to get through Baltimore safe. Most of us also know that he did change his plans at the last minute and slipped through town in the middle of the night instead of following the publicized plan. We all know the conclusion of the story but it is a fascinating story to get that to that already known conclusion.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Our Man in Charleston book review
This past fall I got a new job. Putting my degree to real use in an industry I have a personal interest in. Everything about the job is great, except for one thing. I went from a 6 minute commute (each way, yes I timed it) to a total of an hour and a half daily (30 minutes in the morning but closer to an hour in the evening). But its only 4 days a week, and I've found another silver lining, books on tape. Obviously I was always aware of books on tape but with such a short commute it was not really feasible. Now my daily book is something I look forward to, in fact some days I don't want to go into the office until a particular section is finished.
My latest book "read" this way was "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South" by Christopher Dickey. This is the story of Robert Bunch the British consul in Charleston who served there from 1853 to 1863. Another review I saw took issue with calling Bunch a secret agent as it is the job of a diplomat to gather information about the country he is serving in. And I agree with that. I think the reason the title refers to him as a secret agent is that Charelstonians thought Bunch was sympathetic to their cause. He had mainly friends in Charleston society and he had family connections through his wife to slave owners.
However Bunch was very much against slavery, in particular the international slave trade that had been outlawed in the United States in the 1830s but had continued in a covert way since. It was this issue that Bunch hammered in his reports, believing that the Confederacy would reopen the trade at some point.
One could tell that the author had done extensive research in British archives (of course no notes or bibliography was available in an audio book, so I'm making some assumptions about that). I've done very little reading previously about Britain's viewpoint so this was an eye opener in many respects. For instance it seems from the correspondence among the foreign service officers and various prime ministers of Bunch's decade that there was never any chance of British involvement in the war. The southerners, and then the Confederacy, made several missteps along the way that did not endear them to the British. One would be the insistence that England needed Southern cotton. One exchange between the British indicated that if they (England) were so weak that they could not survive without Southern cotton then they should just give up being a country at all.
England might have been able to support a country with slavery but under no circumstances would the international slave trade be permitted. In one case it was suggested to the Confederacy that if England did become involved the Confederates would have to state that the international slave trade would not be resumed. The Confederate response was that their constitution outlawed this and that it would be unconstitutional to state so again in a treaty with England, That last bit of reasoning seems a bit flawed to me, I cannot understand how restating a law (or in this case article of their constitution) would unconstitutional. Not that this one moment would have turned the British to openly declare for the Confederacy but it was yet another mark against that.
In fact it seems like British involvement in the Civil War would have been because they wished the Union split than any sympathies for the South, cotton or otherwise. A smaller USA and a new CSA might be a better international situation for the British than a large USA.
Another aspect I found interesting was that the common theme of the Emancipation Proclamation is that the war now being for freedom was what effectively turned the British against involvement in the war. But the author instead says that Seward had raised the possibility of freeing the slaves as the first step in a racial warfare, that they would be able to cripple the South in that way. This is what he had been telling the British during the spring/summer of 1862 so when the Proclamation was announced England's first reaction was not that this was making the war about freedom but that the North was grasping for straws to end the conflict. And if they were this desperate this was not the sort of war England wanted to be involved in.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
My latest book "read" this way was "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South" by Christopher Dickey. This is the story of Robert Bunch the British consul in Charleston who served there from 1853 to 1863. Another review I saw took issue with calling Bunch a secret agent as it is the job of a diplomat to gather information about the country he is serving in. And I agree with that. I think the reason the title refers to him as a secret agent is that Charelstonians thought Bunch was sympathetic to their cause. He had mainly friends in Charleston society and he had family connections through his wife to slave owners.
However Bunch was very much against slavery, in particular the international slave trade that had been outlawed in the United States in the 1830s but had continued in a covert way since. It was this issue that Bunch hammered in his reports, believing that the Confederacy would reopen the trade at some point.
One could tell that the author had done extensive research in British archives (of course no notes or bibliography was available in an audio book, so I'm making some assumptions about that). I've done very little reading previously about Britain's viewpoint so this was an eye opener in many respects. For instance it seems from the correspondence among the foreign service officers and various prime ministers of Bunch's decade that there was never any chance of British involvement in the war. The southerners, and then the Confederacy, made several missteps along the way that did not endear them to the British. One would be the insistence that England needed Southern cotton. One exchange between the British indicated that if they (England) were so weak that they could not survive without Southern cotton then they should just give up being a country at all.
England might have been able to support a country with slavery but under no circumstances would the international slave trade be permitted. In one case it was suggested to the Confederacy that if England did become involved the Confederates would have to state that the international slave trade would not be resumed. The Confederate response was that their constitution outlawed this and that it would be unconstitutional to state so again in a treaty with England, That last bit of reasoning seems a bit flawed to me, I cannot understand how restating a law (or in this case article of their constitution) would unconstitutional. Not that this one moment would have turned the British to openly declare for the Confederacy but it was yet another mark against that.
In fact it seems like British involvement in the Civil War would have been because they wished the Union split than any sympathies for the South, cotton or otherwise. A smaller USA and a new CSA might be a better international situation for the British than a large USA.
Another aspect I found interesting was that the common theme of the Emancipation Proclamation is that the war now being for freedom was what effectively turned the British against involvement in the war. But the author instead says that Seward had raised the possibility of freeing the slaves as the first step in a racial warfare, that they would be able to cripple the South in that way. This is what he had been telling the British during the spring/summer of 1862 so when the Proclamation was announced England's first reaction was not that this was making the war about freedom but that the North was grasping for straws to end the conflict. And if they were this desperate this was not the sort of war England wanted to be involved in.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
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