George Templeton Strong: Civil War Diaries (George Templeton Strong and Geoff Wisner)

George Templeton Strong was a 19th Century lawyer and civic leader in New York City, helping to start the Union League’s New York social club in 1863. He is known among historians for his vivid diary of his day-to-day life and the events of the mid-19th Century, particularly the Civil War in and around New York. His diary totalled over 2,250 pages by the time he passed away in 1875. Strong’s diaries were originally published in a four volume set in 1952. Geoff Wisner has curated and edited a substantial portion of Strong’s diary into a collection called George Templeton Strong: Civil War Diaries. 

Fans of Ken Burns will recall excerpts of Strong’s diary narrated by George Plimpton in The Civil War. Those excerpts, and another 750 pages worth of diary, are pulled together into a vivid retelling of daily life in New York City during the Civil War. Strong’s support for the Union, for Lincoln, and his disdain of Copperheads oozes out through the pages of the book. The diary adds detail in seeing how rumors of events during the Civil War would spread quickly, oftentimes not accurately. Given it is a diary from the 19th Century, the less savory elements of the time (racism, anti-ethnic bias) are evident in various entries.

Strong’s diaries are presented largely “as is,” with limited editing, except to remove items that were not germane to the War or family life at the time. This collection is a vivid retelling of life in the North during the Civil War through the eyes of one leading social figure.

MY RATING: 4.5

Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America (Scott Ellsworth)

In Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America, author Scott Ellsworth provides a dramatic retelling of the events of 1864 and early 1865. With page-turning narrative energy, Ellsworth brings the final stretch of the Civil War to life. This period includes the rise of Ulysses S. Grant’s fame as head of the Union army, Sherman’s march through Georgia, and the eventual assasination of Abraham Lincoln.

This period of time was arguably one of the most pivotal in our country’s history. The Civil War was wearing down morale in the North and mounting casualties made Lincoln’s reelection odds in 1864 seem slim. However, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September 1864 provided a turning point that, combined with strong support among voting Union soldiers, helped Lincoln win a hard-fought election that Fall.

In addition to major leaders and headliners of the time, the author includes overlooked voices such as runaway slaves, a female war correspondent named Lois Adams, and other lesser-known participants who provide added context and insight to the events of this timeframe. Ellsworth also provides added insight into the shifting methods of how war was conducted by the South, changing from mostly conventional field battle into more rogue and guerrilla tactics in an attempt to prolong the war. Those rogue tactics gradually wrap in a headlining actor of the day, who becomes a part of the plot to take down Lincoln.

Midnight on the Potomac is a very solid and exciting historical book that highlights the relatively precarious state of the Union effort in 1864 and how a few key events changed the course of the war and American history. It’s a captivating read that will keep you glued to its pages.

MY RATING: 4.5

Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery (Richard Kreitner)

In Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery, author Richard Kreitner explores the wide range of perspectives within the 19th-century Jewish community in regard to faith, slavery, and the Civil War.  The book profiles six Jewish individuals who had varied and prominent roles in mid 19th Century America: Judah Benjamin, a lawyer and Confederate leader; Morris Raphall, a rabbi who defended slavery; Isaac Mayer Wise, who advocated for neutrality; David Einhorn, an abolitionist rabbi; August Bondi, a revolutionary and Union soldier; and Ernestine Rose, a feminist and atheist abolitionist. These case studies illustrate the complexities between faith, identity, and political ideology.

Kreitner delves into the broader context of Jewish life in America, highlighting the challenges of assimilation and the pressures to conform to prevailing societal norms. He effectively demonstrates that, much like their non-Jewish counterparts, Jews were not monolithic in their views on slavery, with some supporting it, others opposing it, and many grappling with the ethical implications of their positions. Kreitner also devotes significant time to discussing how Jewish Americans were perceived in American society and the varying ebbs and flows of antisemitic behavior by Americans throughout the country in the middle of the 19th Century.

Fear No Pharaoh is a significant contribution to books on Jewish history and its relationship and views on American slavery.

MY RATING: 4

A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War (David S. Brown)

1854 was a momentous year in America, marked notoriously by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The legislation declared that territories west of the Mississippi River could allow slavery if their residents and respective territorial legislatures voted for it. This bill wiped clear a generations-old truce of sectional compromise within the American government that first started with the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The bill’s author, Stephen Douglas, remarked at the time of drafting the legislation that the bill’s opposition, primarily from Yankee abolitionists, “will raise a hell of a storm.” David S. Brown, author of A Hell of a Storm:The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War, wryly noted in reply to Douglas’s quote “and so it did.”

This book is a walk through a stormy year in American life. The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively killed one political party, birthed its replacement, and drove the longstanding dominant party in American politics into a minority status that took generations for it to exit fully from. The Underground Railroad was in full transit, helping Blacks escape slavery through the work of Harriet Tubman and others. 1854 also was marked by the conclusion of the Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, a World’s Fair held in Manhattan, as well as the opening of Japan to American trade. The year also included the death of the last of the founding mothers (a spouse of one of the Founding Fathers) of the United States. Abraham Lincoln found his political voice and an aspirant to the White House, Stephen Douglas, effectively lost his over the course of this important year.

A Hell of a Storm is a fast-paced trip through a year that changed much of America’s trajectory, sending it quickly towards a Civil War that would soon kill hundreds of thousands of American men in a few years’ time. 

MY RATING: 4.5

Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War (Roger Lowenstein)

Much has been written about the economic differences between the North and South during the Civil War and how the North’s advantage in population, industry, and commerce were factors in their eventual win. The financial management of the North and South is a topic that is less known about. Roger Lowenstein’s Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War addresses how the two parts of the country attempted to finance and govern their war efforts.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, the government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, and no official currency. The South’s secession and the subsequent war required both the Union and the secessionists to finance their war efforts. Each camp took vastly different approaches. Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, developed a taxation strategy and financed bonds while battling to keep inflation in check. The South embargoed its main cash crop, cotton, and watched while inflation and poor fiscal decision-making drove runaway inflation and gradual starvation of the Confederacy.

Lowenstein also devotes a part of Ways and Means to the change in the federal government’s involvement in the lives of Americans. Pre-Civil War America was a state-driven enterprise, with the federal government a weaker federation having less direct control and influence in policy. The Republicans of the Civil War era were modernizers, permitting the construction of the transcontinental railroad, the formation of land grant universities, and increased government involvement in agriculture and eventually immigration policy. These reforms helped sustain and push the country along after the Civil War’s conclusion. Lowenstein smartly points out that much of those reforms and efforts helped push the North and West while the South lagged for decades to come. The country’s internal economic disparity remained significant between North and South until cities such as Houston, Atlanta, and Dallas began to attract large numbers of residents and immigrants, helping the South to shed its agrarian way of life and leave the Jim Crow era behind.

Ways and Means is a great account of how fiscal policy can guide a country in tough times and how Chase’s creativity and resourcefulness helped in large part to save the Union.

MY RATING - 4.5

A Nation Rising (Kenneth C. Davis)

There are about a million historical accounts that never make it into a school textbook. Textbooks usually do not have the space to give anything but the bare minimum for any given topic. A Nation Rising attempts to correct this injustice by delving deeply into these untold stories.

Aaron Burr...what do we think of when we hear his name? In most textbooks and in the minds of most Americans, he is reduced to one sentence. Aaron Burr was the one who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Davis goes much further than this...offering up a 61 page account of Aaron Burr's trial, not for murder (dueling was common in those days), but for treason!! Davis includes six such chapters in this fascinating book about life in the early 1800s, from Burr's "trial-of-the-century" to severe conflicts over religion in Philadelphia.

This period of history is often overlooked as it is the bridge from the Revolutionary to the Civil War. Davis certainly gives it its due in A Nation Rising.

MY RATING - 4

This review can also be found at www.bookloons.com.