Abraham Lincoln: The Enigmatic President

    Confederates in the Attic Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War  Tony Horwitz Confederates in the Attic is a present-day (1998) memoir of a Civil War tour. The book is appropriately titled. When you rummage around an attic, you find all kinds of junk. Junk that’s past its prime, odd reminders of bygone days, nostalgic twaddle, and utter fantasies. Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, finds all of these and more. Unfortunately, he spends too much time in the shadowy recesses of his metaphorical attic. The encountered characters and whimsical writing make the tour fascinating, but there’s not much substance added to the lore of this bloody conflict. That’s not a criticism because the book’s intent is to investigate lingering sentiments, not to uncover facts or artifacts. The narrative actually references a great deal of Civil War history, and I found no errors of note. (The characters in this memoir would prefer the War Between the States, or even bett...

  Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William T Sherman   In turns fascinating and boring. General Sherman wrote a valuable memoir for historians, but too much minutia for the casual Civil War buff. Sherman includes innumerable orders and other correspondence and describes his entire command structure every time there is a significant change or battle. Although historians, especially military historians, will find this invaluable, it can often be dull reading. Sherman frequently allows these documents to tell the story without presenting a description in his narrative. This means the reader must at least review the correspondence to gain a sense of the events. Disappointedly, Sherman seldom shares his opinions or even thoughts about significant issues. It’s sort of the Jack Webb version of his life. When Sherman does express an opinion, it’s pure gold, especially the chapter when he recounts what he believes are the military lessons from the Civil War.

  Grant Takes Command 1863-1865 by Bruce Catton When asked what sort of man Grant was, Lincoln replied that Ulysses S. Grant was “the quietest little fellow you ever saw. The only evidence you have that he’s in any place is that he makes things git! Wherever he is, things move." Lincoln explained that every other general briefing him before a battle told him that he was short of some crucial resource to ensure victory, but, if ordered, they would proceed anyway. This essential resource was almost always cavalry, and Lincoln claimed their real purpose was to shift responsibility to him. When Grant took charge, he immediately reassigned twenty thousand horseless cavalrymen to the infantry. Since there was no way to acquire horses for every man designated as cavalry, these soldiers were held idle as a handy excuse. Recognizing the duplicity, Grant removed the excuse before his first battle. In this biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning Bruce Catton does an excellent job of describing the...