Charles Francis Adams: 1807-1886 (review)

336CIVIL WA B HISTOBY Although the book is well written and is very readable, it should be noted that it is more a biography of Colonel Henry Pleasants, with emphasis on his very important part in the planning and construction of the mine, than a study of the "inferno at Petersburg." Readability is not enough. It suffers from a malady which is prevalent in Civil War books now being published: a lack of research in depth. The authors did not go deep enough into the facts of the story surrounding the Crater. Their surface mining is adequate for some; however, it does not present the true and complete picture. A great deal more could have been told from both sides. From a letter dated July 12, 1864, we know tiie Confederates were countermining. They had extended two mines from Pegram's Battery, which passed on either side of the Union mine. When the mine exploded, it destroyed Pegram No. 1 but did not destroy Pegram No. 2. No mention is made of Sergeant A. H. Smyth, who was in charge of a Confederate detail down in Pegram No. 2 when the mine exploded. The sergeant and his men lived to report the effects of the blast. The authors do not deal with the aftermath of the Crater. They fail to mention either the Confederate efforts to locate the Union tunnel on the east edge of the Crater or the Confederate effort to set off a charge in their mine at Gracie's Salient on August 1. Ironically enough, the mine was charged but failed to go off because three of the four fuses went out, and the fourth was defective. The testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War was not effectively used, while much information in the Official Records was neglected. This book is basically a revised edition of The Tragedy of the Crater by Henry Pleasants, Jr., published in 1938. With tiie exception that it contains a more detailed biography of Colonel Pleasants, and some academic interrogation as to red tape and the army high command, the main portion of this book is generally the same information that appears in the earlier volume. It adds nothing new to the current literature on the Crater. LOUIS H. MANARIN North Carolina Confederate Centennial Commission Charles Francis Adams: 1807-1886. By Martin B. Duberman. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Pp. 525. $7.50. ) Professor Duberman sets die tone of his biography, Charles Francis Adams: 1807-1886, in the first sentence of a rather unfortunate introduction. His subject, he writes, "was not the sort of man who easily enlisted loyalties or engaged the affections." For almost 400 pages of text the apthor drives this point home. Adams is constantiy represented as a man "reserved and austere . . . having littie charm or magnetism"; he is "cold, fastidious . . . [with] aloof, formal manners"; he lacks originality, is narrow, complacent, conservative, and introverted; and he lives comfortably in "almost monotonous adherence to society's conventions." A conscientious man, a man of stem integrity, impersonal candor and solid convictions, is Dr. Duberman's Adams; but he is Book Reviews337 also inescapably a bore, with an intellect more ponderous than imaginative. His achievements stemmed more from the honest and strenuous application of a superbly balanced mind to a succession of limited problems than from innate characteristics of brilliance and vision. This image of Adams as a character etched in cold stone is the traditional one, and here it is reproduced faithfully; but like many images it is largely a myth. Adams was in fact essentially human, a man with a full quota of passions and prejudices and deep perceptions who developed an iron selfcontrol only through constant inward struggle. He had periods of mental torment and deep despair, as anyone who will read his diary and personal correspondence for the period of the Trent affair can readily ascertain. Genuine humor, usually acerbic, occasionally broke through a studied reserve into his conversations and writings. He was not at all a placid man but had a temper easily roused; he was as capable of sustaining antagonisms as of grimly and mercilessly prosecuting them. Although his joyous moments were never boisterously...