Terrible Swift Sword (review)

102CIVIL WA R HISTORY lyceums. But others, like Ralph Richardson's careful assessment of Jefferson Davis' apparendy inconsistent speeches in 1858 and Lionel Crocker's close study of Stephen A. Douglas' Soutiiern campaign in 1860, lead to more interesting interpretations. Although most of die contributors are newcomers to the field of history, they have handled die took of dieir adopted discipline admirably. All the essays are fair-minded and objective; all are based upon considerable research in the primary, and frequently in the manuscript, sources. There is hardly one of these articles which would not make a creditable showing if published in a historical journal. Indeed, one's only serious complaint about Mr. Auer's compilation derives from a certain uneasy feeling that Antishvery and Disunion challenges traditional historical methods all too little. The professors of speech contributing to this volume differ hardly at all from the professional historians here represented in either die questions they ask or the answers they suggest. These essays contain surprisingly little on die techniques of nineteendi century oratory; they do not give much close attention to the structure of the orations here discussed or much detailed analysis of the rhetoric. They seem to prove that teachers of speech can write good, conventional history rather than to demonstrate that the historian has much to learn from a sister discipline. For this reason Antishvery and Disunion is likely to prove less stimulating to the historian than an earlier publication sponsored by the Speech Association, William Norwood Brigance's A History and Criticism of American Public Address (1943). But, regarded simply as a collection of useful and sound historical essays, Mr. Auer's volume is of considerable merit, and it is worth reading by the special student of the period. David Donald Johns Hopkins University Terrible Swift Sword. By Bruce Catton. (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1963. Pp. xi, 559. $7.50. ) The first of Mr. Catton's three projected general volumes on the Civil War appeared in 1961, and immediately received the unanimous praise of reviewers. With Terrible Swift Sword, another home run has been scored. The story opens in the wake of First Bull Run and concludes with the aftermath of Antietam. The scope of treatment is far-ranging, and includes not only die military scene but much of the political at home and abroad. The autiior is unusually complete and adept in handling the military, as when he returns to the Army of the Potomac theme that won him a Pulitzer Prize. The volume ako features critical analysis and interpretation, and close, intimate views. A "you-are-tiiere" impression emerges, and die reader is gripped widi excitement. By effective writing and organization, die autiior brings about a logical and understandable unfolding of events. Insights abound, and perhaps this is Catton's most unique feature. He penetrates to the heart of people and events, and seems often to capture their BOOK REVIEWS103 total significance in but a brief passage. Consider his evaluation of die wooden U.S.S. Cumberland and U.S.S. Congress as diey guarded die moutii of die James River only hours before their demise at the hands of die ironclad C.S.S. Virginia: Before the day ended a good many people looked at these ships, because each ship was about to die, dramatically and in the center of the stage. This was the last morning ... for all that the ships represented—a special way not merely of fighting on the sea but of moving on it and understanding it, of combining grimness and grace in one instrument. In a war that destroyed one age and introduced another, these ships stood as symbols of the past. Two basic ideas are developed in Catton's pages, and each is emphasized several times. First, the war in the beginning was for both the Union and the Confederacy a conflict to restore the cherished past. Lincoln maintained that the Union must be preserved, and Davis wished to preserve slavery and states' rights. Second, as the war got out of hand in terms of limited objectives , it developed into a contest against slavery, which is to say, a contest for freedom. To Carton, freedom...