Mr. Davis's Richmond (review)

Book Reviews337 resolution of criticism he said, "StiU, I must continue to do so much as may seem to be required by the public safety." "The pubüc safety," or perhaps the Union's safety, was the gauge by which Lincoln measured aU governmental action. In the twenty chapters which comprise James RandaU's fine book, that is the impression which comes through again and again. Such chapters as "Müitary Rule and Arbitrary Arrests," "The PoUcy of Confiscation," "Steps Toward Emancipation," "The Partition of Virginia," and "The Relation of die Government to the Press" pointedly highlight botii the variety of problems Lincoln faced and his solutions . Unquestionably Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln is one of die indispensable books in any weU-rounded Lincoln library. It is also James Randall's scholarly tribute to the sixteenth President's devotion to die American Constitution and the Union which gave it life. Arnold Gates Garden City, New York. Mr. Davis's Richmond. By Stanley Kirnmel. (New York: Coward-McCann . 1958. Pp. 214. $7.50. ) since no one WRITiNG on the crvn, war today can have lived in die period, it cannot be said that a first-hand knowledge is necessary for convincing work. However, any work is convincing in proportion to the writer's immersion in a specific time and place. WiUa Catiier once said tiiat what is left off the page is more important than what is written, and tiiis statement applies perhaps more to history than to fiction. To achieve this suggestiveness, die writer of history must have been immersed in die Ufe of his re-creation to the extent where he draws upon a background in selecting the details which iUustrate and dramatize the intangible qualities diat truly characterize his segment of the past. This process applies equaUy to a battle, a campaign, or a city under wartime conditions. Applied specificaUy to Richmond, die capital of die Confederacy, it seems clear that any other approach would miss the essential intangible, without which everything is missed. Mr. Kimmel has demonstrated the shortœmings inherent in a method that works from the outside. His demonstration is "graphic" in that the book leans heavüy on pictures—photographs, drawings, and especiaUy cartoons. As for the latter, despite their occasional veracity, it is not likely that future historians could form an accurate picture of Washington, D.C, from Russian cartoonists of 1959; nor would die Richmond, Charleston, and Montgomery newspapers, via their cartoons of 1861 to 1865, aid a historian in formulating a true impression of Abraham Lincoln. To learn from this volume what Northerners thought of the Confederacy as epitomized in Richmond is merely to emphasize the distortions inevitable in a technique that does not work from the heart outward. Other distortions are formed by the author's selections from local news- 338CIVIL WAR HISTORY papers. In aU eras, crimes are front-page stories and die police-blotter is duly recorded; yet, a community's life cannot be evoked or adequately formulated by a re-enactment of its night court. Most people live and die widiout serious involvement with the law, and wartime Richmond was no exception. Eight crimes in one night do not represent a city of 80,000 inhabitants who spent some fifteen hundred nights under wartime exigencies, with predominandy peaceful procedures in their daüy lives. The many distortions of emphasis in this work add up to a faUacious report, and Mr. Kimmel cannot be commended for the total product. In aU fairness, it must be said that some of the inaccuracies cannot be excused by any scholarly method. The autiior's emphasis on runaway slaves— again revealing a lack of proportion and perspective—should have been corrected by even a partial acquaintance with historical methodology. He should know, as any respectable historian knows, that a newspaper füe of Richmond, Chicago, Detroit, New York, or Berlin, in or out of times of war, is not in itself a conclusively reliable historical document. The resulting inaccuracies represent only sloppy work. If nothing else, and diere is notiiing else, Mr. Kimmel's book is a salutary example, in the current stampede toward publications on the Civü War, of the faüure...