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70CIVIL WAR HISTORY with a special admiration for Stephen A. Douglas and a passionate champion of Irish independence, but he wrote on a bewildering variety of subjects, usually with wit and sometimes with wisdom. Unfortunately he was seriously handicapped by an excessive devotion to whiskey. When the Civil War began, Halpine quickly joined New York's Irish Sixty-Ninth Regiment, and through much of the conflict he served on the staff of General David Hunter, whom he greatly admired. He took part in Hunter's offensive through the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 and some other military operations, but his most important wartime duty was to stimulate the patriotism of Irish Americans and simultaneously to enhance the Irish image among many skeptical and even hostile Yankees. In this effort he enlisted the services of Private O'Reilly, whose earthly eloquence was often quite effective. A poem entitled "Sambo's Right To Be Kilt" was an especially influential Irish appeal to the racist North to allow Negro troops in the Union army—as cannon fodder. As Halpine-O'Reilly bluntly indicated, every rebel shot or shell which killed a black was one less rebel missile capable of killing a more valuable white. After the war Halpine championed President Johnson and his lenient Reconstruction program, but in 1868, prominent, prosperous and still not cjuite forty years old, this gifted writer died, a sudden end to a fascinating, erratic career. William Hanchett, professor of history at San Diego State College, has produced a fine biography of Halpine, analysing but not overanalysing a moody, restless, spirited personality. Sympathetic, but far from uncritical , he has skillfully placed the talented but flawed Halpine in proper perspective, and, in the process, he has shed new light on some significant aspects of a nation in turmoil. There is always a tendency to burden the biography of a writer with too many lengthy quotations, especially in the case of a man as relevant to the social and political issues of his time as Halpine. Fortunately, Professor Hanchett avoids this pitfall and presents only enough quotations to illustrate clearly Halpine 's style and attitude. Thus Halpine is always on center stage with O'Reilly and his other creations, playing a significant but secondary role. Well-written and reinforced with a useful bibliography, an adequate index, and a clear sketch of Halpine, Irish is a good example of how a short study of a man of letters and his time should be done. A sparse footnoting system does not do justice to Professor Hanchett's extensive research, but he has clearly done justice to a challenging subject. F. N. Boney University of Georgia Daniel Webster and the Politics of Availability. By Norman D. Brown. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969. Pp. vii, 184. $6.50.) In The American Commonwealth (1888) James Bryce included a chapter in which he undertook to explain "Why Great Men Are Seldom Cho- BOOK REVIEWS71 sen President." Not all historians would agree with Bryce on the identity of the "great men" who were not chosen, but surely all would agree with Norman D. Brown that Daniel Webster was a greater man than some of those who were elected between Jackson's presidency and Lincoln 's. In Daniel Webster and the Politics of Avaihbility Brown shows why Webster failed to achieve his ambition in 1836. For a time, in 1833, the prospects for the god-like Daniel had looked good. His fame as the Expounder of the Constitution, the champion of the Union, was still fresh. Having recently stood alongside President Jackson against Calhoun and the Nullifiers, he now hoped to join with Jackson in a new party alignment of nationalists against states' righters. But Van Buren and other Jackson henchmen would have none of Webster, and in any case the nullification issue was soon submerged in the Bank War, which further alienated the Websterites from the Jacksonians. Webster, a regular Whig perforce, next set his heart on the Whig candidacy. He and his followers did not much mind the Tennessee nomination of Hugh Lawson White, for they were confident that White would take votes from Van Buren in the South. The Harrison boom was quite another matter. Trying...

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