Lincoln's Gadfly: Adam Gurowski (review)

212CIVIL war history "In its American policy the British government fairly represents the British people." This may well have been Maury's most perceptive political observation , perhaps the closest a great physical scientist came to a detached view in the area of political science. But whatever his political shortcomings, Matthew Fontaine Maury, scientist of the sea, lives again in the pages of this distinguished work. To him seafaring mankind will forever be indebted. Robert Seager ? United States Naval Academy Lincoln's Gadfly: Adam Gurowski. By LeRoy H. Fischer. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Pp. xvii, 301, $6.95.) His contemporaries usually did not know exactly what to make of Count Adam Gurowski, and whoever reads this scholarly, well-written book will readily understand their perplexity. An intellectual adventurer of grotesque appearance, violent temper, and rare talent for polemics, he made himself a celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic. But just how seriously he should be taken as a historical figure is the question that remains largely unanswered. Gurowski was first a Polish revolutionary, then an ardent Panslavist, receiving amnesty and minor favors from the Czar. Soon, however , he found it prudent to flee Russia, and, after five years of wandering about Europe, emigrated to America in 1849. Following a sojourn at Harvard, he joined the staff of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. He moved to Washington during the secession winter of 1860-1861. By then the count was a familiar figure in political and literary circles, notorious for his ungovernable rages and variously regarded as a genius, a madman, and an insufferable nuisance. With his erratic idealism now concentrated in a passionate hatred for slavery, he set out in his own arrogant abusive way, to advise virtually every department of the government on the conduct of the war. Lincoln's Gadfly is concerned for the most part with Gurowski's role as uninhibited critic and irrepressible busybody during the Civil War. The title itself is misleading, for the count had little contact with Lincoln and no influence upon him. It was among Republican Radicals that he played his yeasty part and exercised whatever influence may be claimed for him. Despising Lincoln and detesting Seward, he found even Sumner too conservative and pinned his hopes to men like Stanton, Butler, and Andrews. Gurowski confided his emphatic opinions—a curious mixture of wisdom and folly—to a diary, which he published in three successive volumes as it progressed. Much of Lincoln's Gadfly depends upon this gamy source, but Professor Fischer has also exploited manuscript collections industriously and with great profit, since the count was an inveterate letterwriter. The trouble is that Gurowski's observations and judgments are seldom evaluated, and Fischer's views, when offered, are hard to distinguish from BOOK REVIEWS213 those of his subject. Furthermore, except in the matter of enlisting Negro troops, there is little to indicate that Gurowski ever really accomplished anything. The problem of bis influence is largely unexplored. Lincoln's Gadfly, an admirable book in many respects, thus contributes only modestly to our understanding of the Civil War, but as a view of that war from the hmatic fringe, it would be hard to match. Don E. Fehrenbacher Stanford University Embattled Confederates: An Illustrated History of Southerners at War. By Bell Irvin Wiley and Hirst D. Milhollen. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Pp. x, 290. $10.00.) Unlike many profusely illustrated volumes, Embattled Confederates is not short on history. Bell Irvin Wiley, the author, and Hirst Milhollen, compiler of the illustrations, explains that the book "is not—nor is it intended to be—a complete history of the Confederacy." Yet there is a great amount of factual information in this well-written, smooth-flowing account of the Confederate people at war. Although no new information or interpretations are offered, it is a masterly synthesis reflecting Professor Wiley's understanding of Confederate history. Only a person thoroughly familiar with the primary and secondary materials could attain the balance he has in Embattled Confederates. This is primarily a book about people," writes Professor Wiley; and it is exactly that. From the first chapter, The Parting of Ways," to the last, The Collapse of...