Book Notes

Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops. By Bob Luke and John David Smith. How Things Worked. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. [xii], 131. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-4214-1360-0; cloth, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-4214-1359-4.) Bob Luke and John David Smith’s slim book gives a brief but interesting account of how the Union army recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed African American soldiers during the Civil War. The authors detail the racism that black troops faced from white politicians, officers, soldiers, and civilians who believed that African Americans, especially former slaves, lacked the courage, virtue, and intellect to be effective soldiers. But as the authors demonstrate, black troops overcame such virulent racism and contributed significantly to the Union war effort. The perspective of the book is top-down, focusing mostly on how government leaders and military officers organized the U.S. Colored Troops. Consequently, little attention is paid to the politics of black soldiers during the war. For instance, the court-martial and execution of Sergeant William Walker for his protest against unequal pay receives only a scant paragraph, and even then the incident is described only to illustrate the dangers black soldiers faced because they often lacked information about certain army regulations. Readers interested in the big questions of how soldiering connected to the African American struggle for freedom, equality, and citizenship should look elsewhere. However, those who want a description of the mechanisms by which the United States built an army and navy that included free people of color and former slaves will find just what they are looking for in this book. [Keith D. McCall, Rice University]

Grant Under Fire: An Exposé of Generalship and Character in the American Civil War. By Joseph A. Rose. (New York: Alderhanna Publishing, 2015. Pp. xviii, 798. $42.50, ISBN 978-1-943177-00-4.) The subtitle of this book says it all. The author claims that he is the first person to do a “comprehensive and critical evaluation of Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy, tactics, and character— testing the typically reverential view” (p. 3). In this well-written, exhaustively researched, and extensively documented study, Joseph A. Rose doggedly pursues inconsistencies between Grant’s written record, especially his memoirs, and other sources. However, if it is possible to put a negative interpretation on anything related to Grant, Rose does so. After more than six hundred pages of relentless attacks on Grant as both a general and a human being, Rose concludes that a better general-in-chief would have won the war at least six months earlier. Rose further argues that Grant hid his own and his friends’ shortcomings and mistakes (especially those of William T. Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan), while unfairly blaming his subordinates, and that the failure of Grant’s presidency revealed the general’s “negligence and corruption and indolence and favoritism and incapacity” (p. 618). Readers will find much that is provocative in this book, but for objective examinations of Grant’s life and career, look instead to Brooks D. Simpson’s Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 (Boston, 2000), Jean Edward Smith’s Grant (New York, 2001), and Joan Waugh’s U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Chapel Hill, 2009). [Kevin J. Weddle, U.S. Army War College]

Douglass in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates. Edited by John Ernest. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014. Pp. [xxxvi], 247. Paper, $37.50, ISBN 978-1-60938-280-3.) This volume, edited by John Ernest, adds nuance and complexity to the narrative of Frederick Douglass by supplementing the well-known autobiographies and biographies of Douglass with lesser-known writings by his acquaintances. As Ernest explains in the introduction, the story of Douglass’s life has gained an almost mythical status because of the popularity of his autobiographies, especially Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). This simplified version of Douglass’s life focuses so much on...