United No More!: Stories of the Civil War (review)

Seven true-life episodes, selected to represent diverse wartime experiences, are retold here with the stated intention to cling closely to verifiable sources (documented for each chapter), but with flourishes of fictionalization that fill in gaps in the historical record and spin brief anecdotes into a short-story-length tales. Julia Ward Howe, a spectator at Union General McClellan's review of the troops, is inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Confederate matron Eugenia Phillips is held in dismal quarters at Ship Island prisoner camp. Mary Jackson of Richmond instigates and loses control of a women's march to demand fairly priced food in a time of runaway inflation; African-American soldier William Carney defends the flag in an assault on Fort Wagner. David Farragut breaks the Confederate blockade of Mobile Bay; Noah Brooks listens to Lincoln's second inaugural address (and, in this account, does little else). Finally, Generals Lee and Grant come to terms that allow Lee to surrender with a measure of dignity for himself and safe passage home for his troops. Unfortunately, the telling robs the vignettes of weight; forced pacing and overwritten descriptions (and the strange, insufficiently justified decision to refer to the women but not the men by their first names) hearken to heroic war tales of four or five decades past: "How fine the colonel looked. His tight-fitting jacket had a silver eagle denoting his rank. The eagle shone brightly against the setting sun"; "The sun, hidden all day, flooded the area with light. Brooks's heart beat quicker. Please let this unexpected clearing be a hopeful sign that the darkness of the past four years is passing, he prayed." Readers seeking personal accounts from the Civil War can draw instead from a wide array of selections ranging from the fictionalized family history of Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say (BCCB 9/94) to Beller's Confederate Ladies of Richmond (BCCB 1/00) or Chang's A Separate Battle: Women and the Civil War (BCCB 2/92).