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Book Reviews121 the "slightest exhibition" of temper on Meade's part. His old man's ego leads him to embarrassing exaggeration at times. None of it seems to be conscious distortion or suppression of the truth. Perhaps the basic trouble is best indicated by a single sentence in which he is discussing Meade in the days just before Appomattox — a period which he first refers to accurately as April, and then twice, within a few words, as May. Mr. Thomas has done a conscientious job of editing; he patiently fields errors by the hundreds, corrects them in brackets or in footnotes. He has cut an enormous amount, he informs us, including word-for-word repetitions. He stitches together transitions and rearranges material to make its order more rational. However, the fact remains that these are the recollections of a lonely old man thirty years after the event. It is regrettable that they were not written some two or three decades earlier. William E. Porter Iowa City, Iowa Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and the Civil War in Kentucky. By William H. Townsend. (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. 1955. Pp. xiv, 392. $6.50.) no product of william H. townsend's pen can ever be regarded as just another book by just another author, for here is a wonderfully humorous Kentucky gentleman, the Sage of Salt River, noted wide and far across America for choice yarns, rare repartee, and all the mellow merriment of an old-school raconteur. Here is the weaver of the memorable story of Cassius Marcellus Clay and the posse comitatus, whom the Chicago Civil War Round Table acclaimed with an unprecedented ovation. Here is "Bill" Townsend, wise and witty as ever and enviably at ease as he writes of his beloved Bluegrass. As you turn the pages (and you will delight in them all), you can picture him sitting in Squire J. Winston Coleman's library or in his own Helm Place or in the Lincoln room at L.M.U. — holding forth to the delighted participants in the feast of reason and the flow of soul. In all candor, it is difficult indeed to be objective about this book. The only people not likely to enjoy it are those who cannot read, or who detest nonfiction , or are allergic to Lincoln and the Civil War. Lincoln and the Bluegrass is an outgrowth of Mr. Townsend's earlier volume, Lincoln and His Wife's Home Town, a work long since out of print and hard to obtain even at skyscraper prices. The new book, moreover, is better than the old, both in content and in physical appearance. Facts and documents previously unused were found in the Robert Todd Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. The author also turned to the Civil War diary of a Kentucky minister, the Reverend William M. Pratt; letters of Private Henry Clay Heisler, describing the Lexington of 1863; Colonel William L. Udey's report to Alexander W. Randall concerning Judge George Robertson ("Old Buster") and the missing slave; and General Braxton Bragg's 1862 Lexington order with regard to the use of Confederate money. Other additions to Mr. Townsend's interpretation include the story of little Alec Todd and the slave girl Celia; Judge George B. Kinkead's Lincoln reminiscences; William H. Seward's colorful letters during his Blue- 122CIVIL WAR HISTORY grass excursion; the visit of Emilie Todd ("Little Sister") to the Lincoln household in niinois; Thomas H. Clay's interview with Lincoln in the White House; and John M. Clay's letter to the sixteenth President presenting the late Henry Clay's snuffbox. It was to be expected that Lincoln and the Bluegrass would be especially revealing in material about the Breckinridge, Clay, and Todd famines, and readers will not be disappointed therein. Mr. Townsend's graphic anecdotes delve deep into the troubled seas of human motivation and action. Young Charles Wickliffe's death in the Trotter-Wickliffe duel is faithfully recounted, as is the purchase for $800 of the Pleasant Green Baptist Church's slave pastor by the congregation of Lexington's First Baptist Church. George D. Prentice's Lincoln correspondence and his attitude toward Lincoln's...

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