Abraham Lincoln Versus Jefferson Davis (review)

208CIVILWAR history Lincoln's religious beliefs, which certainly had nothing to do with the case. Equally superfluous are those devoted to whether Booth escaped and died much later a suicide at Enid, Oklahoma. The story is trite, makes for an anticlimax , and causes the volume to end on a flat note. The illustrations of the book are nothing to brag about. The pertinency of some is debatable, such as a sample of Herold's handwriting and the "Jörgen letter," while others smack of sensationalism. The author seems to have scraped the bottom of the picture barrel, and took what he could find, without proper discrimination. A smaller number, judiciously selected, would have been more effective. All in all, it cannot be said that Roscoe's work has greatly enlarged our existing knowledge of Lincoln's death. Much of it is repetitious, and his own researches were not numerous enough, nor were they directed at vital spots. Whether Susan's name was Mahoney orJackson is less important than whether Stanton, at whom the author points an accusing finger, was in contact with the conspirators, and if so, how this contact was established. Whether Andrew Jackson was drugged on March 4, 1865, or whether Booth double-crossed his helpers, is less interesting than whether the Vice-President was involved in the murder plot. That Booth and his band tried to waylay Lincoln on his way to a theatrical performance is well known, but Roscoe offers no opinion as to the identity of the man who occupied the carriage. Nevertheless, even though he did not come up with many new or important discoveries, he did better in this respect than other historians who have dealt with this subject during the past twenty years, very few of whom have come up with any worthwhile new material or theory at all. And so, even after adding Roscoe's book to the existing literature on the subject, Lincoln's assassination still remains, in many of its aspects, an unsolved mystery. Otto Eisenschiml Chicago, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln Versus Jefferson Davis. By Irving Werstein. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1959. Pp. xii, 272. $5.00.) the title of this book is a misnomer. One is led to expect a study of Lincoln and Davis as practitioners of political warfare. What an exciting story could have been told of the political warfare between these two leaders! One thinks of their struggles to maintain the morale and even the loyalty of the peoples of the North and South. One recalls Lincoln's attempts to break the Confederate holdupon the people of the South and Davis' efforts to create war-weariness in the North. Then, there was the political contest for the Border States and the struggle to influence European attitudes. The story could have been filled with such notable examples of political warfare as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Southern response, Ben Buder's Woman Order and its use as an atrocity story by Davis and Southern propagandists, and even Lincoln 's early political victory in the Fort Sumter incident. Book Reviews209 Instead of a study in political warfare, the author has attempted to show how the Civil War affected Lincoln and Davis and their capitals, Washington and Richmond. Lincoln and Davis never come to grips as antagonists. What emerges is a familiar picture, drawn largely from secondary sources and done in an impressionistic style that accents the purple patches. It should hardly be a matter for surprise that both capitals were crowded in wartime and that among the crowds could be found office-seekers, lobbyists, and contractors. Readers may be titillated to learn that gambling houses and scarlet women existed in the wartime capitals, but the importance of vice is easily overdone. As far as the combatants were concerned, vice was important only to the extent that it acted as an anodyne to jangled nerves, diverted resources, or added to themedicalproblems oftheservices. One may doubt that "mountains" of luxury goods were brought into the Confederacy through the blockade. Quantities of goods of that proportion would no longer remain in the category of luxury goods. That the South could only import luxury goods would indicate the efficacy of...