Battle Chronicles of the Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS243 With a villainous band of more than four hundred Missourians, Quantrill arrived at Lawrence, sixty miles into Kansas, at dawn and swiftly and skillfully deployed his men through the hapless, sleeping city. For nearly half a day the marauders terrorized the city—robbing, shooting indiscriminately, burning, destroying, killing. Goodrich is at his best here, detailing often person-by-person the atrocities suffered by Lawrentians . What emerges in these pages is the savagery in human nature and the valor of the women who often withstood the invaders' threats. The cold killers often spared the women, but were unsparing of the Germans, linked with antislavery. Goodrich's vivid descriptions of pointless death and willful destruction, attempted escape, female heroism, point-blank assassinations, and roasted corpses provide the grisly drama of today's TV and movies. Before noon, the raiders, heavy with loot, departed the wasted city, leaving 150 dead, homes in cinders, stores pillaged, survivors in trauma. As early as 12:30 a.m., Federal forces in Kansas City had learned that a large number of men had passed through Olathe, Kansas. A full-scale mobilization did not take place until after eight a.m. The chase led by Gen. Thomas Ewing, Jr., foster brother of William T. Sherman, failed to prevent the raiders from returning to Missouri by the route they had used to enter Kansas. Ewing desperately sought to end border warfare with his notorious Order No. U, clearing a cluster of Missouri border counties of citizens, food, and forage. Kansans threatened retaliation, and Lawrence began to rebuild. The Civil War dragged to an end, and in June the destroyer of Lawrence died in Kentucky. Bloody Dawn is thrilling history told with verve, drama, and a sense of people and place. Goodrich has carefully grounded his work in the sources and provided a fine bibliography and ample illustrations, though the maps are imperfectly reproduced. The book is essentially narrative, and it is perhaps beside the point to say it lacks the sophistication of Phillip Paludan's Victims or Michael Fellman's Inside War. Readers may enjoy and learn from the lively account, and television producers may make Goodrich rich. James A. Rawley University of Nebraska-Lincoln Battle Chronicles of the Civil War. 6 vols. Edited by James M. McPherson. (New York: Macmillan, 1989. $299.00.) This collection's title accurately describes its content. While it contains some background material, the focus of the set is on military matters. Even in that context there are only a few gestures toward dealing with conflict on the rivers and sea; neither is there much attention to such 244CIVIL WAR HISTORY military-related matters as transportation, supply, hospitals, and prisons. The main stress is on conventional land warfare. The book is aimed at a wide audience including students at all levels, teachers, and general readers. "Much of the material herein is drawn from the archives of Civil War Times Illustrated" (1:7). From this circumstance derives the book's strengths as well as its relatively few weaknesses. As might be expected by readers of that magazine, the volumes are richly illustrated and contain many new and helpful maps as well as a number of old warhorses reprinted from earlier works. The essays included contain many human interest quotations and excerpts from contemporary documents. The bulk of the book consists of chronologically arranged articles on campaigns and battles which because of their differing authorship sometimes contain repetitions. Among the writers are many of the better-known Civil War historians of the recent past and present. This vast array of essays is held together by an introduction, transitional essays, and a conclusion written by James M. McPherson, expressing the ideas which made so memorable his Battle Cry of Freedom. The first volume (on 1861) contains an essay by Albert Castel on the bombardment of Fort Sumter that concisely discusses both sides' motives in the steps that led to war, the conduct of the Confederate attack, and the role of Sumter throughout the conflict. V. C. Jones contributes a sound piece on First Manassas which is elucidated by a portfolio of eight splendid maps. This volume also covers the principal events in the TransMississippi theater...