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book reviews347 Readers well acquainted with this story may wonder what is new in this account, while Americanists in a hurry to explain the Civil War may wonder what is relevant in all this posturing among nations. Gradually, however, there emerges from Jones's telling of the tale a picture of Americans inexplicably determined to destroy one another while the great powers of the day found themselves surprisingly powerless to act. The Americans seemed motivated by abstract fidelities quite out of proportion to their rational interests. Had Britain or the concerted powers of Europe tried to impose a settlement, what would it be? Who would enforce it? And how long would any settlement hold? Jones builds relatively little on this central insight (228), but one can extrapolate some of the early signs of the limits of power that confronted modern states once their people became mobilized either in making war or shaping national political identity. John Lauritz Larson Purdue University The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Hölzer. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Pp. xvii, 384. $27.59.) Here, for the first time under one cover, is the "unexpurgated" text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates—unexpurgated in the sense that the speeches of the protagonists were drawn from the opposition press. While the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune polished what Lincoln said, it printed Douglas's speeches in the form taken down by the stenographer on the scene; and the pro-Douglas Chicago Daily Times reversed the process. Earlier editions, forty in all, contained the speeches of both as bowdlerized or sanitized by friendly party editors . The first one, in i860, was based on the scrapbook of the debates Lincoln himself had put together, albeit with a few additional changes in his speeches and without Douglas's permission to print. The editorial strategy of the present volume is simple and straightforward. The Tribune's account of Douglas's speeches is combined with the Time's version of Lincoln's speeches. Punctuation errors and misspelled proper names are cleared up and other obvious errors duly "sicced"; but the fragments of thoughts and tortured syntax in many of the sentences remain as reported. Other editorial touches, bracketed in the text rather than placed in notes, are calculated to capture "the spontaneous magic" (10) ofthe debates, otherwise suffocated by the partisan editors. First names are dubbed in; the crowd response from the friendly version is given; notable discrepancies between the two versions are pointed out; and less-well-known persons and events are identified for the benefit of the general reader. The editor believes that the resulting text brings the reader much closer to "the true voice of these remarkable leaders" (xiv) as voters heard them in the rollicking and partisan atmosphere of 1858. 348CIVIL WAR HISTORY The general reader will welcome the editor's long introduction to the text and shorter ones for each of the seven debates. The questions raised and conclusions offered will, at the same time, give scholars much to ponder. In some ways Douglas "won" the debates: he was better than Lincoln at impromptu address, crowd-pleasing bombast, and natural fluency with language; and, of course, he did gain reelection to the Senate. The advantage lay with Lincoln in other regards. His wit and humor, logical reasoning, and powers of moral suasion came through well in the debates. Other Republicans running at the time did somewhat better in the counties that hosted the debates. And precisely because Lincoln was less effective at extemporaneous speaking, he stood to benefit more than Douglas from the polished version. It surely had considerable impact on his quest for the presidency in i860 and on his more ultimate goal of shaping public sentiment aright on the slavery issue. In retrospect it is remarkable that no one had thought of an unexpurgated text of the debates before. Harold Hölzer and his publisher are to be commended for the effort. Other scholars can now begin to give their assessment of its value. Major L. Wilson Memphis State University Farmcarts to Fords: A History of the Military Ambulance, 1700-1915. By John S. Haller, Jr...

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