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BOOK REVIEWS215 Students interested in political and military history, biography, and Ohio history will enjoy the volume. They will look forward to the Garfield diaries that the editor and an associate are preparing for publication. Harold B. Hancock Otterbein College The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryhnd, 1862-1864. By Charles Lewis Wagandt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964. Pp. xii, 299. $6.50.) In this well-written history of Civil War politics in Maryland, Charles L. Wagandt has provided a dramatic study in microcosm, which reflects and helps to iUuminate the complexities involved in interpreting the larger national picture. Like other border states, Maryland was "sectionalized." Her northern and western counties (including the city of Baltimore), were largely nonslaveholding areas: a region characterized by a heterogeneous population and "growing towns, bustling industry, and vigorous commerce that strongly contrasted with the static life" of the slaveholding southern and eastern shore counties which dominated the political and economic life of the state. Thus, the Civil War provided free-state advocates in Maryland with a long awaited opportunity to press for the abolition of slavery and to rid the state of an outmoded political, social, and economic order. Maryland's position as a slave state that remained in the Union was anomalous, however, and the justification for emancipating her slaves could not stem from the idea of military necessity. It had to be accomplished by "democratic" processes. The word "democratic" is used advisedly, as Mr. Wagandt clearly shows that emancipation was hardly a result of disinterested benevolence on the part of her slaveholders and non-slaveholding conservatives. In laying the groundwork for constitutional reform, and ultimately a popular referendum on emancipation, Maryland's "Radicals," led by Henry Winter Davis, were aided and abetted by national authorities —especially the policy of liberating slaves by conscripting them into the Union army (which was pursued vigorously by General William Birney , son of the famous abolitionist, James Gillespie Birney), as well as pressures applied at the polls against slaveholders and non-slaveholding conservatives by Union commanders (especially General Robert C Schenk) who often exceeded their authority and instructions. Lincoln was at times "unaware" of these "excesses"; rarely did he intervene directly—only on occasions when it was politically expedient or wise to do so. Thus Lincoln emerges from this study in the role of idealist as opportunist (or pragmatist ). As the war progressed, it became quite clear, of course, that the most that loyal slaveholders could hope for was compensated emancipation, which they refused until it was too late to salvage even that. But this was by no means clear in 1861 or even in 1863. Mr. Wagandt's performance 216civil war history is impressive, in most instances, in analyzing the realities and perplexities facing the Lincoln administration and the free-state faction in Maryland during those crucial years before the fate of the Union and slavery were irrevocably decided. Especially vivid is Wagandt's picture of slavery in Maryland—a picture in which he portrays slave, master, and non-slaveholding conservative as victim. He paints an almost FauDmerian portrait of violence, decay, and irrational fear which dehumanized white as well as black. Possibly this explains why Wagandt is able to view the opposition of conservative unionists to emancipation with calm detachment and a higher degree of objectivity than most previous writers have been able to attain. Make no mistake, Wagandt's sympathies Ue with the Radicals; but he does not disort the position of conservatives by portraying them as "traitors," "Southern sympathizers," or "quasi-secessionists." Rather he views them as victims and captives of a dying social order who were unable to break through the walls created by fear, prejudice, and a myth of "magnolia and moon mist" that never was. Quite clearly, the editors of the Johns Hopkins Press have not exaggerated by saying that the "author's account is certain to gain acceptance among the general history of the United States"—not only for its scholarly contents, one might add, but for its lively style, which at times should create a twinkle even in the eye of Alfred A. Knopf. Richard O. Curry University of Connecticut Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. By...

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