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BOOK REVIEWS Disrupted Decades: The Civil War and Reconstruction. By Robert H. Jones. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. Pp. xiv, 543. $15.00.) The War That Never Ended: The American Civil War. By Robert Cruden (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973. Pp. x, 208. $8.95 cloth; $3.95 paper.) The American War and Peace, 1860-1877. By Emory M. Thomas (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973. Pp. xiv, 241. $8.95 cloth; $3.95 paper. ) All of these studies deal generally with the same topics: the causes of the Civil War, the war itself and Reconstruction. They differ primarily in the amount of detail, in emphasis, and in style. Disrupted Decades is a detailed treatment of these happenings. It attempts as nearly as possible within its limits of space to tell everything about the subjects under discussion. There are informative chapters on slavery, the society and economy of both North and South before the war, sectional politics, secession, all aspects of the struggle, of Reconstruction, and of postwar politics and diplomacy through the Grant administrations. On the whole this is done in workmanlike fashion and clear exposition, though the book suffers a certain weakness of style and diffusion of theme as a result of giving such a myriad of details. It is textbookish in the extreme. Perhaps the author's most marked departure from conventional interpretation is his emphasis on the "temporary" or "expedient" nature of Lincoln's plans for Reconstruction. Whereas Kenneth Stampp suggested that Lincoln at the end may have "been wavering slightly" in his opposition to the Radicals (The Era of Reconstruction, p. 41), Jones strongly believes that Lincoln would have avoided Johnson's later difficulties by joining the Radicals. He supports this conclusion in part by quoting a Lincoln letter of questionable authenticity to General Wadsworth in which Lincoln allegedly wrote that universal amnesty for Southern whites probably would have to be accompanied by universal suffrage for Southern blacks (p. 40). Possibly the effort to tell so much is the cause of a regrettable number of errors. Examples: Contrary to what the text says, murder of a slave in the Old South was a punishable crime (p. 32); the farmers of the Old South did represent a majority of the population (p. 47); the widow of Dred Scott's first owner did not marry John F. A. Sanford, 157 158CIVIL WAR HISTORY who was her brother (p. 121); General Longstreet was not in the West during the battle of Chancellorsville (p. 281); Jefferson Davis was aware that a demand for Confederate independence at the Hampton Roads conference was an impossible condition for an armistice (p. 291); reinforcements from Arkansas did not reach General Albert Sidney Johnston at Corinth, Mississippi (p. 295). The War That Never Ended is an abbreviated discourse on the topics under examination. It gives very little on the military campaigns, but concentrates instead on details of civil administration, raising and organizing the armies, soldier life, and the wartime roles of blacks, the poor, and the businessmen. The author attributes Union victory in large part to Lincoln's ability to overcome Northern localism and opposition to his "revolutionary" measures for prosecuting the war, while Davis was unable to control similar but stronger forces in the South. Lincoln was warm, affable, and flexible, capable of appealing to constituents in simple, human terms. For example, he said in a public letter that he could no more believe wartime curbs on civil liberties would become permanent than that "a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life" (p. 108). In contrast, Davis was "cold and austere" in his public relations, and legalistic in his solutions to the problems of the Southern people. For example, he vetoed a bill providing widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers with the pay and allowances due the dead soldiers themselves. In the absence of a Confederate statute against such a practice, Davis went so far as to cite a United States law in effect at the time the men enlisted (p. 90). Here and there one might raise a question on...

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