In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

book reviews173 ate). The work concludes with the organizational structure of each army and a tablet index. By theirvery nature, the inscriptions makefor tedious reading; wading through three hundred-plus is as stimulating as watching paint dry. Students ofthe battle who seek tactical specifics (mainly to the brigade level), however, will find them here. The paucity of maps and the failure of existing ones to illustrate movements fully are more substantial drawbacks for a volume that claims to be a battlefield guide. More useful in that regard is the U.S. Army War College Guide to the Battle ofGettysburg, which features a variety of situational/topographical maps. Ultimately, the best solution might be to excerpt the fine maps from Edwin Coddington's Gettysburg Campaign and use them with the guidebook of choice. Besides the desire to commemorate Civil War armies and provide instructional sites for future soldiers, veterans who founded the first military parks were animated by a heroic and nonideological memory of the war that was characteristic of mainstream America at the turn of the twentieth century. Remembrance then focused on the war itself rather than its political or racial issues , which were potentiaUy subversive ofcontemporary reunionism. Battlefield preservation of the 1890s thus emphasized tactical reconstruction of the stories of great battles rather than recalling the reasons for the conflict. Large's Battle of Gettysburg, which documents that tactical reconstruction, reveals as much about American society of a century ago as it does about a pivotal contest of July 1863. Mary Munsell Abroe Loyola University, Chicago A Reporter's Lincoln. By Walter B. Stevens. Edited by Michael Burlingame. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Pp. xxiii, 305. $24.95.) The LinesAre Drawn: Political Cartoons ofthe Civil War. Edited by Kristen M. Smith. Forward by Emory M. Thomas. (Athens: Hill Street Press, 1999. Pp. xx, 155. $18.50.) Walter Stevens originally presented most of the reminiscences of surviving friends, relatives, and acquaintances ofAbraham Lincoln that are gathered in A Reporter's Lincoln in the pages ofSt. Louis Globe-Democrat between 1886 and 1909. Stevens, a career reporter, later compiled many of those articles and published them as the first edition of A Reporter's Lincoln in 1916. This rare volume contained only about halfofthe material that eventuaUy made it into Michael Burlingame's fine revised collection. This compilation contains the best of the first edition, as well as many interviews and other sources printed in newspapers over the years but not included in the 1916 edition. Together they present a wealth of memories of Lincoln, especially Lincoln before the White House, that have all the strengths and weakneses of such sources. 174CIVIL WAR HISTORY As Burlingame points out, the memories ofmen and women can be shaky or creative, especially when one is speaking of an individual who has become famous. Many informants claim to have said (or heard someone say) that they "knew" Lincoln would become president, even when he was in his twenties and casting aboutforaprofession. Others, Uke IraHaworth, insist that Lincoln played a crucial role in creating the Illinois, or even the national, Republican parties. Stevens himself seems to have had quite a bee in his bonnet on that topic, as it appears repeatedly throughout the book (26, 123). And the genesis of some of the "reminiscences" themselves is suspect: as Burlingame points out, one or two were Ufted directly from the autobiographies of minor and major public figures. Still, despite the weaknesses inherent in all such sources, and in this particular one, these accounts help to reveal both the individual, Abraham Lincoln , and the world from which he sprang. They make clear, for instance, the ways in which Lincoln's deep humor and thoughtfulness made him a far greater communicator than any later purveyor of platitudes. Lincoln said things in a way that his people understood. He also told them what their own types of truth impUed, even if they did not want to hear it. Kristen Smith's work in compiling The LinesAre Drawn, her coUection ofCivil War-erapoUtical cartoons, isequally welcomeand necessary. Historians frequently have a great deal of difficulty in dealing with visual sources; all too often we elect to leave them untapped and...

pdf

Share