For the Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS69 the southern universities, this volume brings together a convenient coUection of contemporary writings about the Civil War by seventeen prominent literary figures. Much of the material was not intended for publication in book form and has either been long out of print or is buried in dusty periodical files. More than half the authors were connected in some way with New England, and aU but four of them were civilians, the four soldiers being equaUy divided between North and South. In general the book foUows a chronological sequence, and included among its themes are characterizations of important public figures and descriptions of prisoners of war, army hospitals, Negro soldiers, and copperheadism. Of particular interest to this reviewer were Mark Twain's hüariously-funny account of soldiering (his own) in Missouri in the early days of the war, the vivid portrayals of hospital life by Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott, and Ambrose Bierce's realistic reporting of heroism and suffering in combat. The Conflict of Convictions is likely to arouse greater popular than scholarly interest, however. In places the organization lacks continuity, and the editing leaves something to be desired. AU too frequently the editor's notes faü to make clear when a particular passage was written, to whom a particular letter was addressed , and in some instances where an item was first published. The casual reader would have no way of knowing that the Dr. Letterman mentioned on page 103 was medical director of the Army of the Potomac. Also there are occasional inaccuracies in both text and editorial comment. The writers represented in this coUection seem to have regarded war as an ennobling influence. Lowell told readers of the Athntic Monthly that "war has no evil comparable in its effect on national character to that of a craven submission to manifest wrong," (7) and Hawthorne concluded, perhaps on the basis of rather limited observation, that "the atmosphere of the camp and the smoke of the battlefield are moraUy invigorating." (81) There are flashes of prophetic insight in this anthology of literary expression, but it is difficult to believe that the range of topics and the attitudes depicted here were markedly different from those that might have emerged from some other group of literate Americans during those years. J. Cutler Andrews Chatham CoUege For the Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil War. Edited by Kenneth W. Wheeler. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968. Pp. viii, 497. $10.00.) Civü War Ohio was a state of many minds: a land of rich cultural diversity, warring political factions, and wide political extremes; the third most populous state in the nation—a microcosm of the entire North. So says Jeannette P. Nichols in a deftly written and penetrating essay on John Sherman, one of ten more or less prominent Ohioans treated in this volume of post Centennial essays, which besides politicians includes studies of a politician-general, two newsmen, a manufacturer, a clergyman , and two humorists. Mrs. Nichols's John Sherman, though possessed of a cold, stand-offish exterior, learned to practice the politics of survival as effectively as any. None of his Ohio coUeagues, either in Congress or in the Cabinet, was so successful in managing the intense and conflicting pressures arising from wartime Ohio. And none so richly merited, as Mrs. Nichols maintains, the statesman's epaulets for his pivotal role in putting through much-needed wartime financial legislation. The two other politicians considered here, Ben Wade by Mary Land and C. L. VaUandigham by Frank Klement, were representative of two dominant and warring culture groups in Ohio: the rural Yankee transplant of the North with his moral enthusiasms, and the Negrophobic border state emigrant of the South. Mrs. Land 70CIVIL WAR HISTORY gives us the "Bluff Ben" of hoary legend, but there is too much, for my taste, of his well-known jousts with Lincoln and McClellan, to say nothing of other figures, and too little of Wade. (Strangely, there is no reference to the biography of Wade by Hans Trefousse published five years ago.) Was Vallandigham the personification of the Old Northwest copperhead? Many have thought so. But Frank Klement informs us that he was...