1861

I’m reading 1861, by Adam Goodheart. It is an illuminating and affecting scholarly popular history of the first year of the war. The chapter on Ellsworth is particularly fine.

The author has a good eye for the telling detail, many of which I have not come across anywhere else in my reading. For instance, he recounts the story of the slaves who at the outbreak of the war escaped to Ft. Monroe. A local Confederate dignitary came to ask for them back and General Butler laughed him off with the observation that under the South’s theories that it was now a separate nation and slaves were property, why then, the slaves were contraband of war. The author then notes a passage from the diary of General Butler’s secretary:

Solvuntur risu tabulae [Fixed decrees dissolve in laughter]. An epigram abolished slavery in the United States.

Yes, by most measures the book is a fine one. But one passage has called into question everything else. The author quotes from Lincoln and then precedes to give the quotation an interpretation that it cannot bear. This is Lincoln’s statement:

For my own part, I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

There may be one consideration used in stay of such a final judgment, but that is not for us to advance. That is, that there exists in our case, an instance of a vast and far reaching disturbing element, which the history of no other free nation will probably ever present. That however is not for us to say at the present. Taking the government as we found it we will see if the majority can preserve it.

Never mind that the author thinks that the first three sentences are “lambent.” His real error is his opinion that the second paragraph, and especially the first phrase, is a veiled but “unmistakable” reference to emancipation. It is nothing of the kind. As any reader can see, Lincoln is modifying his fear that the failure of the Union would be a negative judgment on democracy with the observation that slavery is a distorting element that would distort the outcomes of the test.

The author’s view that this passage “unmistakably” means what it unmistakably does not drags the rest of the work down. What facts does he tell me are fiction, and what fictions does he present as fact?

Then, a few pages later, I read a subtle and searching analysis of Lincoln’s 1861 4th of July address to Congress.

Homer nods, I guess.

The only other flaw is that occasionally the author forgets that events are their own significance and strains just a little to fit them into a political or ideological narrative. He has his prejudices, though they are mostly implied.