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A Bit of Gold Tumbles from Between the Covers

Introduced by Daniel Mallock

Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body is one of the finest books of prose poetry in American literature. It well-deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1929. It has always had a special place in the hearts of most Civil War students, and those who appreciate the Blue and Gray. Benet died young, but was prolific and busy publishing often.

Long considered one of the finest biographies in Civil War literature, Douglas Southall Freeman’s R.E. Lee is still considered the finest biography of Lee, one of our greatest Americans. I was unaware that Benet and Freeman and their work ever overlapped but it is right and good that they did.

I had the great fortune recently to purchase a 1st edition set of R.E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman. I’ve always wanted to read this biography, but never blocked out the time much to my ongoing frustration. Now, that frustration can end. The set has some water damage on the covers, so it has little value to collectors but its value to me is enormous. Freeman won the Pulitzer prize for biography for this monumental work in 1935. Many years ago, I read Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants. R.E. Lee was always beckoning me.

As I examined my newly acquired set I was amazed to see that the seller had included a special gift for me. This gift I will soon pass along to you.

Out from in between the front covers of the first volume fell the original newspaper clipping, neatly folded of Stephen Vincent Benet’s review of the first two volumes of Freeman’s R.E. Lee. This review appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, Book Section, Sunday, October 14, 1934, the year that the first two volumes were published. My delight at reading this previously unknown, to me, review by Benet was obvious from my smiles and “wows” as I read the fragile paper. What a great thing for the fellow who sold me this set to do! My surprise at finding an important review I never knew existed was matched in large part by the appreciation I felt for the kind person who left it there in Volume 1 for me to find. I’ve since done a search on the internet for this review and have not been able to find it anywhere. I suspect that it is not posted on the internet at all. But it is now.

Benet is not shy about heaping praise on Freeman for this biography of Lee. Rarely, a review will surpass the utilitarian and step into the realm of art - as Benet’s does. Clearly, Benet was very happy to read this excellent biography it’s quite obvious. Benet says, that in this biography, “Lee is all there”, and that certainly is high praise for any biographer. Freeman’s Lee set the standard for Lee scholarship and has to my knowledge not yet been surpassed.

Benet writes that Washington and Lee are the two greatest Americans. He respects Lincoln and Grant, and many others but Lee and Washington are clearly, for Benet, in a pantheon all their own. After reading Freeman’s Lee, the first two volumes, at that point, Benet makes a plea that Freeman must now write a biography of Washington to match the Lee study. Bowing to Benet, in a sense, Freeman did just that.

Freeman would win his second Pulitzer for biography (posthumously, in 1958) for his 7-volume biography of George Washington.

I transcribed this myself. If you find any errors, or bad syntax please blame me and not Mr. Benet. I do not believe that this review is currently available online, and I post it as a service to everyone who loves literature, and Lee, and the great heroes of our Civil War on both sides. This is a beautiful review of a fantastic biography. I know you will enjoy this as much as I have.

-Daniel Mallock

New York Herald Tribune, Book Section, Sunday, October 14, 1934

Robert E. Lee: a Great American Biography
The Whole Man–Boyhood, West Point, Mexico, and the Civil War

R.E. Lee

By Douglas Southall Freeman…Illustrated.. Vol. I., 647 pp; vol. II, 621 pp… New York Charles Scribner’s Sons… 2 vols., $7.50Reviewed by Stephen Vincent Benet

It may seem odd, at first, that we should have had to wait so long for a life of Lee like this one, but, when one thinks it over, it is not so odd after all. Certain great men attract biography from the first, others, equally famous, for years attract only biographers. Learned biographers, enthusiastic or caustic biographers, but biographers who do not get to the roots of the man. Nor is it merely a question of luck or celebrity – though luck enters into the matter. Certain names, certain stories are always explosive material. It is easy enough to write a bad life of Napoleon but it is extremely hard to write a thoroughly and conscientiously dull one – though Sir Walter Scott, of all people, worked notably hard at it. Conspicuous rascality in the subject is not enough; there have been tiresome rascals. Virtue is not enough– there can be no question as to which was the more admirable human being in almost every ordinary relation of life, Byron or Southey. Yet there will be biographies of Byron till the world runs out of ink, while biographies of Southey sleep soundly in great public libraries. Literary genious in the biographer is not, by itself, enough – as witness Charles Dickens and the “Life of Our Lord.”

For true biography is a very difficult art. And it is curious that, in our short history as a nation, two of our greatest figures – Washington and Lee – should have been such difficult subjects for true biography. We have almost every possible view of Washington, from Parson Weems to W. E. Woodward. We have views of his that show him as an impossible demigod and views of him that seem to concentrate almost entirely on his false teeth. And yet, in spite of much interesting work, we still have no life of Washington as full, as just, as sound, as comprehending, and yet as readable as many of us would like.

Mere reverence is not enough, for reverence, by itself, quickly turns men into marble statues a little over life—size. Nor is the Stracheyesque method–which produces brilliant results with the proper material–adapted to them. I remember one life of General Grant from which the chief psychological fact I garnered was that the general was deeply in love with his horse. That is interesting, if true, but it hardly explains the capture of Fort Donelson. And it is easy enough to paint George Washington as an ordinary Virginia planter of limited capacities–until you begin to explain why all the other Virginia planters did not turn into Washingtons.

Dr. Freeman, fortunately for us all, is a true biographer. He has a great subject to deal with–which is to his advantage–but the subject, as I have said, is not an easy one. The man’s life, and himself, are, in one sense, like a marble shaft; you may look in vain for the disfiguring–and interesting–cracks and crevices that spot the characters of many great men. A hero, born in obscurity, who fights his way up to greatness–there is an easy story for you! But Lee was born at Stratford, of the blood of “King” Carter and “Light Horse Harry” Lee. We like to read of the awkward, ugly duckling, the butt of his mates at school and college, who became their master in the end. But Lee was one of the handsomest men of his day, and at West Point he graduated second in his class. In childhood he had the weight of a great tradition behind him; in youth and manhood he fulfilled the full promise of that tradition. When Lincoln was a disappointed ex-Congressman, his political future, apparently, at a dead end, Lee was winning notable distinction in his chosen field. When Grant was still the failure of Galena, Lee was being sounded out as to the commander-ship-in-chief of the whole Union Army. No breath of romantic scandal ever touched his private life; he became the idol of a people and the symbol of a cause without ever losing his simplicity; even his religion, simple, natural and profound, has nothing of the Cromwellian tang of Jackson’s. It did not torment his soul, it gave his soul peace. A good man, a great man, one of our finest human beings. You are right. But a difficult man to depict and yet keep human, for the rest of us. Let us see what Dr. Freeman has done with his material.

In the first place, he shows us from the very first lines of his forward the thoroughness, the patience, the honesty and the true gift for research which are the rare marks of the real biographer.

He has winnowed, and winnowed away an enormous mass of legend. He has collected and set down for the first time in print a vast number of new, precise and salient facts. He has woven together a thousand strands of testimony from the words of forgotten reports to the words on the lips of old men remembering their great youth. In Dr. Freeman’s two volumes we get for the first time the complete, slow growth of a man. The unregarded years–the years of youth and early manhood, the years before the Mexican War and after it, are filled in with completeness and patience for the first time. We see not only Lee the star cadet or Lee the Mars’ Robert of the tales, but Lee at thirty-one on an Ohio River steamer enjoying little roast pigs and sausages but looking with a dubious eye on the crowding and squeezing at the table; Lee building a house of twigs for seven military hens at a desolate army outpost near the fork of the Brazos; Lee, the conscientious but somewhat baffled inheritor of a historic but land-poor estate, wondering how to keep it up on an Army colonel’s pay–a dozen Lees, younger and older, whom the well known stories leave out. We see Lee the military organizer; we even see Lee in a temper.

But thoroughness and patience are not enough. A scholar may be very thorough and very patient and yet remain a scholar read only by scholars. There must be proportion, balance, composition; most of all, vitality in the work itself. Dr. Freeman’s style is not a showy one, and he does not go in for the purple passages. But every one of the 1,200 pages is intensely readable from the first page to the last. He is readable when he describes the Battle of Chancellorsville; he is readable when he describes the education of a West Point cadet in the 1820s or the technical details of the building of an obscure fort by an Army engineer. He has a positive genius for quotation–it is always the live quotation, not the dead one, that appears in his pages–and always at the point where it simplifies, explains, elucidates, gives life and color to the whole. He never points out the obvious; he never grows windy or pedantic. When he gives you an opinion on a disputed point he gives you his reasons as well. “There they are,” he seems to say, “to the best of my judgment. My conclusion is this–you may draw another if you disagree with me. But here are the facts, as far as they can be known.”

If I had sufficient space, I should very much like to quote his brief sketch of Anne Carter Lee, Lee’s mother, on pages 87 seq. It consists of a short appraisal and the only two known surviving letters of Mrs. Lee. The appraisal is short enough. It tells what is known of Anne Carter Lee; it does not tell what is not known. And it is a model to biographers. There is no one fact and twenty barrels of conjecture. There is no “As she did this, she must have done that.” There is a human being there, faintly outlined, because the written evidence is slight; but the outlines, though faint, are definite. There is a real and living woman, not a fictional character or a reverential image. I, for one, never knew her before.

As it is with Anne Carter Lee, so it is with the whole of the story. Slowly, on the firmest of foundations, there builds up the full picture of the man. And it is not the story of Fortunatus–of a silver-spoon youth who marched easily from conquest to conquest. It is something, indeed, to have been born at Stratford, of the Lees and Carters–but to have to leave Stratford at three, because the sheriff’s men are in the house, the horses sold, the furniture attached–that is something, too. One’s father is a revolutionary hero–and that is a great tradition–but one’s father has been twice imprisoned for debt and is to die on the way home from a self-imposed exile. One’s half-brother, “Black Horse Harry” Lee’s career is to be wrecked by tragedy and scandal. A background of great traditions? Very true–but there are other colors in the background than gold.

All through the life, the threads in the web are mixed ones. When Lee married Mary Custis he married a delightful woman but a temperamental one–and a woman who was to become an invalid, needing and invalid’s care. And, when he married her, as Dr. Freeman points out, he married Arlington as well–Arlington with its name, its heavy responsibilities and the great shadow of Washington brooding over it. Dr. Freeman’s analysis of the influence of the Washington tradition on the character of Lee is subtle, convincing and profound. Throughout the book, indeed, his study of the gradual development of Lee’s character is masterly. It has the fascination of a detective story and the inevitability of the growth of a tree.

Certain traits were there from the first and they were fine ones. But the gay, brilliant, teasing Lee of the twenties, the Lee who wrote amusing mock love letters to pleasant girl acquaintances in the Southern tradition of beaudom, had become, at fifty-four, a very different man. Throughout those first fifty-four years there is always upon him–and we see it and feel it–a continuous pressure of responsibility, never slackening, slowly increasing; responsibility for his name, for Arlington, for his work, for his wife, and children, for the men under his command. Except for the Mexican War, it was not a dramatic responsibility, in the usual sense. But a weaker man would have broken under it, and a man [of] a nature less naturally sweet become crotchety, like many another army officer who turned to drink or lethargy to while away the tedium of dull courts martial in Godforsaken frontier posts.

I have stressed Dr. Freeman’s dealings with Lee’s early years because they are the essential foundation on which all true knowledge of Lee must be built. When Lee assumed command of the forces of Virginia he was fifty-four and the main lines of his character were formed. He grew after that, be he grew along those lines, not contrary to them. Where many biographers are content to show effects, Dr. Freeman shows us the causes of those effects–and he does it so well and so thoroughly that by the time we come to the Civil War we have a real knowledge of Lee, not a set of phrases about him, and a real ability to know what Lee may do in a given circumstance. Dr. Freeman shows also–and this is invaluable–on the military side, exactly what experience of war and the conduct of war Lee had had, the sort of strategy and tactics that were likely to appeal to him, both his practical knowledge and the bent of his mind. I have never seen this done so clearly and so well.

There were weaknesses as well as strengths in both Lee’s temperament and Lee’s training–Dr. Freeman shows them both unfalteringly. The first untrained Virginia volunteers were a very different from Scott’s Mexican army–and Lee made mistakes in the West Virginia campaign. Dr. Freeman shows us what the mistakes were and what Lee learned from them. A courteous amiability, in dealing with subordinates, was likely to develop, with an obstinate subordinate, into failure of execution at a critical moment–as it did with Longstreet at Gettysburg–Dr. Freeman shows us the cloud at its beginning, no bigger than a man’s hand. Indeed, for all Dr. Freeman’s practical delineation of the campaigns up to and through Chancellorsville (with which these two volumes end) I can only have the most unstinted praise. With their excellent, clear and numerous maps, they should prove invaluable to all students of military history. And to the average reader they are perfectly fascinating.

For Dr. Freeman, in describing them, has taken a novel point of view. The reader is always with Lee, at Confederate headquarters, in possession of such knowledge as Lee has but no more. In other words, the battles develop before us as battles do to a general who is fighting one, with all their momentary chances. Excellent schemes go astray because of unknown factors–the “fog of war” is over the field, not swept away by after–knowledge. And the battles and campaigns are real. Behind the charges and the yells there is always the constant, wearing question of food and shoes and horses, of men who come down with measles and men who cannot march on the hard roads of Maryland because their feet are sore. All this is a constant reminder of warfare, but it does not always get into the histories. It is continually present in Dr. Freeman’s. And we know not only Lee, by the time we have reached Chancellorsville–we know the Army of Northern Virginia as well.

In any account of the events in the Civil War, the historian or biographer must strike upon a number of moot points. Dr. Freeman, as Lee’s biographer, inclines, very naturally, to cast his vote for Lee, on most of these points. But he never does so without giving full reasons for his statements. His explanation of Jackson’s lethargy during the Seven Days is clear, well reasoned and convincing–and his account of the genesis of the turning–movement at Chancellorsville seems to me a little miracle of reconstruction. On the other hand, for the average reader, I think he might have stressed, even more than he does, Jackson’s personal brilliance in the Valley Campaign. It is one thing to tell a general you would like a certain enemy beaten, if possible, and quite another to have the general do it–as Lincoln, to his sorrow, very often found. Nor is it my opinion that the reader who is unversed in the Civil War will form an utterly correct estimate of the military abilities of Joe Johnston, from Dr. Freeman’s account of him in these two volumes. Johnston was an unlucky general, in many ways, but the most competent testimony, including that of great adversaries, pronounced him a master of craft.

These are small criticisms on a monumental work, but, while I am about it, I will make one or two more. Dr. Freeman deals with John Brown and Harper’s Ferry entirely from the viewpoint of Lee and he is perfectly justified in doing so. But John Brown was not exactly an ordinary disturber of the peace nor was the raid on Harper’s Ferry precisely a riot. And the actual confrontation of Robert E. Lee and John Brown happens to be one of the great dramatic coincidences of history. I think Dr. Freeman could have made more of this than he has done without sacrificing truth to false picturesqeuness. If Lee dismissed Brown as a mere madman–as the testimony would indicate–that, too, shows something about Lee and about the South.

Jackson, Stuart, Longstreet, Magruder, Hood are vividly portrayed, but one might wish for a little fuller physical description of the two Hills, Ewell, Alexander and some of the other Southern leaders. They appear in their words and actions–and admirably–but the readers of an Iliad like to know the faces and armor of all the chiefs. The same might be said of the Northern commanders opposed to Lee. It does not fall directly within Dr. Freeman’s province to describe them, except as they showed themselves in action–but a brief, well-placed footnote on each, showing what sort of man he was, would assist the casual reader. Another, and somewhat vaguer criticism, is this. The heart of the Northern resistance was a man named Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Freeman is writing a life of Lee, not a life of Lincoln. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Lincoln’s presence should somewhere, somehow be felt by the reader–not as the amateur strategist recalling troops for the safety of Washington but as the soul of the o’her Cause. However, there is room for all this, and more, in the next two volumes.

Dr. Freeman is kinder to Davis than some Southern historians have been, and, I think, juster. In his dealing with Northern “atrocities” (the term is not his) he seems to me, now and then, a trifle biased. War is a dirty game, no matter how played. I remember an old man, with passion and indignation in his voice, showing me the marks of Confederate shell on the walls of my mother’s town. And he was as right–and as partisan–as Dr. Freeman. There is little of this in the book, very little, but as it struck me, I mention it. On the larger issues, he states his own feelings admirably in his Foreword–and they are without illusion.

The present two volumes begin with Stratford and end just after Chancellorsville. There are two more to come. One can ask no more of them than they should equal the two already in print. For those two already comprise by far the best biography of Lee of which I have any knowledge. And when I speak of a biography, I do not mean merely a work for research students and Civil War enthusiasts. The whole man is here, as he lived–Stratford–West Point–Arlington–Mexico–the heights of Cerro Gordo and the swamps of the Chickahominy. He is here, in war and in peace. He is writing a letter to somewhat stilted, anxious advice to his children on how to be good boys–and, at Chancellorsville, his is hearing “that shrill, sustained cry like a thousand men calling the dogs to a fox hunt” that was the rebel yell. And behind him is a tradition, an army, a time and a people–all as it was and not otherwise. Dr. Freeman has worked nearly twenty years on these volumes. And for those years, we are all of us in his debt. For he has revivified for us, lastingly and surely, one of the largest figures of our national past. It is a superb achievement. I do not know how Pulitzer prizes are awarded but I should be in favor of giving at least ten of them to Dr. Freeman. And then, if I were dictator, I would have him chained to a desk and make him spend his next twenty years writing a life of Washington whether he wants to or not.

This Reviewer Suffered!

“This Republic of Suffering” by Drew Gilpin Faust

Reviewed by Daniel Mallock


Like the Civil War itself, there was certainly an air of inevitability about “This Republic of Suffering” by Drew Gilpin Faust. The almost universally shocking devastation and death wrought by the Civil War fundamentally changed the character of American society and how Americans (and former Rebels) understood their relationship with government and with one another. Dr. Faust has undertaken this ambitious project of documenting “death” in the Civil War. Interested readers and students of the War can applaud the attempt while mourning her myriad failures.

“This Republic of Suffering” was written by the current president of Harvard University. Debuting to overwhelmingly positive reviews, fawning encomiums in print, on the internet, and in broadcast media this book currently has garnered little criticism or critical analysis. As one of the few books on the subject of Civil War “death”, the author perhaps has overwhelmed her audience with the 50-odd pages of end-notes that might tend to lend credence to a better formulated argument. End notes of such length can be misleading. A flawed or erroneous proposition can have endless endnotes associated with it, but the fact of the original error is not altered. And that is the problem with “This Republic of Suffering”—founded upon a false premise this book is neither enjoyable to read nor correct in its central theory.

The cover photo of Confederate battle dead is a stark, disturbing image. It is disturbing, sad, and sharply simple. Dr. Faust has done the opposite in the text—transmogrifying an ugly simplicity to a much larger society-wide but completely false and essentially unnecessary academic concept that, she proclaims, is at the heart of Civil War death.

The foundation of her book (and reiterated in media appearances) is the author’s bizarre and completely convoluted and artificially constructed concept of the “Good Death”. She argues that the absence of this “Good Death” for men dying in battle caused so much additional (pain) for them and for those they left behind. She claims extensively that this concept is a conscious idea that participants of the War so desperately tried fulfill their Victorian-era ideas of what a “proper death” ought to be.

This “Good Death” trumpeted by Faust for several hundred pages is nothing more than the pre-war death and funeral rituals involving last words, and the comforting presence of friends and family around the dying person’s death bed. Warfare does not generally afford the continuance of such civilized traditions when so many men are so far from home dying in camp and battle. Faust is unrelenting in describing this concept even giving it a proper academic Latin name “ars moriendi” to lend it more credence. Faust writes that “the work of death was Civil War America’s most fundamental and most demanding undertaking”. Death, the result of combat and warfare in conjunction with suffering on the homefront, is not as she says “the most demanding undertaking”, the War itself – its sacrifices, privations, and sweeping changes that it brought - with death as one of its main and most appalling results is at the core.

Faust’s theory is wrong not because she has misidentified a serious issue, but rather because she has misunderstood universal human needs and warfare’s results with a particularly American causation or response. Every society since the beginning of civilization has had to deal with the horrors of war, with the absence of friends, brothers, sons and husbands, and their deaths far from home and loved ones. This desire to be with the dying, this need on the part of the soldier to be comforted to have his family near to him is as universal as any human concept. There is nothing in this concept of the “Good Death” other than an academic’s hubris and fundamental misunderstanding of universal human truths. Faust removes Civil War death from the human continuum and isolates it as an American event alone. But our Civil War wounded and dead experienced the very same devastating losses though on a much greater scale that societies have experienced for thousands of years.

“Soldiers and their families struggled in a variety of ways to mitigate such cruel realities, to construct a Good Death even amid chaos, to substitute for missing elements or compensate for unsatisfied expectations,” writes Faust. These are universal needs, not localized American concerns illustrative of anything about American society or culture. This confusion of the universal for the local is one of the main failures of this book. No one wants to die alone; no one wants to die without last words recorded, no one wants their burial places unrecorded and their families forever without knowledge of them. Extensive details of deaths and deathbed letter writing or recordings of last words or lack of same are just further fake proofs for Faust’s confusions.

Confusion and misunderstanding, lovingly footnoted, are at the heart of this highly disappointing and frustrating book. Rarely has a historian been so out-of-touch as to suggest as Faust does repeatedly that the soldier’s behavior is further evidence of their need/desire to “act out” some pre-ordained concept of what they should be doing or thinking as they die. One cannot be completely sure as to the motivations behind this research except to foist this false notion of the “Good Death” upon an interested but unsuspecting public hungry for history of moment. There is an agenda at work in the book quite separate from any affection for the subject that tends to override feeling at the expense of the dying. It’s almost unseemly.

Faust posits that without these “Good Death” concepts being enacted by the dying, understanding their “roles” in this “play” of working through the “Good Death”, the poor about-to-be deceased and his family would forever be frustrated and unhappy on account of it. Faust believes that Americans during the Civil War were required according to her concept of the “Good Death” to be around the bed-side, to hear the final words, to see a brave departure so that they could be assured that the dying fellow was worthy to get to heaven. Without this viewing of the death in a social setting, the poor dying fellow’s life would be without a satisfactory conclusion. “Kin would use their observations of the deathbed to evaluate the family’s chances for a reunion in heaven. A life was a narrative that could only be incomplete without this final chapter, without the life-ending last words.” For soldiers killed outright on the field of battle there could be no last words. However, this is overstatement and excess on Faust’s part, as such motivators—to get to heaven, to do their “Good Death” duties, were rarely part of the soldier’s life and such claims are not supported by the massive evidence of dying soldier’s last statements, last words, statements of surviving comrades etc., regardless of Faust’s 50 pages of endnotes.

“Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy!” “Tell my mother I died doing my duty!” Such statements are common. “Tell my mother I was a good soldier and sure ’nuff I can now get into heaven!” are far rarer. The soldiers of North and South, completely supported by their respective societies all fully engaged in the war effort were far more concerned with assuring family and friends of duty well done, bravery, the avoidance of cowardice, and the comfort that death had come swift and with little pain. These are universal communications from soldiers throughout history dying in battle. The universal truth of the loneliness of death far from home certainly trumps any academic’s concept of responsibility to some nebulous false tradition and “art” of dying.

“Americans thus sought to manage battlefield deaths in a way that mitigated separation from kin and offered a substitute for the traditional stylized deathbed performance.” This abysmal characterization of death as some kind of culturally pre-ordained requirement is both disturbing and confused. The exigencies of the battlefield could not possibly allow for “substitution” of a traditional death and its “performances”. Faust’s confusions about universal truths of soldiers, battles, sacrifice, and death is truly astounding especially in such a book written by the president of America’s supposed eminent institution of higher learning. “Soldiers, chaplains, military nurses, and doctors conspired to provide the dying man and his family with as many of the elements of the conventional Good Death as possible, struggling even in the chaos of war to make it possible for men—and their loved ones—to believe they had died well.” As before, the dying men of battlefields all died “well”, though some died better than others, certainly. There are no performances at death. This suggestion that the dying understood what they were “supposed to do” is a complete misunderstanding of how men fight wars, how and why they die, and the universal sorrow felt by those left behind. There certainly was an inevitability that a book on Civil War death should appear, but how unfortunate that it should be this one.

“These were condolence letters intended to offer the comfort implicit in the narratives of the ars moriendi that most contained. News of the Good Death constituted the ultimate solace—the consoling promise of life everlasting.” Faust is onto something here, but not at all what she supposes. The literature of the War, the letters, diaries, first hand accounts all tend to support a conclusion quite the opposite from Faust’s. Almost everything coming from the front, officially and from friends, as correspondence from or about those who are dying serve a very specific universal purpose of comforting those who love them.

Those involved in this savage war lived in a world of death and violence, sacrifice and loss. Faust includes quotes from participants, but misunderstands and mischaracterizes them so that they fit her empty theories. Union Colonel Luther Bradley writes, ” Of all the horrors the horrors of the battlefield are the worst and yet when you are in the midst of them they don’t appall one as is it would seem they ought. You are engrossed with the struggle…” Soldiers in the war are in a world of death, killing and being killed. Concerns typical of their previous civilian non-combat lives are rapidly overturned and subsumed. Death is part of the reality of soldiers in war. On the firing line or in a charge or receiving a charge or under an artillery bombardment one is as (likely) to get wounded or killed as another. In the midst of the struggle, as Colonel Bradley says, it’s all killing and all being killed—there is an acceptance of this truth by everyone involved.

Faust extensively quotes her sources. But it’s all for naught. There is only one quote that she prefaces with the honorific “perceptive”. This quote is a fairly pedestrian one by an academic about the frustration of those looking for news of the missing. “A professor at Gettysburg College who aided many civilians searching for kin after the battle there perceptively described ‘aching hearts in which the dread void of uncertainty still remained unsatisfied by positive knowledge.’” There seems nothing particularly “perceptive” in this comment (except) perhaps that it was made by an academic. Can this be more perceptive than Colonel Bradley’s comments above, or any of the hundreds that are quoted elsewhere in Faust’s book? No. This is a paean to a fellow academic long dead, and betrays a bias fundamental to the failure of this abysmal history.

Agenda-driven history can have unfortunate consequences. In describing the aftermath of Gettysburg, Faust falls, and falls hard. “By July 4, an estimated six million pounds of human and animal carcasses lay strewn across the field in the summer heat.” She kindly further provides the horrified reader with descriptions of the “stench” from the thousands of unburied bodies, and what the locals did to counteract it. I have personally read hundreds of books on this subject, and have never before read such a revolting and de-humanizing description of Civil War dead. Faust merits some compliment amidst the revulsion that this statement caused for me. It takes quite a bit for me to be revolted by anything in this subject area and, having no recollection of ever having had this response, even from reading first hand accounts of battles, horrible wounds and the mounds of dead at Franklin in particular, Faust has succeeded where so many others have failed. This disgusting characterization of our Civil War dead in pounds is simply vile.

Now that we have crossed the line to “war porn” which is exactly what this description of Faust’s is, what is to be done? How can we politely dismiss this obviously well-researched but utterly mistaken muddle? The Civil War was fought between two Christian countries having very similar societies, cultures, and understanding of God and man. The relationship between God and man is at the center of Faust’s concept of the “Good Death”. But like Christians today, believers then accepted their fate and placed no blame upon God. They continued to believe and understood their role in the God/Human dichotomy as one of endless mystery with sufficient answers never arriving. This is faith. “War weary Americans invoked the trials and patience of Job, reminded themselves that the Lord ‘doeth all things well,’ and dutifully and almost ritually affirmed, ‘Thou he slay me, yet I will trust in him.’” This understanding of the limitation of people to understand the will of God has long been the foundation of American religious life. Despite the hundreds of thousands of deaths and bloody high cost of the War, it continued—each side seeing God with them and the results in God’s hands. Faust kindly supplies instructive quotes and source material that undermine her thesis, and put the lie to her theories. Our American war dead ought not to be described as meat measured in “pounds”.

An essential truth of war is death. Even after the shock of Bull Run, the horror of Shiloh and the brutality of Gettysburg and beyond both sides did not flinch. Two societies engaged in warfare to the end - to the death- is the ugly simple truth of our Civil War and its horrific casualty rates.

There is no “Good Death”. Faust’s “Good Death” is the tradition of pre-war America, the tradition of stability and comprehensible deaths, funerals, sad partings, and profound last words. The War shattered these pre-War concepts and substituted military necessity in their place so that burial of war dead became exigent upon “practicalities” – the dead would be buried and identified if the course of battle allowed for it. As the armies moved, fought battles and moved on, the focus continued on only one thing and little else- winning battles and the War. A nation in civil war with both sides dedicated to total victory and nothing else had little time for the polite, staid death and dying traditions of the pre-war era. The course of the war alone would dictate funeral practice and set new traditions most formally the hallowed day “Memorial Day”.

Faust’s over-analysis is typical of current academic historiography. Building a book upon a false premise, filling the thing with page after page of endnotes does not a convincing argument make. President of Harvard or not, historians must submit their work to the vigorous review of others well-versed in the subject. Was that done in this case? Where were the editors who should have removed the “war porn”? Silent, and overwhelmed by the duty of editing the president of a prestigious institution? We shall never know, and the issue itself is of little moment. Faust’s work must stand on its own or fall.

Ambrose Bierce the great American writer, veteran of many Civil War battles, was shattered by his war experiences. Faust supplies his words but misconstrues their meaning and import. “‘Death was a thing to be hated.’ Bierce wrote…’It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side—a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions.’” Civil War death was ugly, disgusting and shocking just as war death in every war in every country for time immemorial has always been. The only “Good Death” was dying with one’s face to the enemy doing one’s duty, and perhaps more. This however is not Faust’s understanding of it. Bravery, courage, heroism—all of these things that presaged death added more prestige to the dying man and made him more the hero at home. Civil War death perhaps merits a book, but not this one. This unsatisfactory academic romp through, as Faust puts it so eloquently, “the warp and woof” of Civil War death is unfortunate at best. But, as death is one of the central themes of the War—at least in its literal aftermath for the participants—it was inevitable that such a book should be written.

The actualities of Civil War death would be unlikely to promote the production of an academic history such as this one though a false premise vigorously foot-noted could. The reliance on false premise, empty theories, and the proving of same is a fundamental flaw in the academic approach to history. But, could there be a book on this subject founded upon specious academic theory and mistaken readings of primary sources, produced by anyone less than the president of America’s foremost academic institution? Could such a book have passed a vigorous edit cycle and peer review? Had this book been produced by anyone less than the august personage who wrote it it would have likely been quickly forgotten and largely ignored.

Fundamentally, the concept of death for most Americans before, during, and after the Civil War was about life after death. This a foundational concept for any Christian-based religion. This has always been the case. Faust seems not to understand this. It is a surprising error in such a book that deconstructs religious and cultural traditions. The promise of Christianity to believers is that they will go to heaven and live an eternal life after death. This is the reward of Christianity. Faust states that death was a “cultural preoccupation” during the Civil War. “Redefined as eternal life”, she continues, “death was celebrated in mid-nineteenth century America.” No. Death in America for Christians had always been about eternal life. This is the fundamental promise of Christianity and has been for at least two thousand years. There was never a redefinition of it.

It is important to pay attention where attention is merited. A letter from Sergeant James Williams , Company A, Sixteenth South Carolina is illustrative of the truth, not oft shown by Faust. In a letter many years after the War he describes his comrades from the battle of Franklin and their understanding of what it “all” meant. “As has been said so many times in so many ways, man finally learns how to live, only when it is time to die… The earth would not soon see the like of these men again. . . it had been a time to walk with the giants.” Another story from the “Military Annals of Tennessee” is equally instructive, and perhaps more so.

The story of George Darden is not widely known, but illustrates the ugly truth of Civil War death . There is no “Good Death” certainly not in the Faustian sense. In a world of battle and war everyone is as likely to die as the next and all, for the most part, are prepared. Killing or killed—the world of the Civil War soldier is one of death—everyone is involved in it, everyone accepts the likely outcome, which is their own demise.

During the siege of Atlanta, in a charge near the location and on the same day that Union General McPherson was killed, late July, 1864, George Darden of Company G, 6th Tennessee was mortally wounded.

“He was a brave and eccentric man…His eccentricity and reckless nerve did not forsake him as he lay dying on that field of blood. Near him was a terribly wounded Federal, whose cries were heart-rending. The cries greatly disturbed Darden, who had composed himself to die, as he said, in peace. He appealed to the wounded Federal to keep quiet and die like a man. He said: ‘You disturb me very much. I am wounded unto death as well as you. An hour at most and both of us will have passed away, and for the sake of a common manhood let us die calmly and like men of courage.’ But the wails and groans of the desperately wounded Federal in nowise abated. Darden, with a great effort, dragged himself to the wounded Federal, and after examining his wounds carefully, said: ‘Friend, you can’t live long; your sufferings are great, and you will not let me die peacefully. Hence, for the sake of both of us, I will end your agonies.’ And with these words he raised himself as well as he could, placed a loaded rifle to the Federal soldier’s breast and fired. The soldier died without struggle, and Darden layed (sic) himself calmly by his side, pillowed his head against a stump, and remarking, ‘Now I can die in peace,’ passed away without a sound or struggle, or a prayer that any one ever heard. All this was observed and heard by wounded men of the regiment who lay near the scene. The impression on their minds was deep, and the story is repeated at every gathering of the survivors of that terrible battle to this day.”

Death in war is an ugly business. Confederates and Federals knew after the first battles, after the first horrors, after the first bodies were returned home what it was all about and what would further be required of them. The two countries were fully united in the idea of war ‘till the end. It was victory or nothing, and the men in the ranks paid the price for society’s wants with their blood as soldiers in war always have done and always will do. These are universal truths. There are no “Good Deaths”. The pre-war way of death was abandoned very soon after the Civil War because circumstances involving massive armies, high casualties and ongoing military operations made the previous traditions based upon stability and nearness of family to the dying simply impossible.

And there is the crux, again: it is a simple ugly matter and a dark business. Civil War soldiers considered a “Good Death” one in which they died doing their duty, being brave and courageous, with their face to the enemy and in the heat of battle defending the “right” as they saw it. Faust’s over-analysis of this simple yet painful truth is disturbing. A thoughtful, comprehensive book on this topic might be of some moment, but this is not the one.

The Civil War was America’s conflagration of unity. There are no more Confederates and Federals we are all one people. The Union government and the southern states after the war did the best they could to bury the dead, commemorate their sacrifices, and save the battlegrounds so that future Americans might learn and be inspired by the bravery and courage displayed on those fields at such a high price. Success in these endeavors was not universal.

Clara Barton, the great Civil War nurse, described a failure of her own in lectures that she gave across the country after the war, as quoted by Faust. “Clara Barton described her crisis of conscience when a young man on the verge of death mistook her for his sister Mary. Unable to bring herself actually to address him as ‘brother’, she nevertheless kissed his forehead so that, as she explained, ‘the act had done the falsehood the lips refused to speak.’”

In comparison to all the good work that she did for so many wounded and dying Civil War soldiers, this event is a small one but not perhaps for the man in question. Addressing the poor dying man as her brother could only be seen as a kind, compassionate gesture—except apparently by Barton. Why she could not or would not do this simple kindness is a false conundrum much like the bulk of Faust’s “This Republic of Suffering”.

Built upon misconceptions and the fundamentally false premise of the “Good Death” Faust “soldiers on” with “proof” upon “proof” and “source” after “source” to lay a foundation underneath a falsehood. This is a book of cold analysis where the soldiers dead on the battlefield are measured in pounds to illustrate most inappropriately the difficulty that locals had in removing them. There was no constraint upon Barton except her own to bid the dying soldier “Farewell, dear brother!” “The Republic of Suffering” may be most memorable for its confusions and misunderstandings than for any valuable additions to Civil War study. There were no constraints upon president Faust to tell a truthful simple story. But if these self-evident stories were told could she fill a book with such stories, and would there be academic fame and respect resulting? Is history now in academia deemed of moment only if theories are proposed and explanations given even if they are wrong?

The soldiers of the Civil War have told their stories in thousands of memoirs and books, the families have done the same. Only in the academic world it seems does an analysis that ignores so fundamentally the participants and relies so heavily on theorizing and abstractions carry such weight. Those who read the diaries, letters, reports, etc., of the men on the firing lines know the truth. The truth is that the “Good Death” is a myth constructed solely for the benefit of this book. For the men and women of the Civil War there were no “Good Deaths” only those that involved sacrifice, pain, loss, heartache and tragedy. Look to Ambrose Bierce and the other survivors who were scarred and shattered yet did their duty and held in high accord those who also did theirs but paid the ultimate price. Soldiers in every conflict everywhere want the enemy soldiers to “die for their country”. But if they had to die Civil War soldiers like soldiers in every war preferred to die “well” if they are forced to die; and, even more so if the unenviable result of death were to occur to them they preferred better than “well” – to die with bravery, courage, and heroism. Where is the value in over-complicating a matter as simple, and as deep as this one? There is little to recommend this book as it is so very frustrating, and so very unpleasant to digest. Dr. Faust’s “The Republic of Suffering” is neither instructive nor enlightening, but casts a dark pall across the very subject it purports to lighten. Death in battle is an abysmal, ugly thing, but without those brave men (and now, women) prepared to face it we are all truly lost.

John Adams Finally Gets The Attention He Merits!

Controversial but Excellent President, Superb Statesman, Philosopher, American Hero, and Cousin to Samuel Adams Brewer/Patriot!

Long overlooked and ignored John Adams of Massachusetts will finally get the press he merits when Paul Giamatti plays the great man in an upcoming HBO Special- John Adams.

Giamatti, recently from the Pinot Noir orchards of Napa and the bizarre worlds of M. Night Shyamalan, is a great choice to play the much maligned Adams. While the musical “1776” with William Daniels (later Dr. Craig in St. Elsewhere) was a huge and well-deserved hit and included a loving and (likely highly accurate) portrayal of Adams - for the most part in American history studies he has been widely ignored falling victim in the public mind to the obsessive ignorant love of the populist, slave holder, gourmand and wine connoisseur Thomas Jefferson of Monticello.

It should be remembered that Jefferson embraced the French Revolution while Adams despised it, rightly prophesying its eventual malignant corruption into mass murder and finally Napoleonic aggressive war across Europe. Jefferson thought so quaintly, “the tree of liberty must eventually be watered with the blood of patriots” or some such nonsense to justify the beheadings, ultra-violence and regicide of the Revolution in late 18th century Paris. Adams knew better.

If only it weren’t for the bad choice of the Alien and Sedition Acts John Adams would be recognized for the great hero and leader that he was - after all, Reagan had his October Surprise and Iran/Contra Scandal, Adams had his Alien and Sedition Acts. Reagan’s legacy and reputation was quickly rehabilitated since his death (and during his retirement years, too) now it’s John Adams’ turn.

Perhaps the finest Adams biography of recent memory and perhaps the authoritative treatment by far is John Adams by the renowned biographer and historian David McCullough. John Adams (2002) is superbly written, a treat. It’s time to meet John Adams and appreciate him once more. Without John Adams there would be no United States of America.

John Adams by David McCullough.
Reviewed by Daniel Mallock, BookFolk

What a fantastic way to learn about John Adams! What a great way to be introduced to excellent biography writing. One of the best ways to learn history is to read biographies of the great players of their times. John Adams was one of the key leaders of the American Revolution, a great diplomat, philosopher, and a great reader. So much like Benjamin Franklin yet so far apart in character and manners.

McCullough is a brilliant and exciting writer. Adams seems to come alive in this book and when Adams inevitably dies at the conclusion - it is a very sad thing!

Adams is a hero of the Republic. A forgotten, unfairly maligned and ignored American hero. Once in conflict with the populist Jefferson, then a friend to him again in later years they would die within hours of each other on July 4, 1826. Adams is undeservedly overlooked by many students of American History. Adams would say on his death bed, his last words, “Jefferson still lives”. But the third President had actually died several hours earlier. The irony is striking.

Adams the republican vs Jefferson the populist was at one time illustrative of the great debate in American history which still continues today. Adams saw the horror of the French Revolution for what it was and predicted that it would end in depravity and violence and likely cause a savage reaction which would bring about the end of the French Republic itself. He was right, Bonaparte quickly followed the French Revolution and war across Europe was the result. Jefferson on the other hand embraced the French Revolution as an expression of the people’s desire for liberty. How wrong he was!

Adams was a brilliant Statesman, and student of history. A wonderful family man and superb husband Adams’ correspondence with his wife Abigail is a classic of American literature.

McCullough does so well what so many biographers do so poorly and that is he captures the times of the subject and places his subject in his rightful context. He brought me back to the grounds of “Peacefield” (having visited that mansion many times) through his beautiful evocations of it as it hosted great people and great events, Washington and Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, then later Henry Adams and Charles Francis Adams of the next generation of that great American family.

History is best studied by understanding how historical figures lived and understood their own lives and times. Hind sight is an overrated tool in historiography.

Bringing the past to life in writing is a special gift and McCullough has it. Enjoy his talents and get to know the foundations of the American nation a story not fully known by so many.

Adams’ story deserves to be told. What a brilliant man, and McCullough does him superb justice in this highly readable and entertaining biography.

So much can be said here about Adams, but it’s not necessary as McCullough has written the definitive John Adams biography and says it better than I. Get to know John Adams through this superb book, you’ll be glad that you did.

K. Mallock, BookFolks

I was very excited for this album to be released as I have been a fan of Robert Plant since grade school and a fan of Alison Krauss for the past several years. When I first heard of this collaborative effort, I was ready to buy! I downloaded this within minutes of it being released.

That said, this album just isn’t groundbreaking or innovative and is not as remarkable as it truly could have been and should have been.

The first several times I listened, I was left with the impression that it was an Alison Krauss record with Robert Plant doing backup. With each successful hearing, however, I realized that Plant did more on here than it originally seemed. But, still– the music is stylistically Allison Krauss’ not Plant’s.

Plant’s voice sounds as strong as ever, but when he does those Zeppelin-esque improvs, they just seem out of place on this album. In addition, there’s too much of a Honeydripper feel to Plant’s singing and interpretations. I really wanted something new, and was frustrated that it wasn’t here.

Robert Plant sounds great on every song here as does Krauss. However, Krauss is doing her thing here. . . this is her element and her project. Plant seems just along for the ride.

I don’t hear anything new here, unfortunately — you won’t find her “rocking” here and you won’t find anything as superb as Battle of Evermore which would have been great with Krauss’ striking vocals — imagine her doing Sandy Denny’s part!

I was hoping there’d be some unbelievable, haunting, amazing duets here. But the unpleasant truth is that these duets are really Alison Krauss singing a song with Robert Plant singing harmony/backup. On those songs, it’s hard to hear that it’s the same great Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin or even his own excellent solo efforts– as his participation doesn’t really shine through.

These are good songs. They are not great songs. Krauss gets to shine on these songs and Plant doesn’t. It’s a disappointment, a let down, a shame.

On Plant’s efforts where he sings lead or solo, Krauss very much is in the background–as a matter of fact, I’m not certain she even is participating. There are few real duets going on. Plant’s songs are good, just not great or really memorable.

There’s one more thing that bothered me (not too much, just a little). Some of these songs are written from a man’s point of view with Alison singing lead. I always find that a bit disconcerting. Why couldn’t she change the lyric to “her” instead of “him” or “he” instead of “she”? It’s not a serious matter, it just seems disconcerting and confusing to my ears even though I’m well aware that this is seen fairly frequently in the country/bluegrass genre.

Alison Krauss is blessed with a fantastic voice and so is Robert Plant. Both have very distinctive sounds that do compliment each other but do not make this a standout album. To me, this collaborative effort is extremely disappointing. Considering it’s popularity, however, I realize they may very well come out with another disc in the future. If and when they do, I hope it has more emphasis on genuine partnership.

When Mark Knopfler’s and Emmylou Harris’ CD collaborative effort, All The Roadrunning, was first released, I also excitedly purchased it. And, although many might absolutely adore Emmylou Harris, I never did. I never really liked her voice. I have heard people singing her praises for years and years, but I never liked it as much as the other folk artists of her generation. However, All The Roadrunning is a wonderful CD! The cooperative efforts of Knopfler and Harris ARE what Plant’s and Krauss’ CD should have been. All The Roadrunning CD IS much more innovative than this CD. I have always loved Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler’s solo work, but I have LOVED Robert Plant’s voice and style since the fifth grade. I think Alison Krauss’ voice is gorgeous and much better than Emmylou Harris’ voice (which grates on me after a while). That said, Raising Sand misses the mark and Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris’ CD hits it.