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(More customer reviews)This play-by-play description to the turmoil that followed the capture of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861 is exciting and comprehensive, but it is the vignettes of people north or south, famous or unknown, who put their stamp on history that I found the most intriguing elements of the book. Was it providential that in her darkest hours America had the two most perfect leaders possible- Washington during the Revolution and Lincoln during the Civil War?
The siege of Washington was highly psychological as nobody from the President on down could understand why the rebel armies did not attack Washington which was a sitting duck. Communications and railroad lines were disrupted, essential supplies ran out, stores and homes were boarded up when people fled the city. There were riots everywhere and still the rebel army did not come. Washington City was holding its breath. Finally on April 23 the Sixth and Seventh New York Regiments with enough men to defend the city managed to enter Washington and the citizens went berserk with joy. Said Theodore Winthrop "Our Uncle Sam was still a resident of the capitol."
We follow Lincoln as he orders 75,000 troops. Inside the White House two astonishingly young men, Lincoln secretaries John Nicolay at twenty nine and John Hay at twenty two not only screened all of the hundreds of letters pouring into the White House but also selected who in the hoards of people tramping in and out and right by Lincoln's office got to see the President. The White House even became a barracks with men sleeping on the floor of the East room. Nicolay and Hay were a highly effective buffer that not only protected the President but kept things rolling and things in order. Lincoln knew how to choose men, one of his greatest attributes .Nicolay and Hay were fiercely loyal and really an extension of Lincoln's family.
The women are not to be outshone: incredibly, when Fort Sumter was captured, Varina Davis, the wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, actually had the audacity to invite her friends on the future May 1 ( three weeks away) to attend a tea after Jefferson Davis had licked the North and was the new occupant of the White House. No bird in the hand there.
In Concord, Mass, Louisa May Alcott, the author of the incomparable "Little Women" wished fervently she was a man so she could join Lincoln's army. The closest she could come was being a nurse. Another famous nurse who was very adept with a pistol and could hit the bulls eye of a target fifty feet away, was five feet tall Clara Barton of Oxford, Mass. Clara, of course, couldn't join the army, either, but nursed the wounded soldiers and went on to found the American Red Cross. In Baltimore, where fierce rioting had broken out, Ann Manley, who was the owner of the city's biggest brothel, secreted soldiers in her establishment, fed them, nursed them and gave them various disguises so they could move around the city undetected as they tried to find the means to go south to Washington.*
The backbone of any society is ordinary citizens who really carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and it was the young men, mostly unknown, who had to die by the thousands in the Civil War. When soldiers trickling into Washington were housed in the House of Representatives, they were flabbergasted when in walked Abraham Lincoln and two cabinet members. There was total astonished silence for a moment or two, then the men burst into applause, then stamped and yelled. One young man, 22 year old Private Oliver C. Bosbyshell wrote this wonderful description of Lincoln years later:
"Yes, here, towering over all in the room was the great central figure of the war... I was impressed by the kindliness of his face and awkward hanging of his arms and legs, his apparent bashfulness in the presence of these first soldiers of the Republic, and with it all a grave, rather mournful bearing in his attitude."
It was a near thing. If rebel armies had captured Washington, the Union would have been dissolved. Authors (and brothers ) John and Charles Lockwood lay the siege of Washington right in your lap. The book is a very valuable addition to the huge amount of literature on the Civil War. Highly recommended.*Women's Civil war contributions included "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the war's incredibly powerful propaganda piece penned by Harriet Beecher Stowe. And there's "Mine Eyes have seen the Glory" the stirring "Battle Hymn of the Republic" that can still bring tears to the eyes of a modern listener. The words were written by Julia Ward Howe.
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