Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/918

 9o8 Revieivs of Books Anns, in twenty-one chapters, covers the history through Gettysburg and Vicksburg; The Outcome, eighteen chapters, brings us to the end. The chapter-division is original and true to the matter. Relatively more attention than in most histories of the period is paid to Civil War politics, finance, social conditions, and diplomacy, and to naval operations on inland waters, all of which subjects are ably discussed. The style throughout is clear and vivacious. Each volume has a well-made index, also a critical essay, constituting a chapter, on authorities. This Civil War bibliography is probably the most valuable extant. We miss in it no document worth mentioning unless it is Pickett and his Men, by Mrs. Pickett. The maps look bare but are really the clearer for this paucity of detail. A few lucid plans to each great battle, like those in Mr. Ropes's war books, would much improve Mr. Hosmer's accounts. They need such aid the more since in them appears the sole im- portant literary blemish which these pages betray, a certain appearance of fullness tending to make readers think they understand a battle when in fact only a sketch or a compend is intended. Either a little more amplitude or the same or greater brevity distinctly avowed would add value to the exposition. The defect referred to is illustrated by the description of Second Bull Run. The unknowing reader quite misses the rationale of this brilliant and scientific battle and thinks of Lee as simply " pitching in ". Such a false appearance of fundamen- tality extends to a few other discussions, like that of the origination of the war in chapter i. of The Appeal to Arms. No satisfactory aetiology of the secession movement is disclosed here or anywhere in the book. Yet Mr. Hosmer's history must be pronounced critical. He writes from the sources and in the light of the best comments. He utilizes his material well and uses it with care. He hardly ever betrays bias, Trojan and Tyrian alike receiving due praise and due blame. Lee, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan are appreciated yet shown not to have been infallible either as commanders or as inen. Refreshing fairness marks observations upon Halleck, McClellan, McDowell, Bugl, Joseph E. Johnston, and Longstreet, each of whom it has been the fashion in certain circles to belittle or to vilify. One would have welcomed sim- ilar appreciation for D. H. Hill, so " tenacious of his battle " at Antietam. In Schofield, too, our author does not see quite all there was. The victor of Franklin, Sherman's right hand in North Carolina, he calls just " a good soldier ", by profession a teacher, like Garfield and J. L. Chamberlain. To his credit Hosmer espies in Nathan B. Forrest " some of the qualities of a great commander ", though in calling him " probably the only very conspicuous Confederate who came directly from private life ", he for the moment forgets John B. Gordon. Pope receives a kindly word, his lamentable manifesto, so unworthy of a capable leader, being represented as " drafted under the dictation in sub- stance, of Mr. Stanton; and one sees in the background the figure of Ben Wade, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War,