Kirjahaku

One of America's least known and controversial women artists of the Civil War era was Vinnie Ream, who sculpted a bust of Abraham Lincoln from life when she was only sixteen years old and had almost no artistic training. She was able, through clever maneuvering and dogged determination, to achieve a commission from the Congress for a life-sized statue of the assassinated president - this despite the very real animus against women artists at that time, which is apparent in the heated arguments against granting her the Lincoln commission - arguments spearheaded in the Senate by Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Steeped in the history of her time, Vinnie Ream was involved with dozens of senators and congressmen and other powerful men - not the least of all Generals Sherman and Custer - and her studio on Capitol Hill became a legendary stopping place for many admirers and tourists. Her statue of Lincoln stands in the rotunda of the capitol building; her statue of Admiral Farragut stands in a Washington, D.C. park; other works are in Statuary Hall and various museums. This is a spirited and engaging biography of an important women artist, and an effective portrait of Washington, D.C. in the Civil War era.

Louis Trezevant Wigfall was a violent, mercurial man. He participated in multiple duels, wounding one opponent and killing another. In an outburst on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Wigfall called upon a Brutus to assassinate Texas governor Sam Houston. During the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861, Wigfall rowed out to the fort and arranged its surrender. While still in the U.S. Senate, Wigfall committed treason by operating a station to recruit soldiers for the Confederacy by supplying arms to seceded states and by forwarding information on Union decisions and movements. Wigfall’s oratorical skills convinced Southern ruling classes there was nothing to fear by seceding. He assured them that the North would not fight, that they could not blockade southern ports, that Europe needed Southern cotton, and that England would aid the Confederacy. Wigfall was able to convince Southern states to secede. In this succinct biography of Wigfall, Edward S. Cooper discusses how this violent and mercurial man contributed to the disintegration of the Union and why he was a primary factor in the collapse of the Confederacy.

On August 26, 1861, one hundred volunteers met at Camp Wood and formed Company A. These men, for the most part, were well educated and left to us a series of letters to families and friends, diaries, letters to their local newspapers, official reports, and talks they gave after the war at reunions. Their correspondence differs from most others in that they do not simply record the temperature and what they had to eat. The story the correspondence of Company A tells allows the reader to know what it was really like to be a volunteer soldier. The men describe what they saw from their vantage points on the parts of the battlefield they could see. Their letters cover their discussions and arguments concerning slavery, the national draft, the right of “citizen soldiers” to confiscate property, and the use of blacks in combat. On a very personal level they describe what it was like to be captured and spend time in Confederate prisons awaiting exchange, what they felt when they had to leave wounded or dead comrades on the field when they had to retreat, whether to reenlist, the punishments they had to endure, the witnessing of military executions, and whether to mutiny. There are marvellous descriptions of the unauthorized truces the men arranged with the Confederates to trade tobacco for coffee or to bathe in a stream separating them.

The most flamboyant, consistently dishonest racketeer was Supervisor of Internal Revenue John McDonald, whose organization defrauded the federal government of millions of dollars. When President Grant was asked why he appointed McDonald supervisor of internal revenue he responded, “I was aware that he was not an educated man, but he was a man that had seen a great deal of the world and of people, and I would not call him ignorant exactly, he was illiterate.” McDonald organized and ran the Whiskey Ring but he always credited Grant with the initiation of the Ring declaring that the president “actually stood god-father at its christening.” The demise of the Ring rivals anything that the real or fictional Elliot Ness and his “Untouchables” ever accomplished during the prohibition era in America.