1861

February 28, 2011
Goodheart, a historian and journalist who will be writing a column on the Civil War for the New York Times online, makes sophisticated use of a broad spectrum of sources for an evocative reinterpretation of the Civil War's beginnings. Wanting to retrieve the war from recent critics who dismiss the importance of slavery in the Union's aims, he reframes the war as "not just a Southern rebellion but a nationwide revolution" to free the country of slavery and paralyzing attempts to compromise over it. The revolution began long before the war's first shots were fired. But it worked on the minds and hearts of average whites and blacks, slaves and free men. By 1861 it had attained an irresistible momentum. Goodheart shifts focus away from the power centers of Washington and Charleston to look at the actions and reactions of citizens from Boston to New York City, from Hampton Roads, Va., to St. Louis, Mo., and San Francisco, emphasizing the cultural, rather than military, clash between those wanting the country to move forward and those clinging to the old ways. War would be waged for four bitter years, with enduring seriousness, intensity, and great heroism, Goodheart emphasizes. 15 illus.

Starred review from March 15, 2011

A penetrating look at the crowded moment when the antebellum world began to turn.

The zeitgeist is by definition ephemeral and difficult to recapture—think, for example, of a period as recent as America before 9/11—but that's the neat trick splendidly accomplished here by journalist and historian Goodheart, now director of Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. History, he reminds us, is composed not merely of the momentous judgments of government ministers and generals, but also of the countless decisions of ordinary people. These responses to unexpected challenges are complicated, not always predictable and, taken together, have the power to shift events decisively. Such a time was 1861, when the "Old Gentlemen" (the likes of Buchanan, Tyler and Crittenden) gave way to the self-made men (exemplified by Lincoln, multiplied by a still younger generation of strivers like James Garfield and Elmer Ellsworth); when the Republican marching clubs, the Wide Awakes, and the exotic Zouave drill team became something more than quasi-military; when the transcontinental telegraph replaced the Pony Express; when trolley-car executive William Sherman and shop clerk Ulysses Grant looked on as two unsavory men preserved Missouri for the Union; when fugitive slaves suddenly became "contrabands"; when a general in San Francisco and a major at Fort Sumter, notwithstanding their Southern sympathies, remained faithful to their military oath; when surging patriotism and romantic notions of war turned to hatred and bloodlust; when an unfolding national crisis required people to choose sides, sweep away old assumptions and rattle categories long deemed unshakeable, and bring forth something new. Whether limning the likes of Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster or the young Abner Doubleday, explaining something as seemingly inconsequential as the fashion for men's beards or unpacking Lincoln's profound understanding of the nature and unacceptable consequences of the rebellion, Goodheart's sure grasp never falters.

Beautifully written and thoroughly original—quite unlike any other Civil War book out there.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2011
In this high-quality history depicting the surge of patriotic feeling in the North between the summers of 1860 and 1861, Goodheart presents personalities critical to the course of events. Tracking their various routes to supporting the Union, routes proceeding from the many differences of opinion about its nature, Goodheart focuses on their characters and motivations, creatively yielding an active narrative with much stylistic vibrancy. Pro-Lincoln marchers in the North, the Wide Awakes and the Zouaves, furnish him with colorful material as he plumbs the stirrings of Northern resolve to preserve the Union; those organizations eventually transformed into militias active in the Civil Wars initial fracases (save Fort Sumter) at St. Louis and Washington. Following a glance at California, held fast by one Unionists oratory, Goodheart represents the issue causing sectional discordslaverythrough several blacks whose escapes from bondage forced Northern leaders to squarely face whether the war was solely to save the Union or for some greater cause. Goodhearts intelligent, literate book captures the emotions and enthusiasms that imbued the start of the Civil War.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)