The Civil War, 150 Years On

The Daily Beast looks at the battalion of new books on the anniversary of America's Civil War.

From the piece...

Beginning in November 1860, with Abraham Lincoln’s election, the initial volume in this series re-creates—through diaries, speeches, letters, poems, and newspaper accounts—the thoughts and actions of star players and everyday citizens on both sides of the conflict. Some of this material, such as Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address or the diaries of George Templeton Strong and Mary Boykin Chesnut, is familiar. Much, however, is fresh, and all the entries become more striking by being placed in the context of time unfolding. Many would be striking no matter what the context.

Riding across the Bull Run battlefield in the wake of the fighting, Confederate soldier Charles Minor Blackford writes, “I noticed an old doll baby with only one leg lying by the side of a Federal soldier just as it dropped from his pocket when he fell writhing in the agony of death. It was obviously a memento of some little loved one at home which he had brought so far with him and had worn close to his heart on this day of danger and death. It was strange to see that emblem of childhood, that token of a father’s love lying there amidst the dead and dying … I dismounted, picked it up and stuffed it back into the poor fellow’s cold bosom that it might rest with him in the bloody grave which was to be forever unknown to those who loved and mourned him in his distant home.”

That, astonishingly, is a typical entry in this splendid literary tapestry.