New and Noteworthy--- September Suspense: Military Defeat and Invasion, A National Election and Emancipation

September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril, Dennis E. Frye, Antietam Rest Publishing, 292 pages,  notes, bibliography, appendices, 19 illustrations, index, 2012, $27.95.

Newspapers of the Civil War era are a fountain of information on the material aspects of life and political disputes. During the era there was no unbiased reporting of political news; there was lots of speculation. "Newspapers bring us closer to people and allow us to be there when they make their history" remarks Dennis Frye in his introduction to September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril. During the first week of September of 1862 no one knew the outcome of the Confederate invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, the fall elections, and the revelation of an emancipation proclamation.

Frye relies heavily on southern and northern newspapers and diaries but not those written after the autumn of 1862.  Such reliance provides an immediacy which is usually not offered in most Civil War books.  Over 35 newspapers were consulted. Frye's narrative is sharp and concise. His pacing of the chapters creates an undercurrent of a  'you are there' suspense. This is reminiscent of of John Michael Priest's use of only diaries and letters of privates, corporals, sergeants, captains and lieutenants in Antietam: A Soldier's Battle and Before Antietam: The Battle of South Mountain.

In September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril readers wrestle with American abolitionists and slaveholders, British politicians and American bankers, retail merchants and marauding soldiers, presidents and their cabinets, war governors and army generals, men and women on the street and soldiers in the ranks.  There is a suspense in Frye's work that moves readers forward through these American lives.

The appendices are not 'toss in the kitchen sink' material. The first appendix is the Confederate Terms of Peace published on September 11, 1862 in the Philadelphia Inquirer which was copied from and editorial appearing in the Richmond Enquirer and a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial response to it. The second appendix is General Lee's Proclamation to the People of Maryland that was made September 8, 1862 and a third appendix discusses the dilemma of attempting to ascertain how many Confederate troops crossed into Maryland the first days of September. Each is an essential document that readers in September 1862 held in their hands and read.  In September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril  Frye achieves his goal of having the reader 'feel history', enter 'a time machine' and 'live the moment' with those who passed passed, day by day, through a suspenseful month when the Union was in peril.

Also,  September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril is a good 'immersion' book for Civil War reenactors who enjoy a 'campaign style' story.

New and Noteworthy---A Scribbling Englishman On Both Sides of the Potomac

The Confederacy's Secret Weapon: The Civil War Illustrations of Frank Vizetelly, Douglas W. Bostick, History Press, 158 pp., 98 b/w illustrations, bibliography, $19.99.

Frank Vizetelly's illustrations have for decades been viewed in coffee table books on the Civil War. Yet the name of this graphic artist usually does not ring a bell with probably most readers. Bostick's book remedies the situation. Placing Vizetelly in the context of mid-19th century print journalism is helpful but Bostick offers only a page and a half on how the work of a sketch artist moves from the sketch pad to news print. Strengths of Bostick's work is the close attention paid to Vizetelly's travels inside the Confederacy and his success in getting the illustrations exported to London.

As a correspondent for the London Illustrated News, Vizetelly is challenged by the U.S. War department July 1861 after the Federal defeat at Bull Run. He then enters the Confederacy and views the battle of Fredericksburg and the 1863 Mississippi Campaign. The artist is quite comfortable among the plantation aristocracy, the cavalier and chivalrous officers of the Confederate forces. With a clear and concise narrative, Bostick provides many of Vizetelly's dispatches and finished sketches. Vizetelly reports as if he is at Chickamauga, but Sorrel, Longstreet's aide, reports in his Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer,that appears that Vizetelly arrived "long after the battle."

Vizetelly's anecdotes at times ring true and at other times there is a false ring to them. Did Vizetelly loan Jefferson Davis funds for his escape from Virginia? Bostick's account takes Vizetelly's memoirs at face value. This may leave some readers recalling the saying that the first casualty of war is truth. Was Vizetelly's illustrations a secret weapon of the Confederacy? Upon finishing Bostick's the book, CWL's reply is The Scots' Verdict: unproven.

Having no index and no bibliographic notes, The Confederacy's Secret Weapon: The Civil War Illustrations of Frank Vizetelly is not conducive to much further research. The brief bibliography does not list a book or article by Henry Vizetelly though on page 79 Bostick quotes from one. Yet, in providing a fine account of the life and times of Frank Vizetelly, sketch artist and correspondent of the London Illustrated News, Bostick offers a fine album of illustrations, a brief life on an English sketch artist and an introduction to the world of Civil War journalism.

New and Noteworthy---Sticks, Stones, Bones, and Words At War

Words At War: The Civil War and American Journalism, Sachsman, David B., Rushing, S. Kettrell and Morris, Roy, editors, Purdue University Press, 412 pp.,index, notes, 2008, $29.95.

Words at War analyzes the various ways in which the nation's newspaper editors, reporters, and war correspondents covered the Civil War. In doing so they both reflected the mindsets of their readers and shaped the responses of their subscibers and their antagonists. The sections of Words at War: Fighting Words, Confederates and Copperheads, Union Forever, and Continuing Conflict trace the evolving roles of the press in the antebellum, wartime, and postwar periods.

Spanning 1820 to 1900 the work offers a very large slice of newspaper history. Not limited to the Secession Crisis, campaigns and battles, Words at War covers the Nullification Crisis of 1832, the Amistad trial, the emergence of the Whig Party, the birth of the Republican Party, the Southern Press Association, the Sioux Trial of 1862, Edwin Stanton as Spinmeister, the post-war constitutional amendments, the Klan and race riots, popular religion, and lynching. Famous battlefront reporters and their writings are not neglected. Thirty essays, each with its own notes, satisfy the reader looking for scholarship. J. Cutler Andrews' seminal studies, The North Reports the Civil War and The South Reports the Civil War and Lorman A. Ratner's and Dwight L. Teeter's Fanatics and Fire-eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War by now have company on CWL's bookshelf.

Top Image Source: General Ambrose Burnside reads newspaper to Matthew Brady.

Bottom Image: Stacked Arms with Newspaper Reader