Franklin County: "The War Between the States, its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results," by A. H. Stephens, August 16, 1870
Summary: This article is a book review for a new volume in (former vice president of the Confederacy) Alexander H. Stephen's history of the Confederacy and Civil War. The reviewer glows with praise for the work, claiming that it is informative and free from sectionalism.
Three years ago the announcement by the National Publishing Company, of Philadelphia of the speedy publication of this great work, created a profound sensation throughout the country. The press of both sections hailed the appearance of the book with delight, for it was admitted by all that the task of transmitting to prosperity the Southern version of the history of our great civil war could not have been confided to an abler pen than that of Mr. Stephens, the greatest living statesman of the South. The colleague and friend of Clay, Calhoun and Webster, he is a connecting link between the present and the glorious past, and as Vice-President of the late Southern Confederacy, he is peculiarly fitted for the task, by his opportunities of knowing the most secret details of the history of the War. Above all, his high character as a man which has always won him the respect of his political enemies, enables us to rely upon his statements with an absolute certainty. In the first volume of his work, Mr. Stephens confined himself exclusively to the cause of the War, reserving the narrative of the actual struggle for the second and concluding volume. The success of the former volume was extraordinary, reaching a sale of over 60,000 copies.
If then that portion of the work which of necessity was the dryest-if any part of this magnificent production can be called dry-has met with such a wonderful and rapid sale that we are not warranted in predicting for the second, in which the thrilling story of the most terrible and destructive war of modern times, is told with all the fascination of romance and all the sublimity of truth. Mr. Stephens slights no feature of the War, and his work reveals a particularly interesting and fascinating portion of its history, which has never been made public until now.-He goes to the bottom of the secession movement, and gives the confidential history of the Convention which formed the Confederacy. The vexed question of the non-exchange of prisoners of war has much new light shed upon it, and this alone ought to commend the book to every one who saw the inside of a Northern or Southern prison.
What will strike the practiced reader most favorably however, is the fact that Mr. Stephen's narrative is free from bitterness and sectional feeling. He writes with that calm dignity which is always the historian's most effective weapon, weighing facts according to their merits, and arriving at conclusions with a clearness of judgment which is, to say the least, remarkable in one who was himself so important an actor in the events narrated.-It is this fact which will make his book so welcome to those who are seeking substantial information upon the subjects treated of, and who prefer clear and straight-forward statements of what was done, to fine theories as to what might have been accomplished. Having been compelled by ill health, since the war, to remain almost entirely in the privacy of his home, and to take no part in the questions of the day, Mr. Stephens has been enabled to look back over his long and honorable career with the calmness of one whose record is completed, and to produce, as his most valuable service to the country, the magnificent history which lies before us. The book is sold by subscription only, and agents are wanted in every country.
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: Public Opinion, August 16, 1870, p. 2 col. 6
