Decided on the Battlefield: Grant, Sherman, Lincoln and the Election of 1864
The summer of 1864 marked the nadir of Northern confidence in victory, as Civil War buffs generally know from works like Charles Bracelen Flood’s 1864 (2009). Candidates who tapped into war weariness and angled to replace Lincoln, such as Salmon Chase, John Frémont, and George McClellan, are among the cast in this rendition of the interaction between political and military events that eventuated in the incumbent’s reelection. Johnson writes of battles, party conventions, and newspapers’ reflections of voters’ sentiment in a popular manner that flows well and is not overly scholarly. Dispensing motes of opinion and counterfactual observations (his epilogue traces American “history” following McClellan’s presidency), Johnson will appeal to the what-if aspect of Civil War discussion that animates debaters. The crucial contingent event, he argues, was the replacement of Confederate general Joseph Johnston by John Bell Hood, whose defeats are detailed in The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta (2010), by Gary Ecelbarger. With lively narration of Union victories at Mobile and the Shenandoah Valley, Johnson delivers a readable account of the unlikely revival of Lincoln’s electoral prospects. --Gilbert Taylor