A Treasury of Civil War Tales

by Webb B. Garrison

The sweeping historical event known as the Civil War left no part of the nation untouched. Great and humble, soldiers and civilians, men and women, blacks, whites, and Indians--all had vivid stories about the gathering storms, the four unforgettable years of conflict, and the bittersweet aftermath.

A little woman's book made a great war --
"The little giant" set the stage for "bleeding Kansas" --
Dred Scott was hammered between North and South --
James H. Hammond called upon Americans to acknowledge cotton as king --
Both North and South embraced the song "Dixie" --
Fiery abolitionist John Brown set out to do God's work --
John C. Breckinridge played the role of spoiler in the election of 1860 --
George and Thomas Crittendon mirrored the sundered nation --
The president-elect moved toward his inauguration incognito --
The free and independent republic of Georgia never fully yielded sovereignty --
The world's first war correspondent barely managed to last one year in America --
James B. Eads put together an ironclad inland Navy --
West Pointers sparred bloodlessly at Fort Sumter --
Baltimore saw the first deliberate shedding of blood --
Clara Barton made bandages of red tape --
"Boy Drummer of Chickamauga" refused to be refused --
At Bull Run Creek, a Sunday picnic got out of hand --
Rose Greenhow was "worth any six of Jeff Davis's best regiments" --
Parson Brownlow played both ends against the middle --
"The lot fell upon Colonel Corcoran" --
U.S. Grant ripped a hole in the belly of the C.S.A. --
Marching off to die, strong men sang a gentlewoman's song --
James J. Andrews lost a race but became a folk hero in both North and South --
Carl Schurz spoke for 200,000 Germans in blue --
"The shaprshooter" brought men to recruitment offices in droves --
Lincoln's master spy brought joy to the hearts of rebels --
Near-dictatorship evoked the wrath of "Blackjack" Logan --
Rebel error and Federal fear blended to yield the dealiest day ever --
Elias Boudinot led tribesmen into the promised land of the C.S.A. --
An ex-congressman from Ohio got a special sentence: banishment --
From start to finish, Abraham Lincoln really was Commander-in-Chief --
Grant of Maine built state-of-th-art fortifications for Atlanta --
Armies were expanded: at the cost of riots and escalating abuses --
Mary Walker got her medal: and kept it. James A. Garfield harvested political hay in the aftermath of Chickamauga --
The youngest general captured the most wanted fugitive --
"Rightly used, a few hand guns could end this bloody business" --
Lauded in the South, Forrest was vilified in the North --
Jubal early swapped a day for a wagon load of gold --
In the South and in the North, stricken Atlanta was seen through the eyes of George Barnard --
Northern medics produced America's first big wave of drug addicts --
Sherman tipped the scales in favor of Lincoln's re-election --
Black soldiers were central to the War's biggest explosion --
Sheridan's ride made the North forget Sheridan's raids --
What happened at Ebenezer Creek remains an usolved puzzle --
Mary Todd Lincoln shielded her son from combat --
Desperate, Confederates moved to put slaves into uniform --
Greed and speed proved to be more deadly than Confederate bullets --
Confederate gold was scattered over three Southern states --
Ten thousand Southern leaders went into exile --
Staunch Unionist Andrew Johnson was labeled "too soft on the South" --
Reconstruction ended in return for yielding the White House to Hayes --
From start to finish, it really was Abraham Lincoln's war

Genres: Civil War, History, Nonfiction, Historical, American Civil War, American History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1988

About the author

Webb Garrison, formerly associate dean of Emory University and president of McKendree College, wrote more than 55 books. Before his death in 2000, Garrison lived in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of stories about the Civil War and by no means a complete account of the war. Published in 1988 with a Southern slant, but not too strongly so.
I give this book 2 stars for a good reason. There is one glaring mistake which should discredit any book purporting to be about the Civil War and here I quote: "...Gettysburg had been counted a great victory in spite of the fact that Grant's army suffered 23,049 casualties against Lee's 20,451."(pg. 142) Grant can be given more credit than any other general for winning the Civil War, but it was not Grant who defeated Lee at Gettysburg, but a general named George G. Meade. Let Meade, the man from Pennsylvania who turned back the Confederate invasion of his home state, have some credit for helping to win the war! Garrison even gets the numbers of casualties wrong. While the Union lost 23,000, Lee lost some 28,000. Even if Lee had lost fewer men than Meade, his losses were not as replaceable as those of the North. But Lee actually lost more men--more than 1/3 of his army. If Garrison gets such basic facts wrong about the war's greatest battle, what about other things about the war he writes about? I know he made other factual mistakes.
I will be generous and say that there were some interesting stories in the book and even some things I hadn't known--if the information is accurate! I'll simply conclude by saying I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who wanted to learn the basic facts about the Civil War of 1861-65.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book contains what should have been an excellent collection of short overview and anecdotes, but in several cases there are sloppy errors, and it's hard to say whether they were made by Garrison or his editor. The terms "Secretary of State" and "Secretary of War" get garbled or switched a couple of times, and the order of events in several chapter is oddly vague, with events described in an order not in line with when the occurred. So, the errors dropped it down from 4 stars to 3.
Then, on the last page of the final chapter, Garrison makes the bizarre statement that the entire war was unnecessary, because if Lincoln had let the few hard-core states secede, they would have failed and come begging to be readmitted. For whatever reason, he considered this to have been a better outcome than the war itself.
Now, Garrison was in fact a southerner himself, but the rest of the book avoids most of the obvious historical biases which can crop up, but this one takes the cake! While his basic concept, that the "King Cotton" states could not succeed as a nation, might be true, the rest is unsupported speculation. There are many obvious problems with this version of history. Here are a few:
1) A 7-state Confederacy would quickly have become a debtor nation, once England started developing other sources of cotton. Okay, fine, but one that still didn't want to part of the Union. They might have been as likely to rejoin the British Empire as a commonwealth, if it came to having to join anyone.
2) The issue of slavery would remain unresolved, in the Confederacy as well as in the Union. Garrison assumes that it would have faded away, but in fact that had proven wrong before. Slavery was "fading away" before the cotton gin changed the economics of slavery. How could Garrison assume that other changes might not change slavery again. Perhaps it would have moved from the field into the factory? Not so far-fetched, compared to real sweat-shop factories of the 19th and 20th centuries. Much of that work could have been done by slaves. Only the economics were in question.
3) The precedent would have been set for balkanizing the country. Utah could have used it as precedent, since they had already shown a desire to become a separate nation. What would keep California and Oregon from setting up separately?
4) Without the industrial and political changes driven by the war, the United States would have been a big but weak nation, rather than a potential world power. How would the next century play out from that standpoint?

Even fiction writers of alternate history have LOOKED at these and other issues. Garrison simply swept them all aside in a single unsupported paragraph. To me, this took a full star away from the book. Thus, down from 3 stars to 2.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this book were very interesting and since each story was only about 4-5 pages long there were lots of them. It was disturbing to read how racist the Union soldiers were toward the slaves that they were supposedly freeing, however, it wasn't unexpected. My biggest surprise and something I still haven't come to terms with is the author's obvious dislike of Abraham Lincoln and the author's view point that the Civil War was completely unnecessary and was only fought because of Lincoln. I've never heard this before from any authority on the Civil War or on Lincoln. His last chapter states that if the southern states had been allowed to leave the Union they would eventually have returned to the United States since they wouldn't have been able to make it on their own. Thousands of lives would have been saved as well as a considerable amount of money. This seems a little simplistic to me. He has conveniently forgotten that one of the biggest battlefields before the Civil War was in Kansas/Nebraska. What would have happened with the other territories in the West? There would have been bloody wars in each and everyone of those territories and those battles would have been between two countries and not between two "sides" in a political battle in the same country. Certainly many slaves would have tried to and many would have succeeded in escaping from the South to the North--now two separate countries. How long would it have taken before a war was being fought over that issue? Another aspect that seems to have been forgotten in the author's scenario was the pride of the South and their conviction that they were better fighters than the North. They wanted a fight and were not willing to back down. Also not considered in the author's scenario was the lives of the slaves who would not have had any kind of chance at a free life if the Civil War hadn't happened. Perhaps the author didn't think their lives were worth the sacrifice!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was interesting, however, it was written in short stories and not chronological order as to when the events actually occurred. Because of that I found it difficult to follow. Perhaps a reread would clear up some of the confusion. The author is a southerner and seems to slant the stories in favor of the South. Since I was not alive at the time of these events I find it difficult to know which side I would have been on. If the object of the war was truly to abolish slavery and set the slaves free then I would have no problem being for the North. However, it seems as if the northerners cared little, if any ,for the slaves. They really didn't seem to want anything to do with the slaves. Both sides seemed to have committed crimes against the blacks. It was a terrible, bloody episode in our nations history. One I pray will never happen again.
As for the book, I did enjoy the read although I bogged down in places. There were things I had never heard of before even though I have read a lot of civil war history. Perhaps I have always read books written by Northerners who did not care to mention certain facts.
The book is interesting, though hard to follow at times. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in our nations history. Like any book, it is necessary to read with an open mind. I found it refreshing to read a book with a different point of view. So it gets 4 stars.

[Cala Enslow · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Treasury of Civil War Tales, written by Webb Garrison is a collection of short stories and details from the Civil War. The book itself does not follow a specific timeline but in the beginning it focuses on the documents that kickstarted the war. Instead of following a storyline, the book takes events that took place on both sides of the war and gives a quick retelling of them. The author most likely wrote this book to preserve the tales of the people that not many people had heard before. Not all of the tales in the book are about battles, on the contrary many are about civilians who impacted the war. We often only hear about the main battles, but what about the people who still had just a part to play but could not fight in battle? The author has a slightly Southern bias point of view, this is particularly noticeable in the last chapter where he questions Abraham Lincoln. Garrison uses language such as “he jockeyed secessionists" and “Lincoln barred the way to an earlier peace” that explain his take on Abraham Lincoln’s actions. The titles of the chapters were enticing and grabs the attention of the reader. I would recommend this book because it portrays the Civil War in a different light. Instead of focusing on many heavy battles, it pinpoints small, important, but easy-to-overlook events. I would not recommend this book if someone was looking for a real, exact timeline but if someone is looking for an interesting read about one of the United States' most gruesome wars I would recommend it.

[Nicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dived into this book and loved it way more than I possibly could have predicted. We are, of course, given information on the major players of the Civil War, but we also hear stories about those whose names aren't in every documentary and textbook. I read stories that I found amusing, stories that made me sad or angry. Ultimately, there were many times in the book where I stopped and thought to myself "why haven't I heard this before?"

There were a few issues, but as a whole, I loved this book and consider it worth the read.

I borrowed this from the local library but I may need a copy of my own.

[Janetkc7wvy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book until the very last chapter in which the author did an unbelievable job of stacking the facts to draw his conclusion.
The author asks the question "What would have taken place in the 1860s and thereafter had Lincoln not emerged as the dominant actor in the national drama?" He states that any answer must include conjecture and conjecture he (Webb Garrison) did.

My answer:
Lincoln, although he was always anti slavery, could not have said "If I am elected President I will free all the slaves" because he would never have been elected. He kept those ideas to himself. He knew that the only way to abolish slavery was to keep the Union together. If the Southern states left the Union they would carry on with slavery as they always had. The North and any leader of the North would have no say in what the South did because they would be an entirely different country.

There were a lot of stories I was familiar with, some that I gained a deeper understanding of, and also some I had never heard before.
Each chapter is about 3-4 pages long and tells a story about different ones who played a part in the shaping of the civil war and our country.
Very interesting.