The Rest I Will Kill by Brian McGinty - 3 stars (4 star content)

[Megalion]

A very interesting man on several levels.

His heroics are of great note for two reasons. One, it was the first major "win" for the North as the Civil War got underway. Two, it provided the perfect "test case" to argue that black men should be allowed to fight with the North. They had as much invested in winning and were perfectly capable of fighting. Read: not the imbecile slackers that still stimagtized even the freemen.

His story is interesting and was compelling enough to keep my interest despite the rather dry writing.

At times, the narrative sidetracked into detailed Civil War machinations which was annoying as I'm not interested in reading about the larger movements and etc in the war. I've read plenty of that elsewhere. I just wanted to know about Tillman.

Turns out, they weren't superfluous. The author was giving background context before telling the next pieece of the story or highlighting the significance of something. I'd have recommended that he simplified the background details.

Moving on, Tillman's tale is fascinating. Not much is known about his life before or after the event though the author detailed what he was able to find. But because of the vast amount of recounting afterwards by him and the other men involved, we get a fairly clear picture of what happened.

Despite my complaint about too much background detail, I do appreciate that the author took the time to point out the historical significance and impact this had.

Also of particular interest, the legal aftermath. The ship and its valuable cargo had been seized by the South under a so-called letter of marquee (permit to prey like pirates on Northern ships). Which means when Tillman took the ship back, it was a salvage and therefore salvage rights and recompense was due.


That in itself was really interesting to me because naturally, the ship's owners did NOT agree and the suits and countersuits went on for years.

I didn't read them but a good 40% of the book consists of the footnotes, citations, and bibliography.

In the end, it was a rather quick read. I skimmed the sections about the Civil War. Read all the Tillman parts. Since little is known about what happened to him after the lawsuits were finally settled, there's not a great deal to the overall story.

A worthwhile read for anyone interested in Civil war history. How freedmen were treated in the North (not well) in more detail. And a truly heroic caper. I would have given this 4 stars except the writing was a bit dry.

Thank you to the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.