Might-have-beens haunt this absorbing study of the opening act of the Civil War. Historian Lankford (Richmond Burning
) focuses on March and April of 1861, months when the future, he feels, was up for grabs. The crucial political struggle then, he argues, was for the Upper South: the eight slave states that had not yet joined the newborn Confederacy, where pro-Union sentiment was initially strong and whose loyalties would decide the war. Lankford minutely examines critical events and their effect on Upper South Unionists and the debate over secession, particularly in Virginia and Maryland, emphasizing the importance of individual decision-making in this volatile period. For him, history is contingency—if Lincoln had evacuated Fort Sumter without a fight, or not called up troops to suppress the rebellion, or if Lincoln's generals had treated Maryland less gently, then the Upper South might have remained loyal, or neutral, or plumped more decisively either for the Union or the Confederacy. His underlying historiographical point—that the conflict might have been finessed so as to save the Union without a devastating war—is a none-too-convincing imponderable. But it frames a lucid, often dramatic account of how the nation's confusion and anxiety finally gelled into clear-cut lines of battle. Photos. (Jan. 22)
