My Review of Williamson Murray's "The Dark Path: War and the Rise of the West"

 War Through the Ages

The late Williamson Murray, a military historian at Ohio State, has written a tour de force history of war from the 1500’s to the present. He argues convincingly that the intense competition for the mastery of Europe led to advances in military technology and the infrastructure of war making were responsible for European success in mastering the globe.  His other thesis is that wars are not won by decisive battles, but rather by brute numbers, organization, economics, finance, and logistics. 

For example, Napoleon’s victory at Jena, which so impressed Hegel and Ludendorff’s victory at Tannenberg did not determine the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, respectively. Napoleon lost because the coalition against him was far better organized and financed and had numbers on their side. Similarly, Germany and its allies lost world War I because with America’s entry into the war they were outnumbered and out financed. However, “time and chance happen to all” or in Clausewitz’s word “friction” and at times friction can overcome a lack of resources. For example, Ukraine is still in the fight, but it appears that heroic country was just sold-out by Trump.

Williamson discusses at length the various revolutions in military affairs. He starts with gun powder rendering castle walls obsolete and he goes on to discuss innovations in sailing that happened 100 years later that enhanced naval power. The most important revolution was the merger of the French Revolution with its levee en masse with the industrial revolution which made war total by making the civilian population enmeshed in warfighting. The flowering of that would occur in the American Civil War where the North was far better organized with far better logistics to overcome the South. The war lasted as long as it did because of poor generalship on the part of the North and better generalship on the part of the South.

If there is a hero in the book, it is Otto von Bismarck, whose strategic vision unified Germany with three wars. He had strategic focus and fully understood Clausewitz’s dictum, “that war is the extension of politics by more violent means.” Thus, the lack of strategic vision is road to ruin in wartime. For example, Bismarck understood that after victory against Austria he chose not seize any territory and that ultimately made Austria an ally.

For recent history Murray relies on the work of Andrew Marshall, the longtime head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. ( A biography on Marshall was reviewed here: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2015/04/my-amazon-review-of-andrew-krepinevichs.html ) In that biography I noted, “As the Cold War was winding down in the mid-1980s he focused his attention on the rise of China and was quick to point out how the revolution in military affairs (precision weapons, computerized command and control and information warfare) in the 1990s would significantly change the nature of future battlefields.” Indeed, this is how Murray viewed Marshall’s work. Further Murray noted that Marshall was among the first to see the Soviets lacked the economic strength and the scientific bench to keep up with the U.S. in 1980’s, which highlighted the fact that war involves far more than kinetic battlefields.

Although “The Dark Path” is a long book, it offers a kaleidoscopic view of the history of war over the past 500 years. It is not for the casual reader, but for those interested in understanding how our world came into being, it is well worth the effort.

My Review of David Brown's "A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas......."

 1854: The Hinge Year on the Road to Civil War

 

Historian David Brown has given us an important and very readable book on how the events of 1854 set America on course to our civil war. The critical event was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which broke the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing the territories north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to allow slavery under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Prior to that enactment slavery was prohibited in most of the Louisiana Purchase. The notion of popular sovereignty was first introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas in the 1850 compromise that brought California into the Union, but, allowed for the New Mexico and Arizona Territories to vote on whether or not they wanted slavery. Stephen Douglas would then build on the 1850 compromise to champion the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

 

The notion of popular sovereignty seems quaint today, but I would note we are yet again living with this on the issue of abortion. The overturning of Rowe v. Wade returned the question of abortion to the states where each state would determine how it deals with this question.

 

Leading the charge against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was Free Soil Party Senator Salmon P. Chase. Chase would go on to help found the new Republican Party in 1854, become Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and then become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His leadership on this issue established him as a national figure and the issue brought Abraham Lincoln out of his successful law practice into the national limelight. The growing chasm between north and south was occurring against the backdrop of rising industrialization and a growing abolition movement. It would become a battle between free labor and slavery.

 

So great was the controversy over the act, that the Whig Party would collapse as the northern Whigs could no longer countenance being in the same party as the southern Whigs. Most of the northern Whigs became Republicans and the Democrats solidified their position in the South and picked up those northern Whigs who didn’t become Republicans. The reason why the act passed was because the slavery-oriented Democratic Party was at the height of its power controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress. Indeed the New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce was the last Democratic president to receive a majority vote for president until Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

 

Brown brings into the mix Harriet Beecher Stowe of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fame published in 1852, Henry David Thoreau and his “Walden Pond” (1854), and Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad. All of this was going on in and around 1854. Further, in 1854 the full ramifications of the Fugitive Slave Law, part of the 1850 compromise, was being felt in the North, especially Massachusetts.

 

David Brown gives us a very real sense of our country heading towards civil war. Unfortunately, the parallels for today are more than disquieting.

My Amazon Review of Roger Lowenstein's : "Ways and Means: Lincoln..."

 

The Sinews of War

 

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Lowenstein proves the old wag that the South lost the Civil War because it used Confederate money. Governments are financed by three ways; taxation, borrowing, and printing money. The North funded the Civil War, by and large, through taxation and borrowing. To be sure the North printed up Greenbacks, but nowhere to the extent money printing was used in the South. By the end of the war, prices in the Confederacy had risen by an astounding 9,000%.

 

The problem the South faced is that it did not have the economy to sustain a long war, while the North’s economic advantages increased as the war progressed. The two real heroes in Lowenstein’s book are Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke. Chase a strong abolitionist and in many ways a Jeffersonian Democrat, realized that he could not finance the war by money printing alone and he developed a series of long-term bond issues that were ultimately repayable in gold. He also instituted a progressive income tax, and the Congress raised the tariff to nearly extortionate rates. The tariff was paid in gold, not greenbacks.

 

Later in the war Chase gets Congress to pass the National Banking Act which for the first time creates national bank charters. Previously banks were only chartered by the states. A key feature of the new national banks was that part of their reserves had to be held in U.S. government bonds, thereby creating a natural market to help finance the war.

 

He created a national currency with the Legal Tender Act in 1861, which enabled the issuance of greenbacks. They were accepted. In the South there was no national currency, and it was largely issued by local banks. I learned that a popular currency was issued by a Louisiana bank and its $10 bill was called a Dix. It was widely circulated and henceforth the South was to be called Dixie.

 

His second hero was the scheming financier Jay Cooke who can rightly be considered one of the founders of modern Wall Street. He set up an organization to sell Chase’s bonds to the American public far and wide. He used correspondent banks to help sell the bonds and his company became the first wire house on Wall Street. Cooke’s company would fail in 1873 after the collapse of the Northern Pacific Railway.

 

Lowenstein rightly calls the 37^th Congress the most successful in history. That Congress in 1862 passes the Pacific Railway Act, the Morrill Act establishing land grant colleges and the Homestead Act. All three acts represented nation building at its best.

 

A significant result of the Civil War is that it jump-started the industrialization of America. The Great Lakes cities of Buffalo, Cleveland and Milwaukee thrived during the war. Great fortunes were made, and that capital formed the basis of the industrial behemoth the U.S. was to become and the Gilded Age that was part and parcel with it.

 

I was pleased to see that Lowenstein cited Eugene Lerner, my finance professor at Baruch College from many years ago, at length. Lerner was an expert on the financing of the Confederacy. To sum up Lowenstein tells the story of Civil War finance with great verve, and he holds the reader’s interest throughout.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Sinews of War (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Robert Elder's "Calhoun: American Heretic"

 

 Slavery’s Theoretician

 

John C. Calhoun was brilliant and was one of America’s most dominant politicians for nearly four decades serving as congressman, senator, vice-president under two presidents, Secretary of War, Secretary of State and sought the presidency on several occasions. Unfortunately, he used much of his brilliance in cause of slavery. Baylor University history professor Robert Elder tells the story of his life with nuance and great detail. Unfortunately for the lay reader it 656-page length is a bit much.

 

Calhoun was born in 1782 in South Carolina’s up-country and was inculcated in his slave-oriented society. Unlike most of his brethren he goes north to Yale for his education and after returning to South Carolina he becomes one of the state’s leading politicians. After his election to Congress in 1810 be joins forces with Henry Clay to become a leader in the war hawk faction that leads the U.S. into the War of 1812.

 

His alliance with Clay continues after the war and he becomes an initial supporter of Clay’s American System. He supports the establishment of a national bank, the tariff, and a program of internal improvements. However, the coming of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 he breaks with Clay as the fight over tariffs becomes a proxy war over slavery. By 1832 he triggers the Nullification Crisis where South Carolina sought to overturn the Tariff of 1828. It almost came to war, but Clay came up with a compromise.

 

Calhoun believed the United States to be a compact of sovereign states with each or with a substantial minority having the right to nullify federal legislation. He called his theory “concurrent majority”. He basically sought a minority veto over policy. To be sure part of it was based in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 authored by Madison and Jefferson in opposition to federal power. That theory was expounded 160 years later by civil rights activist Lani Guinier was nominated to be an assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton. She supported a minority veto over majoritarian rule. Calhoun was pro-union, but only on southern terms.

 

Calhoun viewed slavery as a positive good. To him it guaranteed equality among whites thereby dampening the class struggle between white factory workers and their employers. After all South Carolina was way ahead of the rest of the country in promoting universal suffrage for white males. In a way he was a Jacksonian ahead of his times.

 

To Calhoun America’s original sin was not slavery, but rather the “all men are created equal” line in the Declaration of Independence. This completely undercut his support of slavery and further although Elder does not mention it the preamble to the Constitution begins with “We the people...” not “We the states…”

 

As an international statesman Calhoun had a hand in drafting the Monroe Doctrine in 1820 and avoided war with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory in 1845. He actually opposed the Mexican War because he believed President Polk usurped the power of Congress in declaring a state of war existed between the U.S. and Mexico. Further his free trade ideas became conventional wisdom in the second half of the 20th century.

 

Elder goes into great deal about Calhoun’s family life. His wife Floride and her dozen pregnancies and his relationship with his daughter Anna who became his intellectual confidante. The last a rarity in that era. The reader will learn much about America and Calhoun in this book, but I caution it is long.

For the full Amazon URL see: Slavery's Theoretician (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Fergus Bordowich's "Congress at War....."

 

The Civil War Congress

 

Instead of focusing on Lincoln, historian Fergus Bordowich turns his trained eye on the role of the Republican Congress during the Civil War. He tells his story through the eyes of Senate Finance Chairman William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME), staunch abolitionist and House Ways and Means Chairman Thaddeus Stevens (R- PA), Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War Chairman and staunch abolitionist Ben Wade (R-OH) and traitorous Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham (D-OH). It is Fessenden and Stevens who come up with the wartime tax and borrowing measures that kept the Union financially afloat during the darkest days of the war. Wade’s committee shines the light on General George McClellan ineptitude that leads to the appointment of General Grant. And we see Vallandigham spreading defeatist propaganda and raising every possible civil liberties argument against Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus and restrictions on antiwar speech. I wonder where today’s ACLU would be in that context?

 

Congress is way ahead of Lincoln on emancipation. Straight off it passes the confiscation act which frees the slaves captured from the Confederate army. This happens in 1861 well ahead of the draft Emancipation Proclamation that was written in mid-1862 and not formally released until January 1863. But we also learn that many abolitionists harbored deeply racist beliefs, though not true of Wade and Stevens.

 

While engaged in wartime issues the 37^th Congress, perhaps the most productive in history passes the Morrell Act (land grant colleges), the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act and the National Banking Act which created federally chartered banks. As a result, although rapidly depreciating, a national currency in the form of greenbacks was created. The next Congress passes the 13^th Amendment which abolishes slavery. Bordowich also discusses the fate of the Republican Party from its triumph in 1860 to its suffering a major defeat in the 1862 midterms to its great victory in 1864 following Sherman’s military successes in Georgia and the Carolinas.

 

Of note his discussion of Nathan Bedford Forrest who has once again become known in his role as founder of the Ku Klux Klan. What I didn’t know was that Forrest was a slave trader before the war and he conducted perhaps what was the greatest war crime of the war with his massacre of Union troops ( both black and white) Fort Pillow, Kentucky. His is one statue that should come down.

 

For those readers interested in a different take on the Civil War, Bordowich has offered up a very insightful book.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1Z7DLD4IL9YH1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Steven Luxenberg's "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation"

Betrayal

Washington Post journalist Steve Luxenberg has written an important book as to how the “separate but equal” doctrine was codified by the Supreme Court in 1896 that for all practical purposes legalized the Jim Crow laws of the South thereby betraying the promise of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution. He tells this story through the biographies of the dissenting Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, the majority opinion writer Henry Billings Brown, the lead plaintiff attorney Albion Tourgee and the history of the free mixed-race community that grew up in pre-Civil War New Orleans, of which Homer Plessy was a member.

The two heroes of the book are Harlan and Tourgee. Harlan was the slaveholding son of Kentucky’s Whig aristocracy who while supporting slavery opposed the dissolution of the Union and fought on the Union side during the Civil War. Tourgee was an Ohio lawyer who fought for the Union and later became a judge in the Reconstruction South.  Massachusetts born Brown, on the other hand, bought his way out of Civil War service and became a judge in Michigan. Of special interest is the milieu of the mixed race New Orleans community who fought with Andrew Jackson in famous battle of New Orleans and how it evolved over the 19^th century.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a set-up case orchestrated by Tourgee to overturn Louisiana’s separate car rule which kept black people out of the white’s only cars at the sole discretion of the conductor. How was a conductor to tell whether a light-skinned Negro was black or white? Nevertheless that was part of his job. Also of interest is the fact that the railroads did not like the separate car rule either. It cost them money. As a result both the Louisville & Nashville RR earlier and later the Eastern Louisiana RR fully cooperated with Tourgee in causing Plessy’s removal from the whites’ only car to set-up the case. Clearly the railroads, at least in the 1890s, were not the handmaidens of segregation.

What is remembered today is Justice Harlan’s famous quote that came out of his ringing dissent: “Our Constitution is color-blind.” Would that be true today? Luxenberg has written an important history. To me it was way too detailed and way too long, but at many points he reveals himself to be a very fine writer.

The Full amazon URL is: https://www.amazon.com/review/RAIR48142PPMZ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of H.W. Brands' "Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster"

When Giants Roamed the Halls of Congress

University of Texas history professor H.W. Brands has written a biography of the three giants who dominated Congress in the first half of the 19^th Century, namely Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster. All three were great intellects and orators who had a common dislike, for different reasons, of President Andrew Jackson.

Clay comes on the scene in 1811 where in his first term he becomes Speaker of the House. He and Calhoun would join together as the leading “war hawks” and push Madison into war against England. They would later split over the issues of tariffs, slavery and most important, the preservation of the Union. Clay would become the author of the American System based on protective tariffs, internal improvements and a national bank which made him the true heir to Alexander Hamilton. In 1820 he would put together the Missouri Compromise which delayed the ultimate reckoning of the slavery issue and thereby allowed the continued development of a growing America.

Calhoun, who served as vice-president to both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, quite a feat in its own right, became the tribune of the South. He fought tariffs, championed slavery and the ability of states to nullify federal laws they opposed which offered the theoretical basis for secession.

Webster had a brilliant career as a lawyer where he was victorious in such major Supreme Court cases as McCulloch v. Maryland, Dartmouth College and Gibbons v. Ogden. Although he is most remembered for his “Union, now and forever” speech in his Reply to Hayne, he supported New England secession during the War of 1812.

In 1850 all three of them, now all over 70, came together in the great debate over the admission of California into the Union as a free state, the treatment of fugitive slaves and the extension of slavery into the New Mexico Territory. The end result of the debate was yet another successful Clay compromise. And it was here where Webster in order to save the Union bent over backwards against his abolitionist constituency, on the issues of fugitive slaves and slavery in the New Mexico Territory, to agree with Clay. Oh to be in the Senate Gallery to hear the debate. The next best thing is reading Brands’ account. All three would be dead within two years.

Brands brings to life these three great personalities as they dominated the Congress for 40 years. It is history at its best. I only wish our current Congress had at least one Clay or a Webster and unfortunately too much of the nullification spirit of John Calhoun is alive and well in both parties today.

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2JBQPK21E3ID1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Kori Schake's "Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony"

Passing the Baton

Kori Schake, Deputy Director-General for Institute for Strategic Studies, London has written an important book as to how a declining power peacefully passes the baton to a rising power. The operative word here is peacefully, because in most cases the two powers fall into what Graham Allison has called the Thucydides Trap where the ancient historian noted “it was the rise in Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The importance of Schake’s book is that today the world is faced not with the rise of the U.S. and the decline of Britain, but rather with the rise of China and the decline of the United States.

Her book begins with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, where she notes that it was a British idea to begin with, to the end of World War II. In the case of the Monroe Doctrine Britain was seeking to preserve its commercial interests with the newly independent Latin American countries and the U.S was more than happy to have the British navy enforce the doctrine. In fact one of the reasons for the Monroe Doctrine was the Russian presence just north of San Francisco. Both the U.S. and Britain were fortunate to have John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State and the Britain to have George Canning as Foreign Secretary.

Schake then goes on to discuss the Oregon boundary dispute of the late 1840s, the Civil War, the Venezuelan crises of 1895-1905, the Spanish American War, World War I, the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and World War II. She highlights how Britain feared U.S. interference in British politics during the Civil War that worked to keep Britain out as many Brits sympathized with America’s republican values and the presence of Irish and Scottish immigrants in the U.S. who still had strong ties to the home country. The Brits certainly did not want to encourage secession.

By the time the Venezuelan Crises came around Britain began to fear America’s growing power and instead of fighting the powers worked together. Simply put Britain began to treat the U.S. as an equal and further it had worries much closer to home with the rise of Germany. Indeed the British Navy actually supported Admiral Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay. Again both parties were lucky to have such statesman as Hay and Salisbury. Moreover by 1900 the two countries were becoming more alike. The U.S. was become more imperialist and Britain became more democratic. Simply put The U.S. was first willing to accept Britain’s rules based hegemony and later Britain would accept the rules laid down by America.

That became apparent at the Washington Naval Conference where the once mighty British navy accepted American parity in the Pacific. It was a diplomatic victory for President Warren Harding.

With the coming of World War II Britain was forced to accept American hegemony. They had no choice and under the new rules its empire would have to go. In return for American support again the Brits had no choice.

The question for us today that would the U.S. and China be so lucky. Schake thinks not. There is far less commonality and it isn’t clear that on the U.S. side we will we have statesman on the caliber of John Quincy Adams and John Hay. One can only hope.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OM24BW8GQPI1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

An Open Letter to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell

Dear Paul and Mitch,

I know both of you have very tough jobs in that you have to deal with a president who his own secretary of state called a “fucking moron” and who has an approval rating of 38%. Yes, I know President Trump is still popular within the Republican Party, but he remains an impulsive 14 year old boy in the body of a 70 year old man. And he his failing in the most fundamental role a president has that of uniting the country. To the contrary he is dividing our country to an extent not seen since the Civil War and I was around during the Vietnam era.  You know it and I know it, but what are you going to do about it? Look for guidance in the words of Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake.

You have to think where President Trump is taking our country and the republic for which it stands. It is not a pretty sight. You have to get beyond the vote on the tax bill and the next Supreme Court appointment and think what your children will think of you twenty years from now. You do not want to be known as moral eunuchs who stood by as everything you believed in turned to shit.  Let me leave you with a thought as I paraphrase Mark 8:36, “For what shall profit a political party if it gains the White House and the Congress and suffers the loss of its soul.”

Yours truly,

David Shulman

My Amazon Review of Richard White's "The Republic for Which it Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896"

History with a 21^st Century Liberal Bias

Stanford professor Richard White is a distinguished historian; I only have amateur status. While reading White’s encyclopedic history of post-civil war America you get the impression that he is looking to shock the sensibilities of 21^st Century liberals by highlighting racism, the plight of laborers and farmers, the corruption of government and the greed of the emerging capitalist class.

To be sure the post-civil war era was no bed of roses, but if Lincoln came back from the dead and looked upon the America of 1896 he would have been largely pleased. The Whig in Lincoln, after all he was an admirer of Henry Clay’s American  System,  would have been pleased to see the success of the Pacific Railway Act, the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act (land grant colleges). America truly became a country from sea to shining sea, surpassed Britain as an industrial power and was about to take its place on the world stage. Of course as White rightfully notes the Native Americans were far from being partners in this process. Nation building is messy.

The free labor Lincoln might have been a bit disappointed in that industrial workers instead of being free were in fact “slaves” to the industrialists. This last point White makes over and over. However industrial workers were far from being slaves and far from being a majority of the workforce and even with the urbanization that took place in the 30 years after the civil war, America was still an agricultural country with a small town economy. And as bad as factory conditions were, immigrants from Europe continued to pile in. Simply put higher real wages and freedom remained a big draw.  Moreover, White ignores the rise of the middle class who would read the muckraking journals that were just beginning to make their appearance in the 1890s.  

The idea that White doesn’t seem to get is that the America of the 1870s was an “emerging market.” Where he is shocked about the governmental corruption that took place, I view it as a stage in the growth of the economy. Industrialization is messy and that is why crony capitalism and emerging markets go hand in hand. He also makes a side comment that American growth was slow compared to some of the faster growing economies of the 20^th century. Of course it was because America was inventing the stuff that the 20^th century economies had the benefit of copying.

Although White cites the excellent work in Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” he doesn’t take it to heart. (See https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/02/my-amazon-review-of-robert-j-gordons.html )   Productivity growth was strong and real wages were rising. The U.S. was experiencing a “good” deflation, not a bad one as gains in productivity were translated into lower prices. Indeed the return to the gold standard, which White is critical of and it had a lot to do with the deflation, but it laid the basis of America becoming a global economic power at the dawn of the next century. The late 1800s truly were truly an age on invention and the locus of invention was largely in America.

All of the class issues that White discusses were fought out in the election of 1896. William McKinley’s defeat of William Jennings Bryan was a resounding vote for the gold standard and against the class-based reforms proposed by Bryan. Highlighting the rise of the new middle class is the fact that 750,000 people visited McKinley’s home to hear him give campaign speeches. These folks weren’t the tribunes of capitalism or White’s downtrodden workers and farmers, but rather they were of the rising middle class.

The one area where I know Lincoln would have been disappointed is the failure of reconstruction. Here the Republicans punted and turned the south over to the Ku Klux Klan, the armed wing of the Democratic Party. As White notes, the Republican traded the south for the west. I wish he would have spent more time on President James Garfield, whose was shot at the beginning of his term. If there was anyone who could have halted Jim Crow, it would have been him. We will never know.

I am sure White’s book will win its share of awards, but for me it was a disappointment. He should take off his liberal blinders and look at the world as it was.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1TWNN5VYQ0HO0/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv