BOOKS
THE CRISIS OF THE CONFEDERACY—A HISTORY
OF GETTYSBURG AND THE WILDERNESS.
It is not surprising that the campaigns and battles of the four years' war between the American States, and the careers of the great leaders on the two sides should attract the attention and be the study of military students and critics in other lands. But it is surprising that foreign students and war critics should give such thorough and careful study to these leaders, and their campaigns as to produce books that are most complete in their comprehension of all the elements of history, and most accurate in detail. Col. Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War," as a narrative of Jackson's campaigns, and a study of the strategy of that military genius, is the most complete and detailed ever written. No American writer has produced so full and thorough a discussion and history of Jackson and his campaigns as this accomplished English officer.
The same may be said of Captain Battine's book. No book to this time has given so comprehensive and so accurate a narrative of the Gettysburg campaign, from the standpoint of the impartial historian. Of Henderson it may be said that he had become convinced of the justice of the cause of the Southern Confederacy, and was an enthusiastic admirer of Stonewall Jackson and of the Southern Soldiery which followed Jackson. But Captain Battine announces no judgment of the righteousness of the contest on either side. There is a well guarded reserve as to his convictions and his sympathies. With an impartiality that is we believe unbroken, he studies with great fairness the whole campaign, from the standpoint of the military student and critic. With the politics of the great conflict he has nothing to do, and
