America Divided

Three riveting reads about the Civil War will captivate youngsters

By Kathleen Baxter -- School Library Journal, 9/1/2005

The war against terror is not the only armed conflict to have landed on our shores. Since the Pequot War of 1636–1637, a lot of gore has been spilled on what is now U.S. soil. The most costly of these conflicts occurred between 1861 and 1865, when 185,000 soldiers and sailors died.

Three spellbinding new books about the Civil War period highlight the ingenious methods Americans devised to destroy each other. Grierson’s Raid (Farrar, 2004), by Tom Lalicki, describes an almost unbelievable Union army expedition into Mississippi and Alabama in the spring of 1863. General Ulysses S. Grant was planning an attack on Vicksburg, MS, and he needed help. He sent Colonel Benjamin Grierson with a force of 1,700 cavalry troops into the Deep South. The expedition had three goals: damage railroads, destroy Confederate supplies, and draw Confederate troops away from Vicksburg.

Grierson hated horses, having been kicked in the head by one as a child, but during the mission he rode for 16 days. His men’s uniforms got so filthy no one could tell they were blue. In fact, a southern teacher, who glimpsed Grierson’s men, let out her school so the students could cheer the Confederate troops passing by! The raid worked like a charm, helped in no small part by tips from runaway slaves.

Supplies were scarce throughout the South. Against the Union blockade, Confederate torpedoes were ineffective. Without propellers, they simply lay in the water. Depending on wind and luck, a Union (or even Confederate) ship might sail into one and blow up. But the Southern navy needed more than luck. Their bold idea: a submarine that would transport the torpedoes directly to the enemy ships.

Sally M. Walker’s Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H. L. Hunley (Carolrhoda, 2005) tells of that submarine, named for the man who paid for and, eventually, died in her. The new submarine practiced relentlessly in Charleston, SC, harbor, but met with disaster when the ship sank twice. Two separate crews drowned. But in time, the designers’ stubborn determination paid off.

Six months after its launch, the sub sank a Union ship—but then went down herself, killing all eight men inside. For the next 130 years, the H. L. Hunley rested beneath the waves near the entrance to Charleston’s harbor. Walker tells how the sub was discovered and brought to the surface and how forensic scientists identified the remains of the long-lost sailors. Amazing color photos show what that crew looked like before disaster struck.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a familiar story, but James Cross Giblin’s Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth (Clarion, 2005), a real page-turner, tells it from a fresh, dramatic perspective. Edwin and John were star-power celebrities in antebellum America. Edwin, the eldest, was handsome and wonderfully gifted. John, even better looking, was a bit of a fool. He believed that Lincoln wanted to become king. John convinced himself that he could kidnap Lincoln and force the North to surrender. He and a group of like-minded conspirators eventually decided to kill Lincoln.

Giblin focuses on the small details of the historical tragedy, and on the powerful emotions of this family of stage actors. What would have happened if John Booth’s spurs hadn’t caught on a flag hanging from the theater’s presidential box? What if General Grant had accepted Lincoln’s invitation to the theater that evening? Your booktalk listeners will be perched on the edge of their seats to learn how Edwin died and what happened to John and his fellow conspirators. This is a perfectly grand read!

These incredible, true stories will enrich the imaginations of your booktalk listeners. And they will teach students an important lesson—that a country can survive even when its own citizens become its deadliest foes.