Book Review: Allegiance

Posted on January 11, 2009 in History Reading

[amazonify]015600741X::text::::Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War[/amazonify] by David Detzer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excruciating history is revealed here, reminiscent in some ways of the prelude to World War I. Detzer tells the story of the shelling of Fort Sumter. We have all heard about this event in school, but little do we know of the political matters and the vainglorious romance that prefaced it.

The first few chapters move slowly as statesmen probe and waffle, soldiers do their duty to the best of their understanding. No one wanted this, but it happened. As Detzer points out, not a single actor had participated in or even heard the details of an internecine conflict. They went ahead anyways, the South with secession, the North with its refusal to turn over Federal property to the rebels.

Detzer gives us the city of Charleston as it unexpectedly was in 1860-61, the Southern sympathizing officer who became a hero to the North, and the frenzy that led to the emplacement of guns around Charleston’s harbor, all aimed at the brick bastion positioned to choke off all shipping to the port. We see the slaves and the freemen, the white working class, the gentry who climbed up onto their rooftops to watch the bombardment in the early hours of the morning.

When it gets to the action, the author tells us of the intricacies of manning the guns and the extreme exhaustion of the Federal garrison. Civil War buffs will find this an interesting read that will fill in their knowledge of the months that led to war and the first days of a conflict that would ultimately wreck a whole section of the country. Read this slowly for the details, Savor the blunders, the blindness, and the prejudices that cleaved a nation.

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