Nor- throughout the crowded first two years- is there anything more than passing mention of the repercussions on the citizens above and below the line. Nothing is here of the years of tension and the factors that went into the making of war. The telling starts with the two political and ideological leaders:-Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln and with the contretemps which precipitated the firing on Fort Sumter. There is little here of cause and effect. Quite evidently, it is war as it was manipulated by the men in key positions, for almost consistently one sees action as he sees it through the generals and their lieutenants. A novelist, he has viewed the facts exhaustively, through primary sources, contemporary writing and the recreation of the most gifted of the historians and biographers. The first of three volumes- and this one five years in the writing- this bids fair to be a definitive history within the limitations.
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