Book notices.
Annals of the Army of Tennessee, and Early Western history. Dr. E. L. Drake, editor, Fayetteville, Tennessee.
We noticed several months ago the prospectus of this new candidate for public favor, which was started in April last. We have since received the numbers for April, May, June and July and take great pleasure in saying that the monthly fully sustains its promise of interest and value. It proceeds upon the correct theory of allowing the men who made the history tell the story, and is producing some articles of deep interest and great historic value. We cordially welcome the “Annals” as a valuable co-worker in the cause of historic truth, and shall feel it a privilege to “touch elbows” with it in our [96] assaults upon the bulwarks of error. We shall preserve its numbers, have the volumes bound, and place them upon our shelves as valuable material for the future historian.
We trust that friends of historic truth everywhere will give Dr. Drake warm sympathy and hearty support.
Life of Albert Sidney Johnston. By William Preston Johnston. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
We have looked with great expectations to the appearance of this book. We appreciated the intrinsic interest that attaches to so noble a life, and we knew that the gifted author had been singularly fortunate in securing ample material, which we felt confident he would use with judgment and arrange with skill. As announced in our last issue we found the advanced sheets to fulfill the prophecy of its interest and value. We have now received the book itself (gotten up, as to paper, type and binding, in the beautiful style for which the Appletons are famous), and we find that it more than meets our high expectations. With a loving but delicate touch the author tells the story of the life of a great man and illustrates it with anecdote, reminiscence and private letter in such style as to rivet the attention of the reader from the beginning to the end of the book. He tells the story of this great man's boyhood (he was born the 2d of February, 1803, in Mason county, Virginia), his career at West Point, his early army life, his connection with the Black-Hawk war, his service at Jefferson Barracks, his brilliant connection with the Texan revolution, his valuable services to the Republic of Texas, his career during the Mexican war, his civil life after the close of this war, his re-entering the United States army, his command of the Second cavalry, his Utah campaign, his service on the frontier, his resignation, his entering the Confederate army, his career in the West, his great victory at Shiloh, and his glorious death. The author makes an able and very judicious defence of the motives and principles of the leaders of the Confederacy, and gives avery valuable statement of the relative numbers and resources of the North and the South.
His account of the Fort Donelson campaign and of the battle of Shiloh seems fuller and more accurate than any that has yet appeared. Indeed, the book is a very valuable contribution to the history of the first year of the Confederacy.
It is a proud legacy of devoted patriotism, chivalric daring, stainless character and noble example which Johnston and Lee, and Jackson, and Stuart, and Polk, and Hill, and Ewell, and others of our fallen chieftains, have bequeathed to the people of the South, and this charming tribute of an accomplished son to a noble father will write the name of Sidney Johnston even higher on the scroll of fame than the popular verdict had placed it.
It is a high compliment to our talented sculptor, Edward Valentine, that the beautiful engraving which adorns the frontispiece was made from his superb bust of General Johnston, which the family pronounce the best likeness extant.
