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"DISSONANCE" is the third
Unfortunately, the quality product appears to be adulterated with a substantial helping of bologna.
The first caveat to be reckoned with in "Dissonance" is the misleading subtitle. This book does not cover the entire period from mid-April to late July 1861. It stops with the Federal invasion of the newly independent commonwealth of Virginia on May 24, the day after Virginians voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union.
This Federal occupation of Arlington Heights and Alexandria is set forth as something of a pre-emptive strike to prevent Virginia from mounting artillery along the Potomac to interrupt the District of Columbia's maritime communications with the outside world.
However, as Detzer himself explains, Virginia had made no effort to interrupt such activities in the period since Federal authorities attempted to destroy the Gosport Navy Yard at Portsmouth shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter.
Furthermore, by late May, Federal troops had secured full control of road and rail routes leading from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Annapolis to the nation's capital. Federal actions in Virginia on May 24, then, were not so much a pre-emptive strike as the national government's first overt act of aggression in what was becoming a civil war.
The second caveat to be considered is Detzer's attribution of the behavior of white Southerners at this time to the all-pervading influence of race and racism upon Southern society. Sorry, but the idea that Massah and Missus ran around the big house from the fall of 1860 until the Confederate victory at First Manassas worrying about whether Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimah were going to cut their throats and take over the plantation some night just doesn't conform to known facts.
Yes, slavery (and the racism that underlay it) was the major factor in bringing about the irrepressible conflict, but it is clear from the historical record that the secession impulse was influenced by different factors in each of the Southern states.
Moreover, as Detzer himself makes clear, the four Upper South slave states that seceded after the fall of Fort Sumter did so because of President Lincoln's call for troops to put down a rebellion. Use of force against fellow sovereign states was objectionable not only to these four states, but to substantial portions of the population in other states that were not accorded the opportunity to secede.
The third caveat in regard to "Dissonance" is the manner in which Detzer portrays events in Maryland, a state that the Lincoln administration had to keep in the Union in order to retain the District of Columbia. Virginia's secession convention voted to recommend secession to the state's voters on April 17.
Maryland, the Old Line State, had been Virginia's partner in events political and military since the American Revolution. It is not surprising that there was substantial sentiment in favor of secession in those Maryland counties on the eastern and western shores of the Chesapeake Bay, which contained the bulk of the state's plantations.
On April 19, the 6th Massachusetts Infantry, a militia regiment not yet fully equipped or under Federal orders, was attempting to pass through Baltimore on its way to defend Washington. Although Detzer does not say so, nothing could have been more provocative to pro-secession Marylanders at that time.
In those days, the railroad tracks of different companies did not always connect, making it necessary to move along city streets from one station to another. Altercations broke out between marching soldiers and a mob that tried to prevent the regiment's passage, resulting in the deaths of several militiamen and an unknown number of Marylanders.
To prevent further violence, Baltimore's mayor, Maryland's governor and police authorities cut the rail and telegraph lines leading north from the city. Three days later, two other Northern militia regiments occupied Annapolis, having arrived there by water up the Chesapeake Bay.
A Federal force soon occupied Baltimore and restored communications with states to the north. Maryland would soon be occupied by tens of thousands of Federal troops, and any possibility of allowing the state's residents to determine whether or not they wanted to remain in the Union would be permanently forestalled.
Detzer's unfortunate bias in favor of pro-Union and politically correct interpretations of events leading up to the outbreak of war between the states should not prevent us from appreciating what he has to say about the period after Fort Sumter fell, when the Lincoln administration considered Washington in peril.
Attentive readers will learn how former Virginia governor Henry Wise engineered the outcome of the April 17 secession vote, how John D. Imboden took over the Harpers Ferry arsenal for the state, and how William B. Taliaferro failed to prevent the superficial destruction of the Gosport Navy Yard.
Speculations about potential situations in which Virginia might have brought about the occupation of Washington by pro-Confederate forces in April 1861 are interesting, but as Detzer concludes, such an action was not really feasible.
Despite the caveats listed above, "Dissonance" remains a book worth reading, provided the reader is well enough informed to make up for the author's biases.
DANE HARTGROVE formerly of Stafford County, is a freelance writer living in Salisbury, N.C. Send e-mail to his attention to
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.
