Tarnished Victory

This title concludes Marvel's four-volume revisionist history of the Civil War; his thesis is that the war was brought about by the North, that the cost was not worth any benefit derived, and that Northern society was despotic, corrupt, and made miserable by Lincoln. According to Marvel, Union generals were drunkards, inept and ruthless butchers of their own men as well as innocent Southerners. He is quite selective, focusing on the blunders of Union generals that only hindsight could reveal while minimizing the equally baffling blunders of Confederate generals. He criticizes the draft in the North but hardly mentions it in the South and points out horrific POW conditions in the South but blames the Northern policy of refusing to exchange prisoners. Marvel ruthlessly criticizes Lincoln's administration but fails to show how Davis's was any better.