Unforgettables: Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the Civil War Era

In a series of brief character sketches, journalist–turned–history writer Waugh (Lincoln and the War’s End) highlights the lives and contributions of various people during the U.S. Civil War era. Many names will be familiar to readers; others are refreshingly new. The collection begins with Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, whose forceful and commanding personalities helped to shape sectionalist politics prior to the war. The second chapter describes the failed presidencies of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, who all exacerbated tensions over enslavement. Further chapters discuss Abraham Lincoln’s detractors, his cabinet members, military leaders on both sides, journalists, Black leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, several other women, and many more. The final chapter covers two eccentric personalities from the war: Confederate general Richard Ewell and the somewhat obscure West Point graduate George Derby.