North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Hancock the Superb by Glenn Tucker; Dorothy Thomas TuckerReview by: James L. NicholsThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 38, No. 1 (JANUARY 1961), pp. 107-108Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23517001 .

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Book Reviews 107

standing, a clear image simply does not come through. Whether this is the fault of the author or the editor, or both, is anyone's guess.

Maybe it isn't possible to prepare a neat portrait of the

Congress, but certainly this could have been done with indi vidual members. The volume suffers from overburdening de

tail regarding the passage of trivial legislation. There are inexcusable errors in fact, in judgment, and language. Care

less expression and colloquialisms run wild; awkward phras

ing, plain bad grammar, as well as inexact chronology, mar

particularly the chapters on finance and economic organiza

tion, likely to be tedious at best. It may be that those of us who have thought that a pene

trating analysis of Congress would bring great illumination of the internal affairs of the Confederacy have been wrong all

along. At least in this book such new information and inter

pretation as there is remains buried in a mass of undigested material.

University of Mississippi. James W. Silver.

Hancock the Superb. By Glenn Tucker. Maps by Dorothy Thomas

Tucker. (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1960. Pp. 368. Illustrations, bibliography, and index.

$5.00.)

This biography of the Yankee favorite of the South, Win field Scott Hancock, was an almost inevitable outcome of the

author's High Tide at Gettysburg. Hancock's conspicuous

generalship on each of the three big battle days on the fate ful field so impressed Mr. Tucker that he determined to honor

the general with a much-needed modern biography. The wartime career of Hancock, as Tucker suggests, is at

the center of the story of the Federal Army of the Potomac. He opened the advance on the Peninsula, was at the "Bloody Lane" at Antietam, and "rode in the whirlwind of death"

against Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg. He held the rear

guard after the debacle of Chancellorsville and, as previously

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108 The North Carolina Historical Review

stated, was especially "superb" at Gettysburg. The "Bloody Angle" of Spotsylvania, one of Lee's few mistakes, was Han

cock's glory, while the assault at Second Cold Harbor, one of

Grant's worst mistakes, was Hancock's agony. Truly, it can

be said, he was ever at the center, the most trusted lieutenant

of the procession of commanders of the Army of the Potomac.

After the war, Hancock electrified the North and South

with his famous General Order Number 40 which restored

civilian authority and local rule in his district of occupation. His reconstruction proposals, had they not been contemptu

ously rejected by the Radicals, might have adverted much of the bitterness against the North that still exists in many south

ern communities.

Hancock's generous attitude toward the conquered and his

espousal of Democratic Party principles brought him the

presidential nomination in 1880. His biographer believes he lost the election "partly by a forth-rightness that seemed poli tical naivetè, and partly by a handful of what some of his followers termed craftily counted New York ballots" (p. 17).

Mr. Tucker is to be commended for his success in present

ing Hancock the man, despite a lack of personal letters among the Hancock papers. Every possible source appears to have

been exploited, however, to bring the reader an impressive

picture of Hancock in action.

This reviewer, in conclusion, agrees that "though always a

subordinate . . . second in war, second in peace . . . Hancock

undoubtedly ranks as one of the great soldiers of American

History."

Stephen F. Austin State College. James L. Nichols.

Three against Lincoln: Murat Halstead Reports the Caucuses of 1860. Edited by William B. Hesseltine. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960. Pp. xxi, 321. Appen dices, notes, and index. $6.00.)

A young Cincinnati newspaperman, Murat Halstead, ob

served the several political conventions of 1860, recorded

their proceedings, and commented upon them with some

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