There are many years in American history that have come to be seen as critical. 1776, certainly. 1941. 2001. All have seen events that critically changed the course of our nation.
Bruce Chadwick believes that 1858 is another of those years. In 1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See, Chadwick tells of events in each of these mens' lives that led, either directly or indirectly, to the Civil War.
That is the premise of the book, anyway. I was disappointed to see very little of General Grant in the book - Chadwick would have been better off to have substituted William Tecumseh Sherman's name in his place. The book also seems to tell more of the story of James Buchanan and his incompetence than anything else; most of the biographical information on the other men in the book reflect on their interaction with President Buchanan, especially at the beginning.
In fact, 1858 reads like a biography of a group of people; Buchanan, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Sherman, Stephen Douglas, and some others all receive attention in the book. Each man faced momentous events in 1858, and those events are cataloged. Unfortunately, we frequently are missing some backstory, which would have served to put those events into some perspective.
Chadwick's work is lacking as a biography. It is passable as a popular history, though other reviewers have noted some historical inaccuracies such as the Missouri Compromise of 1850 (page 3) - the Missouri Compromise was in 1820, while the compromise in 1850 was completely different. A photograph taken in 1865 is mis-dated as 1862. While these are minor errors, they will grate on students of the era who know better.
1858 is an ambitious work. The idea of tracing the events of one year, and showing how they led to a much larger event several years later, is commendable. Unfortunately, the book ultimately falls short of this goal.
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