I’m guessing in your last sentence you meant to say you DO think it’s a mistake to suggest the book was an attempt at counter-factual history. I don’t think I suggested that the book was such an attempt. I’ll reiterate that I don’t really care for what-ifs, and that since Lankford did not present either alternative courses of action or possible outcomes his book does not even come close to a counter-factual history. However, we’ll have to part ways on your assessment of the relevance of my criticism. I don’t think Lankford was attempting a counter-factual, but then I’m not sure what he was attempting. I really don’t see how simply stating that other alternatives existed and by extension that other outcomes were possible without some sort of examination of what those alternatives were enriches my understanding of contingency in the Upper South. If Lankford’s goal was to show that Americans did not know how events would turn out, for some reason I’m seeing that as a fairly modest goal of proving the obvious, one bound to elicit a response of “Yeah, and?” On the other hand, I think Lankford did do a good job with the second part of the goal as you describe it, that is to demonstrate that the Upper South was caught in the middle.

Drew

I have Marvel’s book here, but haven’t read it. Not surprisingly, he has a fawning blurb on the back of Lankford’s book. I think Lincoln can be faulted for some things he did, particularly as a manager and especially in the first two years of the war, but he is not the villain or sole catalyst of war that some try to make him out to be. Did you review the Marvel book on your site? If so, I’ll link to the review from here.