Benjamin Franklin’s public life as scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher and author, among other activities, is well known. His private life, however, is another matter. Franklin had a complex relationship with his family, and while in his 20s and married, he fathered an illegitimate son, William, whom he adopted. They enjoyed a close relationship for many years, the son assisting his father with scientific and diplomatic matters, performing admirably in the military and impressing many with his intelligence and charm.

Their relationship changed dramatically with the coming of the American Revolution. As Daniel Mark Epstein demonstrates in his well-researched and absorbing The Loyal Son, their decisions to support opposite sides in the conflict led to an irreparable break. By 1776, William was Royal Governor of New Jersey, a post he did not want to give up, and Benjamin had many important responsibilities in the years ahead, including the chairmanship of the Continental Congress’ Committee of Secret Correspondence, the “first CIA.” William was imprisoned for a significant period, under difficult circumstances, but was eventually released thanks to the efforts of Benjamin’s friends and allies. Even then, William volunteered for additional efforts for the Empire.

Epstein, the author of many books, including the acclaimed The Lincolns, offers a balanced, nuanced study, sympathetic to but not uncritical of either man. Shortly before he died, Benjamin wrote to his son, “nothing has ever hurt me so much . . . as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake.”

The gripping narrative illustrates the public issues that drove the father and son apart and illuminates in detail the agonizing cost to each man.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1849, after serving one term in the U. S. Congress, Abraham Lincoln returned home to Springfield, Illinois, to resume his law practice. In retrospect, Lincoln portrayed himself during the years after his return as virtually retired from politics. But as an astute and well-connected political strategist, concerned about the future of the country, he also remained involved in public life. He and his law partner, William Herndon, had the best private library in town, subscribed to many newspapers and journals from around the country, and both regularly wrote anonymous editorials for a Whig Party newspaper. As Herndon pointed out about Lincoln, “He was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” In his magnificent Wrestling With His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. 2, 1849-1856, Sidney Blumenthal explores in superbly researched and beautifully written detail the crucial period when “Lincoln’s public and private statements” began to reflect “a moderate politician with radical thoughts.” Events in Washington and elsewhere threatened to tear the country apart over the extension of slavery in the West. And the Whig Party, for years Lincoln’s political home, was collapsing and the Republican Party was being established.       

Lincoln’s personal experience also shaped his thought. A turning point came in autumn of 1849 when he was in Kentucky, a state that was supposed to be an example to guide other Southern states to move slowly toward emancipation. Instead, he saw the ruthlessness of the pro-slavery forces crush the benevolent paternalism and gradual emancipation plans of Lincoln’s political hero, Henry Clay. Several months later the Compromise of 1850 passed the Congress and President Millard Fillmore proclaimed it a “permanent settlement” of the extension of slavery question. The landslide victory of Franklin Pierce in 1852 seemed to confirm this judgment. But not for long.

Excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches and other writings reflect his deep understanding of the racist undercurrents of his time and the strong tensions between and among various political groups. His outstanding abilities as a thinker and his elegant mode of expression are also revealed. The best example of this is a speech delivered in Springfield in 1854, almost 17,000 words in published form, probably the longest he ever delivered, which laid the foundation for his politics through 1860. Lincoln delivered the speech several times and in longer versions. It is an early (that is before the more celebrated Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858), devastating critique of Stephen A. Douglas’s defense of slavery and, among other points, presented his understanding that the founding generation tolerated slavery only by “necessity,” because it already existed and went to great lengths to limit it with the goal of ending it. The excerpts from the speech and Blumenthal’s masterly description and analysis of it make for great reading.

The first volume of Blumenthal’s projected four-volume biography, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849, was widely praised by Lincoln scholars and many other reviewers. This second volume, by a writer with years of experience as a political journalist and presidential advisor, is also extremely well done, and anyone interested in Lincoln’s political career will want to read it.     

According to the Osage American Indians, when May’s full moon shines and the Earth warms, taller plants overtake April’s tiny flowers, “stealing their light and water” until they die. This is bestselling author and journalist David Grann’s fitting metaphor for what befell the Osages in Oklahoma, beginning in May 1921. His thoroughly researched account, Killers of the Flower Moon, is a chilling tale of unfettered greed, cruel prejudice and corrupted justice.

When the U.S. government drove the Osages from their territory in Kansas to northeastern Oklahoma, no one knew about the rich oil deposits below the surface of their new land. Soon the oil would make the Osages incredibly rich—and their white neighbors incredibly jealous.

Since only a tribe-enrolled Osage could claim the profits from their allotted lands, a law was conveniently passed requiring that guardians be appointed to “manage” the Osages’ considerable wealth. The fraud and treachery that ensued, referred to as “Indian business” by anyone involved, deprived the Osage people of their money, property and even their lives. Families victimized by shootings, bombings and poisonings found no justice at the hands of corrupt lawmen, bankers and judges.

However, the travesties and tragedies unfolding in Oklahoma coincided with the rise of the ambitious J. Edgar Hoover and the new Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was the detective work of agent and former Texas Ranger Tom White that helped Hoover transform the formerly inept and ridiculed FBI into a powerful agency. The FBI was finally able to deliver a measure of justice to the Osages, albeit too late for many victims.

Grann’s tale could have ended there and served its purpose well, revealing this “Reign of Terror” that was, until now, largely forgotten by most. But he goes on to reveal the many unresolved murders that preceded 1921 and the ongoing disenfranchisement of present-day Osages, adding to the sheer power of truth in Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities. Ironically, the conflict's leaders—General Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph—would, in the years afterward, become close, if wary, acquaintances and crucial to the heightening of each other's national reputation.

Sharfstein, a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt, begins his panoramic narrative with Howard losing his right arm to Confederate gunfire in the early days of the Civil War. Still, Howard continued to lead his troops and achieve rank. After the war, he was appointed head of the Freedmen's Bureau and charged with integrating the newly freed slaves into full citizenship. In that capacity, he established the university that still bears his name. But the resistance of white Southerners and their political allies stifled his most ambitious aims and contributed to his growing tendency to rationalize his failures, both bureaucratically and on the battle field.

Chief Joseph, as Sharfstein explains, was less a war leader than a diplomat. Long before and after the 1877 war, he argued incessantly for his tribe to be allowed to occupy its Oregon homeland rather than be harried to a reservation. However, the waves of settlers seeking to open up the resource-rich Northwest simply washed over him. Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns.

Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.

Tales of the Old West seem to improve with age, as award-winning historian Tom Clavin (The Heart of Everything That Is) demonstrates in his lively new book, Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West. Revisiting the capital of the wild frontier, Clavin focuses on Dodge City’s heyday—the 1870s and 1880s—and brings into sharp focus stories that long ago acquired the sepia tone of antiquity. 

Established as a military settlement, Dodge City developed into a frisky cowtown with a bustling stockyard and railroad terminus. Set on the plains in southwestern Kansas, it was an inevitable stop for buffalo hunters, businessmen, miners, guns-for-hire, cowpokes and other folks traveling westward. Dodge City, Clavin says, “came to symbolize both the American West and a nation seeking to fulfill its manifest destiny.” 

Because it attracted gunslingers of every breed (Dirty Sock Jack, Cold Chuck Johnny and Dynamite Sam, to name a few), extra-vigilant lawmen were needed to keep the peace. Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp were tailor-made for the task. 

Clavin’s storytelling skills shine as he chronicles the personal histories of the now-mythical pair, tracing the years of their reign in the West and providing an intriguing look at their comradeship. He delivers plenty of quick-draw drama—with appearances from Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James and others—in detailed accounts of the shootouts and duels that were the order of the day. 

Clavin’s bold narrative of life in a nation still coming of age provides a shot of good old-fashioned escapism. Dodge City “was a reservoir of tall tales,” he says, “yet many of the facts are equally if not more fascinating.” This rip-roarin’ read proves he’s right.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As Civil War battles go, the Battle of Hampton Roads isn’t among the most memorable. Gettysburg, Bull Run, Antietam and Fredericksburg usually take top billing. But author Richard Snow argues in Iron Dawn that Hampton Roads was among the most significant Civil War conflicts because it was the first sea battle between ironclad ships: the Merrimack and the Monitor. The battle lasted only three hours and ended in a draw. But because the two ironclads proved battleworthy, it signaled the dawn of the modern navy and the end to wooden shipbuilding. “Many naval battles . . . have bent the course of history in hours or even minutes,” Snow writes. “But none has fomented in a short day’s work a whole new kind of warfare, has in one noisy morning made an ancient tradition obsolete.”

By the time the two boats met on March 9, 1862, on Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, the Merrimack had already destroyed two wooden Union ships and had its sights set on a third. The Monitor arrived to hold the Merrimack in check. The two ironclads fired on each other for several hours, with little damage and few casualties, before they both retreated to safer waters.

The battle was evidence, Snow says, that many of the most important technologies of the Civil War came from the navy, not the army.

Iron Dawn is a worthy read not only for serious Civil War buffs, but also for those who appreciate how ingenuity forever changed the way the military does battle on the sea.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Our understanding of history does not always match the documented evidence. The American Revolution was not as orderly and restrained as we sometimes think. American colonists who remained loyal to the king and those wanting to break away often treated one another inhumanely. A plundered farm, the target of small raiding parties, was more common than a battle charge. After the war, 60,000 Loyalists became refugees. 

In his excellent American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor gives us a wide-ranging view that draws attention to the multiple empires clashing for land and power. The result, based on the latest scholarship, is a fresh and authoritative interpretation of the complex series of events that led up to the war and the many problems the new nation faced in the years immediately following.

Taylor emphasizes the crucial role played by the western expansion of settlers despite British efforts to restrict them. This expansion is essential to understanding both the causes of the revolution and the republic’s growth after the war. Between 1754 and 1763, the British and their colonists claimed the West as far as the Mississippi River. The colonists already here expected to share the fruits of victory. When that did not happen—instead, the British tried to protect Indian lands from settler expansion, made unexpected concessions to Francophone and Catholic subjects in Canada, and then imposed new taxes on the colonists—dissatisfaction began to stir.

Taylor’s focus on a larger area of North America gives us a more realistic understanding of the struggle. He shows “that relations with the native peoples were pivotal in shaping every colonial region and in framing the competition of rival empires. Enslaved Africans now appear as central, rather than peripheral, to building the colonies that overtly celebrated liberty.” 

Near the war’s end, black soldiers were one-tenth of the Continental Army. Women were also crucial to the Patriot war effort, running the farms and shops, keeping families together. Nevertheless, Patriots defended freedom for white men while continuing their dominance over Indians and enslaved blacks.

Taylor’s masterful account is consistently compelling whatever the focus—on diplomacy, religion, warfare, culture or slavery. Everyone interested in early American history should read this book.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The African slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean existed for centuries before the English colonization of what came to be called New England. By the 17th century, when the English joined the race for land and resources, merchants, traders, religious leaders and the crown were quite willing to use slaves (Indians and Africans) to help achieve their objectives. In her provocative and compelling New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, historian Wendy Warren asks if the early colonists disapproved of slavery. Her answer, deeply researched and well documented, is a “resounding no.”

Slavery, as Warren shows in significant detail, was part of life in America’s English colonies from the very beginning. Puritan theology was not opposed to it, nor was Anglicanism. Puritans, with the authority of the Bible, believed in a hierarchical system where those who were “perpetually” enslaved, Africans and Indians, were the lowest of all. Warren’s research demonstrates conclusively that the realization of John Winthrop’s vision of “a city on a hill” was possible only because of a flourishing economic system joining the West Indies and New England with slavery at its center. Leading colonists owned and sold slaves and wrote about slavery. The author

s documentation includes wills, probate records, ledgers and personal correspondence. She shines a light on many heartbreaking stories of enslaved individuals whose travails have remained largely untold in histories of the period.

Warren brilliantly traces in detail the development of the system from 1638, when the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in New England, until the publication of Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph, the first New England anti-slavery tract, in 1700. Although there were many other aspects of the arrangement, including family connections, the basic situation was as follows: West Indies sugar meant great wealth for owners, but it was necessary for the New Englanders to grow crops and catch fish to be sent to the West Indies where English colonists there, with the profits from sugar, bought what they needed to sustain themselves and the slaves who produced the sugar. A large part of the early New England economy, perhaps as much as 40 percent, had direct ties to the West Indies sugar plantations. If enough people had said no, the system might have ended but they did not. Enslaved people worked in homes in New England but usually no more than one or two at a time. Hostile Indian slaves were sent to the West Indies where harsh working conditions often amounted to a death sentence.

The first legal approach to chattel slavery in North America, the Body of Liberties, came from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641. The legislation made the perpetual bondage of Indians and Africans lawful. The Connecticut Code of Laws of 1646, published in 1650, made reference to Indian and African slavery as legitimate punishment for crimes.

This groundbreaking book gives us a new interpretation of the early colonists with regard to slavery, showing that it was part of New England life from the beginning. It also recounts the realities of settlement, violence and Indian removal, and how slavery became an accepted part of life in the colonies. Authoritative, extremely well written and humane, this important book presents a challenge to earlier accounts of the earliest English colonists in New England.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, May 2016

The state of play in the American Revolution, late 1777: One famous general has lost every significant battle he’s been in, often because he couldn’t curb his aggressive instincts. Another famous general has won several major victories, including one that will prove to be the most pivotal of the war.

The initially unsuccessful general was George Washington; the winner was Benedict Arnold. We know how it turned out—in the coming years, Washington became First in the Hearts of His Countrymen and Arnold became First Traitor. But how on earth did it happen? Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the bestsellers In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, tackles this fascinating reversal of fortune in Valiant Ambition, an engrossing narrative of the war’s most difficult years.

In Philbrick’s view, both men were indeed valiant and ambitious, but their fundamental characters were diametrically opposed. Washington had a true moral compass, a long horizon and the capacity to learn from his mistakes. Arnold was impetuous, greedy and consumed with self-regard. When Congress mistreated Arnold, he became enraged, started smuggling contraband and ultimately sold out to the British. 

The British unwittingly helped both men to their fates. The dysfunction of the infant American government was nothing compared to the internecine warfare of the British generals, who spent much of their energy scheming against each other. General William Howe beat Washington in every pitched battle they fought, but his hatred for his compatriot General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne exceeded his desire to win what he probably considered a pointless colonial dust-up. Perhaps Philbrick’s least favorite character is the British spy Major John André, the ruthless charmer whose careless misstep led to Arnold’s downfall and Andre’s own execution.

Philbrick argues that the quarrelsome, divided Americans needed Arnold’s perfidy as much as they did Washington’s greatness to unify their new nation. He pushes aside the patriotic myth to unveil the war’s messy reality—and it’s still a rousing adventure.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Christopher Columbus, honored as the discoverer of America and celebrated annually with a national holiday, was a slaver. This and other grim facts about the trail of human trafficking throughout history are likely not learned in school. In The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, Andrés Reséndez, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, offers a compelling account of a huge, tragic, missing piece of history.

From the Caribbean to South America to Mexico, then north to the West and Southwest of America, colonization, conquest and greed spawned the need for cheap labor and servitude. Long before the African slave trade brought captives to America, European explorers and conquerors claimed native men, women and children for profit-making purposes. Slavery was “first and foremost a business involving investors, soldiers, agents, and powerful officials.” In what is now Peru and Bolivia, for example, a “state-directed” labor force for silver mines “began in 1573 and remained in operation for 250 years.” Enslaved workers were brutally treated and subjected to diseases like smallpox, for which they had neither immunity nor remedy.

Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, figure prominently in an equally long history of reformers, predecessors to the abolitionists. They shared a conviction that any form of slavery was morally wrong—but faced difficulty in converting those who profited from it. Owners of Indian slaves, distantly removed from their royal rulers or, as in America, from political deciders back east, could ignore demands for reform. When the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1865, legally abolishing slavery throughout the U.S., Southern laws like the Black Codes continued to thwart freedom for African slaves. In the Southwest and West, where Indian tribes went on enslaving each other, warring over horses, guns and territory, laws made in Washington meant little.

Today, with the complex and myriad effects of globalization frequently in the news, human trafficking has managed to endure. The Other Slavery both reminds and cautions: Man’s inhumanity to man is still making history.

Priscilla Kipp is a writer in Townsend, Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson was arguably the central figure in the early American republic. No one contributed more to the formation of the country or had more sustained influence. But how did he think of himself and what he was doing in the world? How did he want others to perceive him?

The authoritative and eminently readable “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” is an excellent place to look for answers to these questions. Annette Gordon-Reed, who received the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her groundbreaking The Hemingses of Monticello, and Peter S. Onuf, the country’s leading Jefferson scholar, delve deeply into the development and evolution of Jefferson’s thought. They give careful attention to both his public and private writing to help define his attitudes about many subjects, including the role of women. 

Jefferson came to view the family as a microcosm of the nation. He may have idealized home so much because, as a committed patriot and skilled politician, he was so often away from his own. Born into the top of Virginia’s social stratum, he enjoyed extraordinary advantages. At the same time, perhaps more than any of the other founders, he wrestled with the moral and practical implications of long-term relationships among Native Americans, enslaved people and white settlers. He came to accept the concept of inevitable human progress, and he believed future generations would resolve these problems. 

A particular highlight of the book is a discussion of the critical importance of the years during his diplomatic service in France, when his slaves, James and Sally Hemings, lived with him. When he returned home, Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery changed. He continued to see it as an evil, but not as the main degrading foundation of his country’s way of life. At the same time, Jefferson insisted publicly that patriotism began at home. The bonds that sustained family life, he thought, were the only stable and enduring foundation for republican self-government.

The authors are often asked, “What is left to be known and said about Thomas Jefferson?” Their reply is “Everything.” This stimulating book is a valuable guide to our most intriguing founding father.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.