Civil War

Splicing exceptional artworks with letters, extracts from diaries, journalistic dispatches, memoirs, poems and historical writings, this mosaic succeeds admirably in conveying a vivid firsthand impression of the Civil War as both sides experienced it. Walt Whitman as a hospital aide gives an empathic eyewitness account of the war's victims. With restrained pride Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman tells his wife of his destructive march to the sea. Julia Ward Howe divulges her sources of inspiration for ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'' Diarist Mary Chesnut, a Confederate general's wife, curtly notes the ``foul murder'' of Lincoln. Selections by Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ulysses Grant, Bruce Catton, Herman Melville and Stephen Crane as well as by soldiers and civilians are effectively juxtaposed with Winslow Homer's unsentimental paintings of military life, with oils by Albert Bierstadt and George Caleb Bingham, and with archival photographs, editorial cartoons, drawings and recruitment posters. The result is a stirring tableau. Sears is a former editor of American Heritage. (Nov.)