The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy

One of history's most bitter irregular conflicts was waged in Kansas and Missouri before and during the Civil War. Goodrich (Bloody Dawn) reconstructs its horror through extensive quotation from letters, diaries and reports. He depicts a situation wherein a conflict's original causes gave way to young men who kept fighting because they knew no other way of life. Whether Union or Confederate, they turned the concepts of mercy and honor into grisly jokes as reciprocal massacre, destruction of property and victimization of noncombatants reduced life on the Trans-Mississippi frontier to a Hobbesian state for all. This compelling work highlights the wisdom of the Confederacy's leaders in surrendering in 1865 rather than continuing what would now be called a low-intensity conflict and whose results would have been incalculably disastrous. Photos. (Mar.)