Marc Riggs

The scholarship is extensive and appears comprehensive, but the writing is often tortured, with garbled syntax, and endless sentences that seem to get lost in themselves in an effort to contain three or more thoughts. And despite the fact that the work appears well researched, early in the book Mr. Blumenthal makes allusion to a character (not Salmon P. Chase), who he identifies as Lincoln's secretary of the treasury. Manifestly, this is an inaccuracy. I read a gallery version of the book, and it is hoped that the final text will have all the prose challenges and any possible misstatements of facts corrected. However, this early version of the book also lacks imaginative illustrations, these being limited to the first page of each chapter, when a small image of some character or event discussed in the following pages appears on the lower right hand side. The book suffers from lack of maps to provide graphic illustration of certain events, or the terms of such momentous events as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and other historical events germane to Blumenthal's subject and period where a map with lines delineating affecting areas would be most useful.