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| Book Reviews | Crime: Stories than on the law or on the trials that America Aflame: How the Civil By Ferdinand von Schirach; translated by occur. For the most part, the reader War Created a Nation need know nothing about German Carol Brown Janeway law to appreciate the stories fully. Von By David Goldfield Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 2011. 188 pages, Schirach does include a four-paragraph Bloomsbury Press, New York, NY, 2011. 632 $25.00. afterword to explain some differences pages, $35.00. between German and American law, and this afterword should have been The Union War REVIEWED BY HEN R Y CO H EN an introduction, because it gives away By Gary W. Gallagher nothing about the stories and would Are these crime stories truth or fic- help the reader on the few occasions Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011. 215 pages, $27.95. tion? The book does not say, but the when the stories refer to German crimi- stories feel true, because they are so nal procedures. Among the differences strange. As Mark Twain said, “Truth is between German and American law is stranger than fiction, but it is because that the prosecutor in German criminal REVIEWED BY HEN R Y S. CO H N Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; proceedings is not on the side of the Truth isn’t.” If I were to summarize the state but is obliged to be impartial. These two books, published on the plots of the stories in Crime: Stories, you The defense attorney, by contrast, acts 150th anniversary of the beginning of might say that they are not possibilities. solely in the interests of his client and the Civil War, reach conclusions with Reading the stories, however, might must preserve his client’s confidences. which many scholars would disagree. convince you that they happened just as In addition, Germany does not use But let’s start by quoting from a book Ferdinand von Schirach tells them. juries, but, for larger trials, uses three review that historian James McPherson The puzzlement arises because von career judges and two lay judges, who published in the April 12, 2001, issue of Schirach is a German criminal defense are ordinary citizens appointed for a The New York Review of Books: attorney, and so is the book’s name- specific term. less narrator, and we don’t know to The crimes that Crime: Stories From the 1930s to the 1950s the what extent they are the same person. describes are not ordinary—there is not most influential interpretation of Are Ferdinand von Schirach’s 11 stories a single drug deal among them—and the causes of the Civil War was “plucked from his legal career,” as the some of them are gruesome. To pro- that put forth by the “revisionist” review of the book in the New York tect his girlfriend, a man dismembers school of historians, whose lead- Times claimed, or does von Schirach and carries away the body of a man ing figure was Avery Craven. The have an extraordinary imagination? It he finds in her bed, not knowing that revisionists denied that sectional could be both: he could be embellishing the man had died of a heart attack and conflicts between North and South ordinary cases that he has handled. But that she had left the scene for fear of were genuinely divisive. ... Such as fantastic as the cases seem, they do being arrested as an illegal immigrant. minor disparities did not have not appear embellished, because von A jealous boyfriend apparently kills to lead to war; they could have, Schirach tells them in such a straight- his girlfriend, not knowing that she and should have, been accom- forward way. It was only occasionally has prostituted herself in order to raise modated peacefully within the that I was so struck by the artistry of a money for him, and he has already had political system. ... The war was passage that I had to stop to reread it. a finger cut off by a creditor to whom brought on not by genuine issues For example, Feldmayer, who is one of he still owes money. A man robs a but by extremists on both sides, von Schirach’s narrator’s clients, has just bank and then sits down and waits to especially abolitionists and radical committed a crime. “Then,” the narrator be arrested. But von Schirach’s narrator Republicans, who whipped up tells us, “something strange happened. It portrays all his clients as human beings emotions and hatreds for their own seemed to Feldmayer that the blood in and enables us to understand how their self-serving partisan purposes. his veins changed color, it turned bright situations drove them to violence. red. He felt it surge and pulse from his I am not going to ruin any of the McPherson added, however, that, stomach, spreading throughout his body, plots for you, and will conclude by say- “[s]ince the 1950s most professional all the way to the tips of his fingers ing only that all 11 stories are vivid and historians have come to agree with and toes, illuminating him from inside.” engrossing. The narrator engages in no Lincoln’s assertion that slavery ‘was, Feldmayer is having a psychotic episode, polemics and no philosophizing; these somehow, the cause of the war.’” By and he is not the only criminal in this stories do not have deeper meanings. implication, then, the Civil War became book who suffers from mental illness. They just show us sides of life that we inevitable after Abraham Lincoln was Although the narrator of these sto- do not ordinarily see. TFL elected president, because Lincoln was ries is a criminal defense attorney who not going to allow slavery to expand represents the accused in each story, Henry Cohen is the book review editor of the narrator focuses on the crimes more The Federal Lawyer. REVIEWS continued on page 64 October 2011 | The Federal Lawyer | 63 REVIEWS continued from page 63 into the territories, and, as Jefferson notes that the Fugitive Slave Law moti- the Florida sunshine and writing about Davis said in an effort to justify seces- vated Stowe to write the book, he household management. Evangelical sion, the slave states were not going to also sees Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Stowe’s ministers gave up their strong message abide excluding slavery from the terri- “channel[ing] her grief [for the death of and mingled with leading entrepreneurs tories. In March 1861, Confederate Vice her son Charley] into a cause greater and politicians. Goldfield also shows President Alexander H. Stephens said than herself.” Stowe wrote that “[i]t was that the triumph of capitalism in the that slavery was “the immediate cause of at his dying bed and at his grave that I decade after the Civil War did little to the late rupture and present revolution” learned what a poor slave mother may improve the lot of former slaves or other of Southern independence, and in their feel when her child is torn away from minorities, such as Native Americans. declarations of secession, the Southern her.” Goldfield finds Uncle Tom’s Cabin He praises Mark Twain’s satiric picture states acknowledged that the preserva- filled with rhetoric against those who did of Northern capitalists, amassing enor- tion of slavery was the reason they were not follow Stowe’s evangelist doctrine. mous wealth and living like European seceding. Goldfield’s accusations against the royalty. Goldfield completes his book But James McPherson was correct evangelists are not new. Such charges with a view of the Centennial Exhibition in 2001 that only “most” professional emerged in the South as early as 1866 in Philadelphia, featuring the enormous historians agreed that slavery was the in the popular writings of George Lunt, Corliss engine and new American inven- cause of the war, and he remains cor- a Northerner who theorized that the tions, such as the telephone. rect today. For David Goldfield, once a evangelists and their abolitionist allies America Aflame is inadequately graduate assistant to Avery Craven, is were guided by anti-American princi- researched. Goldfield repeats as fact clearly in the revisionist school of his- ples, and that the Southern states seced- the legend that Lincoln greeted Harriet torians that McPherson described. In his ed to protect the traditional American Beecher Stowe as the little woman smoothly written book, America Aflame, way of life. Unlike Goldfield, however, who wrote the book that started the Goldfield argues, as did the earlier revi- standard 20th-century revisionists did Civil War. Goldfield’s discussion of sionists, that it was clearly possible for not blame solely the evangelists for the the Centennial Exhibition should have the North and the South to settle their Civil War but, more sensibly, looked to included Hartford’s Joseph Roswell disputes, and Goldfield blames the dis- multiple factors for the Union’s disrup- Hawley, the chairman of the 1876 ruptive abolitionist agitation of Northern tion. As David Donald summed it up in celebration. Hawley was both an evan- evangelical Christians for making such a his 1978 book, Liberty and Union, “[B]y gelical Protestant and a founder of the settlement impossible. the 1850s the reservoir of goodwill and Republican Party. He made sure that The title of the book, America Aflame, compassion that Americans [in both the the exhibition was closed on Sunday. alludes not only to the Civil War but North and South] had hitherto shared Hawley favored equal rights for blacks also to the burning by Protestants of an was being drained.” and immigrants and never compro- Ursuline convent in Massachusetts in Goldfield’s dislike for the North con- mised on these issues after the Civil 1834—an incident that Goldfield sees tinues in his treatment of the war itself.

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