With similar excellences
but with the same defect, though still the best in its field, is
Albert Bushnell Hart's "Salmon P. Chase" ("American Statesmen
Series", 1899). Among the Southern statesmen involved in the
events of this volume, only the President of the Confederacy has
received adequate reconsideration in recent years, in William E.
Dodd's "Jefferson Davis" (1907). The latest life of "Robert
Toombs", by Ulrich B. Phillips (1914), is not definitive, but the
best extant. The great need for adequate lives of Stephens and
Yancey is not at all met by the obsolete works--R. M. Johnston
and W. M. Browne, "Life of Alexander H. Stephens" (1878), and J.
W. Du Bose, "The Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey"
(1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens by Louis
Pendleton, in the "American Crisis Biographies". Most of the
remaining biographies of the period, whether Northern or
Southern, are either too superficial or too partisan to be
recommended for general use. Almost alone in their way are the
delightful "Confederate Portraits", by Gamaliel Bradford (1914),
and the same author's "Union Portraits "(1916).
Upon conditions in the North during the war there is a vast
amount of material; but little is accessible to the general
reader.
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