One of the things that so appeals to me about the Freedom Riders is that they were, for the most part, regular folks. Yes, there were movement leaders and future leaders on the buses and in the cells: James Farmer, James Lawson, Wyatt T. Walker, Stokely Carmichael, among others. But for the most part, the Riders were citizen soldiers who dropped whatever they were doing to go to Mississippi (and elsewhere in the south) in 1961. So I'm happy that Breach of Peace plays a part in recording their place in history, and getting their recollections about their experiences into print.

At his New Yorker blog, Rik Hertzberg writes a brief review about a book just out in paperback that uses the contemporary observations of Union and Confederate soldiers to write a history of the Civil War:

“What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War,” by Chandra Manning (Vintage Books), is a consistently absorbing work of bottom-up history. It is based on the writings of ordinary soldiers on both sides—letters home (some of them dictated by illiterate troops to their lettered comrades), letters to political figures (notably President Lincoln), articles from regimental newspapers (a species of periodical I hadn’t known existed), and resolutions passed and forwarded by the rank and file of military units in the field (another genre new to me). It is the first book by Ms. Manning, who is an assistant professor of history at Georgetown, and it is a work of heroic research, skillful synthesis, and clear writing. . . .

The book is terrific. Taking her title from “When This Cruel War Is Over,” a mournful song that (with very slightly different words) was sung more than any other in both North and South, Manning argues, and pretty much proves, that the war was over slavery and nothing but slavery. The soldiers on both sides understood this very well and, for the most part, understood it earlier than the folks back home did.

Order it from Amazon.