Thread:ML4E/@comment-21519-20140213213414

I'm two thirds of the way through a book by one of your compatriots about the relationship between the American Civil War and Canadian Confederation. My guess is the author's hoping to cash in on sesquicentennial fever with a book that will interest readers on both sides of the border.

It's not the best historical writing I've ever seen, I'm afraid, but I have found it to be pretty informative. I keep picking up on little errors which give me a bit of pause--he says Robert E Lee was already in command of the defenses of Richmond at the outset of the Peninsula Campaign, for instance, or that Joseph Hooker was new to command when the Pennsylvania Campaign began--but on the other hand those details have only a distant bearing on the heart of the book's subject matter, so I'm willing to overlook them.

One thing which I was surprised to learn, and which might interest TR as well, is that not only did Montreal-based Confederates organize a plot to burn the theaters and hotels of Broadway with Greek Fire in November 1864, but they got a good deal further along with it than did their fictional analogs in the first and by far better season of Copper. 