Unforgettables

John C. Waugh, whose earlier book was The Class of 1846, has spent three decades researching and writing about the American Civil War. In Unforgettables he collects forty people from the period whom he has come to regard as unforgettable. The group includes famous and notorious figures as well as people who are little known or have been largely forgotten. The full title, Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the Civil War Era, describes the range of the collection.

Among the subjects are Abraham Lincoln as a writer, Jefferson Davis as the president of the losing side, and their wives, Mary and Varina. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster are placed beside Presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, who were in office as the country moved toward war without stopping it. The military portraits include U. S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, along with General Winfield Scott, the mentor of both men, who is now nearly forgotten.

Waugh also widens the frame to include Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, who fought for equality, as well as Lincoln's friend Douglass. Other chapters cover several women, among them Maria Mayo, Kate Chase, and Anna Dickinson, whose work helped shape how people understood social and cultural questions. Two influential newspaper and media figures, Horace Greeley and Adam Gurowski, round out the collection.

In his preface, the author says he hopes these sketches and character studies revive interest in the passions that drove people during the era and draw skeptical readers into history's drama.