With the secession of the Southern States after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and the subsequent secession of the upper South after firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, reconstruction, or restoration as William Harris claims, was underway. Lincoln upon his inauguration extended an olive branch to his "dissatisfied fellow countrymen" promising them that the Federal Government, nor he, would assail them or their institutions if they agreed to return to the Union. Lincoln did everything in his power as president of the United States to keep the Southern states intact and a part of the United States of America. It was the decision of the Southern states to pursue war and not that of Lincoln.
William C. Harris, a professor of history at North Carolina State University, chronicles Lincoln's many attempts at restoring the nation to avoid war, and eventually to try and shorten the war in his fine work With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union. (1997) Harris starts out analyzing Lincoln's first inaugural address and points out Lincoln's belief that the Southern states could not secede from the Union. Lincoln believed that the Union was inseparable and thus there was no legitimacy to the Confederate States of America, and their illegal government. Lincoln felt that individuals and not states had rebelled against the United States Government. Thus, Lincoln's task was clear, he had to suppress the rebellion and restore loyal governments in the South. Harris shows how Lincoln never wavered from this theory throughout his work. The states were indestructible and it was his job as president to return them to there "proper practical relationship with the Union." Everything that Lincoln did during his administration focused on this premise according to Harris.
Harris breaks down Lincoln's actions, from appointing military governors, proclamations, and other means that Lincoln employed trying to entice Southerners into rejoining the Union. As stated earlier the first attempt at restoration was during the inaugural address, in which Lincoln made it evident that Southerners had nothing to fear from him as president. Lincoln had no desire to ban slavery in the South, although personally he was opposed to it based on human dignity.
The second thing that Lincoln tried was the appointment of military governors in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Louisiana. In this attempt, Lincoln was hoping that the loyal Union men in these states would reestablish governments that were loyal to the Federal government and the Union. For the most part this proved to be somewhat unsuccessful because these states were partially occupied by Confederate forces. Men such as Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, Francis H. Pierpont of Virginia and Edward Stanly of North Carolina served as military governors at one point or another in their respective states. Pierpont is responsible for the addition of the new state of West Virginia, because most men living in this part of Virginia were staunch Union men and did not own slaves nor support the slaveholding elite. Andrew Johnson served as military governor in Tennessee and later became Lincoln's second vice-president in 1864, eventually replacing Lincoln after his assassination.
Harris goes into great detail about the Emancipation Proclamation in which Lincoln declared that all slaves would be forever free on January 1, 1863 if the states that they lived in were still in rebellion on such date. Harris points out that Lincoln would have left slavery intact if the states had agreed to rejoining the Union before this date. The Emancipation Proclamation was another carrot offered in an attempt to end the war.
Harris continues detailing Lincoln's ten-percent plan in which he stated that if ten percent of the voters from the last Federal election took an oath of loyalty to the Union cause that they would be allowed to hold elections and restore state governments. The politics involved in this process are well explained and comprehensive. Not everyone was in total agreement over the restoration of states that had rebelled. Charles Sumner wanted the states punished for their insurrection, by relegating them back to territorial status. This flew in the face of Lincoln's premise that the states could not secede and therefore were never out of the Union. Harris makes this fact clear, and that Lincoln vigorously objected to this train of thought.
Harris also defends Lincoln's pocket veto of the Wade-Davis bill that would further erode Lincoln's policy towards restoration of the Union by taking power out of his hands, and placing it in the hands of the Congress, this too was totally unacceptable to Lincoln.
There is little doubt that Lincoln's plans for the restoration of the Union was a well thought out policy, however with Lincoln's untimely death and no one sure just what he would have done had he lived, Reconstruction turned into one of the most controversial periods in our history. If the Civil War was the defining point of who we were as a people, than Reconstruction in the hands of Johnson and later the Congress was the wedge that nearly split us apart again.
With Charity for All is a tremendous look at Lincoln's efforts to bind the nation back together in the face of trying circumstances to say the least. Harris has created a magnificent book that is current, comprehensive and thought provoking. His straightforward approach to a sometimes-controversial topic is refreshing and greatly appreciated. Many times historians try to waffle around subjects that are controversial in subject, but Harris is clear in his thesis and never veers from his point of view. The materials that he uses fully support his premise that Lincoln pursued his policy based on the fact that he felt that the Southern states had never really left the Union nor could they do so. With Charity for All is a welcome edition to the ongoing scholarship on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln.

Who would have thought that at such a late date, a historian could produce a work that so brilliantly and sharply alters our perceptions of the thinking and policies of Abraham Lincoln, one of the most written-about figures in history? Harris makes the reader realize that previous scholars have not been methodical or rigorous enough in examining Lincon's reconstuction policy. Given Lincon's immense prestige, contemporaries and historians have struggled to make his opinions match theirs. After Lincoln's death, Radical Republicans who bitterly opposed his reconstruction policy keenly felt the need to convince the public (and perhaps themselves) that Lincoln, before his death, had begun to come around to their way of thinking. Too many historians have mistakenly accepted this deceptive assertion. As Harris powerfully demonstrates, Lincoln's reconstruction policies were extremely consistent, and one must also say, very conservative. Due to his desire to prevent anarchy and restore order and stable, "republican" (with a lowercase r) government, Lincoln was willing to allow "loyal" Southern whites an almost free hand in reestablishing state governments, as long as they abolished slavery and granted African Americans minimal legal rights. Contrary to the later assertions of the Radicals, Lincoln evidently never determined to insist on voting rights, or perhaps even full legal equality, for African Americans. (He may have been willing to accept discriminatory "Black codes" or even a slavery-like apprentice system). Given Lincoln's immense prestige, it is more than a little disturbing to consider what the results of his policies would have been if implemented. As Professor Harris points out in his well-reasoned conclusion, however, one should not assume that Lincoln would have stood idly by and let white Southerners brutally and lawlessly reimpose white supremacy, as actually happened. Faced with such a situation, given his undoubted humanitarian instincts, he may well have concluded that only full, federally supported legal equality could salvage the situation in the South, and if he had decided this, he alone had the ability and influence to impose such a policy.

This is the best, most concise, book to use when one is starting to organize a set of building plans. There are many pertinent detail drawings required. Quite a number of these detail drawings address custom details, as well as the standard conditions typical to most wood frame construction. This third edition was written by two authors who are practicing design professionals, who are also teachers at the community college level. They seem to have been able to establish a clear and accurate communications link between the designer and builder. When this third edition was published in 1979 it cost about $30.00 (My original hardbound copy of the second edition cost $22.00). It is unclear why the cost is now $73.00. Possibly this is a typographical error.

This book takes on a very difficult subject, African fetish statues, and with the help of wonderful photo plates, and a discussion of African American artist Renee Stout's contemporary interpretations of the subject, the work explains brilliantly the meaning of some of the most extraordinary works of art produced by humankind. Have you ever wondered why pins are stuck in voodoo dolls? Read this book and enrich your understanding.

One of the 200 Most Important Confederate Books for the Reader, Researcher and Collector. Richard Barksdale Harwell Author of In Tall Cotton As listed in In Tall Cotton: [This is] a fictional treatment of Harris' early teen-age years as printer's devil for The Countryman, a remarkable country paper roughly modeled after The Spectator that was published during the war years by Joseph Addison Turner at Turnwold Plantation near Eatonton, Georgia. Harris dedicated On the Plantation to Turner and says in an "Introductory Note": "Some of my friends who have read in serial form the chronicles that follow profess to find in them something more than an autobiographical touch. Be it so. It would indeed be difficult to invest the commonplace character of Joe Maxwell [i.e., Harris] with the vitality that belongs to fiction. Nevertheless, the lad himself, and the events which are herein described, seem to have been born of a dream. That which is fiction pure and simple in these pages bears to me a stamp of truth, and that which is true reads like a clumsy invention. In this matter it is not for me to prompt the reader. He must sift the fact from the fiction and label it to suit himself."

I'm so glad that I chose to read this book before reading any of the book reviews that discussed its literary prose value. I fully admit to have lived in Savannah for the past ten years and probably read it for curiosity value moreso than desire to read another historical fiction. However, I had great difficulty putting this book down to work or sleep. I found the characters and plot most riveting. I found myself asking friends and co-workers that are native to Savannah about the events and descriptions of the town in earlier days, only to determine the extreme accuracy of depictions. I, too, will be awaiting the sequel eagerly.

A great read ! An engrossing and fast moving story of family loyalties, ambitions, murders, and political and social intrigues set in and around Savannah (by a native Savannahian) with such a fascinating, moving and authentic presentation of the behavior, attitudes and reactions of its diverse people that the book is extremely difficult to put down until it is finished.

Reading this book was a wonderful experience. On the historical side, the picture painted of Savannah was beautiful and enticing, full of the rich Southern and Irish-Catholic heritage that Savannah is so proud of. The families portrayed were full and in-depth studies of the individuals and their family heritage, good and bad. The novel begins with a unique bond between two good men, one a white Confederate soldier, the other a slave. The bond is friendship and trust. The novel traces family history in an intriguing plot involving serial murders, betrayal, greed and also love, brotherhood, trust and true faith. The families lives entertwine again and again through history. This novel was far different than what I had expected it to be about, but I can say I was not at all disappointed. I was very moved by the strong key role that the characters Faith in God and their relationship to the Catholic Faith played and how it was their strength and life saver in their many struggles with betrayal, disappointment, drugs, war and death. From the Civil War to Vietnam and beyond this was a wonderfully crafted novel. This is not the typical " Irish sad story", where when it's over you heave a big sigh and say Ahhhhhhhhhh! This is a wonderful tale of family, true love, and a rich Faith in a beautiful Southern setting.

Wm. Harris picks up with characters from his last novel Delirium of The Brave. His writing isn't bad, but at times he over works his characters. In addition, Harris walks a thin line between reality, fact and fiction. Having grown up just outside of Savannah in the late 40s and practicing law there in the early 1970s, I've heard some of his story before. Aside from a few editing and plot problems, the book is ok. However, I'd rather spend my money and time elsewhere.

Reprising characters from his intriguing debut novel, "Delirium of the Brave," Georgia based writer William Harris adds another star to the pantheon of reader pleasing tales set in Savannah.

Savannah....just the name evokes mystery, intrigue, and long buried secrets. Readers will find all and more in "No Enemy But Time," a story spanning World War II years to the present. Imagine Savannah's coastal region: Driftwood Beach, Back River, Uncle Moses's Cabin, Sister Mystery's Cabin and what might have occurred if a spy had been stationed there during the war.

In this finely crafted narrative Francis Collins, a member of the IRA, agrees to spy for the Nazis. Following a rigorous training regime he is transported by submarine to the borders of Savannah with orders to contact a fellow German agent. Their goal? The destruction of a shipyard. When this plan is scuttled and arrests are made, Collins decides to immerse himself in his assumed American identity and disappear.

In later years he becomes a power in the local political and social scene, and a bulwark of support for a young politician.

As chance would have it one day the young politico is out driving when he discovers a downed submarine. The sub is not just a curiosity but the repository of dark puzzles from the past which, if brought to light, could destroy.

Harris is an author who knows his setting and his suspense. He weaves a satisfying Southern spell so surely that readers may wonder, "Is this fact or fiction?"

- Gail Cooke

Anyone who read Delirium of the Brave is no doubt delighted to find that this book is finally available--and every bit as intriguing and engrossing as Dr. Harris' first effort. The characters are intense, the story-telling first rate and the haunting romance of Savannah is brought to life in a way that only a true son of the south can do. Highly recommended.

By Tom Bennett
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ralph Ellison wrote that Aesop and Uncle Remus teach us that comedy "is a disguised form of philosophical instruction."
Growing up in the hotbed of philosophy that was Wren's Nest, the west Atlanta home where his father Joel Chandler Harris spun the engaging "Uncle Remus" stories, Julian LaRose Harris had to have experienced a good deal more intellectual growth than the average boy in Atlanta in the 1870s.
He also had to have gained from the stories a roundabout introduction to philosophy, and each day had rub off on him the gentleness and altruism of his famous father.
This upbringing and his world travel formed a sophisticated Georgian, one who would prove be out of place in his home state.
Julian LaRose Harris and his brilliant wife Julia Collier Harris counted among their friends the newspaper titan H.L. Mencken and the sociologist Howard Odum. The Harrises' were on the world stage at a pivotal time, while Julian was general manager of James Gordon Bennett's Paris Herald during World War I.
Julian covered the 1896 Democratic national convention in Chicago at which William Jennings Bryan was nominated; the Versailles peace conference; and the Scopes monkey trial.
You cannot retain the narrow world view of a west Atlantan of the 1870s while you are hearing firsthand the oratory of a Bryan, or watching the streets of Paris fill up with the wounded from the Battle of Verdun.
Julian Larose Harris emerged from all this far too progressive to last for long as editor of a Georgia daily in the 1920s. He flamed out on the Columbus Enquirer-Sun after nine years, but not before it won the Pulitzer gold medal for public service for facing up to the Klan. (That "it" is correct, for the gold medal goes to the paper and not the person.)
"Someone had to be hated" is a book you can like a lot.
It answers questions that I've long had about this engaging pair who formed the second generation of a distinguished Georgia journalism family -- Julian and Julia.
What experiences shaped their progressive views, ruinous for their careers? What are the details of their perilous defiance of the Ku Klux Klan while putting out the Columbus Enquirer-Sun? What made Julia a notable figure in U.S. journalism in her own right?
All these answers are provided by authors Gregory C. Lisby and William F. Mugleston, and Georgians owe them a debt.
Julian LaRose Harris got a jump-start on The Atlanta Constitution as an 18-year-old reporter, but he soon would depart on his journalism odyssey taking him to Chicago to Europe to the banks of the Chattahoochee River in Columbus. He initially didn't want any help from The Constitution, his father's newspaper, for fear of charges of nepotism. If only second-generation journalists strictly applied that standard!
Harris' clear flaw as a progressive editor was that he wrote for Georgia journalists at least as much as for the readers of Columbus. No wonder they never subscribed as heavily to his Enquirer-Sun as they did the rival Ledger of the nondescript Page family.
A frequent target for what the authors call Harris' "broadsides" was The Atlanta Constitution. It doesn't come across well at all. He described it as the "Atlanta Morning Moddle-Coddle." It made no editorial comment after the Enquirer-Sun exposed how Gov. Clifford Walker told journalists he was headed to Philadelphia for a rest - A rest? In Philadelphia? -- but in fact he went to Kansas City to address the convention of the Ku Klux Klan.
Perhaps Harrises' most strident criticism for the three Atlanta papers -- Constitution, Journal and Georgian -- was that in that era they "were not representative of anything except the cheapest politics, and the most childish rivalry in obtaining or controlling cheap political jobs." Ralph McGill's emergence as a progressive about 1938 turned that around.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has cautioned that we must give the Arab world time to democratize. In our own experience, he points out, we gradually enfranchised our citizens over a 200-year period.
It's in that light that journalism history must view the 58 years from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board Education, from 1896 to 1954. That's a period squarely in the middle of which Julian LaRose Harris briefly flashed across the firmament as Georgia's liberal editor. Even so he never took an integrationist position. It put him at enough personal risk to advocate what them was progressivism of Georgia editorial pages. It was this: It's wrong to drag people from their beds and hang them from trees until they are dead.
This book reiterates how the immediate heirs of Joel Chandler Harris could have used marketing and business know-how. In the teens, they sold away Wren's Nest to a mismanaging committee of 100, for a pittance. In the twenties, Julian and Julia never figured out that their Enquirer-Sun bookkeeper, Francis Edward LaCoste, was stealing them blind.
Whether they intended to or not , the authors relieve the heartbreak of the Harrises' loss of control of the Enquirer-Sun by relating the story of the "cornpone-and-potlikker debate." What a welcome thing it is for the reader!
Gov. Huey P. Long of Louisiana bragged how he won over road contractors by serving them potlikker, with a platter of cornbread for dunking in it. Julian Harris, now news director of The Atlanta Constitution, led as the paper galvanized support across the South for the view that it was far better to crumble cornpone in your potlikker rather than dunk it.
Clark Howell Sr., The Constitution's partisan owner, had not fared very well in the authors' narrative until now. We see his witty side as he cables dryly from his Hawaii vacation getaway: "The boys at home have overlooked my instructions not to engage in any serious controversy during my absence."

This is essentially a booklet published by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. At 63 pages including end notes, it is a little book meant to provide a summary of the events leading up to North Carolina's secession from the Union. Personally, I think it does more harm than good. There are many contradictions in the text, often between one sentence and the next. The author uses pejorative terms to describe the pro-secessionists (e.g., fire-eaters, zealots); while these terms can be found in historical studies, the connotation associated with them deserves no place in objective writing. My main objection to the book is the author's stated belief that slavery alone led to the state's secession. The events, ideas, and actions leading up to War Between the States are varied and complex; this is especially the case in North Carolina. Oddly, several of Harris' own facts belie his simplistic model of history. There were significant numbers of slaves in North Carolina, but a majority of whites owned no slaves, and the number of plantations featuring more than 50 slaves was miniscule at best. The political economy and way of life varied greatly between the coastal plain, piedmont, and mountain sections of the state. White yeoman farmers were a significant force in North Carolina politics by 1860. Significant class issues are passed over by Harris in this book, which is a great weakness of the text. Surprisingly, Harris goes to great lengths to note the fact that votes for the conventions considering secession had no correlation at all to the number of slaves held in each area of the state--this alone chops the legs out from under his monolithic slavery thesis. After citing the fact that several thousand pro-Unionists gathered in Salisbury in 1860, he makes the unbelievably broad statement that North Carolina was all but united in its opposition to leaving the Union. He argues that local issues were still predominant in the politics of the 1850s and 1860, yet he still asserts that slavery overruled all other concerns in North Carolina politics and virtually mandated that the state secede. Finally, in the final paragraph he steps back and admits that secession was a difficult decision for North Carolinians and was only made in the wake of Lincoln's coercive action in Fort Sumter. The sense of rationality he accidentally assigns North Carolinians here is insufficient to resurrect the practicality of a book built upon a simplistic thesis that the author refuses to give up despite the fact that his own arguments often disprove its very validity.