Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, the author of the
popular and award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the
most memorable and impactful individuals he has come across during his
three decades of researching and writing about the American Civil
War--or as he calls them, his "Unforgettables" in the aptly titled,
Unforgettables: Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the
Civil War Era.
Waugh's unique pen and spritely style bring to life a mix of the famous
and the infamous, the little-known and the unremembered. He reintroduces
us to Abraham Lincoln the writer, Jefferson Davis the losing president,
and their fascinating and influential wives Mary and Varina. Henry Clay,
John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster ("three for the ages") are
juxtaposed with Presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin
Pierce, and James Buchanan--four chief executives who failed to avert
the coming war. Military personalities include U. S. Grant and Robert E.
Lee with a nod toward their mentor, the nearly forgotten General
Winfield Scott.
The author cast a wide net to include "the seekers of equality," African
Americans Sojourner Truth and Lincoln's friend Frederick Douglass, a
half dozen women like Maria Mayo, Kate Chase, and Anna Dickinson who
helped shape our understanding of cultural issues, and influential media
mavens Horace Greeley and Adam Gurowski.
Poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, "The universe is
made of stories, not of atoms." She was right. Had she elaborated, she
might have added that these stories are driven by the passions of their
characters and are what history is all about. "My hope," explains the
author in his Preface, "is that these sketches and word portraits
rekindle that passion and hook a few non-believers on the undeniable
drama that is history."
