Touched With Fire

A well-crafted survey of the five presidents—Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley—who emerged from the ranks of the Union Army.

The crucible of war has forged plenty of our nation's leaders, writes political journalist Perry (A Bohemian Brigade, 2000, etc.), and even though the citizenry has supposedly shied from letting the military get too close to politics, service in the armed forces has been the rule rather than the exception for most chief executives. The Civil War produced those five leaders, who, for better or worse, guided the nation through the Gilded Age. "They all fought in battles so desperate and bloody we can barely comprehend them," Perry observes. About those battles—the hells of Chickamauga, Shiloh, Atlanta, and others—he writes fluently and memorably. He has less to say about just how their battlefield experiences affected these presidents' time in office after the war, though he volunteers that Grant never seemed quite able to comprehend the complexity of civilian politics and that Garfield's skills as a backstabber, fine-tuned as a self-serving staff officer, found a perfect arena in the White House. Still, Perry does a good job of giving a you-are-there account of the presidents' seasons under fire and of drawing attention to often overlooked figures: Rutherford B. Hayes, who was wounded four times and fought bravely in a dozen major engagements; William McKinley, who served under Hayes and proved a hero at the Battle of Antietam; and Benjamin Harrison, a capable officer under William Tecumseh Sherman's command, even if it was true that "not many people actually liked him," thanks to his lack of social skills. Although he has but qualified praise for their work as politicians, Perry writes admiringly of their many contributions to the Union cause, with even a grudging nod to Garfield, "the smartest, the most devious, the most political of all these Civil War presidents."

A solid overview, well suited to Civil War buffs.