Shades of Gray

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War By H. W. Crocker III (Regnery Publishing, 370 pages, $19.95) AN OFT-REPEATED TRUISM is "History is written by the victors." Certainly this has been the case of the War Between the States. Books written about the war must number in the hundreds of thousands by now, and generally they worship at the altar of the Union and the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln. And they keep on coming. The majority of Americans, if asked, would say that the war was principally about the national stain of slavery, that secession was illegal, that the South provoked the war, that the Union was worth preserving at the cost of 650,000 dead, that it was the only solution to the problem of slavery, and that Lincoln was our greatest president. Well, Harry Crocker doesn't think any of these things are true, and in this enjoyable and provoking book he tells his readers why.  Crocker, a Californian novelist, editor, speechwriter, and amateur British Imperialist, is the author of an idiosyncratic book on the history of the Catholic Church, as well as a military history of the U.S. and other books such as Robert E. Lee on Leadership. His current contribution, the latest of Regnery Publishing's popular Politically Incorrect Guides, takes on the "Civil War," a.k.a. "The War of Northern Aggression" (or, as some post- bellum Southerners referred to it, "the late unpleasantness"). Make no mistake, Crocker's sympathies lie with the South, and Part I of his book describes "why the South was right." However, as one reviewer put it, he does so with "great scholarship, great story-telling, and great fun." The book's many informative sidebars full of interesting quotes and Civil War trivia show that Crocker, although serious about the justice of the South's cause, maintains his light touch in provoking the reader to think differently about the War that changed us from saying "United States 'are' rather than United States 'is'" and all that came with it.&n...