The Drums of Morning

THIS fictional history of Abolitionism begins with the martyrdom of Elijah Lovejoy and the destruction of his printing press in 1837 and ends with the return of “human sweepings from battlefields" to their ruined towns and farms just after another martyrdom in 1865. Between are well-documented glimpses of the Abolition movement in New England, some record of the politico-moral struggle over the extension of slavery to the territories, a conspectus of slavery as it actually was in the deep South, an exciting history of one Pennsylvania farm station of the Underground Railroad near the Maryland border, and a very circumstantial account of the horrors of Andersonville, all strung upon a personal story of patriotism, passion, error, and hair-raising adventure. What is at once poignant and profound about it is a consequence of the simple fact that the Abolitionist hero (whose point of view governs the narrative) is imprisoned in the South during almost the entire period of the War of Secession, virtually cut off from all authentic news of both the physical struggle and the moral objective. He emerges unchanged into a radically changed world, still execrating Lincoln exactly as in 1860 and without the slightest inkling that the issue over which he has burned for a quartercentury is no longer the burning issue and has in fact been settled almost parenthetically as an incident of a greater issue that he had not even perceived. His story, perhaps something short of eminent as fiction, is deeply satisfying as a popularization of history and in its philosophic implications. w. F.