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I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I can’t speak for other states, but we learned about the Civil War (as much as we covered it in our mediocre history classes) from the North’s point of view. I imagine it was similar in other northern states. To me, slavery was the main issue separating North and South but I won’t deny that there were lots of good, honorable, Christian people on the Confederate side who fought for reasons other than slavery. The irony of the American War was expressed most eloquently by Abraham Lincoln, who had a gift for apt sayings. He once said, towards the end of the war, that it would have cost less money, and 600,000 less human lives, if the Federal government had simply bought each slave for market value back in 1861 and then freed them!
That leads us to Manly Wade Wellman’s three-part juvenile historical novel series covering one aspect of the Civil War, told through the eyes of the young Confederate scout, Clay Buckner: The Ghost Battalion, Ride Rebels, and Appomattox Road. Clay is part of a body of Confederate cavalry scouts who act almost as spies, with secret headquarters and daring infiltration into Union lines. The reader will learn much about how cavalry scouts operated and the adventures that they often had. Clay’s interactions with a brave Southern girl and a Union spy who becomes a friendly enemy to Clay add to the richness of the story. This trilogy about Clay Buckner is highly recommended for middle school and higher readers and as a literary supplement to a unit study on the American Civil War.
Frontier Reporter is not about the Civil War but is included in this review since the hero of the book is Hugh Buckner, son of Clay Buckner, who sets out to Kansas to work in journalism. The town in which he works is vying, with other nearby towns, to become the county seat, where the county government will sit. Like many others of Wellman’s historical fiction, a main theme of the story is the building of civilization and community. Although my description may sound dry, the action of Frontier Reporter and Hugh Buckner’s heroics will keep any reader turning pages!
People who choose to begin reading any of Manly Wade Wellman’s many juvenile historical novels are in for a delightful time. These stories are historically accurate, exciting and realistic, with a firm Christian worldview and no questionable language or incidents. These novels, for early middle school and higher, are composed of several series and a number of stand-alone stories. Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) was an interesting American writer. He was born in the country of Angola in Africa, the son of a medical officer. The family then moved to America, where Wellman got a college degree in journalism in 1926. He and his wife lived for the last several decades of his life in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Wellman wrote for many different genres – comic books, mysteries, science fiction, and stories in which his heroes fought evil in the supernatural realm. Today, he is best remembered for his delightful stories and novels about Silver John, a wandering minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar who travels through the Appalachian regions and fights supernatural evil known only from whispered folk tales. During the time of his career, he also had a tremendous interest in American history, particularly of the Carolina areas, and so wrote many wonderful juvenile historical novels, which I will be reviewing from time to time (see my review of the American Revolution and Bear Paw Gap series).