A Civil War Book Collection for 2002

LR ^ | 02 September 2002 | Donald Miller

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A Civil War Book Collection for 2002

by Donald W. Miller, Jr.

As a boy and teenager I came to know a woman who was born in 1866, one year after the war ended. She was Mary Lyde Hicks Williams, my great-grandmother. She lived in North Carolina in an antebellum plantation home that General Alfred Howe Terry of General Sherman’s Army used as his headquarters during Sherman’s march through North Carolina. Her father fought for the Confederacy at Fredericksburg, Antietam, and Chancellorsville, and led the 20^th North Carolina Regiment in the Battle at Gettysburg. He was captured on the first day of that latter battle after losing eighty percent of his men in two-and-a-half hours of fighting, and spent the rest of the war in prison at Johnson’s Island, Ohio.

His daughter lived in good estate well into her nineties and died when I was eighteen. She took a fancy to me, even though she would remonstrate that I was ill-mannered and should be sent to military school. Mary Lyde Williams was an old-school Southern Presbyterian, who, as a leader in the Daughters of the Confederacy, gave the Presentation Address at the Unveiling of the North Carolina Memorial on the Battlefield of Gettysburg, on July 3, 1929. She had many books on the Civil War in her library, some of which are now in my collection.

Captivated as I was with my great-grandmother and her Southern views on the Civil War, I learned in public school that it was wrong for people like her to support secession and the Confederacy, and for her father and his compatriots to fight and die for it. I was led to believe that a person who says the South did the right thing by seceding from the Union, while not openly admitting it, must secretly approve of slavery.

The first books about the Civil War I began collecting after my formal education was completed were biographies of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant’s own Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (2 vols., Charles L. Webster and Co., 1885–86) is arguably the best of all the Grant books. David Eicher in his analytical bibliography The Civil War in Books (University of Illinois Press, 1997) says, "Grant’s memoirs comprise one of the most valuable writings by a military commander in history." Not only a remarkable work by a military commander, Memoirs is a great work of literature. Although my views on the nature and significance of the Civil War have changed, I nevertheless continue to collect and read books about General, and later President, Grant. Two recently published ones stand out: Al Kaltman’s Cigars, Whiskey & Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant (Prentice Hall Press, 1998), which encapsulates many interesting facets of Grant’s character; and Frank Scaturro’s President Grant Reconsidered (University Press of America, 1998), a valuable corrective to the view held by mainstream historians that Grant’s presidency was a near-complete failure. (One good thing that Grant did as president was to resurrect the gold standard, which brought on a fifty-year period of economic prosperity in America.)

Collectors group books about the Civil War into these categories: General works, which include Histories and books on Battlefields, Equipment, Common Soldiers, Slaves and Black Americans, Politics and Society, Medical Aspects, Prisons, etc.; Battles and Campaigns; Confederate and Union Biographies, Participant accounts, and Letters; Unit Histories, particularly Regimental Histories; and Civil War fiction. A special set of books in my collection is the Photographic History of the Civil War (Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.-in-Chief, The Review of Reviews Co., 1911) that was published on the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s start. David Eicher calls it "The grandfather of pictorial histories," and writes, "This mammoth work is a necessary part of any Civil War library." My set came from my great-grandmother’s library, shortly before most of her collection was lost in a fire. This 3,497-page 10-volume set has 3,389 photographs taken during the war – of battlefields, camp scenes, hospitals, prisons, forts and artillery, army movements, and materiel. Tucked away in one of the volumes was a newspaper clipping from the September 1, 1949 New York Times. It described the last official "encampment" of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis that year. A photograph shows the six GAR veterans who attended the event – the youngest at age 100, the oldest at 108.

There are a few core works that every Civil War book collector will have. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 volumes, Century Co., 1887–1888) is the classic 19^th century work containing 388 articles with 197 maps that were published in the Century magazine between 1884 and 1887. Another is Allan Nevins’ 8-volume history of the Civil War, in three sections titled Ordeal of the Union, 1847–1857; The Emergence of Lincoln, 1857–1861; and The War for the Union, 1861–1865 (Scribners, 1947–71). As befits one of the leading court historians who presents the victors’ view of the war, Nevin idolizes Lincoln and argues that the war was a necessary catalyst for establishing the modern American state.

A listing of core works must include Bruce Catton’s The Centennial History of the Civil War in 3 volumes titled The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, and Never Call Retreat (Doubleday, 1961–65); James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford University Press, 1988); and my favorite, Shelby Foote’s 3-volume The Civil War: A Narrative (Random House, 1958, 1963, 1974).

Two resources that I have used in putting together my Civil War book collection are Richard Barksdale Harwell’s In Tall Cotton: The 200 Most Important Confederate Books for the Reader, Researcher and Collector (Jenkins Publishing Co., Austin, 1978) and Michael Mullins and Rowena Reed’s The Union Bookshelf: A Selected Civil War Bibliography (Broadfoot’s Bookmark, Wendell, North Carolina, 1982). Part I of The Union bookshelf contains 114 Annotated Books; Part II, a List of Regimental Histories; and Part III, a List of Participant Accounts.

Four books about the Confederacy belong in every Civil War library. One is Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (C. Vann Woodward, Ed., Yale University Press, 1981), certainly the best of all Civil War memoirs. This well-edited edition won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History. Another is Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War (Robert Manson Myers, Ed., Yale University Press, 1972). The third is Robert Selph Henry’s The Story of the Confederacy (De Capo Press, 1989); and the fourth, Margaret Mitchell’s great American novel, Gone with the Wind (Macmillan, 1936). Those who have read Mitchell’s prose will agree that the book is much better than the famous film based on it. (One bookseller is currently offering this book in a first edition, first printing, in a first-issue dust wrapper, signed by Mitchell in near fine condition for $17,500.00.)

To date more than 60,000 books and pamphlets have been published on America’s Civil War. By serious collectors’ standards I have a relatively small and undistinguished Civil War book collection – three hundred books in all, with only a few of them first editions in fine or near fine condition. But my collection has seven books, all published in the last twelve years, that I consider vitally important in helping one to understand the true nature and significance of the war. They are:

• Francis W. Springer’s War for What? (Bill Coats Ltd., Nashville, TN, 1990)
• Robert W. Johannsen’s Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Louisiana State University Press, 1991).
• Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Open Court, 1996)
• Secession, State & Liberty (David Gordon, Ed., Transaction Publ., 1998)
• Lerone Bennett Jr.’s Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Johnson Publ.. Co., 1999)
• Charles Adams’ When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000)
• Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War (Prima Publishing, 2002).

The authors of these books reach startling conclusions that stand the conventional schoolbook account of the Civil War on its head.

Until a few years ago, I, like most Americans, had accepted the standard view of the Civil War. In this version, historians portray Abraham Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents because he ended slavery and restored to the Union the slaveholding states that had seceded. But, as James McPherson puts it, Lincoln also engineered "a Second American Revolution." This revolution, in contrast the first revolution of nearly ninety years earlier, established a strong, centralized form of government, an outcome that has rendered the founder’s emphasis on state sovereignty an anachronism.

The first thing one learns from reading the books listed above is that America did not need a war to end slavery. Every other Western country that held slaves in the nineteeth century – which included Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Jamaica – freed them peacefully. The South would have done the same before the century was over. If anything, the fact that seven slaveholding states seceded from the Union when Lincoln was elected president would have sped up the process. As several of the historians above point out, many people in the North considered the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law to be an abomination, and the law would have been repealed if Lincoln had allowed the Southern states to go their own way. The Constitution of the Confederate States of American prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9); with their supply thus restricted, and slaves now having a place to escape to, slavery in the Confederacy would have ended as it did elsewhere, without war.

Charles Adams in When in the Course of Human Events and Thomas DiLorenzo in The Real Lincoln show in a convincing fashion that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought over money and politics. Abraham Lincoln entered office with a political agenda that did not include ending slavery. (Emancipation was introduced as a "war measure," as Lincoln put it, in 1863, in the third year of the war.) Following in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, his idol and mentor, Lincoln sought to create a strong centralized national authority. This would enable him, as president, to implement his long-held agenda of protective tariffs, to shield (Northern) American industries from foreign competition; centralized banking, which would give him control of the money supply; and "internal improvements," i.e., government subsidies to politically favored industries, particularly the railroad and canal-building companies that bankrolled the Republican Party. With no corporate, property, or income taxes then in force, the government’s principal source of revenue was import tariffs; and the South, with the greater number of ports, paid 87 percent of the taxes that the federal government collected to fund its operations and pay government salaries. Lincoln was willing to let the South keep its slaves and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law so long as the Southern states remained in the Union and continued to pay its disproportionate percentage of taxes.

American political history since the founding has been divided into two great camps – the Hamiltonians (beginning with Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and on to Lincoln) who favor a highly centralized state; and the Jeffersonians (beginning with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph, and Andrew Jackson) who espouse a limited, decentralized, constitutional government constrained by state sovereignty. One camp sought to have a Republic that respects and protects individual liberty and property; the other, to establish an Empire where the ends justify the means and the individual is subservient to the state. The American Civil War was a pivotal event for these opposing views of government. Abraham Lincoln prevailed and set the stage for the United States to become an American Empire. We, in 2002, are living with the results – with a currency managed by the Federal Reserve, today’s central bank, that has lost 95 percent of its value; with a continuing diminution of individual liberty and freedom under the thumb of a federal government that regulates every aspect of our lives; and now with suicidal attacks on our home soil by terrorists who hate America and the Empire it has become.

I believe the seven books listed above belong in every serious American Civil War book collectors’ library. Read them, particularly Charles Adams’ When in the Course of Human Events and Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln, and you will begin to view America’s Civil War in a new, more penetrating, and truer light. These scholars give us a much-needed insight into how what is happening in our country today, in the twenty-first century, is in large part a consequence of the outcome of its war that was fought 140 years ago.

September 2, 2002

Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon in Seattle. He is a director of Prepared Response, Inc. and a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com. This article was published in the Summer 2002 issue of The Journal of the Book Club of Washington (Volume 3, Number 1).

Copyright © 2002 by LewRockwell.com

 

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Ok FReepers, any books you would add to the list?

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Add your favorites to the list.

If you want on/off this bump list, FReepmail me

[kimosabe31]

bump

[exit82]

I would like to add two:

1. The Annals of the Civil War--Written by Leading Participants North and South--Da Capo Press 1994

This is a reprint of the series " The Annals of the War" published in 1878 as a series by the Philadelphia Weekly Times, edited then by Alexander McClure. McClure paired North and South soldiers and commanders on the same topic, and their first hand accounts, even 125 years after they were written, are fascinating. They often show that there is more than one side to a story, and that history is always written from a perspective.

2. My Story of the War, by Mary Livermore,1889. Mary Livermore was one of the leaders of the US Sanitary Commission, which sought to improve soldier medical care and hospital coditions. Her first person accounts of her four years on the Commission,including two personal visits with Abraham Lincoln, are a valuable memoir of that time period, and show the enormity of the suffering of the wounded and dying soldiers, and the state of medical care, during the Civil War. Especially poignant are the stories she tells of soldiers' last words and requests--heartbreaking at times. I have an original 1889 version, autographed by her.

[Pelham]

Destruction and Reconstruction, by Richard Taylor.

Richard Taylor, the son of President Zachary Taylor, was a Confederate general in the western theater. This is perhaps the best and most literate memoir written by a principal from the war. Very illuminating of some of the battles in the neglected western theater. Taylor at one point lured a fleet of Union gunboats up... the Red River, I believe it was, trapping them as the water fell. Kirby-Smith's failure to understand what Taylor was doing squandered the opportunity to capture them. A Confederate flotilla on the Mississippi would have added great complications to Grant and Foote in the west, where the War ultimately was decided.

The Black Flower, Howard Bahr

The experience of a rifleman during two days of the Battle of Franklin. A vivid rendering, a truly excellent book. I'd rate it equal, and maybe better than, the Shaara books.

[wardaddy]

My favorite as a boy was a novel by James Street called Captain Little Axe. It is now a collector's piece.

[Al B.]

"Lee's Lieutenants," by Douglas Southall Freeman....the 3-volume history of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Freeman was a 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his biographies of Lee and George Washington.

[FireTrack]

"Destruction and Reconstruction, by Richard Taylor"

Wow! I thought I was the only person on here who knew about Dick Taylor. I have to second that nomination. I would love to see a movie based his experiences!!!

Not exactly a Civil War Book, but close. Check out "Twelve Years a Slave"

[SteveH]

The first thing one learns from reading the books listed above is that America did not need a war to end slavery. Every other Western country that held slaves in the nineteeth century – which included Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Jamaica – freed them peacefully. The South would have done the same before the century was over. If anything, the fact that seven slaveholding states seceded from the Union when Lincoln was elected president would have sped up the process. As several of the historians above point out, many people in the North considered the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law to be an abomination, and the law would have been repealed if Lincoln had allowed the Southern states to go their own way. The Constitution of the Confederate States of American prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9); with their supply thus restricted, and slaves now having a place to escape to, slavery in the Confederacy would have ended as it did elsewhere, without war.

This seems logically weak (especially if one puts oneself in the shoes of a slave in the 1850's South) and seems to be contradicted by the following:

With no corporate, property, or income taxes then in force, the government’s principal source of revenue was import tariffs; and the South, with the greater number of ports, paid 87 percent of the taxes that the federal government collected to fund its operations and pay government salaries. Lincoln was willing to let the South keep its slaves and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law so long as the Southern states remained in the Union and continued to pay its disproportionate percentage of taxes.

So (perhaps someone with more historical sense can help me here) on one side many countries were abolishing slavery, but on the other side were consuming goods made from raw materials which were produced by slavery condoning countries. As the latter became fewer and fewer, it seems to me that the economics in favor of their remaining slavery condoning states became stronger, not weaker, with the passing of time and the overall decrease in the number of slavery condoning countries. (I also suspect that other countries not listed, such as Haiti, had to undergo a revolution at some point to evolve politically, though of course Haiti continues to have massive problems with poverty, etc. today.)

I have relatives who fought on the side of the Confederacy so I would like nothing more than to believe the romantic notion that the South fought entirely for noble ideals. I also note that Lincoln was no political innocent, following in the footsteps of Hamilton and blazing a path for the cause of federal supremacy over more local rule. I believe that many Southerners, such as Lee, had noble ideals, but that there were many others who were crowded by economics, greed, or a combination, to benefit unfairly from the forced labors of others, and could have continued to do so indefinitely were it not for war. Therefore it seems to me a hard sell to convince anyone that the South could have freed its slaves of its own volition without Lincoln's war and power grabbing politics. In fact, it seems one could make the argument that if the South had modernized its politics and culture and freed the slaves of its own volition, Lincoln as a political force would not have been able to muster enough support to put himself in the presidency in the first place, and the federalist movement in the USA would have been at least delayed.

(An interesting question is would it have happened at all? -- I believe probably so, though to a lesser degree, brought about by other incidents such as WWI and WWII; although the US entry into both wars was somewhat predicated by artificial means, the general fact seems to be that there needs to be some mechanism to permit the US to defend itself effectively and quickly from sneak attacks, nuclear attacks, terrorist attacks, etc., and the old method of having Congress debate and resolve to declare war, then muster an army, etc.-- the 18th century model -- would have left the US defensively weak and open to attack by the early 20th century if not the late 19th century.)

[Pelham]

there were many others who were crowded by economics, greed, or a combination,

An apt description of the Gilded Age, the corrupt years following the Civil War during which an unholy combination of politicians and businessmen enriched themselves at the expense of others. They were the victorious Yankees, including the Grant Administration, but what would you expect? The type can be identified by the pointing finger of accusation, usually pointed south. Very sharp eyed at spotting the faults of others. Its modern descendant is leftism, which like the abolition movement of old, finds its spiritual home in Massachussetts.

[FireTrack]

A few passages from Richard Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction";

Chapter I. Secession

The history of the United States, as yet unwritten, will show the causes of the "Civil War' to have been in existence during the Colonial era, and to have cropped out into full view in the debates of the several Sate Assemblies on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in which instrument Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, and others insisted that they were implanted, African slavery at the time was universal, and its extinction in the North, as well as its extension in the South, was due to economic reasons alone.

The first serious difficulty of the Federal Government arose from the attempt to lay an excise on distilled spirits. The second arose from the hostility of New England traders to the policy of the Government in the war of 1812, by which their special interests were menaced; and there is now evidence to prove that, but for the unexpected peace, an attempt to disrupt the Union would then have been made.

The "Missouri Compromise" of 1820 was in reality a truce between antagonistic revenue systems, each seeking to gain the balance of power. For many years subsequently, slaves--as domestic servants--were taken to the Territories without exciting remark, and the "Nullification" movement in South Carolina was entirely directed against the tariff.

Anti-slavery was agitated from an early period, but failed to attract public attention for many years. At length, by unwearied industry, by ingeniously attaching itself to exciting questions of the day, with which it had no natural connection, it succeeded in making a lodgment in public mind, which, like a subject exhausted by long effort, is exposed to the attack of some malignant fever, that in a normal condition of vigor would have been resisted. The common belief that slavery was the cause of civil war is incorrect, and Abolitionists are not justified in claiming the glory and spoils of the conflict and in pluming themselves as "choosers of the slain."

The vast immigration that poured into the country between the years 1840 and 1860 had a very important influence in directing the events of the latter year. The numbers were too great to be absorbed and assimilated by the native population. States in the West were controlled by German and Scandinavian voters, while the Irish took possession of the seaboard towns. Although the balance of party strength was not much affected by these naturalized voters, the modes of political thought were seriously disturbed, and a tendency was manifested to transfer exciting topics from the domain of argument to that of violence.

Chapter XIV. Criticisms and Reflections

Aggrieved by the action and tendencies of the Federal Government, and apprehending worse in the future, a majority of the people of the South approved secession as the only remedy suggested by their leaders. So travelers enter railway carriages, and are dragged up grades and through tunnels with utter loss of volition, the motive power, generated by fierce heat, being far in advance and beyond their control.

We set up a monarch, too, King Cotton, and hedged him with divinity surpassing that of earthly potentates. To doubt his royalty and power was confession of ignorance or cowardice. This potent spirit, at the nod of our Prosperos, the cotton-planters, would arrest every loom and spindle in New England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary.

Extinction of slavery was expected by all and regretted by none, although loss of slaves destroyed the value of land. Existing since the earliest colonization of the Southern States, the institution was interwoven with the thoughts, habits, and daily lives of both races and both suffered by the sudden disruption of the accustomed tie. Blockaded during the war, an without journals to guide opinion and correct error, we were unceasingly slandered by our enemies, who held possession of every avenue to the world's ear.

During all these years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fortitude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and malinger of his brethren. Accepting the harshest conditions and faithfully observing them, they have struggled in all honorable ways, and for what? For their slaves? Regret for their loss has neither been felt nor expressed. But they have striven for that which brought our forefathers to Runnymede, the privilege of exercising some influence in their own government. Yet we fought for nothing but slavery, says the world, and the late Vice-President of the Confederacy, M. Alexander Stephens, reechoes the cry, declaring that it was the corner-stone of his Government.

[Physicist]

The Story of the 48th by Joseph Gould. It's a regimental history of the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, with which four members of my family served, including my father's paternal grandfather.

[aomagrat]

"Company Aitch" by Sam Watkins.

[Constitution Day]

A Civil War Book Collection for 2002

Harrumph. There was nothing "Civil" about it!
8^)

(Bump for later reading, thanks for the ping!)

[Non-Sequitur]

I believe the seven books listed above belong in every serious American Civil War book collectors’ library. Read them, particularly Charles Adams’ When in the Course of Human Events and Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln, and you will begin to view America’s Civil War in a new, more penetrating, and truer light.

Barf alert.

[Ditto]

The Constitution of the Confederate States of American prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9); with their supply thus restricted, and slaves now having a place to escape to, slavery in the Confederacy would have ended as it did elsewhere, without war.

What a bunch of crap! The importation of slaves was ended in 1808 and the slave population of the US grew by nearly 4 times from slightly over 1 million in 1810 to nearly 4 million in 1860. At the heighth of the Underground Railroad, only a few thousand slaves escaped each year. And with the slave population increasingly concentrated in the deep south cotton belt, the chances of any slave making it hundreds of miles to freedom in the north were slim to none.

The slaveocrats banned importation of slaves in the Confederate constitution for one reason --- it was in their economic interest to do so. If more slaves were imported it would decrease the value of their existing slaves. That is not even to mention that the Atlantic slave trade was all but dead by 1860 thanks to the efforts of the British Navy. That clause was like giving up Brussels sprouts for Lent!

[Non-Sequitur]

But in the interest of scholarship I'll add a few suggestions to the list. If one is interested in the details of major battles then I suggest two authors: Stephen Sears and Peter Cozzens. Stephen Sears has written excellent single volume books on Chancellorsville, Antietam, and the Seven Days battles in 1862. He has also edited the papers of several Union generals and wrote an excellent biography of George McClellan. Cozzens has specialized on the west and his books on Chattanooga, Chickamauga, and Stones River form an excellent trilogy on that theater. Byron Farwell has written probably the best biography of Thomas Jackson there is. The number of really excellent books on the Civil War are too numerous to mention, really. It all depends on what part you're interested in.

[Non-Sequitur]

The slaveocrats banned importation of slaves in the Confederate constitution for one reason.

This southron canard gets repeated over and over and over until it is accepted as gospel, just like the ridiculous claim that the south paid 85% of the total tariffs. The actual fact is that, far from banning imports, the confederate constitution actually protected imports. Article I, section 9:

The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

[fagin62]

I prefer first-hand accounts, free of any "revisionist history". A few of my favorites...
Co.Aytch by Sam Watkins
Battlefield And Prison Pen by John W. Urban (1882)
Andersonville Diary by John Ransom
I Rode With Stonewall by Henry Kyd Douglas
Recollections And Letters Of General Robert E. Lee by his son Captain Robert E. Lee (1904)

[billbears]

the confederate constitution actually protected imports.

Yep, and Chase's actions 8 years earlier did nothing to influence his self serving decision in '69. < /sarcasm> The fact is that the statement in the Confederate Constitution went further towards ending slavery altogether than anything in the US Constitution. It further appeased the small, minute, non existant Abolitionist Party in the union by stating that no slaves would be accepted from union states. The border states knew that slavery was dying out over simple cost. Within 20-30 years it would have died off altogether. Stephens as much said this in his discussion with lincoln (root,pig, or perish conversation. Surely you remember that Non). Instead ol' abe decided that 600,000 men had to die, the nation go into debt 100 times what it was in '61, and his all glorious Hamiltonian Empire just HAD to be built