Book # 31, 32, 33, 34

Faith of Our Fathers

By N.C. Allen

Book # 1: A House Divided

Book # 2: To Make Men Free

Book # 3: Through The Perilous Fight

Book # 4: One Nation Under God

I've wanted to read this historical series for some time because I wanted to learn more about the American Civil War. But I like to read series all at once and you need time for that and so the Christmas holidays were perfect. 

I don't want to tell a lot about it. Just a few things I learned and my impressions about the books. First of all, I don't remember a lot of history from school. For some reason I thought the civil war was a lot longer, like 10 years, but it was only 4. That's good because it was the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilian casualties. 

One thing that caught my interest was the riots that occurred in New York City and in a few other northern cities, when it became apparent that one of the goals of the war was to free the blacks from slavery. For many poor northerners, going to war against the south was okay to restore the union, but freeing the blacks was NOT a good cause, especially if those newly freed blacks came north and took all their jobs. The reason that interested me is because when I read another historical series, this time on the revolutionary war, it was also New York City where the people thought differently than many of their fellow countrymen. In that series, I was surprised to learn that not all "Americans" supported the revolutionary war. Many wanted to remain under the rule of the British Empire. They simply would have been satisfied with equal representation in Parliament, which is how it all started anyway. New York was full of British spies and sympathizers, and the British military set up headquarters there. When the British lost the war, many of those supporters moved to Canada. I never knew that. Not a really profound thing to write about, but at the time I wondered if there were some Canadians who wished that their ancestors had swallowed their pride and stayed put.

I liked the series and I learned a lot, but I found some of the story line forced and unconvincing. But it was great holiday entertainment nevertheless.

Until next time :o)