Bad time for fascinating books to arrive, the interim after cataract surgery where I can see sparrows a mile away but can't yet have reading glasses. At least, I read the Matthews book in printout and have a blurb on the back. The Williams book has many pages on my fascinating step-grandpa, William Cocke. [I still don't understand why the college he started (now the University of Tennessee) was called Blunt College instead of Cocke College.] He declined compromise, says the index, and used force, and looked the part: "Cocke was himself of an imposing presence, tall, swarthy, black-haired, black-eyed; and bold and eloquent in utterance" (p. 117). This is the man whose two story cross hall dog trot log house was on the bluff above the Tombigbee on the very spot where the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center now stands. What a man! Member of the US Senate and 4 state legislatures! And a good step-father to Grandma Sims's children.
Heywood Reynolds has left a new comment on your post "Lloyd J. Matthews's GENERAL HENRY LOCKWOOD OF DELA...":
ReplyDeleteYou are right on target with that review and addition to it.
It has not escaped notice that the biographer has much in common with the subject. The more obvious ones being that both were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West point. Both were teachers. Both wore many hats that included army service during times of hostilities. The list of similarities most certainly extend beyond those.
A biography of Henry Hayes Lockwood could only be properly approached by another military man with similar service, although separated by over one hundred fifty years. If this were the only plus to be mentioned, it would be adequate, but the author covers a time in the subject's personal history, that lights up a period of American history seldom illuminated as well. As a historian, he did the research, and the book is readable, as only one with his ability and background could make it.