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A Politician Turned General: The Civil War Career of Stephen Augustus Hurlbut. By Jeffrey N. Lash. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003. Pp. 300. $49.00.)
A Politician Turned General is a useful biography of an Illinois politician and Union general whose career touched on several key events of the Civil War era and its politics. Stephen A. Hurlbut was involved in the rise of the Republican party, the Civil War in the Mississippi Valley, wartime Reconstruction, creating the Grand Army of the Republic, and U.S. intervention in Latin American politics. Although Hurlbut held high office in government and the military, Jeffrey Lash rates his career a failure. Lash concludes that "the combination of Hurlbut's abilities as a lawyer, politician, and volunteer soldier could not compensate for his intemperance, cupidity, and abuse of power" (213).
Born in South Carolina in 1815, Hurlbut grew up in a family of Whig nationalists who were politically isolated in the...