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Lincoln's Critics: The Copperheads of the North. By Frank L. Klement. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Books, 1999. Pp. xxxvii, 261. $40.00.)
In his introduction to this collection of essays by the late Frank Klement, Steven K. Rogstad notes that the longtime "Marquette University professor did more to erase myths about Copperheads than has any other scholar" (xi). Few would disagree. By the time of his death in 1994, Klement had published seven books and over fifty articles, more than half of which dealt with the subject of Northern opposition to the Lincoln administration and its conduct during the war.
Central to Klement's work was his revisionist attack upon what he termed the "nationalistic" interpretation of Lincoln's critics. First imposed by the Republican administration itself, this view branded all critics of their policies as...