Books: Queer Cabinet

STATESMEN OF THE LOST CAUSE—Burton J. Hendrick—Little, Brown ($3.75).

The South's Confederate heroes were military leaders—Lee, Jeb Stuart, Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson—not Jeff Davis and his Cabinet. The first full-length study of the Confederate Cabinet, Statesmen of the Lost Cause, is by a Yankee. Pulitzer Prize Biographer Hendrick (The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page) makes these forgotten statesmen the biographical find of the year. Individually picturesque, they made still more picturesque diplomatic history. And Author Hendrick gives them a large share of credit for losing the War. If that Yankee judgment seems...