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By Dane Hartgrove

Date published: 1/6/2007

DISSONANCE: THE TURBULENT DAYS BETWEEN FORT SUMTER AND BULL RUN, by David Detzer. Harcourt Inc. 371 pages. Illustrations, maps, endnotes, index. $27.

"DISSONANCE" is the third Civil War book by David Detzer, a former professor at Connecticut State University. Detzer's previous efforts were "Allegiance," which covered events leading up to the capture of Fort Sumter, and "Donnybrook," which did the same for the first battle of Manassas. "Dissonance" is billed as the ham to fill the sandwich between Detzer's first two volumes.

Unfortunately, the quality product appears to be adulterated with a substantial helping of bologna.

The first caveat to be reckoned with in "Dissonance" is the misleading subtitle. This book does not cover the entire period from mid-April to late July 1861. It stops with the Federal invasion of the newly independent commonwealth of Virginia on May 24, the day after Virginians voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union.

This Federal occupation of Arlington Heights and Alexandria is set forth as something of a pre-emptive strike to prevent Virginia from mounting artillery along the Potomac to interrupt the District of Columbia's maritime communications with the outside world.

However, as Detzer himself explains, Virginia had made no effort to interrupt such activities in the period since Federal authorities attempted to destroy the Gosport Navy Yard at Portsmouth shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter.

Furthermore, by late May, Federal troops had secured full control of road and rail routes leading from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Annapolis to the nation's capital. Federal actions in Virginia on May 24, then, were not so much a pre-emptive strike as the national government's first overt act of aggression in what was becoming a civil war.

The second caveat to be considered is Detzer's attribution of the behavior of white Southerners at this time to the all-pervading influence of race and racism upon Southern society. Sorry, but the idea that Massah and Missus ran around the big house from the fall of 1860 until the Confederate victory at First Manassas worrying about whether Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimah were going to cut their throats and take over the plantation some night just doesn't conform to known facts.

Date published: 1/6/2007