March Not Fiction Book Discussions

Junius Browne and Albert Richardson reported on the Civil War for the abolitionist New York Tribune. They were captured by Confederates and spent nearly two years in a series of brutal prisons before escaping and walking 300 miles through the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains in the dead of winter to Union lines. Along the way, they were aided by slaves and Union sympathizers and supported by their devoted friendship. In Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey, Peter Carlson has crafted a true epic, with nods to both the form and the content of Homer's Odyssey, from their harrowing adventure.

Carlson, himself a journalist who reported for The Washington Post for 22 years, is clearly fond of his two real-life protagonists. In Chapter 23, he comments wryly on the first newspaper articles to appear about Junius Browne's escape from Salisbury prison: "Those two short items in the Tribune provide a valuable lesson about the glamour and the glory of a career as a newspaper reporter: Junius Browne risked his life covering a war. He was captured by the enemy and imprisoned for 20 months. He escaped and trudged 300 miles over snow-covered mountains. And when he finally reached safety, his own newspaper misspelled his name. Several times. On several days. First name and last name" (222). Carlson also dedicates the book "To newspaper reporters, past and present, who went off on adventures and came back with stories." Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy asks us to consider the important role journalists have played in recording and even making American history. George Packer says of the many political, social, and cultural crises in our history, "The unwinding is nothing new. There have been unwindings every generation or two . . . Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion. . . . In the unwinding, everything changes and nothing lasts, except for the voices, American voices . . . " (The Unwinding). Our journalists' voices and the principles of free speech and witnessing the truth have been a through line in the American story.

As James M. McPherson, author of the classic one-volume history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom, notes, "This absorbing story of two Northern war reporters who were captured by the Confederates at Vicksburg demonstrates that for the Civil War, truth is indeed more thrilling than fiction. The accounts of the essential help the escapees received from slaves and Southern white Unionists provide key insights on Southern society." How does Junius and Albert's story illustrate the political, social, and cultural challenges America faced at the time of the Civil War? After reading their story, what do you think held us together as a nation at that desperate moment when it seemed like we might come apart? Does their story make you optimistic about our future as a nation?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.