Two Kinds of Courage

Of two new historical tales, one is concerned with the Civil War, the other with the American Revolution; one is factual, the other imagined; one deals with physical and the other with moral courage. Both are agreeable examples of the Historical Footnote school of writing.

LINCOLN'S COMMANDO, by Ralph J. Roske and Charles Van Doren (3 1 0 pp.; Harper; $4.50), is notable as the work of Adult Quiz Kid Van Doren (TIME, Feb. 11, et seq.), a cerebral type who chose as his subject a man of flamboyant contrast. The man: Commander Will Cushing, U.S.N., whose raids up and down the Confederate-held coasts during the second half of the Civil War were the despair of Rebel defenders. Cushing was young and handsome, a braggart as well as an incredibly brave man. His superiors feared his escapades nearly as much as did the enemy (on the eve of war his horseplay got him expelled from Annapolis; later, at sea, his irresponsibility in humiliating a British ship's captain became an international incident). His most spectacular adventure was the destruction of the Confederate ironclad, Albemarle, at its anchorage in Plymouth, N.C. Several Union attempts to destroy the ironclad had already failed, and a garbled account of Cushing's plan was reported in Northern newspapers before he set out. With 14 men in a motor launch armed with a torpedo, plus a diversionary crew of 13 in a cutter, Cushing stole up the Roanoke River at night. The Albemarle's defenders were ready for him: they lit a giant bonfire which illuminated the river and revealed that the ironclad was newly protected against torpedo attack by a boom of logs that surrounded the vessel.

Cushing coolly sailed up to the log barrier, examined it, then spun the wheel and headed across the river in order to get speed enough to drive the launch up over the logs. He came surging back in a hail of musket fire that tore off the sole of his left shoe and ripped out the back of his uniform. The boat breasted the logs and hung suspended, just 10 ft. from the muzzle of one of the ironclad's 8-in. guns. Carefully, Cushing lowered the torpedo into position and gently pulled the 25-ft. line that released the firing pin. Simultaneously, the torpedo exploded, and the

Albemarle fired its 8-in. gun. "Surrender!" came the cry from the shore. "Never--I'll be damned first!" yelled Cushing as he dove into the river. He floated and swam downstream, stole a rowboat from a squad of Confederates who were posted near by and made his way back to the fleet.

Two thousand years ago, Cato Major, musing on the problem of inhuman courage, said: "There is a difference between a man's prizing valor at a great rate, and valuing life at little." In their book, Coauthors Van Doren and Roske (a Civil War historian) are similarly bemused by Will Cushing's reckless bravery. They contrast it with the more measured courage of his brother Alonzo, a man who knew fear and hated war, yet died bravely at Gettysburg. Like many another hero, Will Cushing found it hard to adjust to peace. His final escapade in Cuba came close to embroiling the U.S. in war with Spain; then illness and idleness brought him down. He was only 32 when he died at the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington.

THE BRAINTREE MISSION, by Nicholas E. Wyckoff (184 pp.; Macmillan; $3.50), raises a question rather than hell. The novel's question: What would have happened if the British had attempted to woo the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts with the offer of earldoms and representation in Parliament? Edward Humbird, sixth Earl of Hemynge, is selected by Lord North to journey to Boston, still rancorous about the "massacre" of several of its citizens, and select a likely candidate for the peerage. Hemynge picks Lawyer John Adams, whose sense of justice is so strong that, despite his rebel sympathies, he has agreed to defend in court a British officer and soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre (Lawyer Adams won acquittal for the officer and six of the soldiers, but two were found guilty of manslaughter and branded on the hand).

Hemynge woos Adams with a courtly visit, invites him to a lavish dinner and musicale and makes his proposition ("You may adopt such styling as pleases you--something on the lines of 'Earl of Braintree,' perhaps"). He is coldly, if politely, refused. That is all there is to the plot. But ex-Newsman Wyckoff (Boston Herald, New Bedford Standard) has embroidered his slight theme with antiquarian relish, and the reader will get a primer course in 18th century rhetoric, music-making and intrigue. In the book, as in history. John Adams emerges as the apogee of moral courage and his wife Abigail as a compendium of pioneer virtues.

One of the best characters is onstage for only a few pages: he is gouty William Pitt, now out of power, but still impressing his arrogant will on the times. Hearing of Hemynge's failure to seduce Adams with an earldom, he announces an epitaph for Britain's colonial policy in America: "As for your honest John Adams, I regard him as lost to us. It is certain now that he will leave the ranks of the merely liberty-loving men. He will become a fighter for freedom. He will become--altogether dangerous!"

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