Book excerpt: From the BACK COVER: "In all that pertained to the history of the Southern Confederacy, his scholarship was decisive." In Memoriam Charles William Ramsdell University of Texas. --- Charles W. Ramsdell was one of the finest historians our country has ever produced. He was a Texan who taught at the University of Texas at Austin most of his long career. His papers are at UT where a Biographical Note states: "Recognized as the dean of Southern historians, Dr. Ramsdell held the distinction of being the most distinguished scholar and teacher in the field of Southern history." Of the nine great treatises in this book, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter" is legendary and argues powerfully that Abraham Lincoln started the War Between the States by engineering events in Charleston Harbor to get that result. Several Northern newspapers agreed. Lincoln was in serious trouble in the spring of 1861, and the Northern economy, without its captive Southern manufacturing market and cotton to ship, faced economic annihilation. War was far more preferable. Ramsdell's book reviews (15 are in this book) are works of art. He reviewed many famous books such as R. E. Lee: A Biography, by Douglas Southhall Freeman (he loved it); Life and Labor in the Old South, by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (he liked it); and State Rights in the Confederacy, by Frank Lawrence Owsley (he wasn't impressed). Ramsdell and historians of his era are refreshing. You often discover important points of history long overlooked, or discounted by the politically correct frauds of today. This is the first of three books of Ramsdell's writings.