The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 | Page 6

operations and movements on the Rapidan and the disaster to the union arms at Chancellorsville,--the movements upon Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the retreat of Lee's array to Virginia. Closer attention is paid, in this volume, to the legislation, administration, finances, resources, temper, and condition generally of the North and the South, and valuable accounts are given of the organization at the North of the signal corps, the medical and hospital service, the military telegraph, the system of railroad transportation for military purposes, the soldiers' homes, and the sanitary and other commissions.
As a whole, and so far as published, the work purports to give an accurate account of what took place in all quarters of the theatre of war, and is generally successful. It never errs on the side of partisanship, but occasionally through ignorance or misapplication of facts. From first to last, it is an honest and straightforward narrative, at times eloquent and at times vivacious. The reader is bored by no flights of rhetoric; but students will always lament a lack of philosophical tone and critical appreciation of men and events. The maps and plans, which are numerous and are furnished from official sources, are all that could be desired.
REMINISCENCES OF FORTS SUMTER AND MOULTRIE IN 1860-61. By Abner Doubleday, Brevet Major General, U.S.A. 1 vol. 12mo pp. 184. New York, Harper & Brothers.
The author bore an honorable and responsible part in the actual outbreak of hostilities between the national government and the revolted states, and in this book he gives a simple and faithful recital of some of the more important facts. Though so misrepresented by certain critics, the book is not an attack on Major Anderson's character; on the contrary, it clearly shows, and attempts to show, that that commander firmly subdued all considerations and devices which seemed inconsistent with his duty as a soldier of the United States, and held himself ready to be sacrificed to the trust given him. General (then Captain, 1st artillery U.S.A.) Doubleday was at Fort Sumter during the bombardment, and, as might be expected, his volume gives many incidents of the life of the little besieged band, and of the siege itself, which appear here for the first time, and which throw fresh light upon the conduct and principles of both parties to the conflict. As a personal narrative, it is one of the most charming and instructive relating to the war. The book was published in 1876.
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ASSESSMENT INSURANCE.
By G.A. Litchfield.
It is the purpose of this article to fairly treat the subject under consideration and to set forth such claims only as can be sustained to the satisfaction of candid and unprejudiced minds. It will not be assumed that the science of Assessment Insurance is perfected; on the contrary, our most advanced thinkers upon the subject are those who see most clearly its defects, and are laboring most assiduously to correct them. Grave obstacles have been encountered in their endeavors to perfect the system. Those who have written upon the subject in the public press have been largely such as have given it but a cursory study, or such as have been totally unfit to discuss it from an impartial standpoint by reason of preconceived notions or prejudices in favor of the level premium system of insurance, if, indeed, they have not been retained for a consideration by that gigantic moneyed monopoly.
So largely has prejudice controlled in the consideration of the subject, that those who have sought judicious and stringent legislation to correct abuses, and to bring the business under equally careful and official supervision as that given other forms of insurance, with a view to making it permanently subserve public interests, have been more than once defeated in their laudable endeavors, because they insisted that no legislation could meet the necessities of the case that did not contemplate it as a permanent institution. Great advances have been made however in the last three or four years, and much that was objectionable has been corrected. Wise legislation has been secured in many States. At the last session of her legislature, Massachusetts signalized an important step in advance, by enacting a law whose provisions indicate an intelligent comprehension of the subject on the part of her legislators, unsurpassed by those of any other State. It has already begun to correct existing evils, as its advocates foresaw it would do.
Several companies dishonestly and incompetently conducted have found it impossible to longer prey upon a too confiding public.
The collapse of fraudulent concerns has furnished an occasion for the enemies of the system to cry out against the system itself, but thinking men are not deceived thereby. As was recently remarked by a distinguished ex-insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts, "Assessment Insurance has come to stay." There is not, as has been claimed by