Third Beall biography in two years!

In 2023, McFarland published Ralph Lindeman's Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes and LSU Press released William Harris's Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall. Sometime this year, we'll get yet another Beall biography in Ken Lizzio's John Yates Beall, Son of the South: The Life and Death of a Confederate Privateer.

It's not terribly unusual to have two books on the very same subject pop up at roughly the same time (such instances are frequently brought up on this site), but it is pretty remarkable for three biographies of a comparatively obscure Civil War figure to emerge in such close succession. Getting two from the same publisher (Lizzio's upcoming book will also be published by McFarland) is surprising, too.

Booknotes: War Underground

New Arrival:

• War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare by Earl J. Hess (UP of Kansas, 2025).

Until this point in his extensive military history writing career, the vast bulk of Earl Hess's studies of the technical aspects of warfare has been focused on the American Civil War. That concentrated lens shifted into a broader outlook in his 2023 book Civil War Torpedoes and the Global Development of Landmine Warfare and has widened even more in his latest study, War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare.

From the description: "From as early as ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese warfare to the battles of World War I, military mining was an essential component of siege warfare. Armies have tunneled underneath castle walls, dug trenches across no-man’s-land, and engineered confusing defensive countermines. These tactics for assaulting enemy fortifications and positions by creating underground access have adapted to changes in warfare, technology, geography, and culture. While its use diminished after 1918, when speed and movement took precedence over capturing strongpoints, military mining remains a viable strategy still deployed to this day. Although military historians have given mining marginal treatment in virtually every study of siege warfare, it has not yet been treated with depth or comprehensiveness as a subject in its own right. In this first book-length study of the subject, renowned military historian Earl Hess now fully addresses the topic of military mining from its earliest origins to the twenty-first century."

As referenced above, the 1914-18 Great War featured the pinnacle of military mining, its conduct on the Western Front being its most refined state in both technology and scale. Thus, Hess devotes five full chapters on World War I mining operations. Other chapters explore military mining during the Classical and Medieval periods as well as during the early to late black powder eras. Among the last is the American Civil War, which is explored in a single chapter almost thirty pages in length. Of course, the 1863 Vicksburg and 1864-65 Petersburg campaigns provide the focus for that examination. Fitting its diminished global significance in warfare, military mining after the Great War is summarized in a single chapter at the end of the volume. Supporting the text are numerous photographs and schematic drawings of mining activities.

In sum, Earl Hess's War Underground "offers a sweeping study of the use of offensive and defensive military mining in more than 300 sieges from around the world and across almost three millennia. The result is an impressively broad and comprehensive treatment of the grand history of military mining, which offers novel insights to the evolution and trajectory of the strategy since its ancient origins."

Booknotes: "The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender"

New Arrival:

• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender by Chris Mackowski (Casemate, 2025).

This is Mackowski's second installment of his two-volume Vicksburg Campaign entry in the Casemate Illustrated series, the first one (see here) taking the reader through the campaign's inception through the gunboat fleet's downriver passing of the Vicksburg river batteries.

The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender "examines the movements of the Union and Confederate armies from March 1863 through July 1863, the joint-operational cooperation between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, the delayed and indecisive Confederate operations to stop the Federal initiative, and how the individual soldiers conducted the one of the greatest campaigns in American military history: to control the “The Father of Waters”—the Mississippi River."

The book begins with the bombardment of Grand Gulf and the massive amphibious landing to the south at Bruinsburg. From there, summaries of the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River advance the narrative to the ramparts of Vicksburg. The failed assaults of May 19 and May 22 are then recounted, as is the siege operation that ultimately forced the surrender of the city on July 4, 1863.

In addition to the volume's five original maps, there are a number of archival maps interspersed throughout. Nearly every page includes at least one illustration of some kind, be it new or old photography, color artwork, or contemporary newspaper drawings. Frequent sidebars, which are mostly personality or biographically focused, are another series constant.

Review - "The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals" edited by Timothy Johnson

[The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 3 maps, chapter notes, index. Pages main/total:xvii,233/267. ISBN:978-0-8071-8238-3.]

Over the decades following the conclusion of the War of 1812, elements of the United States Army operated primarily as coastal defense garrisons and frontier constabulary, thus the outbreak of war with Mexico offered a unique opportunity for West Point graduates to test themselves against a foe organized on roughly similar European-style lines. Historians have most commonly examined those experiences, and what roles they might have played in professional development, within the process of writing general officer biographies. The result, in terms of providing both descriptive detail and analysis, has always been a mixed bag. While some coverages point toward useful insights and possible connections between Mexican-American War service and Civil War generalship, the rest come across as being mostly box-checking exercises completed along the way toward toward presenting the main event of their subject's military career, the American Civil War. What sets apart the 2024 anthology The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals is its laser focus on drawing out those connections. Timothy Johnson, Winfield Scott biographer and author of a number of scholarly Mexican-American War titles, serves as this volume's editor, and he successfully presses his essay contributors to both recount the military participation in Mexico of West Point-trained officers who would later become high-ranking Civil War generals and cite specific examples of how those experiences might have shaped later command performances under vastly increased levels of responsibility.

Johnson's assemblage of writers is noteworthy for having a number of major biographers in it as well as others who have authored important works on topics directly related to their essay subject's Civil War military career. The essays, twelve in total, are evenly divided between Union and Confederate generals, ten of whom rose to army command (the other two were high-profile corps commanders entrusted with major independent operations). For the Union side, the author-subject pairings are Timothy Smith on U.S. Grant, Stephen Engle on Don Carlos Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Joseph Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on George McClellan, Jennifer Murray on George Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on George Thomas. On the Confederate side, we get Joseph Glatthaar on Robert E. Lee, Sean Michael Chick on P.G.T. Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Braxton Bragg, Christian Keller on Stonewall Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on James Longstreet.

Drawing connections between Mexican-American War and Civil War experiences is most often framed around positive and negative "lessons" learned from youthful experiences in the former which were then later applied to leadership in the latter. As several contributors to this volume prominently note, these links must in the main be inferred. Many of their subjects wrote little to nothing about their experiences in Mexico, while those that did only rarely linked (at least in direct fashion) their own Civil War decision-making and conduct of military affairs to what they either did or observed during the Taylor and Scott campaigns in north and central Mexico. Johnson's contributors collectively navigate that tricky path with caution and judiciousness.

In Mexico, junior officers, particularly staff officers, keenly observed a wide range of matters related to civil-military affairs. According to Glatthaar, Lee, through direct awareness of the troubling military-political divide that developed between his mentor General Scott and the Polk administration, likely learned important lessons about personal and professional relationships between superiors and principal subordinates that helped him later foster a cordial and effective military partnership with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Closely working with the highly touchy Scott in Mexico also taught Lee the value of showing proper (even strategic) deference to superiors and knowing when to gracefully quit pressing when it came to losing disagreements (ex. Lee's strong disapproval of, but quiet acquiescence with, the Davis administration's decision to reorganize brigades with regiments from the same state). On the less productive side was how Joseph Hooker responded to what he witnessed during the conflict. Unlike many of his fellow West Point graduates who observed with disdain naked political interference in military matters in Mexico, Hooker, as insightfully examined by Rafuse, embraced "playing games" with that system. That relish for games of intrigue pervaded Hooker's entire Civil War career, contributing mightily to his downfall. At any rate, with the war in Mexico came more direct reinforcement of the reality that politics and war were inextricably linked and cooperating with politician-officers was an inescapable part of the professional war fighting experience.

While the scale and distances involved in the war with Mexico helped quartermaster officers like Grant to refine their logistical managements skills, the experiences of living off the land through foraging and occupation without at the same time inciting a general uprising also proved instructive. Many West Point-trained professionals freely expressed their disdain for volunteer soldiers, and highlights from Murray's Meade chapter draw correlations between the Pennsylvanian's Mexican War experiences, where he witnessed widespread pillaging and other abuses of the local population, and his clear support for a conciliatory manner of conducting warfare during the early years of the American Civil War. Everyone recognized that volunteers needed strong subordination and discipline in order to be transformed into effective soldiers.

The importance of awarding credit where credit was due in official writings, regardless of personal animosities, was also realized by most as being in the best interest of the service. When it was not done as expected, officers such as Beauregard became embittered by the experience. A part of that self-aggrandizement at the expense of others stemmed from officers forging cynical alliances with the press corps. For Meade, who is known by all Civil War students for the special hell he wanted to reserve for newspaper reporters, the origins of that attitude developed during the Mexican War. There he traced through the press the making of undeserved reputations as well as the silent treatment given to distinguished officers who opposed, on principle, cultivating self-promotional relationships with ambitious reporters. Meade also carefully noted the internal dissension, jealousy, and unseemly competition for attention that playing those games engendered in the officer corps. 

On a tactical basis, the war taught the value of combined arms, and many young officers appreciated the battle-winning outcomes that resulted from closely coordinated infantry and artillery attacks both in the open and against fortified positions. The Thomas and Beauregard chapters from Wills and Chick are particularly strong on detail in regard to tracing artillery exploits in Mexico. Both chapters demonstrate how that war raised the prestige and reputation of the field artillery service in the U.S. Army. When it came to the process of neutralizing Mexican strongpoints, many staff and line officers also witnessed the value of using turning movements in conjunction with frontal masking demonstrations and artillery fire. The actions of engineer officers such as Lee and Beauregard also clearly revealed the value to be derived from, and the dangers attended with, personal reconnaissance. Just in general ways, junior officers acting on the staffs of general officers in Mexico gained professional knowledge about how armies (or at least higher formations) actually worked in the field, an eye-opening experience for those accustomed to company-level frontier service or static fort postings.

In the area of personal relationships, the shared experiences of the war with Mexico forged lifelong bonds among many fellow officers (a close attachment exemplified by the formation and endurance of the Aztec Club). Knowing that true measurements of character and military ability emerge from the testing ground of war, Mexico also allowed those officers who served together to take stock of colleagues who would later become either comrade or foe during the Civil War.

When the Mexican-American War experiences of Civil War generals are discussed in the literature, it is primarily through the themes of the war with Mexico either being a proving ground for what was learned at West Point or the conflict being an education in and of itself. On a collective basis, there are certainly noteworthy elements of both of those themes inside this strong set of essays. While there is a degree of repetition entailed with compiling twelve independent essays involving basically only two major campaigns, and a few chapters lean most strongly into the descriptive realm of presentation, there is certainly more than enough analytical heft across the volume to make this anthology a heartily recommended read for even the most broadly informed students of both wars.

Booknotes: "The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: Grant’s Failed Offensives"

New Arrival:

• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: Grant’s Failed Offensives by Chris Mackowski (Casemate, 2025).

This is the first of the Casemate Illustrated series April pairing of Vicksburg Campaign titles from Chris Mackowski. From the description: "Ulysses S. Grant, who had risen to fame as one of the North’s prominent heroes early in the war, boldly concluded that Vicksburg would be the next nut to crack in the Federal policy for control of the Mississippi River. Understanding that only a strong relationship with US Navy could ensure the success of Vicksburg’s surrender, Grant found a man as bold and daring as himself in David Dixon Porter and his Mississippi Squadron of ironclad gunboats and fleet of vessels. These two commanders and their trusted subordinates would frustrate John C. Pemberton’s attempts to defend Mississippi and eastern Louisiana for the Confederacy. A lack of experience in commanding such an important assignment, limited resources, poor staffing, and a Confederate government consumed with the war in the east ensured Pemberton’s position would be insurmountable as the Confederacy’s tenuous hold on the Mississippi River began to fall apart."

The volume begins with the initial Farragut-Williams attempt to capture Vicksburg during the seemingly vulnerable window of opportunity that followed the fall of New Orleans. The volume goes on from there to cover the inland Mississippi Central campaign, the Chickasaw Bayou operation, and Arkansas Post. From there, the book addresses a series of "experiments" (Grant's canal and the Lake Providence bypass, Yazoo Pass, and Steele's Bayou), the collective failure of which sparked a major change in strategy. It ends with the dramatic running of the Vicksburg batteries and Grierson's Raid.

The book's five original maps are mostly operational-level sketches (fitting the scale of the text presented), but there are also a number of contemporary maps included along with the usual series complement of old and new photography, biographical and event sidebars, and other illustrations.

Booknotes: The Shiloh Campaign, 1862

New Arrival:

• The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland by Sean M. Chick (Casemate, 2025).

This is the second of the March '25 Civil War releases from the Casemate Illustrated series. It is quite evident that author Sean Chick is currently deeply immersed in Shiloh research and writing. In addition to the impending release of this volume, The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland, the contributor bio blurb from a recently published book revealed that Chick is working on a multi-volume history of Shiloh. We'll have to keep our eyes and ears out for that project's progress! But back to the matter at hand.

The Shiloh Campaign, 1862's narrative runs a brisk 125 pages, covering events leading directly into the battle, both days of intense fighting, the retreat, and the campaign's aftermath. As with the other volumes in the series, there is a timeline and the text is heavily supplemented with informative sidebars along with modern and contemporary images of all kinds. For this particular series entry, the multi-color maps are created by Bradley Gottfried (and undoubtedly borrowed from Gottfried's work on an upcoming Shiloh Campaign atlas). They are five in number, and the four tactical maps covering the battle depict the fighting at brigade-scale. A "Further Reading" section and index round out the volume.

Review: "A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864" by Sean Michael Chick

[A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick (Savas Beatie, 2025). Softcover, 7 maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, orders of battle, reading list. Pages:xxiii,167. ISBN:978-1-61121-721-6. $16.95]

Much has been made of the Army of the Potomac's skillfully staged and practically unopposed mid-June 1864 crossing of the James River, a smoothly run operational movement that constituted a stolen march on an opponent (Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee) who had up to that point proved consistently adept at meeting marches around his eastern flank. In truth, however, that newly seized freedom of movement and the advantages it conferred mattered little if its immediate goal, the rapid capture of Petersburg, proved unattainable. Indeed, the inability of Union forces to sweep aside the Cockade City's small garrison and capture the town represents one of the war's most momentous lost opportunities. Instead of isolating Richmond and forcing its evacuation in June 1864, Union failure before Petersburg consigned the war in the East to a quasi-siege that stretched over ten months. That key four-day interval that altered the course of the war in the theater is explored in Sean Michael Chick's A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864.

Prior to the crossing of the James by the Union army led by U.S. Grant and George Gordon Meade, Petersburg's stark vulnerability was exposed on June 9 during an operation best described in William Glenn Robertson's The First Battle for Petersburg: The Attack and Defense of the Cockade City, June 9, 1864 (2015)¹. Even though that smaller-scale action drew needed attention on the part of Confederate authorities to the perilous state of Petersburg's defenses, the protective works surrounding the vital logistics hub were still sparsely defended when the main Union forces arrived six days later.

Four chapters, one for each day of the June 15-18 stretch of fighting, finely summarize the action². Supported by an abundance of visual aids (including maps, contemporary artwork, and photographs), those chapters describe both the mad scramble by the Confederates to defend their undermanned positions and the Union high command's struggle to effectively harness its massive numerical superiority into a coordinated offensive. Unable to convince General Lee of the enormity of the danger imposed by the attacking Union host, which captured the eastern end of the Dimmock Line but could not progress from there to fatally pierce the defenders' improvised inner line of earthwork fortifications, commanding general P.G.T. Beauregard was primarily left to his own devices prior to the 18th. In the end, the city was held by the slimmest of margins. Of course, the amount of tactical-scale detail made available in a concise work such as this one (the main narrative runs just under 100 pages in length) cannot match that found in the author's own full-length history of the same subject, but the text nevertheless offers a suitably detailed and insightful higher-level description of the fighting. The text also offers convincing conclusions in regard to what factors contributed most to Confederate success and federal failure.

Much like Thomas Howe maintained decades earlier in The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864, Chick finds that Union high command bungling proved comprehensively self-defeating (none of the top actors on the Union side—Grant, Meade, Butler, Hancock, and Smith—come across well in this volume). Chick, however, also stresses that the extremely run-down condition of many Union formations deployed against Petersburg, those forces having been horrifically reduced in numbers and leadership over the continuous stretch of fighting between the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, also bears a great deal of responsibility for the failed offensive. That being said, as the saying goes, the other side also had something to do with it. In the author's estimation, Beauregard was the man of the hour, doing all that could have been done against the long odds he faced. At this point Chick has become a leading voice among those rating Beauregard as the Confederacy's second-best general capable of leading armies, a lofty ranking that Beauregard himself (if he were alive today) would almost surely dispute as being off by one.³

Like those at the top of the Union high command, the Confederacy's top general also does not escape censure. With his army backed up to the Richmond suburbs, Lee could not easily risk the safety of the Confederacy's capital by prematurely reinforcing Petersburg with the bulk of his forces, but Chick joins many others in determining that the general, considering the information available to him at the time, was still dangerously tardy in bolstering the Petersburg defenses. Heavy detachments from the Army of Northern Virginia did not make their presence felt until the fighting on the 18th. Their contributions meant than the final Union attacks had little chance of success, but the previous three days were close-run affairs, with Beauregard having the benefit of only scant reinforcement.

A 13-stop driving tour is included in the volume as an appendix, that section also including a number of other interesting side topic discussions. The final appendix delves into some worthwhile debates and arguments related to campaign remembrance and some of its most consequential leadership accomplishments and failures. Though not available at the time of this writing, it is intended that the volume's footnotes can be downloaded from the ECW archive here³.

Sean Chick's A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 represents a promising start to a planned series of ECW volumes covering the entire length of the 1864-65 Petersburg Campaign.

Additional Notes:
1 - Robertson's study commemorating the fight's 130th anniversary is a revised and expanded version of the author's 1989 contribution to the H.E. Howard Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders series titled The Petersburg Campaign: The Battle of Old Men and Young Boys, June 9, 1864.
2 - Published the same year as Robertson's expanded anniversary edition, Chick's The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 (2015) was the first major study of this part of the Petersburg Campaign since Thomas Howe's The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864 (1988), another Howard series volume. This ECW series title fixes some errors from the earlier text, improves upon map coverage, and, in the author's own words, allowed him to "reassess things after more thought and research" (pg. 166).
3 - If you're interested in reading more about the author's thoughts and opinions in regard to Beauregard's place in the pantheon of Confederate generals, see his 2022 biography Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War.
4 - It is not made explicit in the text which views were those that had evolved most between the author's 2015 study and this one, and I was hoping that perhaps the notes would provide some guidance.

Booknotes: The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863

New Arrival:

• The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 by James A. Hessler (Casemate, 2025).

The Casemate Illustrated series already has dozens of titles available. While the series is heavily weighted toward World War II topics, there are a number of volumes covering the American Civil War, American Revolution, and War of 1812 that are either out already or in production. Last year, I reviewed David Powell's two-volume series contribution, The Atlanta Campaign, 1864 (2024). Just yesterday, the March and April '25 Civil War releases (4 volumes in total) arrived on my doorstep. First up from the March pairing is James Hessler's The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863.

Hessler's volume revisits a number of the major issues of contested history and interpretation from that day. From the description: "The first day of the Battle of Gettysburg is often overshadowed by fighting on the following days, but July 1 was one of the bloodiest single engagements of the entire Civil War. Many of the decisions leading to and through Gettysburg’s first day remain steeped in controversy. Did Meade intend to fight on the Pipe Creek line in Maryland until subordinates such as Major General John Reynolds forced the engagement at Gettysburg? Did the absence of J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry really leave Lee “blind” to his opponent’s movements? Was Lee’s desire to avoid a general engagement ignored by his own officers? With neither commanding general on the battlefield for much of the day, crucial decisions remained in the hands of subordinates such as John Buford, John Reynolds, A. P. Hill, Richard Ewell, and Oliver Howard."

Like the earlier Civil War volumes that I've had the chance to go through, this one blends text with maps (by my count, 8 in total), leader sidebars, an event timeline, period B&W photography, modern color images, and orders of battle. You could describe content and presentation as an enhanced version of what you might see in the popular Osprey books. Since this Civil War volume covers part of a single battle rather than an entire campaign, many of the maps are able to show more small-unit detail (the positions of regiments and batteries). The text is not annotated nor is there a bibliography, but you're in good hands with a Gettysburg expert like Hessler at the helm. There is a "Further Reading" section near the end of the book.

More from the description: The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 "sets the stage for the Civil War’s greatest battle and covers the heroism, decisions, and mistakes made on the first day at Gettysburg." You can't very well do Day 1 and not go on from there to devote separate volumes to the other two days of the battle, so I would strongly expect to see those sometime in the future.

Booknotes: Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars 1754–1865

New Arrival:

• Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars, 1754–1865 by Don Troiani & John U. Rees, with James L. Kochan (Stackpole Bks, 2025).

I never personally knew anyone who was a collector, but it seemed to me at the time that the 1990s must have been the peak decade for producing and selling Civil War art. The original oils went for a pretty penny, and in addition to providing the cover art for so many of the popular magazines the ads inside each issue were filled with newly available prints and regular introductions of new artists and their work. A prolific contributor who was one of my personal favorites, Don Troiani painted active scenes but was perhaps best known for his highly detailed uniform and accoutrement portraits. That specialization is on full display in his newest book, Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars, 1754–1865.

From the description: "Using a masterful combination of artistry and accuracy, Don Troiani has dedicated his career to transforming our understanding of the military soldier. Don now turns his talents to capturing the under-recognized African-American soldiers as they fought in the French and Indian War, the War of Independence, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War. Don’s battle paintings, figure studies, and artifact collection are teamed with historian John Rees’s insightful text."

Presentation is very attractive. The 8.5" x 11" format allows for large image size, and the high quality paper and high resolution image reproduction renders Troiani's uniforms, equipment, and weapons in vivid color and fine detail. Also included are close-up photos of items such as identification discs, medals, cartridge pouches, paper documents, etc. related to these men's military service. It looks like Troiani is still active in painting as many of the featured artworks have very recent dates.

In addition to an introduction, there are four longer chapters covering black soldier contributions to the four wars referenced above. Rees's text contains a great deal of information about the fighting and especially the units in which these men were involved. "Using primary sources, Rees gives a true picture of the contributions of the many Black soldiers over the 100-year history." Those sources appear at the bottom of the page, and there are additional chapter notes collected at the back of the book.

2024 - The CIVIL WAR BOOKS and AUTHORS Top Ten Year in Review

BOOK OF THE YEAR

1. The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 by Robert D. Jenkins, Sr. (Mercer).

This book offers the most meticulously detailed and most thoroughly convincing interpretation of arguably the greatest enduring controversy that emerged during the event-filled interval between the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's onset and the dismissal of Johnston. What put it over the top for me was the profoundly enlightening manner in which author Robert Jenkins combined conventional battle narrative with forensic historical map analysis unlike anything I've ever encountered before in the Civil War literature [for more on this title, see the Site Review (5/8/24)].

The Rest of the Year's TOP TEN (in no particular order)

2. High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent St).

Rutan's study represents a groundbreaking reassessment of our understanding of the Union Army's late-war regiments and their contributions to final victory [see the full 10/22/24 site Review].

3. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel Masters (Savas Beatie).

One of the finest single-volume campaign studies of recent memory, this book deserves recognition as the new standard history of Stones River [12/23/24 Review].

4. Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America's Mineral Wealth by Neil P. Chatelain (McFarland).

An excellent multi-themed transnational history of the land and sea route utilized by the United States to securely transport the Far West's vital mineral wealth to where it could be integrated into the country's war economy [5/24/24 Review].

5. New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865 edited by M. Jane Johansson (Tennessee).

Combining coverage of uncommonly explored wartime topics, occupations, and settings with unusually descriptive prose, Bennett's writings are a dream resource for historians, the entire package enhanced through Johansson's expert editing [8/15/24 Review].

6. The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie).

Powell's latest multi-volume campaign history project is off to a rousing start. This book certainly exhibits the same exacting standards established through the author's previous works [9/18/24 Review].

7. Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North by Jack Furniss (LSU).

A fresh and convincing way of reconsidering the dynamics of party politics and political strategy in the United States during the Civil War [1/22/25 Review].

8. Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War by Kenneth E. Burchett (McFarland).

The most comprehensive treatment to date of a chaos-filled seminal event from the early-Civil War period in Missouri [10/3/24 Review].

9. Union General Daniel Butterfield: A Civil War Biography by James S. Pula (Savas Beatie).

In addition to painting a compellingly favorable picture of Butterfield's Civil War legacy, this study possesses that rare quality of fully meeting expectations in terms of depth while as the same time remaining relatively concise in page length [7/24/24 Review].

10. North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (NC Office Archives & Hist).

This is a great example of the supporting text in a roster history being both expansive enough and qualitatively strong enough to be worthy of publication on its own [7/17/24 Review].

Coming Soon (February '25 Edition)

Scheduled for FEB 2025¹:
• Gettysburg: The Tide Turns - An Oral History by Bruce Chadwick.
• Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War by Darin Wipperman.
• Fractured Freedoms: Reconstructing Central Louisiana by David Ballantine.
• Trouble, Trials, and Vexations: The Journal and Correspondence of Rachel Perry Moores, Texas Plantation Mistress ed. by Thomas Cutrer.
• Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina by D. Michael Thomas.
• Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War ed. by Schieffler & Stith.
• Cape May County and the Civil War by Ray Rebmann.
• The Civil War and the Rise of the American Petroleum Industry by Allen Mesch.
• Lincoln's Last Card: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Case of Command by Richard Ellis.
• New York City in the Civil War by White & Orr.

Comments: A couple of these, the books from Wipperman and Thomas, arrived early. See their Booknotes entries here and here.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's books, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Review - "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" by Lesley Gordon

[Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Softcover, 3 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,284/327. ISBN:978-1-108-72919-2. $29.99]

Organized in 1861 when volunteerism across the country was at fever pitch, the Union's 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" and the Confederacy's 2nd Texas, both infantry regiments led by officers of promise and boasting their section's best soldier material, went to war with full anticipation of producing bravery in action and battlefield success. Instead, both regiments were routed in their first battle, the New Yorkers on July 21, 1861 at Manassas and the Texans on April 7, 1862 at Shiloh. The substance of their controversial first performances in the field and fallout from sustained recriminations that followed are the subject of Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.

At first blush, it appeared that the Fire Zouaves were destined for Civil War battlefield laurels that would fully justify the public acclaim granted them before they even fired a shot in anger. The regiment was led by the most celebrated militia officer in the country, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, who was master of the "Zouave drill" that swept popular culture across the nation during the years leading up to the conflict. The regiment's rank and file consisted of New York City firemen, renowned for their physical prowess and willingness to rush headlong into danger, and the junior officers were largely Ellsworth acolytes. Additionally, the regiment was backed by the country's largest city, its most powerful state, and the greatest newspaper circulation on the continent. Instead of glory, though, tragedy and disaster was the fate of both commander and unit. Ellsworth exposed himself recklessly and was killed by an angry civilian, and the regiment crumbled during its very first battle. After the defeat, months of relentless public censure finished off the unit that began its service with such high hopes and expectations.

The reasons behind the regiment's ultimate fragility are many, and Gordon explores them all convincingly. Like other 90-Day regiments, the 11th was rushed into service without the benefit of extensive training and drill time that later waves of volunteers would be accorded. At the top, Ellsworth himself could be resistant to subordination and was very impulsive in nature, undisciplined personal characteristics that would get him killed in the infamous off-the-battlefield incident in Alexandria. His demise sparked a top-down leadership shakeup that undoubtedly weakened cohesion within a regiment already possessing a reputation for unruliness. Ellsworth's successor was well respected by the men, but he immediately set out to abandon the Zouave drill and distinctive uniform in favor of army standardization, and many junior officers associated with Ellsworth left the regiment in the wake of their idol's death. Though the true proportion of regimental troublemakers is impossible to estimate (the claims varied wildly among critics and supporters), it seems clear that enough resisted their officers' attempts to instill military discipline for the regiment as a whole to gain an unenviable reputation for misbehavior, which included various forms of mistreatment against civilians. Compounding discipline-related unrest in the ranks were widespread complaints about absent pay, lack of supplies, and deficiencies in clothing and weapons.

Gordon's narrative, which unfolds in two parts (one for each regiment), is less about reconsidering the available evidence in order to comprehensively reconstruct the most accurate and detailed picture possible of the battlefield experience (indeed that type of coverage for both regiments is rather brief) and more concerned with the contemporary perceptions of expectation and reality that shaped each unit's fate. For the Zouaves, initial post-battle newspaper reports were positive, and the unit's high casualties were deemed by many to have been sufficient demonstration of their bravery, but those favorable views were quickly challenged by subsequent editorials alleging battlefield misbehavior and cowardice. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, many Zouaves deserted and hundreds more took French leave, that widespread abandonment of duty only adding fuel to the fire. Then came the scathing official after-action reports from superior officers and nearby unit commanders that singled out the 11th for not properly supporting their comrades on the battlefield and breaking without rallying. Joint Committee interviews conducted later further fanned the flames of public anger and dismay. The regiment did have defenders in the press, but the relentless newspaper and letter campaigns attacking the character of the officers and men of the 11th certainly contributed to the demoralization that hindered restoration efforts. Unfortunately, all too many common soldiers (more disillusioned by the experience than motivated to prove their critics wrong) continued to resist adaptation to military life, and many officers lost faith and resigned. Several attempts (which stretched into 1862 and even beyond) to reorganize the broken regiment for redemptive service were launched, but all failed in the end. Ultimately, Gordon is in accord with contemporary military and civilian critics in suggesting that the 11th had plenty of individuals capable of bravery but was undone by the general incapability of channeling that ardor through discipline. Of course, many Civil War regiments faltered early on in their careers before going on to forge distinguished records, but it seems clear from Gordon's presentation that the relentlessly public nature of the critical lens through which the 11th, as perhaps the early war's most famous Union regiment, was scrutinized and journalistically flogged for months on end after Manassas greatly (perhaps decisively) hindered the unit's recovery, reorganization, and quest for redemption.

In marked contrast to the 11th New York, the 2nd Texas was afforded plenty of time to organize and drill in its home state before the onset of active field service. Nevertheless, the regiment suffered from the Confederate Army's logistical limitations and was additionally affected by further privations imposed by the long journey from Texas to Corinth, Mississippi, where the unit finally joined up with General Albert Sidney Johnston's concentrating army. Gordon stresses officer corps turmoil as a troubling omen for the 2nd Texas, but it is perhaps useful to recall that officer infighting and politicking for higher rank was practically part and parcel to the organization of Civil War volunteer regiments. Seeing its first major action of the war at Shiloh, the rookie 2nd performed well during the offensive operations of April 6. The following day, however, the Texans crumbled under heavy enfilade fire from an unexpected direction and were apparently unable to rally as a cohesive unit.

Rumors of cowardly misbehavior under fire on the part of the Texans were subsequently traced to General William J. Hardee and one of his trusted staff officers who claimed that the 2nd also resisted all efforts (including that officer's own) to rally. Unlike the 11th New York, however, the 2nd Texas did have the opportunity to wipe away the stain of failure by replacing it with fresh laurels, which they did earn at Farmington east of Corinth. In defense of themselves, the officers and men of the regiment reminded critics that they had received express authorization from the army high command to add "Shiloh" to the collection of battlefield honors stitched onto their regimental flag. This was cited by their supporters as powerful evidence that the unit's superiors were satisfied with the 2nd's overall performance during the battle.

It was after Second Corinth that the negative Shiloh rumors were solidified in print. While the officers and men of the 2nd Texas believed, at the very minimum, that their costly assault against Battery Robinett at Corinth on October 4, 1862 should have left no doubt as to their bravery and fighting qualities, General Hardee, in a sharp letter to Richmond authorities, doubled down on his earlier claims against the Texans. Gordon offers some possible scenarios behind why Hardee was so determined to single out the Texans over what happened on the second day of Shiloh, but none of those possibilities seems entirely convincing on it own. An unmentioned alternative relates to the common enough (though disreputable) motivation of a high-ranking officer to protect his own reputation at the expense of others. One could argue that Hardee, having been personally involved in placing the regiment in a poor situation and having misrepresented the friendly fire dangers ahead of it, consciously or unconsciously saw highlighting the collapse and pell mell retreat of the Texans as a convenient way of escaping his own culpability for how things turned out on that sector of the battlefield.

After providing further proof of their bravery during the attack at Corinth, the regiment excelled on the defensive during the Vicksburg Campaign, most prominently while holding the 2nd Texas Lunette against heavy assault. After the city's surrender, the 2nd Texas, along with at least three other Trans-Mississippi regiments, refused to reassemble at the Demopolis parole camp, instead returning to their home state. In addition to citing disillusionment with the army as a source of that discontent, the author might also have added long-standing issues Trans-Mississippi Confederates had with Richmond over the central government's neglect of their home region. After some months in limbo over official parole status, the regiment reformed for coastal defense, never again fighting in pitched battle.

Several common themes emerge from the pages of this study. As Gordon outlines in her examination, the clearest lesson to be drawn from the first-battle failures of the 11th New York and 2nd Texas was that bravery, either individually or as collective fighting stock, matters little on the battlefield unless it can be managed by way of thorough military discipline and training and enhanced through strong leadership and experience. On the face of it, that's rather obvious, but it wasn't necessarily a uniform belief or expectation at the time. The book also strongly argues that attempting to draw a line of demarcation between bravery and cowardice creates a false dichotomy, with the truth of the matter nearly always lying somewhere in between those indefinite extremes. It was certainly true of the New Yorkers and the Texans during each regiment's first battle, where a host of different factors (major and minor) combined to make, in one terrible moment during the chaos of combat, "cowards" of both units. That's a common enough Civil War story, the difference being that a great many regiments tainted by initial failure were able to overcome lasting damage to their reputations and fully redeem themselves during subsequent fighting. As Gordon shows, that was not at all the case with the 11th New York and only partially the case with the 2nd Texas, the latter of which continued to struggle with the old charges even after demonstrating incredible bravery during later action. Using two high-profile regiments as examples, Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War offers a fresh and interesting new look into the more unheroic aspects of Civil War service and the dark shadows, sometimes permanent, they often cast.

Booknotes: Thunderbolt to the Rebels

New Arrival:

• Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War by Darin Wipperman (Stackpole Bks, 2025).

A number of units of varying size that served in the Army of the Potomac had the word "sharpshooters" in their name, but the two raised by Hiram Berdan, the 1st United States Sharpshooters regiment and the 2nd United States Sharpshooters almost regiment (it had eight companies), clearly have garnered the highest level of popular recognition and attention in the Civil War literature. A new study of the 2nd USSS at Gettysburg was published just a few months ago. Acknowledging the hefty nature of existing coverage, Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War author Darin Wipperman nevertheless aims to offer readers a fresh slant on the topic, his research revealing that "much new could be told about their field service" (pg. xii).

From the description: "Sharpshooters were the elite of the Union army. Clad in green uniforms and equipped with the era’s latest rifles and scopes, they took up positions out in front of the infantry, where they targeted Confederate officers or skirmished with enemy soldiers. However they were used, sharpshooters formed an important presence on battlefields throughout the Civil War, and yet most accounts have tended to focus on their distinctive uniforms and cutting-edge equipment rather than on their combat performance. Thunderbolt to the Rebels tells the story of these Civil War deadeyes on battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg and beyond."

Per the author, his book, based on primary sources, "focuses on the two regiments' very difficult thirty-four months of combat operations starting with the 1st USSS at Yorktown in April 1862" (pg. xii). Supported by eight maps, the text explores USSS participation in the Peninsula, Second Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Overland, and Petersburg campaigns. The main narrative ends with final disbandment of the 2nd USSS in February 1865, an act that frustrated many members who understandably wanted to the witness the conclusion of the war with their unit intact.

As it was with cavalry service, fighting as a USSS was harder and more dangerous than many suppose. More from the description: "During the first year of the Civil War, Hiram Berdan proposed the creation of a unit of marksmen armed with Sharps rifles, and thus were born the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters. Drawn heavily from the Upper Midwest and New England, as well as Pennsylvania, the soldiers had to pass a marksmanship test to join: 10 shots in a 10-inch-diameter circle from 200 yards. They were issued green uniforms for better camouflage, which also helped Confederate riflemen target them. The job of a sharpshooter was dangerous and demanding – much of it out in front of the army, much of it alone – but they made a difference on the battlefield." Even though Wipperman's own accounting of total sharpshooter deaths is a bit lower than Fox's, it remains that "one in five Sharpshooters would not survive their war experience" (pg. xiii).

In the end Wipperman finds that, while the units played a noteworthy part in the Army of the Potomac's campaigns, it was also the case that the "Sharpshooters' war experience failed to fulfill the expectations created for the marksmen" (pg. 267). As recapitulated in the conclusion, reasons behind that included unrealistic expectations, devastating disease, fickle or absent bureaucratic support, common misplacement on the battlefield, and less than stellar leadership. Brief sketches of the post-war lives of a representative group of Sharpshooters, presumably drawn for those who contributed firsthand source material to the project, are also included, as is an appendix exploring names and numbers of those members who died during the war.

Booknotes: Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind

New Arrival:

• Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery by Todd Mildfelt & David D. Schafer (OU Press, 2023).

This volume represents yet another example of that recurring publishing phenomenon in which a long-neglected topic is suddenly addressed by two full-length treatments released close together. Back in 2022, I reviewed that year's release of Robert Conner's James Montgomery: Abolitionist Warrior. Published the very next year was this study, Todd Mildfelt and David Schafer's Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery (2023). Mildfelt and Schafer's book is nearly twice the length of Conner's (and includes an even more detailed history of Montgomery's remarkable Civil War career), and its bibliography reveals a source range and depth much more in line with what we'd typically expect from a scholarly examination of the topic. Conner's book also lacked maps, which this one certainly does not.

From the description: "A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery (1814–71) waged a far more personal and radical war against slavery than popular history suggests. It is the true story of this militant abolitionist that Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer tell in Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind, summoning a life fiercely lived in struggle against the expansion of slavery into the West and during the Civil War."

Montgomery negotiated the "the turbulent world of the 1850s and 1860s" with "the fervor of an Old Testament prophet," launching a campaign of "destructive retribution on Southern slaveholders." More from the description: "Montgomery helped enslaved men and women escape via one of the least-explored underground railways in the nation, from Arkansas and Missouri through Kansas and Nebraska. With support of abolitionists in Massachusetts, he spearheaded resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in Kansas."

During the early period of the Civil War, Montgomery was one of the most notorious leaders of Kansas Jayhawkers, but he also undertook a rare transformation from freebooter to successful (but still no stranger to controversy) conventional officer. As a Union Army colonel, he led both black and white troops into battle, beginning with a regiment in James Lane's Kansas Brigade. More: "Drawing on regimental records in the National Archives, the authors provide new insights into the experiences of African American men who served in Montgomery’s next regiment, the Thirty-Fourth United States Colored Troops (formerly Second South Carolina Infantry)." At the head of that unit, Montgomery conducted coastal raids in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the most widely known event from that phase of his career being the infamous burning of the town of Darien. He led a brigade at the 1864 Battle of Olustee, earning just praise for his handling of the rearguard during that Union defeat. Later that year, he returned to uniform as the leader of a Kansas militia regiment and went into action against Sterling Price's Confederate expedition as it transited the Kansas-Missouri borderland.

Obviously, the rendering of any kind of final judgment has to come after actually reading this thing (it arrived only last week), but even a superficial glance through it suggests strong addressing of shortcomings found in the 2022 biography.