Booknotes: A Grand Opening Squandered

New Arrival:

• A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Originally published in 1988, Thomas Howe's The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864 is the classic account of the bungled attempt by Union forces to seize the Cockade City during the opening stage of what would become the extended 1864-65 Petersburg Campaign. If Sean Michael Chick's new book, A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, sounds familiar, your memory is not deceiving you. Potomac Books published the author's full-length study of the very same topic, titled The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, back in 2015. So why a new version with a different publisher? As Chick writes, the new version represents "a chance for me to return to the topic, correct a few errors, provide better maps, and reassess things after more thought and research" (pg. 166). If things go right, a second edition of the earlier work might also be in the cards.

Even though it remains unquestionably the case that federal blundering played a principle role in their failure to carry the Petersburg defenses, recent scholarship gives the Confederates more credit for successfully defending the city during this period. In the judgment of some, the early stages of the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign were General P.G.T. Beauregard's finest hour as a Confederate commander.

From the description: "Petersburg’s small garrison was determined to hold the city. Its department commander, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, realized the danger and shifted as many men as he could spare into the defenses and took the field himself. North of the river, meanwhile, Lee remained unconvinced that Grant had stolen a march on him. The four days of fighting that followed (June 15–18) would determine if the war would end or drag on." "Somehow, the Confederates managed to hold on against the bungled Federal effort and fight them to a standstill. Lee’s army finally began arriving on June 18. Petersburg would hold—for now. Beauregard’s impressive achievement was one of the South’s last strategic victories."

Chick's updated work "provides fresh and renewed attention to one of the most important, fascinating, and yet oddly overlooked battles of the war. Inside are original maps, new research, and dozens of images—many published here for the first time." The book is part of the ECW series, so, of course, it contains a hefty appendix section addressing diverse topics worthy of further conversation. In addition to a driving tour of June 6-18 events, the section offers short pieces on the Battle of Piedmont (and how it affected the war in other parts of the state), the First Michigan Sharpshooters (who participated in the final attack against Petersburg on June 17), a biographical sketch of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and Civil War service, a short history of Petersburg National Battlefield, and a summary of Civil War memory narratives associated with the campaign.

It is also worthy of note that A Grand Opening Squandered "is the first in a series on the Petersburg operation, which will provide readers with a strong introduction to the war’s longest and most complex campaign."

Booknotes: Holding the Political Center in Illinois

New Arrival:

• Holding the Political Center in Illinois: Conservatism and Union on the Brink of the Civil War by Ian T. Iverson (Kent St UP, 2024).

In order to bring the Civil War to a successful conclusion, it was vital that the Lincoln administration retain the support of the country's conservative leaders and voters. Much of the recent literature concentrates on Lincoln's frequently fraught relationships with Border State conservatives who were unconditional in their support for restoring the Union even though most disagreed with the president on numerous matters of military and social policy.

Even more recently, scholars have redirected their efforts toward examining the role and impact of northern conservatives. Published in 2024, Jack Furniss's Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North surveyed gubernatorial politics across five northern states and Kentucky, demonstrating how a cross-party conservative consensus, unwavering in it support for the war, was critical to Union victory. Ian Iverson's Holding the Political Center in Illinois: Conservatism and Union on the Brink of the Civil War uses Lincoln's home state as a laboratory for highlighting the ways in which northern moderates confronted the increasingly extremist politics of the half-decade leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War.

From the description: Holding the Political Center in Illinois "charts the political trajectory of Illinois from the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 through the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Throughout, Iverson focuses on the significance of political moderation in this era of partisan extremes, one in which the very label of “conservative” was contested. Most often framed through the biography of Abraham Lincoln, the turbulence of antebellum-era and political realignment in Illinois has been widely misunderstood, yet the Prairie State’s geographic, economic, and demographic diversity makes it an especially fascinating microcosm through which to examine the politics of self-identified conservatives leading up to the Civil War."

Iverson's study seeks to reshape our understanding of the meaning of conservatism and its core appeal during the late-antebellum years. More from the description: "Most politicians and voters in this period claimed to be conservative and stood opposed to radical secessionists and abolitionists. By positioning “conservatism” as a disposition rather than an ideology, Ian. T. Iverson explores how mainstream politicians in the Democratic, Republican, and Know-Nothing Parties employed a shared interpretation of American liberty, history, and institutions to court voters throughout the sectional crisis."

In Illinois, "this united reaction against secession, which propelled Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas to rally together behind the Union’s banner in April 1861, rose from an unconditional centrist commitment to the Union―the core value defining conservatism." In that way, both Furniss and Iverson agree that upholding the Union over all other considerations was the single-most important unifying factor in defining conservatism.

Booknotes: The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals

New Arrival:

• The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (LSU Press, 2024).

In terms of professional skills honed, lessons learned, friendships (and feuds) fostered, martial reputations burnished (or tainted), and professional careers advanced, the 1846-48 war between the United States and Mexico undoubtedly served as an important developmental stage for many future Civil War generals. Their modern biographies typically include at least one chapter covering the Mexican War years, though it is often the case that the content is primarily descriptive in nature and pretty light on analysis. Expectations are higher for this new academic press-published volume of essays, which is edited by leading Mexican War historian Timothy Johnson (BTW, I heartily recommend his 2007 Mexico City campaign study A Gallant Little Army as well as his earlier Winfield Scott bio). Indeed, one strongly suspects that elements of analysis will be at the forefront of each contribution to The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals.

From the description: "Rather than treat the conflict with a form of historical amnesia, the contributors to this volume argue that the Mexican-American War was a formative experience for the more than three hundred future Civil War generals who served in it as lower-grade officers. The Mexican War was the first combat experience for many of them, a laboratory that equipped a generation of young officers with practical lessons in strategy, tactics, logistics, and interpersonal relationships that they would use later to command forces during the Civil War."

Johnson has assembled a distinguished set of familiar contributors, including a number of major biographers, and the subjects they cover are an assortment of high-ranking generals who all played major roles in the Civil War. At six Union generals [Timothy Smith on Grant, Stephen Engle on Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on McClellan, Jennifer Murray on Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on Thomas] and six Confederate generals [Joseph Glatthaar on Lee, Sean Michael Chick on Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Bragg, Christian Keller on Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on Longstreet], the opposing sides are accorded equal weight. Looking forward to getting into it.

Earl Hess and a Civil War hiatus well earned

Prolific historian Earl Hess informed me long ago that he was always working on multiple book-length publishing projects at the same time. So it was no big surprise, though still no less remarkable a feat of skill and endurance, that for quite a stretch we were getting 1-2 Civil War titles per year from him. That furious pace had to come to an end at some point. My records indicate that it has been nearly two years since his July 22 Battle of Atlanta and Civil War mine warfare books were published. I wish I could find the old master list of projects he had planned. The only unfulfilled one from it that immediately comes to mind is the Jonesboro battle history.

Hess's "break" from Civil War publishing, which would be unremarkable in length for anyone else, does not mean that he hasn't still been hard at work on other things. While I was combing through all the latest university press catalogs, I discovered that Kansas will be publishing Hess's War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare (Feb 2025) next month. Going back to the February 2023 book about Civil War mine warfare, and now this new one, it appears that Hess has developed a heavy interest in the global evolution and context of military technologies and their uses. Indeed, 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." There seems little doubt that there will be at least some coverage of the Civil War in there.

Booknotes: Building a House Divided

New Arrival:

• Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War by Stephen G. Hyslop (OU Press, 2023).

Everyone recognizes that increased sectional tensions over slavery during the 1840s and 1850s went hand in hand with the nation's westward expansion. The Civil War literature typically picks up the matter with the the sudden acquisition of vast territories in the American Southwest upon conclusion of the war with Mexico, but the goal of Stephen Hyslop's Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War is to take readers much further back in time to the very beginning. His main thesis is that "(t)he origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic," and his resulting study consists of "an exploration of how the incipient fissure between the Union’s initial slave states and free states—or those where slaves were gradually being emancipated—lengthened and deepened as the nation advanced westward."

Hyslop frames his narrative around the words and actions of a subset of the period's most important political giants. Both "collectively and individually," the book "focuses on four prominent slaveholding expansionists who were intent on preserving the Union but nonetheless helped build what Lincoln called a house divided: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois..." Others with supporting roles enter into the discussion. "Along with these major figures, in all their conflicts and contradictions, he considers other American expansionists who engaged in and helped extend slavery—among them William Clark, Stephen Austin, and President John Tyler..." The other side of the expansionist equation also comes into play, as the book also examines "examples of principled opposition to the extension of slavery by northerners such as John Quincy Adams and southerners like Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton, who held slaves but placed preserving the Union above extending slavery across the continent."

By taking readers on a long ride "through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras," Hyslop's Building a House Divided adopts a "long view of the path to the Civil War," one that begins with "the critical fault in the nation’s foundation."

2024 Pate Award winner

Congratulations to Neil Chatelain, winner of the 2024 A.M. Pate Award for the "best book providing original research on the Trans-Mississippi sector of the Civil War." His Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America's Mineral Wealth (McFarland, 2024) is well worthy of the recognition.

Named in honor of the late A.M. Pate, Jr., a Fort Worth businessman, museum founder, and philanthropist, the award is handed out yearly by the fine folks of the Fort Worth Civil War Roundtable (of which Pate was a founding member). Go here for the award press release.

As you might guess after reading the linked review in the first paragraph above, I also hold Chatelain's book in high regard. It will very likely make my own Top Ten list for last year, which should be posted on the site sometime this month.

Review - "Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates" by Mark Neels

[Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates by Mark A. Neels (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024). Softcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,194/266. ISBN:978-0-8093-3949-5. $27.95]

Born and raised in Virginia, Edward Bates (1793-1869) moved to Missouri as a young man and quickly became intimately associated with the political establishment and early growth of that western state. Bates's older brother, Frederick, was a prominent figure in St. Louis, and the younger Bates parlayed that advantageous association, along with a thriving legal practice, to gain social and political prominence in the city. His public offices included one term in the U.S. House of Representatives and election to both houses of the state legislature. When Missouri became a state in 1820, Bates was involved in creating its constitution. He was also the state's first attorney general.

Edward Bates was, like Lincoln, a Whig and strong admirer of Henry Clay, and he established himself as a leading figure of the party in Missouri. Bates consistently supported federal funding for internal improvements, was deeply skeptical of national territorial expansionism, and he positioned himself in opposition to Democratic Party giants such as President Andrew Jackson and, closer to home, Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Of course, he's best known as Lincoln's choice for the cabinet post of attorney general of the United States. Largely overshadowed by other Civil War-period cabinet figures such as William Seward, Edwin Stanton, Salmon Chase, and Gideon Welles, six decades have passed since the publication of the most recent full biography, Marvin R. Cain's Lincoln's Attorney General: Edward Bates of Missouri (1965). Providing a much-needed updated perspective on Bates's life and public career is Mark Neels's Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates.

As a leading citizen of St. Louis, one present to witness (and even help shape) that place's growth from frontier post to great city, Bates was a strong believer in the idea that the emerging West, symbolized by St. Louis, would act as a mediating force in resolving the increasingly troubling sectional conflict between North and South. However, the local unity he deemed necessary to that grand project's success did not emerge as anticipated, with the massive mid-century influx of immigrants (primarily Germans) into the city and state commonly resisting cultural assimilation and widely espousing political views more radical than those held by the majority of native-born Missourians.

During the nationwide search for a Republican presidential candidate capable of winning in 1860, Bates's position as an antislavery conservative who had defended slaves in freedom courts on multiple occasions and fully supported congressional oversight over territorial slave policy made him an attractive alternative to divisive frontrunner William Seward. An interesting historical question surrounding Bates's political career is why his 1860 candidacy, which was deemed strong before the convention, foundered so quickly (he ranked last among serious contenders during the first balloting and his support level plunged even further with each one that followed). In seeking to answer why Bates failed to gain traction, Neels offers two suggestions. First, German-American Republicans, strong in Bates's Missouri and a powerful bloc in other places, denounced him as a nativist, citing his support of American Party candidate Millard Fillmore in 1856. To German leaders, that dalliance with nativist figures, however brief, made Bates persona non grata regardless of his own expressed views opposed to nativism. The second factor was strategic in nature. Bates, although he had several influential supporters at the Chicago convention, failed to employ a dedicated campaign manager (someone who could, like David Davis did for Lincoln, creatively promote his boss and hustle votes). It is up to the reader to decide whether those factors offer sufficient explanation, but the analysis is sound.

Throughout his public life, Bates's conservative disposition left him deeply skeptical of the breadth and strength of executive power. As the author reminds us, both Bates and Lincoln condemned what they saw as President Polk conducting the Mexican War without proper congressional approval and oversight, but Bates, though troubled by the prospect, seemed to generally agree with Lincoln that the Civil War was an extraordinary event that required extraordinary measures. The reader gets the impression that that reluctant philosophical concession, combined with Bates's ironclad loyalty to the administration, led the attorney general to support executive action in imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus during the opening months of the war (at least until Congress could convene). Congress later approved Lincoln's course of action, but the matter was not settled until passage of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863. Still, Bates, who witnessed widespread reliance upon military tribunals from the more radical factions of the government along with Lincoln's own willingness to exceed the powers granted him by the act, remained disturbed for the rest of the war by the federal government's continued application of what he saw as arbitrary powers

Unfortunately for historians, Bates's capitol hill entanglements with early-war habeas corpus legal matters left him little opportunity to document his own private thoughts and official views on what was going on in St. Louis and the rest of Missouri in 1861, a critical time that saw the initiation of general hostilities and the state's governor deposed and replaced with Bates's own son-in-law, Hamilton Gamble. Bates was predictably pleased with Gamble's appointment, and both conservatives, according to Neels, envisioned a strong state-led partnership with the federal government.

Although Bates as attorney general was uniquely positioned to offer Lincoln legal advice, it remains unclear the degree to which Lincoln was influenced by the Missourian's opinions, especially where they differed with the president's own. Indeed, many readers of the book will likely find themselves hungering for more details about the personal interactions between the two and the nature/extent of their friendship. Perhaps the source material on the topic is scarce. On matters related to the Confiscation Acts and other controversial war policies and legislation, Lincoln bypassed Bates's concerns (for example, his desire to have civilian courts adjudicate property seizures) and aligned himself fully with the more amenable legal philosophy of respected international law expert Francis Lieber. In regard to the Emancipation Proclamation, the cabinet conservatives—Bates, who had freed his own slaves a decade before, Blair, and Welles—each held doubts about some aspect of it on matters of expediency or practicality. For his part, Bates, who did not believe whites and blacks could peacefully coexist as equal citizens, urged that mandatory colonization be attached to it and treaties forged with foreign countries that agreed to accept freedpeople and respect their fundamental freedoms. Regardless of his personal views, Bates accepted the inevitable but, like he did earlier when opposing certain parts of the Confiscation Acts, still urged Lincoln to task civilian courts, not military officers acting on War Department orders, with oversight over ground-level emancipation. He failed in that after Lincoln repeatedly refused to force the issue with Stanton. According to Neels, what bothered Bates most was that Lincoln's proclamation went forward while still leaving completely unresolved matters of compensation, colonization, and citizenship. Regardless of the lack of wider resolution, the author maintains that Bates made an important incremental contribution to defining citizenship during the postwar period. As outlined in his opinion on the 1862 David Selsey case, Bates's official position was that people of color who were born free in the U.S. were citizens, though he did not believe that that designation should be automatically extended to recently emancipated slaves.

According to Neels, Bates considered his role as attorney general to be distinctly advisory rather than proactive, and, to his credit, he studiously avoided taking part in the types of personal schemes and intrigues that other cabinet secretaries engaged in during Lincoln's presidency. The one departure that Neels cites was Bates's direct correspondence with a newly appointed department commander in Missouri (Major General Edwin Sumner). Bypassing proper channels, Bates offered the general, who gratefully accepted it, personal advice in regard to navigating military-civilian cooperation in the strife-torn state. As those things go, that was a pretty benign intervention.

In the book, Neels frequently mentions how physically and mentally exhausted Bates was by his post's work requirements, and interested readers might wish that the author provided a bit more detailed information about the day to day duties and activities of the attorney general that led to such overwork. For example, Bates's involvement and legal opinion in regard to the Prize Cases (a momentous early-1863 Supreme Court decision assessing the constitutionality of Lincoln's blockade declaration and the blockade's compliance with international law) is summarized in only a few short paragraphs. On the other hand, there are a number of weighty occasions upon which Bates himself provides only limited assistance to future historians. As the author notes, Bates's diary is silent on several events of key historical importance, including the day of the Emancipation Proclamation's signing, leaving posterity to largely speculate on his personal views and motivations.

In early 1864, Bates suffered a stroke and his family urged him to resign and devote himself to recovery, but Bates, loyal to Lincoln to the end, was determined to hang on until the president's reelection. After that was achieved, Bates resigned and returned to Missouri, where, instead of enjoying quiet retirement, he felt compelled by his conservative principles to oppose the increasingly radical late-war political movement in the state. In a series of public letters, Bates earnestly campaigned against the radical legislative convention that, instead of amending the existing state constitution (which Bates played a major part in drafting), sought, in extralegal (even, as critics contended, revolutionary) fashion to discard the document completely and replace it with their own ideologically aligned one. Bates vehemently opposed the proposed constitution's most extreme and punitive articles, especially those related to voting rights and wholesale unseating of public and private offices. The moderate campaign failed and the radical constitution narrowly passed, but Bates, though he would not live to see its full fruits, would have been happy to see the most obnoxious parts of the constitution successfully challenged in the 1870s by a fresh conservative reform alliance (the Liberal Republicans).

In Lincoln's Conservative Advisor, Mark Neels submits a convincing examination of the conservative Whig political beliefs and standards that consistently guided the public career of Edward Bates. Indeed, Neels's study of Bates's Civil War-era public life serves as an excellent lens through which to gain insights into ideological tensions within the nascent Republican Party between its radical and more conservative elements. As outlined in the book, Bates's relationship with slavery was complicated and life-long, and Neels handles his subject's personal and political evolution from slaveholder to antislavery advocate with judicious humanity. Though Bates, when acting as attorney general, did not envision a near future with black equality, he is credited with defining citizenship in a way that smoothed the path toward it. Though it will likely not raise the public profile of Bates to rank alongside the more popular giants of Lincoln's war cabinet, Neels's study nevertheless restores Bates's historical stature as a founding father of sorts for both the state of Missouri itself and its branch of the Whig party. In the end, what emerges as Edward Bates's most enduring public legacy was his relentless championing of due process, one of American society's most cherished civil rights. While the relatively concise nature of Neels's full biography does not offer the kind of monumental reappraisal found in other recent tome-length biographies of Lincoln's cabinet secretaries, it is more than thorough enough to convincingly convey a renewed appreciation of Edward Bates and his own just due as a major nineteenth-century historical and political figure.

2025 Spring/Summer university press catalog offerings

Following up on my earlier comments, I perused the recently released Spring/Summer '25 university press catalogs to see if things are on the upswing since the nadir of sorts that was last fall.

As expected, the top-tier giants (in terms of matching quantity with quality) do not disappoint.

LSU:
• Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War ed. by Schieffler & Stith.
• Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South by Jennifer Gross.
• The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family ed. by Henry McKiven.
• Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 by Damien Shiels.
• Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg by Alexandre Caillot.

UNC:
• The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment by James Marten.
• The Second Manassas Campaign ed. by Janney & Shively.
• A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg - Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill by A. Wilson Greene.
• Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination during the Civil War Era by Alys Beverton.

Seven former regulars still come up empty. Among most of those, that trend has gone on for so many years that I despair of ever hearing from them again. You never know, though.

For the rest, in the onesies category we have:

Georgia:
• Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War by Fialka & Carman. With this and an earlier one from UNC, I wonder if publishing "graphic history" will become an emerging trend among some UPs.

Kansas:
• Lincoln's Last Card: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Case of Command by Richard Ellis.

Kent State:
• More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee by Jonathan Engel. As mentioned before, this one is already out.

Mercer:
• Joshua Hill of Madison: Civil War Unionist and Georgia's First Republican Senator, 1812-1891 by Bradley Rice.

Nebraska:
• Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of John W. M. Appleton edited by Jewell & Van Sickle (Potomac Books).

Oklahoma:
• It looks like it's been five years since the last CW title from OU Press's Campaigns and Commanders series (which has a lot of great entries), so the announcement of Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody is exciting. I'm looking forward to learning more about Anderson's life and military career.

TAMU Consortium:
• Still nothing from A&M itself, but consortium member State House Press is putting out the following: Rockets, Tanks and Submarines by Edward Cotham.

Tennessee:
• Decisions at Chancellorsville: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Sarah Bierle.

Overall, I would say that the output numbers situation from 2024 going into 2025 remains pretty much the same. Alabama, Mercer, and Tennessee haven't released their spring catalogs yet, but I've scanned through the preorders listed on the two biggest online book retailers. The Tide have only published one CW title in recent memory so I'm not too sanguine about something popping up later, but we may get more news from the other two.

Booknotes: Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina

New Arrival:

• Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina by D. Michael Thomas (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2025).

The Hidden History series published by The History Press has numerous Civil War-related titles under its belt, the collection of short essays in each volume covering either cities or states. The newest one is Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina. In it, author D. Michael Thomas "has uncovered fifty accounts of lost history pertaining to the state and its men during the war."

From the description: A sampling includes the story of when a "single South Carolinian captured nearly six hundred Union soldiers. See also Lieutenant Alexander Chisolm, who had an extraordinary career [as General Beauregard's ADC]. See the connection between South Carolina College and its Confederate generals. Learn little-known tales about naval operations from the Union and the Confederacy and witness the recovery of the state’s “Gettysburg Dead.”"

The fifty accounts follow a chapter-length overview of the Civil War in South Carolina. The anthology is organized into six sections: "The Early Days," "Leadership," "Blockade of South Carolina's Coast," "Naval Operations 1861-1865," "Soldiers' Stories," and finally "Postwar Years and Remembrance." The text is annotated and supplemented by a scattering photographs and illustrations.

I received a copy early for review consideration. Official release will be in the first week of February.

Coming Soon (January '25 Edition)

Scheduled for JAN 2025¹:
• More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee by Jonathan Engel.
• A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 6-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick.
• Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Michael Lang.
• Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten.
• Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union by Richard Carwardine.
• The First Confederate Soldier: George Washington Lee and Civil War Atlanta by Robert Scott Davis
• Trouble, Trials, and Vexations: The Journal and Correspondence of Rachel Perry Moores, Texas Plantation Mistress ed. by Thomas Cutrer.

Comments: The Engel book listed at the top is out already. Looks like it might be a good companion to recent works such as Andrew Bledsoe's Citizen-Officers and Zachary Fry's A Republic in the Ranks. For a preview of the Parten book, see my Booknotes entry for it 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.

Booknotes: Between Extremes

New Arrival:

• Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North by Jack Furniss (LSU Press, 2024).

Much of the recent scholarly attention paid to the U.S. home front during the Civil War has been defined by the management of internal strife and political division along the path to Union victory, but it is just as profitable now and then to reassess (and appreciate) the scale and power of the common ground that existed within northern society. As author Jack Furniss writes in his introduction, the "core contention" of his book Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North is that the "centrist politics" of a collection of Union parties composed of allied Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated Whigs "played a critical role in enabling Union victory in the American Civil War by allowing northern voters to support revolutionary changes for conservative reasons" (Pg. 2). A related facet of the study is its claim that the North's two-party system was much less stable during the period than popularly believed.

From the description: "Between 1861 and 1865, northern voters fortified Abraham Lincoln’s administration as it oversaw the end of the institution of slavery and an unprecedented expansion in the size and scope of the federal government. Since the United States never considered suspending the democratic process during the Civil War, these revolutionary developments―indeed the entire war effort―depended on ballots as much as bullets. Why did civilians who, at the start of the conflict, had not anticipated or desired these transformations to their society nonetheless vote to uphold them? Jack Furniss’s Between Extremes proposes an answer to this question by revealing a potent strand of centrist politics that took hold across the Union and provided the conservative rationales that allowed most northerners to accept the war’s radical outcomes."

This one will definitely go into the 'to-read' pile. I have my fingers crossed that a couple more LSUP titles from October and November that I was hoping would arrive before the end of this month make it in.

Review - "Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863" by Daniel Masters

[Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel A. Masters (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 17 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, orders of battle, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,615/671. ISBN:978-1-61121-712-4. $39.95]

Before now, Civil War readers have had three main options to choose from when it comes to single-volume narrative histories of the winter 1862-63 battle in Middle Tennessee between Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee and William Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland. Each of them, in chronological order those from James Lee McDonough, Peter Cozzens, and Larry Daniel, have served us fairly well up to this point and all are roughly comparable in scale, with the latter two vying for recognition as the best of the trio¹. Still, far surpassing each of those earlier efforts in operational depth and level of tactical detail is Daniel Masters's newly published Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863.

With its bibliographical bounty of newspaper, manuscript, and unit history resources, the research underpinning Masters's study exhibits all the primary source variety and depth one would expect to find in a modern campaign microhistory of this grand a scale. In a fashion that invites favorable comparison to the celebrated work of the Civil War field's most able professional and non-professional military history practitioners (a group that includes consistently reliable authors such as Earl Hess and David Powell), Masters skillfully utilizes the research material at his disposal to weave together a comprehensively authoritative, yet still accessible, account of the Stones River campaign and battle. The lavishly descriptive text contained in every chapter is enriched on a consistent basis through the author's seamless integration of revealing firsthand quotes and passages left behind by participants of all ranks. That interlacement produces a profoundly revealing ground-level exploration of the intensity and character of the fighting at Stones River as well as the human cost that combat left behind.

Along the way, Masters quite evidently has gained a degree of expert knowledge about the contested ground between Nashville and Murfreesboro that few others possess, and that background allows him to thoroughly convey to his readers the ways in which key terrain factored into the course of the battle. The many places upon which the battlefield's unusual topography, in particular the area's numerous densely choked cedar groves and forests as well as its ubiquitous pockets of limestone outcroppings, restricted both fields of fire and maneuvering space for infantry and artillery alike are keenly observed throughout.

David Powell's acclaimed Chickamauga Campaign trilogy offers strong arguments in favor of that great western clash being deemed a three-day (rather than two-day) battle. Given Masters's description of the events of December 30, one might be tempted to similarly add another day of battle to Stones River. Masters himself doesn't quite reach that far, though, with the heading of his chapter relevant to the December 30 fighting labeling those events as "Almost A Battle." In this case, he's probably right in resisting revisionist tendencies.

Regardless, the main Stones River fighting on December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863, those days bookending the battle's interrupted three-day span, has already been documented in strong detail among several works, but Masters embarks on an even deeper dive. His volume is roughly twice the length of its strongest predecessors. Additionally, those with a particular interest in gaining more information about the movements and events leading up to the beginning of the Battle of Stones River should find themselves well satisfied with Masters's expansive pre-battle operational history, which comprises well over a third of the book's content. Indeed, it is fast approaching page 250 before the Confederate army's December 31 dawn attack on the Union right is finally launched.

The clashes between infantry are front and center, but the battle narrative also devotes an appropriate degree of attention to the support arms. Masters's text clearly shows where and how Union qualitative and quantitative superiority in artillery deployed on the defensive proved critical in helping slow and ultimately stop the massive series of Confederate assaults against the Union right and center on December 31. The Union long arm also proved instrumental in shattering the subsequent January 2 Confederate attack initiated on the east side of Stones River. On the other hand, as it would throughout much of the war, the Army of Tennessee's artillery arm, saddled with a high proportion of antiquated smoothbore tubes, struggled at Stones River to both adequately support their infantry comrades on the tactical offensive and deliver effective counterbattery fire. With batteries assigned individually to brigades, organization also played a part in hindering concentration of fire.

A comprehensive description and analysis of the mounted forces of both sides and what part they played in this campaign already exists², and Masters's own interpretation is more supportive than not of historian Dennis Belcher's central findings. Both authors credit General Rosecrans for effectively reorganizing and bolstering the Union cavalry in his department prior to the campaign, though that prodigious effort was far from complete by the time Stones River was fought. Both writers rate David Stanley's appointment as cavalry chief to be a faultless executive decision matching man with moment. Belcher and Masters are also on the same page when it comes to the cavalry not being assigned primary blame for the intelligence failures and/or miscommunication on the Confederate right on December 31, a situation that hampered timely reshuffling of forces between the wings of the army separated by the river. Unlike Belcher, Masters does not weigh in heavily on the matter of whether Joseph Wheeler's cavalry, instead of raiding the wagon trains of Rosecrans's army to mixed results, might have been better utilized in the role of providing direct tactical support to the December 31 Confederate attacks on the exposed Union right.

If anything can be criticized about the book's presentation, which is stellar overall, it is the uncomfortable gaps that exist in map coverage. Seventeen maps are often a sufficient number for studies of this general type, but within this particular densely detailed campaign and battle narrative (one that's over 600 pages in length) the rate of change in the progression of events that unfold in the text all too frequently outpaces corresponding map coverage. On the other hand, the quality of the cartography itself is first-rate, with the maps having everything one might wish for in both small-unit detail and terrain representation.

Stones River arguably doesn't possess the weight and number of endlessly debated what-if scenarios that other Civil War battles of similar significance provide as speculative fodder for conversation. One such matter that undoubtedly shaped Stones River to some degree or another was the Davis administration's insistence pre-campaign that Carter Stevenson's large infantry division (some 8,000 men) be transferred from Bragg's army in Tennessee to John C. Pemberton's command in Mississippi. Much like what happened earlier at Shiloh and Perryville, at Stones River the ferocity of the initial Confederate assaults shoved their Union opponents across the battlefield (at Stones River, some three miles) but lacked the reserves to break them. An argument can be made that the troops of Stevenson's Division could have added enough additional punch to Bragg's assaults on December 31 to successfully cut across the Nashville Pike and make decisive tactical victory possible, but Masters elects to not weigh in strongly on either side of that debate. In his very brief overview of the matter, he does cite one historian's grave doubts that Bragg possessed the battle management acumen to utilize Stevenson for decisive effect (an argument along similar lines has long been raised in regard to the consequences of the Army of the Potomac's First Corps being withheld from General McClellan on the Peninsula), but the text is not clear as to where on that interpretive spectrum Masters's own views reside.

The Civil War battle historiography is replete with late-day drama surrounding how certain actions and decisions robbed attacking armies of clear opportunities for achieving complete victory . Much of that brand of speculation is unrealistically conceptualized, one of the oldest examples being persistent claims from Confederate partisans that total victory was in their grasp at the end of the first day's fighting at Shiloh (if only General Beauregard had not halted the attack). There is also the other side of the coin, with particular units or individuals hailed as exceptional saviors of their armies during key defensive actions. The ability of the battered Army of the Cumberland to maintain its hold on the Nashville Pike during the waning daylight moments of December 31 has often been represented as a near-run thing. While Masters does title his chapter corresponding to that defining event the "Miracle at the Three-Mile Marker" and singles out the spoiling attack of Bradley's Brigade as providing saving grace to Rosecrans's shaken army, it is at the same time also strongly suggested that the heavy assembly of artillery concentrated along the pike raised significant doubts that the Confederates, nearly fought out by that point in the battle, could have closed the deal. It was along this sector that the absence of Stevenson's Division was most keenly felt. Of course, the numerous Union army defensive stands that preceded it, among them the stout resistance of Philip Sheridan's division in The Cedars and the determined defense of the Round Forest by the brigades of William Hazen and George Wagner, are fully addressed and their significance duly appreciated.

In contrast to the volume's very extensive coverage of pre-battle events, the aftermath of Stones River, including discussion of those factors that went into Bragg's final decision to retreat as well as the retreat itself (Polk's corps to Shelbyville and Hardee's to Manchester), is handled in a single chapter at the end. At several places in the book, the plight of the wounded of each side receives due attention. The casualty levels suffered by both armies at Stones River (some 27% of Bragg's army and 31% of Rosecrans's) were stunning losses by any measure, and Masters cites the literature's standard numbers. He reports no evidence that would suggest the need for major revision of those figures in killed, wounded, and missing, though perhaps with the caveat that the prisoner hauls might have been higher than those typically accepted.

True to its author's name, Hell by the Acre displays mastery of every major element that goes into creation of the best type of modern Civil War campaign and battle history narrative. When it comes to single-volume treatments of Stones River, this study has indisputably become the new standard. With the high-level research and writing skills amply on display here, Masters joins the upper echelon of talented avocational historians who have contributed so much to the Civil War literature over recent decades. Hopefully, we will get even more of this brand of fine work from him in the future³.

Notes:
1- These traditional battle narratives are James Lee McDonough's Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee (1980), Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River (1989), and Larry Daniel's Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict Between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland (2012). In structure and form, Lanny Smith's massive two-volume set [The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: The Union Army (2008) and The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: Army of Tennessee (2010)] is a different animal entirely.
2 - See Dennis Belcher's The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History (2017).
3 - For a collection of the author's short-form writings, visit his regularly updated blog Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles.

Booknotes: Somewhere Toward Freedom

New Arrival:

• Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

Numerous books have been written about William T. Sherman's famous "March to the Sea," and they collectively bring to the table a variety of perspectives. In terms of major modern works, Burke Davis's Sherman's March (1980) got things going with its popular-style rendering of the 1864 Georgia and 1865 Carolinas campaigns. Those events are examined through the lens of the common Union soldier experience in Joseph Glatthaar's celebrated book The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (1985). More recently, Noah Andre Trudeau's Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea (2008) provided readers with the first detailed military account of the operation. In subsequent works, home front interactions between slaveholding Confederate women and Sherman's men are the focus of Lisa Tendrich Frank's The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers during Sherman's March (2015), and Anne Sarah Rubin's Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory (2014) is a prominent Civil War memory study. Bennett Parten's upcoming book Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation adopts yet another important perspective, that of the many thousands of slaves that attached themselves to Sherman's columns.

According to Parten, "as many as 20,000 enslaved people had attached themselves to Sherman’s army" by the time the hard-marching federals finally reached their goal, the city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way, they "endured hardships, marching as much as twenty miles a day—often without food or shelter from the winter weather" and their ability to stay with the army, which operated deep behind enemy lines during the march with severed lines of supply and communications, was frequently tenuous (even hostile).

More from the description: In Somewhere Toward Freedom, Parten expansively "reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how Sherman’s March impacted the war, and what it meant to the enslaved, but also reveals how it laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction. When the war ended, Sherman and various government and private aid agencies seized plantation lands—particularly in the sea islands off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts—in order to resettle the newly emancipated. They were fed, housed, and in some instances, taught to read and write. This first real effort at Reconstruction was short-lived, however. As federal troops withdrew to the north, Confederate sympathizers and Southern landowners eventually brought about the downfall of this program."

This is a 2025 title that will go into general release about a month from now.

Booknotes: Lincoln and the War's End

New Arrival:

• Lincoln and the War's End by John C. Waugh (SIU Press, 2024).

By its very nature, SIU Press's Concise Lincoln Library series lends itself toward a long run of titles limited only by the imagination of its contributors, with each compact volume exhibiting a focused bearing on some aspect of the celebrated president's life, personality, character, relationships, career, and elected office. Many of the installments also get paperback reissues, and that is the case with John Waugh's Lincoln and the War's End, which was first published in hardcover in 2014.

From the description: "On the night of his reelection on November 8, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln called on the nation to “re-unite in a common effort, to save our common country.” By April 9 of the following year, the Union had achieved this goal with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House." Waugh's book addresses the events of that momentous five-month interval, "revealing how Lincoln and Grant worked together to bring the war to an end." The words of a number of other well-known voices from the war, "including New Yorker George Templeton Strong, southerner Mary Boykin Chesnut, Lincoln’s secretary John Hay, writer Noah Brooks, and many others" contribute to the discussion.

Naturally, the volume highlights the series of Union military victories that together extinguished any remaining Confederate hopes for independence. Thus, Waugh "recounts the dramatic final military campaigns and battles of the war, including William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea; the Confederate army’s attempt to take Nashville and its loss at the battle of Franklin; and the Union victory at Fort Fisher that closed off the Confederacy’s last open port. Other events also receive attention, including Sherman’s march through the Carolinas and the burning of Columbia; Grant’s defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Five Forks, and Lincoln’s presence at the seat of war during that campaign; the Confederate retreat from Petersburg and Richmond; and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox."

Just as important as the battlefield results were their social and political ramifications. Intertwined with his military narrative, Waugh "presents the key political events of the time, particularly Lincoln’s final annual message to Congress, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Second Inaugural, Lincoln’s visit to Richmond the day after it fell, and Lincoln’s final days and speeches in Washington after the Confederate surrender." The celebratory capstone to the Union Army's victory, "the farewell march of all the Union armies through Washington, D.C., in May 1865," is also covered.