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.

Major modern biographies of Lincoln's cabinet secretaries

Yesterday's post about the new Bates study got me thinking about remaining gaps in the modern biography of Lincoln's cabinet. I know "major" and "modern" are subjective labels, but I tried to keep the selected list below to conventionally published works from the past fifty years or so.

State

William H. Seward (1861–1865):
• Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man (2012) by Walter Stahr.
• William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand (1991) by John Taylor.

Attorney General

Edward Bates (1861–1864):
• Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates (2024) by Mark Neels.
James Speed (1864–1865):
None

Navy

Gideon Welles (1861–1865):
• Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (1973) by John Niven.

War

Simon Cameron (1861–1862):
• Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War (2016) by Paul Kahan [site review].
Edwin M. Stanton (1862–1865):
• Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary (2017) by Walter Stahr.
• Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton (2015) by William Marvel.

Postmaster General

Montgomery Blair (1861–1864):
None
William Dennison (1864–1865):
None

Treasury

Salmon P. Chase (1861–1864):
• Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2022) by Walter Stahr.
• Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (1995) by John Niven.
• Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (1987) by Frederick Blue.
William P. Fessenden (1864–1865):
• Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (2011) by Robert Cook.
Hugh McCulloch (1865)
• Hugh McCulloch: Father of Modern Banking (2004) by Susan Lee Guckenberg.

Interior

Caleb B. Smith (1861–1863):
None
John P. Usher (1863–1865):
A short biography was published in 1960, but none since then
James Harlan (1865): - Appointed by Johnson after Lincoln's assassination
None

It's expected that the cabinet biggies would have multiple treatments, and it still surprises me that it's been half a century since the last Welles biography. Blair is another notable omission.

Booknotes: Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor

New Arrival:

• Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates by Mark A. Neels (SIU Press, 2024).

When it comes to fresh biographies of Lincoln administration cabinet secretaries, empty boxes continue to get checked on a fairly regular basis. The latest is Mark Neels's Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates. According to the description, it has been nearly six decades since the last full biography [presumably Lincoln's Attorney General: Edward Bates of Missouri (1965) by Marvin R. Cain] was published.

Covering all the essential ground, Neels's study "begins with Bates’s youth in Virginia and follows him through his political and judicial career, his candidacy as a Republican presidential nominee in 1860, and his appointment to Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet as attorney general." Missouri, and Border State support in general, was critical to Lincoln's goal of keeping the Union together, and its easy to see why Bates, "a founding father of Missouri and leader of the Missouri Whig Party," would be considered for a high position in the new administration.

In the unprecedented times that would follow the outbreak of Civil War, Lincoln's war policies and measures would operate within a legal gray zone subjected at various times to attacks from all sides. As Attorney General, "Bates became an essential advisor to the president on key legal, military, and political matters from emancipation to civil liberties and equal rights, and his official opinion on Habeas Corpus would have a permanent effect on presidential authority and separation of powers."

As a political moderate, though, Bates also at times found himself at loggerheads with both the president and the more radical wing of the Republican Party. Indeed, he was a central figure in navigating the divide. More from the description: "When Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, Bates found himself at odds with the president and the radical anti-slavery members of the cabinet. But more than simply highlighting the conflict within Lincoln’s administration, Bates’s example lays bare the strong philosophical divisions within the Republican Party during the Civil War era. These divisions were present at the party’s inception, crystallized during the war, and ultimately sparked a political realignment during Reconstruction. Bates was at the center of this divide for most of its existence, and in some cases assisted in its promulgation."

According to Neels, Bates's conservative values and principles guided him throughout his lengthy public life and service. More: "Bates, a fierce opponent of radical Republicanism, embodies the conflict among Republicans over issues of slavery and citizenship. In both judicial and elective office, he was compelled by a sense of duty to defy the populism of President Andrew Jackson and Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and, later, the proslavery forces that threatened to tear the nation apart. Though he had owned slaves, Bates represented at least one enslaved woman’s suit for freedom, released from bondage the people he had enslaved, and aided Lincoln in his efforts to end slavery nationwide. Bates’s opinion on citizenship as attorney general helped pave the way for equal rights. His opinions were not always popular with either his colleagues or the greater populace, but Bates remained true to his conservative principles—a set of values shared by a large swath of Lincoln’s Republican Party—which positioned him as a leading opponent of radical Republicanism during the Reconstruction Era."

Booknotes: Dread Danger

New Arrival:

• Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Cambridge UP, 2024).

I've been looking forward to reading Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War for quite a while now, and after some publishing delays (it was in my June "Coming Soon") it's finally here. With so many subjective elements involved with it, evaluating cowardice in Civil War combat seems like it would be a daunting task to undertake. Nevertheless, I fully anticipate that Gordon has come up with some valid and interesting ways of looking at the topic that together impart "a fuller understanding of the soldier experience and the overall costs and sufferings of war." The book is surely an extension of Gordon's highly praised earlier work in A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut's Civil War, which also examined a regiment that suffered from a stained martial reputation (the 16th broke at Antietam and suffered further humiliation in 1864 at Plymouth, North Carolina).

The book is structured around two case study regiments, one a Union short-timer and the other a Confederate unit that served throughout the entire war. From the description: "When confronted with the abject fear of going into battle, Civil War soldiers were expected to overcome the dread of the oncoming danger with feats of courage and victory on the battlefield. The Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry went to war with high expectations that they would perform bravely; they had famed commanders and enthusiastic community support. How could they possibly fail? Yet falter they did, facing humiliating charges of cowardice thereafter that cast a lingering shadow on the two regiments, despite their best efforts at redemption."

The two unit selections are intriguing ones. I'm familiar with the reputational hit suffered by the 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" regiment, which infamously broke and ran at First Bull Run, but, at least for me, nothing like that immediately comes to mind for the 2nd Texas. My own lasting image of them is their incredibly brave and costly charge against Battery Robinett on October 4, 1862 at Corinth (you might recall the fairly frequently reproduced photograph of Texas bodies, including that of its colonel, William P. Rogers, piled up against the earthwork battery's exterior slope) and the regiment stalwartly defended the 2nd Texas Lunette at Vicksburg. The specific circumstances surrounding the substance of General Hardee's charges against the Texans at Shiloh doesn't ring a bell for me (was Hardee a major general who frequently singled out regiments for alleged bad behavior?), and I'm quite interested to learn more about that.

According to Gordon, public allegations of collective cowardice directed toward the 11th New York and 2nd Texas didn't much survive the conflict itself let alone stalk those individuals throughout the rest of their lives. More from the description: "By the end of the war, however, these charges were largely forgotten, replaced with the jingoistic rhetoric of martial heroism, a legacy that led many, including historians, to insist that all Civil War soldiers were heroes."

Booknotes: The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process

New Arrival:

• The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process by John F. Schmutz (McFarland, 2024).

Thanks to McFarland for breaking the site's near month-long cold spell of no new arrivals.

One among many of the war's large-scale human tragedies was the mid-war collapse of the POW exchange system. Both sides contributed to it, and, predictably, each blamed the other for the general breakdown. John Schmutz's The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process is not intended to be a broad examination of the exchange system. Instead, it "focuses on 600 Confederate officers, made prisoners of war, who were dispatched to Charleston Harbor to act as human shields, and were subsequently imprisoned elsewhere and deliberately starved nearly to death. These actions were the result of the breakdown of the exchange cartel, as well as the "retaliation" policies promoted by the Secretary of War and the Lincoln administration."

The descriptive passage quoted above might be construed as adopting a particular angle and tone, but the author insists in the Preface that his book is "not intended to display either a pro-Confederacy or Yankee bias. Nor is it intended to glorify the "Lost Cause"...Nor is it merely a "victim's history"."(pg. 3)

At a glance, the book offers detailed accounts of the Six Hundred's initial capture and their assembly as a human shield on Morris Island, South Carolina. The men were housed in the line of fire as a retaliatory measure against the Confederate confinement of Union officers in the bombarded district of nearby Charleston. Detainment of the Confederate prisoners in camps located on Hilton Head Island and Fort Pulaski, where deprivations to the extent of causing preventable deaths have been alleged, are also detailed, as is the prisoners' final stop at Fort Delaware in 1865. The book does not contain a roster of the Six Hundred, but a pretty substantial selection of prisoner "Post-Release Sagas" is included in the appendix section. Another appendix offers some general commentary on the military prisons of both sides and analysis of the circumstances/consequences surrounding the national exchange system's suspension.

Review - "'Digging All Night and Fighting All Day': The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865" by Paul Brueske

["Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiv,243/331. ISBN:978-1-61121-710-0. $32.95]

By the summer of 1864, northern military planners and political leaders had been advocating a combined operation to seize Mobile, one of the South's largest cities and the western theater's most significant remaining blockade-running haven in the Gulf, for nearly two years. Everyone recognized Mobile's strategic importance, but organizing a campaign against it always got derailed by other priorities. When finally underway, Mobile's reduction proceeded in two major phases: (1) the August 1864 sea and land assault that wrested control of Mobile Bay from Confederate naval forces and captured the masonry forts guarding the bay's entrance, and (2) the March-April 1865 operation that drove the Confederates from their eastern shore fortifications and forced the evacuation of the city. One can argue that each of these stages was sufficiently spaced apart from the other to be considered a separate campaign, and no existing scholarship integrates the two into a single study devoting equal detail and attention to the events of 1864 and 1865.

In terms of modern book-length treatments currently available, readers wanting to learn about the August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay commonly consult Chester Hearn's Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War (1993), its content overwhelmingly weighted toward the 1864 campaign, or Jack Friend's West Wind, Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay (2004). Preceded only by Sean Michael O'Brien's scantily detailed Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (2001) and even briefer works from John Waugh and Russell Blount, Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018) provided readers with the first truly satisfactory book-length overview of the land campaign against Mobile. Even then, though, only limited space could be devoted to the campaign's two main actions, the siege of Spanish Fort and the storming of Fort Blakeley. In his new book, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, Brueske is able to offer his full attention to the strongly contested fight over the east bay's southernmost guardian.

Some contend that the results of the 1864 Mobile Bay campaign effectively neutered the city of Mobile's strategic significance, rendering a massive spring campaign against it unnecessary, but Brueske effectively argues that proponents of that view unduly benefit from the advantages of hindsight. In addition to its value as a logistics and communications hub that effectively blocked Union forces from gaining river access into the Alabama interior, Mobile's defenses also housed in early 1865 one of the western theater's few remaining Confederate troop concentrations of any great consequence. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was never again able to conduct army-scale operations after its devastating defeat at Nashville in December 1864, but it was nevertheless the case that powerful sub-units, though reduced in manpower strength, retained combat effectiveness. Some were dispatched east to North Carolina and others south to Mobile. The handful of veteran brigades sent to Mobile formed the backbone of its defense in 1865, and Brueske makes a strong case for the city's enduring military significance during this waning period of the war.

Brueske's deeply researched operational and tactical-level narrative devotes equal attention to the military actions and strategic concerns of both sides. Union land forces during the 1865 Mobile Campaign were led by Major General Edward S. Canby, and strong elements of two army corps (Thirteenth and Sixteenth) were directed against Spanish Fort upon completion of a brief west bay diversion. Canby's men outnumbered the Confederate defenders of Spanish Fort, initially a mixture of garrison troops and Army of Tennessee veterans under Brigadier General Randall Gibson, by roughly eight to one. Many expected Canby to launch an immediate assault, but he elected instead to reduce the fort by siege approaches. After nearly two weeks of progress, Colonel James Geddes's brigade was able to traverse a covered route around and behind the Confederate left that was previously thought impassable to organized forces. His thinning defenses finally unhinged by Geddes's bold action, Gibson withdrew the garrison overnight, escaping under the enemy's noses using a previously built plank causeway to march north to safety. There was little time for Gibson and his men to celebrate their close call, however, as the subsequent storming of Fort Blakeley left too few men overall to attempt a final combined defense of Mobile. The city's remaining garrison, including Gibson's command, withdrew upriver to Meridian, Mississippi and surrendered soon after.

Events of the two-week siege are meticulously recounted in the text and their details visually well represented in the accompanying cartography. All of the elements of offensive and defensive siegecraft honed by both sides during the war were displayed by the Spanish Fort combatants, including controversial use by the Confederates of subterra shells. Brueske credits the veteran presence of Gibson and the stubborn fortitude of his men for dragging out the operation as long as possible. Gibson's Confederates were able to make expert use of the preexisting earthworks and slowed enemy progress through well-timed sorties and effective sharpshooting. The besiegers were initially stymied through lavish expenditures of rifle and artillery ammunition along with naval support fire, but dwindling powder, bullet, and shell stocks eventually forced the Confederates to adopt drastic cutbacks. With Rebel guns increasingly silent in response, Union superiority in manpower and firepower gradually gained ascendancy. After two weeks, the garrison was forced to either surrender or withdraw. As Brueske details in the book, the latter operation was astoundingly successful.

The siege was noteworthy for the Confederate Navy arguably having a greater impact than its more typically dominant Union counterpart. Before ammunition ran short, the heavy guns of the Confederate naval squadron, in particular its pair of partially completed ironclads, was able to successfully hinder the Union advance by providing enfilade fire down the line. Rear areas also came under heavy fire, disrupting Union command and control. Additionally, Confederate vessels were able to ferry men, guns, and supplies into the fort (and out, as necessary) relatively unhindered. On the Union side, Admiral Henry Thatcher struggled to get his ships within range close enough to materially affect events. The east bay's network of distant shoals, water obstructions, and well-placed torpedoes hindered Thatcher's approach toward Spanish Fort and its supporting batteries, and the admiral's insufficient precautions against floating mines contributed to the shallow water sinking of two monitors and a tinclad.

Though respected by his peers, Canby was widely known to be an abundantly cautious general, and many critics (including U.S. Grant then and later) condemned his methodical approach to reducing the east bay forts as not keeping requisite pace with military events developing elsewhere. Nothing in Brueske's study is about significantly elevating Canby's modest historical stature among Union Civil War army commanders, but he does persuasively lead readers to approach Canby by fairly assessing the general's actions within the context of what was known and expected at the time. Canby initially had to overcome challenging weather limitations (ones that his critics consistently overlook), but he also got the job done with relatively low casualties. We can never know for certain whether an all-out assault to open the campaign would have resulted in fewer overall casualties than those accumulated over the two-week siege, but one can certainly take the position that the probability of suffering high casualties against the small but well led, strongly situated, and highly motivated band of Confederate defenders backed by plentiful artillery made an immediate attack not worth the risks involved. At this stage of the war, no apology was needed for employing a methodical approach that minimized casualties.

A very useful compilation of supplemental material is assembled in the volume's extensive appendix section. Found within are detailed army and navy orders of battle for both sides, lists of casualties and naval vessels lost, POW numbers, and an inventory of captured stores. Another appendix traces the postwar journey of the siege's most famous cannon, the Lady Slocomb. Preservation information is also provided as is a brief but interesting look at the history of the old Spanish Fort, its colonial period origins (Spanish versus British) still in dispute.

In addition to providing the Civil War literature with the first full-length account of the siege of Spanish Fort, the strategic arguments presented in Paul Brueske's "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day" (combined with the author's earlier work on the campaign) offer powerful counterpoints to those that maintain that the late timing and slow pacing of the 1865 Mobile Campaign essentially erased its strategic utility within the overall plan to end the war that spring. Highly recommended.

Coming Soon (December '24 Edition)

Scheduled for DEC 2024¹:
• The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process by John Schmutz.
• A Union Tested: The Civil War Letters of Cimbaline and Henry Fike ed. by Jeremy Neely.
• In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians At Gettysburg ─ In Their Own Words by Owen & Ashton.

Comments: The Schmutz title is already in general release and available for purchase. I've been tracking this stuff online for twenty years now and can't recall a December this bare. I hope the Oct-Nov stragglers that I've been wanting/expecting arrive very soon so they can considered for the year-end list. I am very curious to find out how the first half of 2025 will play out. Hopefully, 2024 was just the bottom of a curve.

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: Hell by the Acre

New Arrival:

• Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel A. Masters (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Stones River was an incredibly costly bit of concentrated mayhem, its level of bloodiness even more pronounced given the relatively small size (by major Civil War battle standards) of the two armies involved and the compactness of the battlefield.

From the description: "The opposing armies—44,000 men under Rosecrans and 37,000 under Bragg—locked bayonets on December 31, 1862, in some of the hardest fighting of the war. Bragg’s initial attack drove the Federals back nearly three miles, captured 29 cannons, and thousands of prisoners. Somehow the Union lines held firm during the critical fighting along the Nashville Pike that afternoon against repeated determined attacks that left both armies bloodied and exhausted. The decisive moment came two days later when, in the fading afternoon of January 2, 1863, Bragg launched an assault on an isolated Union division on the east bank of Stones River. The Confederates once again enjoyed initial success only to be repulsed by 58 Union guns combined with a daring counterattack. This repulse broke Bragg’s hold on Murfreesboro. He retreated the following night, leaving Rosecrans and his Cumberland army victors of the field."

Serious students of the Stones River/Murfreesboro campaign and battle are fortunate to have a number of major modern works at their fingertips. The first edition of James Lee McDonough's Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee was published in 1980. That was followed in 1989 by Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River. In 2012, prolific western theater specialist Larry Daniel made his own contribution with Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict Between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland. The Cozzens and Daniel titles are roughly similar in depth. In terms of following the actions of every unit involved (down to each regiment and battery from both sides) throughout the course of the campaign and battle, nothing is more detailed than Lanny Smith's two extraordinary self-published tomes 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). The other books referenced above are easily found, but both Smith books are long out of print and likely unobtainable today outside of a very lucky eBay/used bookstore find. Most recently, the mounted forces of both sides are placed at the forefront in Dennis Belcher's The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History (2017).

Fast forward to today and readers just might have in Daniel Masters's Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863, which offers detailed perspectives of the campaign from the strategic level down to the views of those on the ground, the new standard when it comes to comprehensive single-volume treatments. At over 600 pages of main narrative, Masters's book is positively David Powellian in scope. Its bibliography displays strong breadth and depth of source materials consulted, and the 17 maps from Edward Alexander are filled with meticulously rendered small-unit and terrain details. My first impressions are very positive, and I'm looking forward to reading this.

Booknotes: Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920

New Arrival:

• Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920 by Gregg Andrews (LSU Press, 2024).

From the description: Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920 "is the first comprehensive examination of a workhouse in the United States, offering a critical history of the institution in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Using the Old St. Louis Workhouse as a representative example, award-winning historian Gregg Andrews brings to life individual stories of men and women sentenced to this debtors’ prison to break rocks in the quarry, sew clothing, scrub cell floors and walls, or toil in its brush factory."

Obviously, this is a penal system history and not a Civil War history. Though the extensive period covered in the book includes the years 1861-65, nearly all of the text examines the postwar era and beyond. One might be interested in finding out how the unprecedented turmoil in St. Louis caused by secession and Civil War affected how the workhouse was run, but it doesn't appear (at least by my cursory thumb through) to be something addressed by the study. It is mentioned that the end of the Civil War in 1865 marked the beginning of a steep rise in prosecuting vagrancy offenses as a widespread effort to control who was on the streets.

More from the description: "Most inmates, too poor to pay requisite fines, came through the city’s police courts on charges of vagrancy, drunkenness, disturbing the peace, or violating some other ordinance." The casting of such a wide net led to workhouses becoming "overcrowded and inhospitable facilities that housed hardcore felons and young street toughs along with prostitutes, petty thieves, peace disturbers, political dissenters, “levee rats,” adulterers, and those who suffered from alcohol and drug addiction. Officials even funneled the elderly, the mentally disabled, and the physically infirm into the workhouse system."

Treatment of prisoners in the St. Louis workhouse was very harsh. More: "The ordinance that created the St. Louis complex in 1843 banned corporal punishment, but shackles, chains, and the whipping post remained central to the institution’s attempts to impose discipline. Officers also banished more recalcitrant inmates to solitary confinement in the “bull pen,” where they subsisted on little more than bread and water."

Such records of mistreatment led to the facility being targeted by concerned reformers. According to Andrews, "(t)he best opportunity for lasting change came during the Progressive Era, but the limited contours of progressivism in St. Louis thwarted reformers’ efforts. The defeat of a municipal bond issue in 1920 effectively ended plans to replace the urban industrial workhouse model with a more humane municipal farm system championed by Progressives."

Review - "The Maps of Second Bull Run: An Atlas of the Second Bull Run (Manassas) Campaign from the Formation of the Army of Virginia Through Chantilly, June 26-September 1, 1862" by Bradley Gottfried

[The Maps of Second Bull Run: An Atlas of the Second Bull Run (Manassas) Campaign from the Formation of the Army of Virginia Through Chantilly, June 26-September 1, 1862 by Bradley M. Gottfried (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, color maps, text, orders of battle, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages:xiv,305. ISBN:978-1-61121-708-7. $39.95]

Every new addition to the Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series is cause for celebration, and Bradley Gottfried's The Maps of Second Bull Run is no exception. The tenth volume in the series, it covers the period of time during the summer of 1862 that witnessed a series of sharp clashes between Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and John Pope's recently organized Army of Virginia, the latter reinforced (not quickly enough in the opinion of many critics) by advance elements of George McClellan's Army of the Potomac. Events fully addressed in the atlas include the Battle of Cedar Mountain, the rear guard action at Kettle Run, the contest over possession of Thoroughfare Gap, the Battle of Brawner's Farm, the featured Second Manassas battle, and the Battle of Chantilly.

For those unfamiliar with the general format, when you open the book there is a full-page, multi-color map on the right-hand side and facing it on the left is a page filled with a narrative description of the action depicted on the corresponding map. Those pairings are further organized into "map sets" that collectively address smaller engagements in their entirety, operational interludes between battles, and key phases of the larger battles. In this case, their are twenty-four maps sets arranged in six parts, the whole housing 122 maps.

Several maps address the overall strategic situation at the onset of the campaign, but the overwhelming majority are of operational and tactical natures. Generally speaking, the tactical-scale maps are of two main types. One depicts larger sectors of the battlefield involving multiple divisions on each side, and the other represents much more close-in views of brigade-scale actions. Unit scale ranges from corps and divisions on the operational map sets to individual regiments and batteries on the tactical ones. Environmental map features include the expected man-made and natural elements (ex. roads, railroads, rivers, streams, vegetation, fence lines, crops, and the most prominent elevation lines) without becoming too busy. Distance scale and action time intervals are clearly denoted, as is compass direction. The last is important to keep in mind as many/most of the operational-scale maps are offset by 90 degrees (so north is to the left on those instead of up) in order to take advantage of that page dimension's wider lateral space.

In most military atlases, the maps (appropriately enough) are front and center and explanatory text is relegated to a secondary role at best. This series distinctively, perhaps even uniquely, offers the best of both worlds. It should really be called a 'history and atlas' series. Each volume contains a fully realized narrative account of the campaign and battle, one that provides abundant small-unit detail and transitions seamlessly from page to page. Integrated into map and text is a matching number system for highlighting the most noteworthy events. There is some analysis of decision-making and range of options available to commanders (and in that analysis Gottfried frequently defers to the written opinions of subject matter experts such as Second Manassas leading light John Hennessy), but the bulk of the text is reserved for describing movements and actions depicted on the facing map. Gottfried's explanatory endnotes frequently offer additional detail and commentary, too. Nearly every paragraph incorporates some pithy phrase or stirring passage from a participant account. That humanizing element inserted throughout the book effectively prevents the text from becoming just a dry recitation of unit movements and actions.

Gottfried's research is grounded in a solid body of manuscript resources, newspapers, government documents, books (particularly unit histories), and articles. As noted in the introduction, the narrative is intended to be a synthesis of the best available sources rather than a platform for new interpretation from the author. For a book of this type, that's likely the most common reader expectation.

As good as the narrative content is overall, there are some presentational problems that mar it. Numerous errors (ex. typos, missing words in sentences, and use of words that don't match intended meaning) made it through final editing. In the introduction, the author humbly asks readers to report mistakes that can be corrected in future printings. An example of a confusion-spawning error was the frequent misrepresentation of Confederate Col. Thomas Garnett's name. In Gottfried's index he is incorrectly listed as Thomas "Garrett" and both names (Garnett and Garrett) are used interchangeably within the map-facing text coverage of the Cedar Mountain fighting (on the maps, his command is correctly labeled as Garnett's brigade). In another case, Union Col. James Nagle's name is correct on the maps and in the index, but it is incorrectly spelled "Nagel" in the facing page titles and descriptive text starting on page 132.

Aforementioned flaws in presentation aside, The Maps of Second Bull Run is another excellent entry in the series. The best military atlas enhances reader understanding in ways that can only be achieved through effective leveraging of the kind of visual learning unique to cartography. That is very much the case with this volume. That strong measure of success, in combination with what is essentially a new full-length historical account of the campaign and battle, makes the book well worthy of recommendation.

Booknotes: Reckoning with the Devil

New Arrival:

• Reckoning with the Devil: Nathan Bedford Forrest in Myth and Memory by Court Carney (LSU Press, 2024).

Court Carney’s Reckoning with the Devil reexamines "the troubled, complex legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest―a slave trader, Confederate general, and prominent Klansman." In it, Carney "explores how historical omissions and erasures continually reshape perceptions of Forrest as well as the Civil War." Of course, Forrest's military brilliance in certain roles was a major part of his Civil War historical legacy (for a good modern overview of that see John Scales's The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1861-1865), but that aspect is not a focal point of Carney's work.

As Carney see it, "the slave trade, the Fort Pillow massacre, and his Klan affiliation were the fundamental elements shaping Forrest’s image." Forrest's wealth gained through slave trading was "a key to his ascent in the southern social hierarchy." In the book, Carney "traces Forrest’s trajectory from a prosperous slave trader in Memphis to a politician and eventual military leader in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Forrest’s postwar years reveal his struggle to rebuild his life, leading him to engage in various economic ventures and eventually join the Ku Klux Klan." The "ambiguity and malleability" involved in the above "allowed Forrest to attract admirers as well as detractors as his image was memorialized in postwar white southern culture."

Reckoning with the Devil "covers distinct phases of Forrest’s memorialization, from the unveiling of statues in Memphis in 1905 to his representation in literature and media and the controversies surrounding his monuments in the 2010s." In the end, it is Carney's view that "Forrest’s significance lies in his capacity to encompass conflicting narratives―hero and villain, rebel and patriot. Carney contends that understanding Forrest’s legacy is essential for comprehending the intricacies of the southern past and its enduring impact on American society."

Booknotes: "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day"

New Arrival:

• "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske (Savas Beatie, 2024).

It dismays modern observers today as much as it frustrated contemporary proponents way back then that it took so long for Union forces to finally close the vital Gulf port of Mobile, Alabama to Confederate blockade runners. When the campaign against Mobile did get underway at long last, it unfolded in two distinct stages. The first, consisting of both a naval offensive into Mobile Bay that famously damned the torpedoes and accompanying amphibious attacks that forced the fall of bay entrance guardian forts Morgan and Gaines, occurred during August 1864. The second and final phase played out during March and April of 1865, culminating in the April 12 surrender of the city.

The finest modern overview of the 1865 campaign is Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018), but given its nature the fights for the east bay Confederate forts (Blakeley and Spanish Fort) could only be summarized. The solid discussion of the action at Fort Blakeley (the April 9 assault in particular) found in Mike Bunn's The Assault on Fort Blakeley: The Thunder and Lightning of Battle (2021) addresses one of those two gaps in book-length standalone coverage, and Brueske's new study, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, fills the other with an even more detailed account.

From the description: "The bloody two-week siege of Spanish Fort, Alabama (March 26–April 8, 1865) was one of the final battles of the Civil War. Despite its importance and fascinating history, surprisingly little has been written about it. Many considered the fort as the key to holding the important seaport of Mobile, which surrendered to Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby on April 12, 1865."

Canby had a large army at his disposal for operations on both sides of the bay (over 40,000 men), but the Confederates were able to slip in a number of veteran units, albeit battered ones, into the defenses. Though still greatly outnumbered, the Confederates were able to offer fairly stiff resistance given the circumstances.

More from the description: "After the devastating Tennessee battles of Franklin and Nashville in late 1864, many Federals believed Mobile’s garrison—which included a few battered brigades and most of the artillery units from the Army of Tennessee—did not have much fight left and would evacuate the city rather than fight. They did not. Despite being outnumbered about 10 to 1, 33-year-old Brig. Gen. Randall Lee Gibson mounted a skillful and spirited defense that “considerably astonished” his Union opponents. The siege and battle that unfolded on the rough and uneven bluffs of Mobile Bay’s eastern shore, fought mainly by veterans of the principal battles of the Western Theater, witnessed every offensive and defensive art known to war."

In support of the text are six maps. The appendix section offers a broad range of supplementary material, including army and navy orders of battle, ordnance information, casualty and prisoner lists, and much more.