Booknotes: Lincoln's Campaign Biographies

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Campaign Biographies by Thomas A. Horrocks (SIU Press, 2024).

This is the 2024 paperback reissue of the original 2014 hardcover edition, which is part of SIU Press's long-running Concise Lincoln Library series.

In pre-modern American political history, campaign biographies provided a great way to for a presidential campaign to expose its candidate to a wide audience while at the same time controlling the message. From the description: "During the 1860 and 1864 presidential campaigns, Abraham Lincoln was the subject of over twenty campaign biographies. In this innovative study, Thomas A. Horrocks examines the role that these publications played in shaping an image of Lincoln that would resonate with voters and explores the vision of Lincoln that the biographies crafted, the changes in this vision over the course of four years, and the impact of these works on the outcome of the elections."

According to Horrocks, Lincoln's campaigns were more adept than most when it came to using the campaign biography as an effective election tool. More from the description: "Horrocks investigates Lincoln’s campaign biographies within the context of the critical relationship between print and politics in nineteenth-century America and compares the works about Lincoln with other presidential campaign biographies of the era. Horrocks shows that more than most politicians of his day, Lincoln deeply appreciated and understood the influence and the power of the printed word."

Campaign biographies were also useful when it became necessary, or simply advantageous, for a candidate's public face to shift and evolve. That was certainly the case between 1860 and 1864. More: "The 1860 campaign biographies introduced to America “Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter,” a trustworthy, rugged candidate who appealed to rural Americans. When Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, the second round of campaign biographies complemented this earlier portrait of Lincoln with a new, paternal figure, “Father Abraham,” more appropriate for Americans enduring a bloody civil war."

In the end, Thomas Horrocks's Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies "provides a new perspective for those seeking a better understanding of the sixteenth president and two of the most critical elections in American history."

Booknotes: A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2

New Arrival:

• 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 (UNC Press, 2025).

The long-awaited second installment of A. Wilson Greene's epic three-volume series A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg has arrived. The excellent from top to bottom A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 1: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater arrived on our doorsteps back in 2018, so powers of recall will have to be sharp in order to pick up on the full range of recurring themes (and hopefully the Volume 1 review linked just above will assist in that area to some degree).

As stated in the Preface, A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill covers the period "between August 1 and the end of October." Thus, it encompasses the "Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Petersburg Offensives, all entailing concurrent efforts south of the Appomattox River and north of the James River. August also witnessed one of the war's greatest acts of sabotage, while in September the Confederate cavalry conducted a spectacular raid behind Union lines" (pp. xii-xiii). "But as winter approached, Grant had captured one of Lee’s primary supply routes and extended the lines around Petersburg and Richmond to some thirty-five miles."

If the past few decades of Petersburg Campaign scholarship haven't already disabused you of the common notion that its ten months were generally lacking in operational and tactical-level features of interest, Greene's series should be thoroughly convincing. As was the case with Volume 1, Volume 2 enhances its narrative through extensive map coverage, too. From the description: "Supported by thirty-four detailed maps, Greene’s narrative chronicles these bloody engagements using many previously unpublished primary accounts from common soldiers and ranking officers alike. The struggle for Petersburg is often characterized as a siege, but Greene’s narrative demonstrates that it was dynamic, involving maneuver and combat equal in intensity to that of any major Civil War operation."

In a nice touch, Greene dedicates this volume to Richard Sommers, who passed away the year following Volume 1's release. Grant and Lee were the giants who actually fought the campaign, but Sommers was also a giant, albeit of a different sort. Through his masterwork Richmond Redeemed and beyond, Sommers established himself as the dean of Petersburg Campaign historians, his work influencing all who followed in his footsteps.

Booknotes: The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War

New Arrival:

• The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment by James Marten (UNC Press, 2025).

The Sixth Wisconsin was, as we all know, an integral component of one of the most celebrated infantry brigades produced by either side, the Iron Brigade. "One of the core units of the famed Iron Brigade, the Sixth was organized in July 1861 and mustered out in the summer of 1865, playing major roles at Second Manassas, Antietam, and Gettysburg, and in the Overland campaign of 1864." The unit's service history has been well documented in that integrated context (and in field grade officer Rufus Dawes's well-used memoir based on his wartime writings), but I am not aware of any prior full-length regimental history. According to James Marten, author of The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment, that might still be the case, as he categorically states that his book "is not a regimental history," but rather, as he calls it, a "regimental biography." Like a biography covering an individual's life, Marten's book "traces the birth, education, maturation, aging, and decline of its subject" (pg. 3).

From the description: "Reimagining one of the oldest genres of Civil War history," Marten's own brand of regimental study does not aim to recount in detail the Sixth's part in the various campaigns and battles. From the author's point of view, "the regiment’s full history is found in the stories of its men learning to fight and endure far from home amid violence, illness, and death, and in the lives of families that hung on every word in letters and news from the front lines. Those stories also unfolded long after the war’s end, as veterans sought to make sense of their experiences and home communities struggled to care for those who returned with unhealed wounds." Marten branches off from modern Civil War community, memory, and veteran studies by following "a single regiment through the entire gamut of experiences, from peace to war and back again" (pg. 4).

In his introduction, Marten explains his main goals for the book at some length. The first is to present the veteran lives of the Sixth's surviving members as being just as important as their soldier lives. This gets into the "long Civil War" part of the title. Most inspired by the focus and style of soldier studies from Gerald Linderman, Earl Hess, and Peter Carmichael, the second of Marten's goals is to "enrich and complicate the way we think about common soldiers' experiences." The third central intention is to explain, through the eyes of Sixth Wisconsin soldiers along with their loves ones and home communities, "how the Civil War generation invented the very idea of war" in the sense of "inventing a vocabulary, a series of acceptable responses," and "a way of explaining it to others and themselves." Finally, Marten uses his biography of the Sixth to develop the idea of "the Civil War regiment as a particular kind of constructed community" (pgs. 5-6). Through all of this, it is hoped that "readers will understand the long history of the Civil War" in a new way.

Coming Soon (April '25 Edition)

Scheduled for APR 2025¹:
• Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of John W. M. Appleton ed. by Jewell & Van Sickle.
• The Second Manassas Campaign ed. by Janney & Shively.
• The Strange and Tragic Wounds of George Cole's America: A Tale of Manhood, Sex, and Ambition in the Civil War Era by Michael deGruccio.
• The Final Bivouac: The Confederate Surrender Parade at Appomattox and the Disbanding of the Virginia Armies, April 10-May 20, 1865 by Chris Calkins, with Dunkerly & Schroeder.
• 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.
• The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment by James Marten.
• Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South by Jennifer Gross.
• Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs by Thomas & Matthews.
• Faith of the Fathers: The Comprehensive History of Catholic Chaplains in the Civil War by Robert Miller.
• Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery by Richard Kreitner.
• Joshua Hill of Madison: Civil War Unionist and Georgia's First Republican Senator, 1812-1891 by Bradley Rice.
• Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination during the Civil War Era by Alys Beverton.
• Lincoln the Citizen, February 12, 1809 to March 4, 1861: The Complete Version by Whitney, ed. by Burlingame.
• Hispanic Americans in the Civil War by A.G. Schenkman.
• The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family ed. by Henry McKiven.
• From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership by Quarstein & Worden.
• Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at his Father’s Side during the American Civil War by Albert Nofi.
• The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation by John Bicknell.
• From Camp Douglas to Vicksburg: The Civil War Letters of William J. Kennedy, 55th Illinois Infantry, 1861-1863 ed. by Mellen & Powell.
• From Dakota to Dixie: George Buswell's Civil War ed. by White & Connelly.
• Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 by Damian Shiels.
• Shipwreck on the Potomac: Disaster in Pursuit of Lincoln's Killer by Karen Stone.
• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: Grant’s Failed Offensives by Chris Mackowski.
• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender by Chris Mackowski.

Comments: A number of these have arrived already. The sheer size of this batch of new releases is impressive, and the great majority of them are crammed into the first half of the month, too.

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: The Second Manassas Campaign

New Arrival:

• The Second Manassas Campaign edited by Caroline E. Janney & Kathryn J. Shively (UNC Press, 2025).

The end is nigh. When UNC's venerable Military Campaigns of the Civil War series returned in 2015 after a decade-long hibernation (and under new stewardship), the plan was to conclude it by filling in the few remaining gaps in coverage. First up was that year's Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign. That was followed three years later by Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia. Now we have the penultimate volume in The Second Manassas Campaign, edited by Caroline Janney and Kathryn Shively.

From the description: "Waged from June 26 to September 1, 1862, the Second Manassas campaign pitted the US Armies of Virginia and the Potomac against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and its new commander, Robert E. Lee. The campaign unfolded against a backdrop of momentous US political decisions regarding confiscation, emancipation, and Confederate civilians. These decisions dismayed and energized Confederates, sparking the debut of Lee’s offensive strategy. Weeks of strategic movements were punctuated by savage fighting that culminated in a climactic battle on August 28–30. Second Manassas destroyed the careers of US army commander John Pope and corps commander Fitz John Porter. Despite the dramatic impact of the campaign, it is often forgotten in the larger history of the Civil War, and sorely understudied."

Contributors to this volume include co-editors Janney and Shively as well as Keith Bohannon, Gary Gallagher, John Hennessy, Peter Luebke, James Marten, William Marvel, and Cecily Zander. Their essays "provide valuable attention to strategy, tactics, and logistics; the performances of key commanders on each side; the campaign’s political dimensions; the connections between home front and battlefield; and the memory of the campaign’s aftermath." In them, Shively studies logistical problems in Pope's Army of Virginia, Hennessy discusses how Pope's army confronted slavery, Gallagher offers the Confederate perspective of the campaign, Zander looks at Radical Republican intervention in the campaign, Peter Luebke reviews Confederate strategy during this period, James Marten examines the role of the 6th Wisconsin at Brawner's Farm, Keith Bohannon's essay is centered on John Bell Hood's part in the Confederate victory at Second Manassas, the Porter trial is revisited by William Marvel, and, finally, Janney investigates the struggle to preserve the battlefield's early monuments. That's a very interesting sounding collection.

This volume's publication leaves only First Manassas left to go. Looking forward to it...the topic not the end of the series!

Review - "The Confederate Resurgence of 1864" by William Marvel

[The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 by William Marvel (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 10 maps, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,231/336. ISBN:978-0-8071-8243-7. $49.95]

During the harsh winter of 1863-64, Confederate national morale found itself standing at yet another crossroads moment between confidence and despair. For southern armies and the home front they defended, 1863 was a tough year to say the least. In the West, the costly Confederate victory at Chickamauga in September 1863 briefly revived spirits dampened by the drawn-out catastrophe of Vicksburg, but all of that shaky optimism was dashed by the end of the year following defeat at Knoxville and the utter rout of the main body of the Army of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Across the Mississippi River, federal amphibious forces ranged up and down the Texas coast with impunity, and in Arkansas a bloody repulse at Helena was followed by Union occupation of the length of the Arkansas River Valley, including the state capital at Little Rock. In the East, national elation following the unlikely triumph at Chancellorsville (though that joy was tempered by the loss of Stonewall Jackson and heavy casualties incurred overall) was followed that summer by terrible defeat and more irreplaceable losses in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg. Even though the heavily depleted Army of Northern Virginia retained its confidence in commander Robert E. Lee and stymied Gettysburg's victors for the remainder of the year, some deemed that army's 1863 losses, particularly in officers, so crippling as to seriously impair its prospects for the coming year. Bad news also extended to the North Carolina front, which was reinforced early in the year at some strategic risk. There, the manner in which the failed attack on New Bern was bungled raised serious questions over whether anything could be accomplished toward regaining cities and territory lost in the region the previous year. Amidst all that doom and gloom, everyone in the Confederacy knew that there would be no let up in pressure by the enemy. So what steeled the Confederacy's badly shaken supporters for the even greater challenges and sacrifices that 1864 would undoubtedly bring? Seeking the answer to that question, or at least a significant part of it, is the most probing theme of William Marvel's new book The Confederate Resurgence of 1864.

It is Marvel's view, strongly developed throughout this study, that the string of Confederate military victories on land and water over a roughly ten-week period from February 20 to April 30 provided such a significant boost to both the home and fighting fronts that it sustained them through the horrendous casualties and steady loss of national territory produced by the fierce fighting between the main armies in Georgia and Virginia. Perhaps more controversially, Marvel even goes so far as to say that the widespread injection of fresh optimism into flagging spirits provided by that late-winter and early-spring "resurgence" was instrumental in sustaining Confederate resistance into the following year.

Marvel sets the stage by recounting the depths to which army confidence in eventual victory had sunk by the onset of the winter of 1863-64, which was exceptionally cold in places. That increasing despair led to a widespread surge in desertion, even in areas far from the main action. Many of those who abandoned southern ranks, both individually and in groups, took advantage of President Lincoln's shrewdly conceived amnesty proposal. Of course, the Confederacy had experienced ups and downs in national prospects and morale before, but things seemed different as 1864 arrived. Hopelessness started to pervade Confederate society, currency values approached complete worthlessness, total economic collapse seemed impending, and supplies of clothing and shoes for the army were increasingly inadequate (with little to no prospect for improvement). General Sherman's February 1864 Meridian Expedition, which started at Vicksburg and drove inland into the Mississippi heartland with near impunity, only furthered the perception that Confederate defenses were now a hollow shell. The Confederate resurgence arrived just in the nick of time.

Fine overviews of the sequence of military events large and small that form the basis of Marvel's argument and analysis, with map support, are offered. Covered are the Union expedition in Florida that suffered defeat at the Battle of Olustee, the cavalry clashes between Nathan Bedford Forrest and Sooy Smith in North Mississippi, the confrontation at Rocky Face Ridge/Mill Creek Gap in North Georgia, the abortive Butler/Wistar raid on Richmond in early February (stopped at Bottom's Bridge) and accompanying diversionary operation from the Army of the Potomac, the infamous Kilpatrick/Dahlgren Raid on Richmond, the Red River Campaign and Camden Expedition, Forrest's raids on widely separated points across western Tennessee and Kentucky (especially at Union City, Paducah, and Fort Pillow), and the Confederate recapture of Plymouth, North Carolina. These Confederate successes are discussed in both isolation and in cumulative effect. Certainly other factors were involved in sustaining hope within Confederate ranks through the rest of 1864, not least of which were having Lee in the East and replacing Bragg with Johnston in the West (the latter overwhelmingly perceived as a major upgrade), but Marvel, through surveying a wide range of contemporary primary sources, builds a strong case that the string of victories listed above produced a noticeably powerful boost to Confederate national morale and determination.

Even events that were damaging on the face of it could be widely seen as having a silver lining. In Charleston harbor, the sinking of the USS Housatonic, even though it also resulted in the loss of the attacking submersible CSS Hunley, nevertheless increased hopes that further blows could be struck against the ever tightening blockade of the southern coastline. While the relatively weak response to Sherman's incursion into the heart of Mississippi and the level of destruction wrought there was disheartening to Confederate supporters, Marvel notes that the public morale effect was largely mitigated by Forrest's manhandling of Sooy Smith's cavalry wing. Not recognizing that Sherman had already turned back by the time Forrest confronted Smith and harried him into retreat, it was inaccurately assumed by a great many within the Confederate military leadership and among the general populace that stopping Smith had compelled Sherman to give up plans for further advances toward either Selma or Mobile. Likewise, to the north, the successful Confederate defensive action at Dalton was widely perceived as repulsing a major enemy advance rather than the mostly diversionary action it really was.

According to Marvel, the period under consideration in his book also had a major political component in that it represented an interval that delivered key blows to Lincoln's presidential reconstruction plans. The administration's political initiative was an utter failure in Florida and, with Steele stripping much of his occupation forces from the Arkansas River Valley in support of his Camden Expedition, the pro-Union political position in Arkansas started to deteriorate. Abject defeat in the Red River Valley also meant that reconstruction could not be carried from New Orleans into the heart of Louisiana.

As Marvel outlines, the early-1864 Confederate resurgence also contributed to a corresponding stumble in Union self-assurance. Since modern observers lack scientific opinion data for the Civil War period, fluctuations in the value of paper currency relative to gold prices are commonly used to gauge northern confidence in the war effort and economy at a given time, and Marvel points to several events during the book's ten-week interlude that corresponded with spikes in gold demand/prices and greenback depreciation.

Drawing support from a variety of primary source materials, the quality of Marvel's main argument is vigorously developed and presented to the reader in his own inimitable writing style and tone. What's most open for debate is just how much of the strength of Confederate resistance revealed throughout the rest of 1864 can be directly attributed to that early-year window of successive battlefield victories. The least convincing part of the argument is the attempt to draw an analogy between the Confederate national mood at the beginnings of years 1864 and 1865. Marvel's suggestion that the first six months of the latter witnessed a widespread and rapid collapse because it lacked anything like the previous year's boosting victories has some merit, but one can't help but feel that much more of a gulf in military and home front starting conditions existed between the respective winters of 1863-64 and 1864-65 than Marvel concedes. Regardless, one is still able to fully appreciate the thought-provoking power behind Marvel's central thesis without necessarily agreeing with all of his conclusions associated with it.

As he readily admits in his introduction, Marvel is not the first scholar to raise the matter of this dramatic early spring revival of Confederate fortunes, but he certainly is the first author to both descriptively recount the period in comprehensive fashion and analyze the full impact of its significance. The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 offers fresh thinking and a powerful new way to assess the events of that pivotal Civil War year and beyond.

Booknotes: Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts

New Arrival:

• Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of John W. M. Appleton edited by James Robbins Jewell and Eugene S. Van Sickle (Potomac Bks, 2025).

From the description: "In January of 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was born. On February 7, 1863, Massachusetts governor John Andrew commissioned Boston-bred John W. M. Appleton the first of the white officers in the most famous Civil War regiment of Black soldiers. Appleton immediately began recruiting enlisted soldiers for the company he would command, Company A."

According to James Jewell and Eugene Van Sickle, co-editors of Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of John W. M. Appleton, the Appleton memoir is "the most complete first-person account available about the service of the men in the 54th Massachusetts regiment." In terms of what kinds of topics Appleton favored in his writings, he "wrote candidly about his own experiences and the men who served with and under him, including troop punishments, combat, and combat injuries, including his own. He also described in detail the weather, climate, southern geography, and his interaction with civilians. Appleton served with the regiment from February 1863 through August 1864, when severe injuries forced him home a second time."

In the book's Preface, it is mentioned that there are presently twelve published first-hand accounts related to the 54th, but the editors believe that, out of all of them, Appleton's memoir "provides a more intimate window into the men and their experiences" (pg. xiii). Appleton's memoir was also not written for publication, or at least that's what he always maintained, so it has that going for it as well.

Appleton's writings span the regiment's most eventful service interludes, from initial recruitment and organization to coastal raiding in Georgia, the 1863 assault on Charleston's outer defenses, the 1864 Florida Campaign, occupation duty at Jacksonville, and return to Charleston siege operations. During the last, wound and heat-related disabilities finally forced Appleton's resignation from the army. He basically was with the regiment for all save the last thirteen months of its Civil War service.

Extensive editorial content from Jewell and Van Sickle supplements the Appleton memoir. Their general introduction is followed by nine chapters of Appleton writings, an additional chapter discussing Appleton's return home and postwar life, and an epilogue focused on the writing and preservation of the memoir. Among the volume's illustrations are a number of insightful battlefield sketches (from the Charleston campaigns) that reside in the Appleton archive. Extensive chapter introductions also add essential context for what follows. As expected, the material in the book is fully annotated. This volume certainly looks to be a must-have for anyone interested in exploring the 54th's history through the eyes of one of its officers.

Booknotes: The Final Bivouac

New Arrival:

• The Final Bivouac: The Confederate Surrender Parade at Appomattox and the Disbanding of the Virginia Armies, April 10-May 20, 1865 by Chris Calkins, with Bert Dunkerly and Patrick A. Schroeder (Savas Beatie, 2025).

I don't recall exactly how many at this point have been given the treatment, but Savas Beatie has revisited a number of classic titles from the long out of print H.E. Howard Virginia Battles and Leaders series, republishing them in revised and expanded form. Around a year ago, with the assistance of Bert Dunkerly, Patrick Schroeder, and Melody Bage, the publisher released a fresh version of Chris Calkins's 1980s book The Battles of Appomattox Station and Appomattox Court House, April 8-9, 1865 under the new title "No One Wants to be the Last to Die": The Battles of Appomattox, April 8-9, 1865. Calkins's follow-up from the same period, The Final Bivouac: The Surrender Parade at Appomattox and the Disbanding of the Armies, April 10 - May 20, 1865, has now received its own new version (and slightly different title wording) with The Final Bivouac: The Confederate Surrender Parade at Appomattox and the Disbanding of the Virginia Armies, April 10-May 20, 1865, and Dunkerly and Schroeder return to assist with the project.

The book addresses a number of questions related to the surrender and its immediate aftermath. Among others, they include: "What actually happened during the first six weeks of new-found peace once General Lee surrendered the remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant? What were the initial reactions of the soldiers and Virginia citizens to the devastating news of Lincoln’s assassination? How did they handle the situation of the emancipated slaves?"

In its coverage of the surrender parade, Calkins's work "vividly captured the intense feelings and emotions of Union and Confederate soldiers as the former enemies faced each other for the last time. The honor and respect shown by the victorious Federal troops toward the defeated Southerners is one of the most moving episodes in American history." The text, which combines author narrative with extensive blocks of material from eyewitness and participant letters, diaries, official reports, and other writings, "continues the story with marvelous firsthand accounts by homeward-bound Confederates, the members of the Union encampment at Burkeville, men involved in the Danville Expedition, and those present for the occupation of Southside Virginia. The narrative concludes as the last few regiments in blue cross the James River at Richmond on their way to Washington, D.C., and then, finally home."

In addition to support from seven maps, the volume sports an extensive appendix section filled with interesting supplemental information and data tables. The first highlights a number of archaeological investigations of the ground, the second provides insights into the condition of Lee's army during the period (particularly in areas of clothing and food), the third delves into the neverending debate over how many men Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the final appendix reviews the sun rising and setting times over the course of the campaign.

Review - "Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation" by Michael Lang

[Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Michael S. Lang (University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Softcover, 16 maps, illustrations, appendix, orders of battle, strength tables, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:xx,293. ISBN:978-1-62190-916-3. $24.95]

Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation is one of the more unique installments in UT Press's ever-growing Command Decisions in America's Civil War series. In a series now approaching two-dozen volumes, this is only the second Trans-Mississippi theater entry, and its subject, the 1864 Red River Campaign, is the only one to lack a comprehensive book-length treatment that anyone would consider definitive in nature. While numerous overview-level books covering the campaign's operations in the Red River Valley and Arkansas exist, it is still the case that no full-length studies of the campaign's climactic battles, those fought at Mansfield (April 8) and Pleasant Hill (April 9), have been published. In contrast with other series topics, which tend to address major military contests fought between principal field armies, the Red River Campaign is also atypical in that it was driven by political and economic considerations more than military ones. How that mix affected critical decision-making and its consequences adds some interesting elements to the analysis.

For those unfamiliar with the series and its structure, please refer to the site reviews of the early series titles for more explanation. In short, critical decisions are, as Lang explains, those that are "not only consequential in their own right, but also so important that they substantially shape the decisions and events that follow, thus forming the course of history" (pg. xiv). For each critical decision, identification and analysis unfolds in the following sequence: Situation, Options, Decision, and Result/Impact. Situation describes a particular state of affairs (be it "strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, personnel related, or logistical" in nature) at a pivotal moment prompting a critical decision. That background element provides readers with the context necessary to recognize and evaluate the Options (two or more in number) available to the decision-maker. The historical Decision that was selected by that high-level decision-maker is then described. The ensuing Result(s)/Impact section recounts what happened and how those historical events shaped what followed. An Alternative Decision/Scenario section is optional for contributors (some really get into the alternate history conjecture while other omit it altogether), and Lang includes a brief one or two paragraphs of that type of content for all of his fifteen decisions.

Series contributors typically organize their critical decision compilations into several sub-groupings (most often by specific time intervals). Task ten knowledgeable individuals with the same job of identifying critical decisions and you'll undoubtedly receive back ten different lists. With that in mind, one might quibble with a few of Lang's selections, but that's alright as he brings all of the most centrally important situations and decisions into the conversation. In Lang's analysis, eight decisions are assigned to an extended stretch (January 1863-April 1864) of campaign preliminaries. This is where the bulk of the strategic, organizational, and personnel-related decisions reside. The second grouping, five in number (including the volume's only two tactical-level decisions), addresses the campaign's first big inflection point, the April 6-9 sequence of events encompassing the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. The third and final grouping, covering the period April 9-May 30, discusses the two critical decisions that most shaped the finishing stages of the campaign on both fronts, Union commander Nathaniel Banks's decision to withdraw to the Red River after his tactical victory at Pleasant Hill and Confederate commander Edmund Kirby Smith's decision to divert the bulk of his resources to Arkansas.

Like most others who have examined the campaign at length, Lang wonders what Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith's principal subordinate in the Red River Valley, might have accomplished against Banks's increasingly divided and demoralized command at Cane River had Kirby Smith not redirected the bulk of his available infantry firepower (the Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas divisions of Parsons, Churchill, and Walker) to Arkansas. What more that larger force might have done against the river fleet trapped above the falls at Alexandria is another interesting matter to contemplate. Lang is more noncommittal than most when it comes to taking sides in the epic clash of wills between Kirby Smith and Taylor, instead offering readers the tools to form their own opinions.

Two decisions are tied to the fighting in Arkansas, the first a logistical decision on the part of Frederick Steele, the Union general charged with leading what came to be known as the Camden Expedition, and the second Kirby Smith's weighty decision over where to concentrate his counteroffensive after Banks retreated back to the Red River and the naval support it provided. That relative paucity of critical decisions assigned to the Camden Expedition (essentially 1.5 out of 15) possibly represents a determination that Steele's column and its overextended supply line possessed little in the way of ability and opportunity to truly transform the course and results of the campaign (an opinion that Steele himself held from the outset).

Even though it's not explicitly part of the standardized structure of decision analysis adopted by the series, at times it might be helpful to explain why seemingly important decisions did not, in the mind of the author, qualify as critical decisions. For example, Steele's decision to abandon, perhaps temporarily (he did not yet know that Banks had been defeated at Mansfield and had retreated after Pleasant Hill), his advance on Shreveport and redeploy to Camden, where his supply line to Pine Bluff was shortened, might be considered a critical decision. Similarly, Steele's final decision to abandon Camden (after his two primary foraging missions were smashed by the Confederates and official confirmation arrived that Banks was not only no longer advancing but in trouble) and retreat back to his Arkansas River base might also be considered a critical decision. That said, critical decisions have to have realistic options and, in both cases, the author perhaps determined that Steele's supply situation left him no reasonable alternatives. On the Confederate side of the Arkansas operation, there are no critical decisions assigned to the execution, upon heavy reinforcement from the Red River Valley, of Kirby Smith's plan to cut off Steele's retreat. Cavalry division commander James Fagan was ordered to block Steele's retreat route (a movement that was apparently very feasible), but Fagan instead cleared out his entire force off to the west toward better foraging grounds, leaving Steele's path wide open. Some deem Fagan to have spoiled a golden opportunity to force the outright surrender of Steele's desperately low-supplied army. Of course, we'll never now what might have happened had Steele been compelled to fight his way out of a surrounding cordon of infantry and cavalry, but it was arguably a critical decision left unexamined.

As is the case with a few structural elements of the series, the scale of the driving tour appendix can vary between volumes. With eleven stops that begin in New Orleans and spread across Louisiana and Arkansas, Lang's tour is a substantial journey. In addition to providing driving directions and visual field orientation, the text attached to each stop explains how it is tied to a critical decision. Helpfully, many of the key orders and communications between leaders that are cited in the main text's decision analysis are reproduced at length in the tour appendix. Added to the orders of battle for both sides are some strength tables (divisional for Union forces and district level for the Confederates) and lists of naval forces (gunboats and transports) deployed by both sides.

One of the most noticeable changes in the series between its inception and today is in the cartography, the earliest volumes having wider coverage (with maps in the dozens spread over both the main decision analysis and integrated driving tour) and more small-unit detail. Lacking insider knowledge, one might guess that evolving economics of publishing played some part in this. It's less of a concern in this volume, which has very few tactical-level critical decisions.

In addition to its strong consideration of the campaign's most momentous decisions, Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign also, more than any other entry in the series, starkly demonstrates the ways in which leadership and personality factors can erase seemingly overwhelming one-sided advantages in manpower, firepower, materiel, and waterborne support. Lang's measured analysis of Union plans and their execution, as well as Confederate lost opportunities, only confirms General Sherman's caustic condemnation of the campaign's conduct as being, at least from the Union perspective, "one damn blunder from beginning to end."

Booknotes: Hundreds of Little Wars

New Arrival:

• Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War edited by G. David Schieffler & Matthew M. Stith (LSU Press, 2025).

In a body of major scholarship encompassed by the 1995 publication of his now classic study Seasons of War: The Ordeal of the Confederate Community, 1861-1865 and the 2009 release of A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War, historian Daniel Sutherland established himself as a towering influence in the modern examination and understanding of the Civil War's local impact beyond the conventional battlefield. Across several works, Sutherland powerfully argued that, in many ways, the irregular war on the domestic front was the war as experienced by the majority of the southern and Border State populations. Using Sutherland's pioneering contributions as a springboard, the essays collected in the new anthology Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War "reveal how viewing the war from the vantage point of singular communities allows us to better understand the larger conflict." Those 'singular communities' include "towns, regions, counties, regiments, prisons, and even refugee camps" across the country. Together, they "played a significant role in shaping the contours of the Civil War."

Volume editors G. David Schieffler and Matthew Stith invited their contributors to define the term 'community' in a manner that reaches expansively beyond more traditional labels. The result is twelve essays organized into six themed sections (with a pair of essays attached to each): (1) Regimental Communities, (2) County and Environmental Communities, (3) Border Communities, (4) Hybrid (in terms of race and demography) Communities, (5) Irregular Communities, and (6) Transnational and Comparative Communities. In summary, "Lesley J. Gordon and Eric P. Totten examine military outfits, namely the 126th New York Regiment and the 4th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. Madeleine C. Forrest provides an analysis of Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1862, and Matthew M. Stith evaluates a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in East Texas. Christopher Phillips and Scott A. Tarnowieckyi investigate the middle border region spanning the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Lorien Foote and G. David Schieffler assess the demographically diverse Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as Helena, Arkansas. Barton A. Myers and Terry L. Beckenbaugh employ Sutherland’s framing while considering irregular war, first with an examination of partisan officers and then with a survey of the White River Valley in Arkansas. Finally, Niels Eichhorn and Michael Shane Powers assume a transnational viewpoint, comparing Richmond with Vienna, Austria, and analyzing a community of Confederate veterans in Central America."

The cumulative effect produced by the essays in this volume is to "show that no one single conflict defined the Civil War. Instead, hundreds of wars existed, variously categorized by geography, race, gender, environment, and myriad other factors. Only by concentrating on these communities can we grasp the scope and complexity of the Civil War."

Review - "The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland" by Sean Chick

[The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland by Sean M. Chick (Casemate, 2025). Softcover, 5 maps, timeline, photos, illustrations, reading list, index. 128 Pages. ISBN:978-1-63624-369-6. $24.95]

The American Civil War titles that are a part of the Casemate Illustrated series offer access to concise and up to date histories of major campaigns and battles that are supplemented by color maps and additional visual aids of all types. The latest installment is Sean Chick's The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland.

Chick, who is in the midst of writing a major multi-volume history of Shiloh, situates the battle within the context of a broad wave of Union offensive operations in the western theater that began in February 1862 and quickly produced major land and water advances through Kentucky and deep into Tennessee. The Confederate attack on the Union encampment around Pittsburg Landing on April 6 is properly presented as a desperate attempt to reverse the profound effects of the unmitigated disasters that befell the South's western defense line over the previous two months.

Conventional thought, in both the popular imagination and among scholars, in regard to the personalities, decisions, and events most central to our understanding of the Shiloh campaign and battle has evolved greatly over time. In his book Rethinking Shiloh: Myth and Memory, Timothy Smith identified what he considers to be three distinct historical schools of thought and an evolving fourth. In their own writings and other forms of public engagement, modern subject matter experts such as Smith, Stacy Allen, and others have directly questioned much of what was commonly thought to be true about Shiloh and have rejected many longstanding lines of interpretation along with a number of equally long-cherished myths. Much of that recent reappraisal is reflected in Chick's sound narrative of events. Thus, Chick, though he certainly appreciates its significance, does not make the Hornet's Nest fighting the central event of his April 6 narrative, nor does he opine that it was Confederate army commander Albert Sidney Johnston untimely death that allowed Grant's army to escape defeat on that day. While Chick does wonder what might have been had another hour of daylight been available, the author generally reinforces the consensus view that the Confederates were by no means on the cusp of achieving victory when Johnston's successor, P.G.T. Beauregard, ordered the army to stand down late in the day. That decision was opposed by some front line commanders at the time and was later criticized by pro-Confederate chroniclers seeking a scapegoat for what they saw as a battlefield defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Chick, who recently authored a Beauregard biography, gives the general a mixed review for this part of his Civil War career. Beauregard's mistakes, such as his ill-conceived initial battle plan and the disorganized state of his command on April 7 (when he was surprised by the timing and strength of the Union counterattack), are duly acknowledged, but the general is also praised for his inspirational battlefield leadership against the combined armies of Grant and Buell before enemy numbers and sheer exhaustion pushed his diminished army to the brink of collapse during the fierce morning fighting on April 7.

In assessing the Union side of things, Chick, as Timothy Smith has similarly argued, finds that Grant's early-war overconfidence displayed at Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh was a personality trait that barely escaped producing disaster (for the general's own career as well as for the forces under his command). In arranging his divisions around Pittsburg Landing, Grant's lack of defensive preparedness is deemed by Chick to have been particularly "inexcusable," but, on the other hand, Grant is complimented for weathering the crisis on April 6 in his typically cool and determined fashion, even leading from the front in ways that he generally avoided later on in the war. Sherman is similarly criticized for his lack of defensive preparation (and for his crude dismissals of clear signs that the enemy was near), but the author highly commends Sherman's handling of his green division on April 6, when it held its ground for several critical hours against superior numbers and inflicted crippling losses on its attackers. In the author's view, the stand of Sherman's division was a key factor in staving off defeat on Day One. In addressing a point that still divides opinion, Chick's interpretation of the role of Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio concludes that those forces didn't "save" Grant's army from defeat or annihilation on April 6. Instead, they should be considered the essential reinforcements without which the outright driving of the enemy from the field on April 7 was an uncertain proposition. The Lew Wallace controversy, which has been addressed in-depth inside several recent books, is treated briefly and in evenhanded fashion.

Overall, Chick does fine work in condensing a big topic into a very limited amount of space. The narrative provides both big-picture analysis and an appropriate degree of small-unit (brigade and regiment) detail. Well-selected passages from participant writings further enrich the text. Battlefield maps (two for each day) are brigade-scale and useful mostly for general orientation. Among the large collection of illustrations are a number of less commonly reproduced ones, and the informational sidebars also focus on lesser-known figures and topics related to the battle.

Sean Chick's The Shiloh Campaign, 1862 is a strong modern overview that should readily appeal to readers seeking their first exposure to the greatest western battle of the early-war period. There's also enough interesting, non-'run of the mill' commentary on personalities and decisions scattered about the text to draw the interest of deeper students of the subject.

Savas Beatie to publish Francis O'Reilly's Malvern Hill book in 2026

I just received a press release from Savas Beatie announcing that the publisher has struck a deal with Frank O'Reilly to publish his looooooong anticipated Malvern Hill study, which will be titled Retreat from Victory: The Battle of Malvern Hill and the End of the Seven Days, July 1, 1862.

From the release:

"O'Reilly’s forthcoming and long-awaited book on the Battle of Malvern Hill promises to be a milestone in historical literature, blending deep and original research with outstanding prose and cutting-edge analysis.

O'Reilly, a longtime historian on the Fredericksburg-area battlefields known for delivering outstanding battlefield tours and presentations, garnered critical acclaim and multiple awards for his book The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock (2003). He brings the same detailed and insightful analysis to Retreat from Victory—the first book-length study on this critical combat that had important ramifications for the course of the Civil War and many of its prominent leaders."

This is certainly exciting news for anyone interested in the eastern theater's early-war period and the Peninsula Campaign/Seven Days in particular. As regular visitors to this site know, the project has ranked high on CWBA's list of most highly anticipated titles for a very long time.

Of course, the next question is 'when will we see it?' The answer to that is: "Retreat from Victory is slated for release in May 2026 and will be available in hardcover, digital, and audiobook formats."

Booknotes: Our Onward March

New Arrival:

• Our Onward March: The Grand Army of the Republic in the Progressive Era by Jonathan D. Neu (Fordham UP, 2025).

The GAR was first and foremost a veterans fraternal organization, with posts all around the country (even in the former Confederacy), but Jonathan Neu's Our Onward March: The Grand Army of the Republic in the Progressive Era emphasizes the GAR's political activism component of its mission.

According to Neu, "Union veterans of the GAR drew on lessons they learned in the Civil War―lessons about broad principles like democracy, freedom, and loyalty―to undertake grassroots civic projects designed to address the rampant social ills and challenging foreign policy issues associated with US modernization. Armed this time with sage wisdom and unwavering principles, they mobilized again to consummate their wartime victory with reform-minded activism on behalf of establishing an even more perfect Union."

Over the decades following the end of the Civil War and into the new century, GAR passion for public engagement and reform took many different forms. More from the description: "Extending the boundaries of America’s post–Civil War era, Neu investigates the GAR during the Progressive era, a period in the organization’s history that scholars have overlooked. Countering stubborn notions that the GAR was merely a pension advocacy group or an insular bastion of sentimental nostalgia, he reveals instead that the organization reached a turning point in 1890, after which it became an active and decentralized civic association whose members worked to instill a commitment to public life, engagement with community issues, and pride in the democracy they had defended as young men."

The author arrived at his conclusions through fresh examination of neglected source materials. "Anchored by illuminating new source material, including post-minute books and fraternal records, Our Onward March places aging GAR members squarely among the diverse constellation of turn-of-the-century social reformers, using their memory of the Civil War to promote robust, veteran-led civic engagement. By situating Union veterans in this context, we see a more accurate portrait of the GAR post in American culture―as a local center of progressive activism."

Booknotes: Fractured Freedoms

New Arrival:

• Fractured Freedoms: Reconstructing Central Louisiana by David T. Ballantyne (LSU Press, 2025).

When, in April 1862, Union army and naval forces captured New Orleans, not only Louisiana's largest city but the most populous city by far in the entire Confederacy, that stunning event opened the floodgates for carrying the war into the Lower Mississippi Valley. By May 1862, the state capital, Baton Rouge, fell to Union forces and control of much of Louisiana's transportation and economic infrastructure soon followed. This early-war period occupation of the heart of a Deep South state offered the Lincoln administration a golden opportunity to test its wartime reconstruction policies.

Rather than attempting a comprehensive examination of reconstruction in Louisiana during the Civil War years and beyond, David Ballantyne's Fractured Freedoms: Reconstructing Central Louisiana employs a more localized approach to the topic. Its focus is on 1860s through 1890s Rapides Parish, which was located smack dab in the center of the state, had a large land area, and had a majority black population. The location of the parish seat, Alexandria, on the right bank of the Red River (and a relatively short distance from the Red's confluence with the Mississippi) meant that the small city was heavily visited by the war's kaleidoscope of effects.

From the description: "Using the region as a case study, Ballantyne reveals what is, in part, a rural Reconstruction success story, emphasizing the resilience of Black politics and the persistence of significant divisions among white residents that allowed the Republican Party to gain and maintain power there. It was only with the collapse of state-level Republican power in 1877 that Democratic forces in the parish were able to dismantle local Republican political control and gradually constrict Black freedoms."