Booknotes: Confederate Gibraltar

New Arrival:

• Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou by Matt Atkinson (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Some Civil War campaigns are so long in duration, complicated in their dimensions, and full of battles of various sizes that the standard single-volume overview treatment of the kind we've come to expect from the ECW series won't cut it. Currently, we are in the middle of a multi-volume 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign series from Sean Chick, and the ECW crew has now moved out west with the first of three planned Vicksburg Campaign volumes from Matt Atkinson.

The subtitle of Atkinson's Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou makes it clear enough as to what events are covered in the first volume. Of course, every Vicksburg study recognizes the fact that Grant's campaign as it unfolded would not have been possible without the benefits of the naval supremacy placed at his disposal.

Another major theme explored in the volume is its terrain challenges. From the description: Arrayed against Union army and naval forces were "Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and his Confederate army and perhaps an even more formidable opponent—the terrain. That part of Mississippi, riddled with alluvial lowlands, malarial swamps and canebrakes, woods, deep bayous, and steep ridges presented high-water floods and low-water navigation hazards." As recounted in the book, federal combined operations "spent months probing, maneuvering, bombarding, assaulting, and even digging in their effort to find a way to reach the nearly unreachable Confederate Gibraltar."

The volume ends with Grant's initial crossing of the Mississippi River below Vicksburg. Four maps support the text, and the volume features a dense collection of illustrations as well as period and modern photographs (an ECW series staple). There is also a single appendix consisting of contributor John Castaldo's review of the Yazoo River sinking of the ironclad U.S.S. Cairo.

On a related note, in his foreword to the book Timothy Smith mentions that Atkinson's master's thesis was on Chickasaw Bayou. Perhaps he can be prevailed upon to produce the first standalone study of that battle. I would definitely be interested in something like that.

Review - "Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah" by Lori Duran

[Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah by Lori Duran (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2026). Softcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography. Pages main/total:142/171. ISBN:978-1-4671-7243-1. $24.99]

When Unionist governor Sam Houston was ousted from office after refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the new Confederacy, Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark finished out the remaining months of the old Texas hero's term. Clark in turn lost a close August 1861 gubernatorial race to Francis R. Lubbock, who served his two-year term and declined to run for reelection, joining the army instead. Facing off against each other in August 1863 were Pendleton Murrah and Thomas J. Chambers. There were no formal political parties in the Confederacy, but as the war progressed candidates could often be differentiated from each other based on their level of support for the Davis government in Richmond. Murrah, both a strong states rights advocate and pro-administration candidate, handily defeated the anti-administration Chambers, and he served as the state's governor through Confederate defeat and surrender in 1865. Murrah's leadership during this period as well as numerous other aspects of Civil War Texas home front politics and society are explored in Lori Duran's Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah.

As explained in the opening sections of the book, few details regarding Murrah's early life are open to modern inspection. Born out of wedlock, Murrah grew up in an orphanage, but he overcame those humble beginnings to graduate from Brown University and become a respected lawyer in Alabama. At some point, he also contracted the tuberculosis that would plague him for the rest of his life. Perhaps for his health, in 1850 Murrah moved to Marshall, Texas, an up and coming town that launched his political career. He also married Sue Taylor there, although their union (like the country's as a whole) proved less and less harmonious as time went on.

The study is largely a work of synthesis. According to Duran, "(n)o autobiography, biography, personal journal, or diary concerning [Murrah] or his wife has been found" (pg. 152), and that gap is mostly addressed in this book through a variety of published primary and secondary sources as well as a handful of letters. With apparently little in the way of detailed information available regarding Murrah's activities during the first half of the war, the book instead surveys the great many unresolved state-level military, political, social, and financial trials and pressures that accumulated during that time and which were immediately placed on Murrah's plate in November 1863. Murrah's governorship does not begin until Chapter Six, well over halfway through the volume's main narrative.

The Union military's strategic interest in Texas ran hot and cold over the duration of the war, their efforts largely limited to transitory seizures of coastal ports and barrier islands. Nevertheless, the threats to Texas's borders came from all points of the compass, and these are outlined in the text. The preview to Murrah's governorship also notes the significant wartime industrialization of East Texas, with special attention paid to Murrah's hometown of Marshall, which also became a major political and military administrative center. The first half of the book also reviews the mounting challenges Texas society faced as the war progressed. In addition to persistent frontier security problems, these issues included runaway inflation, shortages in essential civilian goods, military impressment of crops and slave labor, expanded conscription, and a dangerous internal opposition and insurgency. The book examines how Murrah's predecessors, especially Governor Lubbock, attempted to manage these crises and problems. When Murrah inherited the governorship, he was faced with an expanding military economy but a collapsing civilian economy. After the twin surrenders of Vicksburg and Port Hudson almost entirely isolated the Trans-Mississippi states and military department from the rest of the Confederacy, Murrah also had to contend with increasingly centralized military control of domestic affairs. Murrah's views on state prerogatives repeatedly clashed against departmental commander Edmund Kirby Smith's military priorities. If there is a general complaint to be made in how all this is presented, it lies in the somewhat disjointed chronological development of the narrative, which shifts back and forth in time both abruptly and frequently.

Though perhaps a bit unrealistic in her expectations, Duran is critical of Murrah maintaining his Confederate loyalty throughout the war and not working toward ending the conflict earlier after final defeat seemed inevitable. On the other hand, she also presents a strong case for Murrah's effectiveness as a wartime governor laboring under extreme internal and external conditions. Though limited by poor health, Murrah was active in maintaining support for public institutions of the kinds that were de-prioritized and allowed to fall into neglect in other Confederate states. Unlike other ardent supporters of states rights (Governor Brown of Georgia being an extreme example), Murrah was also willing to compromise with Confederate authorities for the good the overall war effort. As outlined in the text, a prime example of that was Murrah's willingness to suspend the competing activities of the state cotton bureau after Kirby Smith strongly objected to its drawing resources away from the Confederate bureau's ability to acquire critical military supplies for forces in the region. After resisting earlier efforts at drafting Texas militia and state troops into Confederate service (especially when it came to those units defending the frontier counties from Indian raids), Murrah also reluctantly gave in to Confederate manpower demands made during the spring of 1864. Those Texans deployed outside the state played a major role in achieving Confederate victory during the Red River Campaign. Recognizing the inevitable fallout from the complete collapse of Confederate authority in 1865, the author also doesn't attach to Murrah an undue degree of blame for the breakdown in law and order in the state during that time.

After the Confederate surrender, Murrah, suffering intensely from late-stage tuberculosis but fearing prosecution from the U.S. government, fled across the border into Mexico with other prominent Confederates. He died in Monterrey only weeks later in August 1865. While his gravesite in Mexico may still be lost to history, this book goes some way toward preserving Murrah's historical memory and his significant place in Texas's Civil War political record.

Coming Soon (November '26 Edition)

Scheduled for NOV 2026¹:
• Hard Women, Hard War: How Southern Women Shaped U.S. Policy During the Civil War by Laura Mammina.
• Lincoln's Compass: The Declaration of Independence and the American Idea by Joshua Claybourn.
• From the Valley to the Tidewater: The War in Virginia, May 21–June 12, 1862 by Ethan Rafuse.
• Louisiana’s Tigers: The Men of Wheat’s Confederate Battalion by Ross Brooks.
• Grant and His Generals by Harry Laver.
• Napoleon’s Long Shadow: How French Military Genius Shaped the American Civil War by Timothy Smith.
• Lincoln’s March: The Daring Journey to a Fallen Richmond by Tom Shoop.
• So Badly Routed: The Battle of Fisher’s Hill in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, September 22-24, 1864 by Allamong, Kehoe, Kleese, Racey & Stover.
• A Red Badge of Cotton: The Treasonous Trade That Clothed the Union Army by David Montejano.
• Valiant Men of War: Black Soldiers’ Fight for Family, Honor, and Nation in the Civil War South by Jonathan Lande.
• Grant: The Making of a Legendary Military Leader by James Lee McDonough.
• Joseph Hooker: The Rise and Fall of the Civil War's Dangerous Man by Darin Wipperman.
• Let Us Die to Make Men Free: American Slavery and Civil War in Global Perspective by James Strickler.
• The Indispensable Man: George Washington Rains, the Confederate Powder Works, and the Civil War You Never Knew by Theodore Savas.
• Stonewall's Lieutenant: The Life of General Elisha Franklin Paxton, Commander of the Stonewall Brigade by Gerald Maatman.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They routinely do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, publisher exclusives, 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 Political Supreme Court

New Arrival:

• The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History by Rachel A. Shelden (UNC Press, 2026).

In her new book The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, historian Rachel Shelden argues that the U.S. Supreme Court "was unmistakably a political institution, both by design and in practice." At no time was this more clear than in the nineteenth century. Indeed, "(t)hrough these political interactions, members of the Court helped shape debates about the Constitution’s meaning at a time when most Americans did not believe in judicial supremacy."

From the description: "Justices were fully expected to engage in partisan politics—there was no concern that such engagement would lead to corruption or undue bias—and they remained deeply involved in civic debate and the electoral process while on the bench. In addition to hearing cases in the capital, each justice spent much of his time “riding circuit” and presiding over federal trial courts. On circuit and in Washington, nineteenth-century justices wrote for partisan newspapers, drafted legislation, advised partisan allies, campaigned for colleagues, and even ran for political offices from the bench."

Yes, this is not a Civil War book per se, but there is quite a bit of content from the Civil War-era. Chapters are thematic and largely shaped around one or more of the justices involved. Chapter 5's examination of presidential politics and slavery explores the career of Justice John McLean of Ohio and his loss to John C. Fremont as the Republican Party's nominee for the presidential election of 1856. Chapter 6 looks at Tennessean John Catron's reputation as one of the court's shrewdest political operators, most specifically his concurring opinion in the Dred Scott decision (although he disagreed with Chief Justice Taney on several counts). Catron maintained his Jacksonian-style unconditional Unionist stance during the Civil War and remained on the court. Secession politics and the court, as viewed through Alabamian John Campbell, is discussed in Chapter 7. In the end, Campbell was the only justice who hailed from a seceded state that resigned from the court. The next chapter reviews President Lincoln's successful Supreme Court nominations, the focus being on Jeremiah Black and Stephen Field. The Supreme Court and the politics of the Reconstruction period is a topic covered in two chapters.

In addition to, as outlined above, "recovering (the court's) essential role in the era’s turbulent politics," Shelden's study "also charts shifts at the turn of the twentieth century, when members of the Court and the legal community refashioned the judiciary as an apolitical institution, setting the stage for an increasingly more powerful—and more isolated—modern Court."

Booknotes: How Lincoln Won

New Arrival:

• How Lincoln Won: The 1860 Presidential Election and the Origins of the Civil War by Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz (LSU Press, 2026).

Though there has been recent pushback of persuasive nature on a number of counts, the modern literature still generally portrays Abraham Lincoln as a gifted military strategist, through both natural abilities and study. The consensus is even stronger when it comes to appreciating Lincoln's exceptional strengths as a political strategist and operator, and much of that political mastery was exhibited in Lincoln's unlikely rise to the highest office in the land.

An aspect of the political game in which Lincoln demonstrated noteworthy superiority over most of his contemporary rivals was in "recognizing and exploiting strategic opportunities." In their book How Lincoln Won: The 1860 Presidential Election and the Origins of the Civil War, authors Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz "show that Lincoln’s strategy of division and conquest, cleverly designed and artfully executed over two years, not only secured his victory in America’s most consequential presidential election but also helped establish the Republican Party as the nation’s second major political party."

From the description: In Dewitt and Schwartz's view, Lincoln grasped "three essential truths" around which he formulated his winning strategy: "First, the Republican Party’s moral opposition to the expansion of slavery commanded only minority support among the electorate. Second, in every presidential election since 1844, one party had won because the other had split on the slavery issue. Third, the Republican Party could win the presidency―without compromising its principled opposition to slavery’s expansion―if it turned this recurring pattern into a deliberate strategy, that of division and conquest on the overriding issue of slavery."

The process began in earnest two years before the pivotal 1860 election, and the book credits Lincoln for playing a key part in sowing division within both state and sectional political opposition. More from the description: "Lincoln employed this strategy during the 1858 debates for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. There, Lincoln repeatedly trapped his opponent into taking new and moderate positions on slavery that fractured the Democratic Party. As a direct result of those concessions, rival Democratic tickets were fielded―first in Illinois in 1858 and then nationwide in 1860." Without laying this groundwork, the odds of Lincoln winning the presidency on the Republican ticket in 1860 were slim at best.

Of course, forces outside Lincoln's powers of manipulation played a big part in the events of this period, too, and the authors recognize that "Lincoln prevailed not only because he devised a clever strategy and executed it skillfully but also because history had positioned him and his allies to profit from it." Nevertheless, Lincoln's "achievement reveals a novel model of transformative political change―one driven by strategic party division rather than by efforts of persuasion, moderation, or changing the issue agenda."

Booknotes: Managing the Union Army

New Arrival:

• Managing the Union Army: Scott, McClellan, Halleck, and Grant as General-in-Chief by Earl J. Hess (LSU Press, 2026).

Earl Hess strikes again! Only two weeks after I posted a review of his latest book, another one covering a very different, but equally compelling, subject is released. Managing the Union Army: Scott, McClellan, Halleck, and Grant as General-in-Chief is both an in-depth study of the position itself as well as a critical evaluation of the four men who occupied that seat during the Civil War.

Hess feels that the role and authority of the Union Army general-in-chief is frequently misunderstood in the literature. From the description: "The general-in-chief did not command the million-man Union army that fought in the Civil War, as most historians have assumed; rather, he was a member of a management team that included the president and the secretary of war. The president, as commander-in-chief, created the position by appointing an officer to it, and he could dismiss that officer at any time and choose not to appoint another."

In his introduction, the author outlines the four main tasks assigned to army general-in-chief. They were (1) to "serve as an advisor to the secretary of war and to the president" on a variety of matters including strategy, (2) "influence the daily administration of the army," (3) find "good high-ranking officers to fill important positions in the army, administratively and in the field," and (4), when and where desired or impelled, "to take command of important movements in the field" (pg. 3). In discussing how well or poorly each officer fulfilled these tasks, Hess "shows how the performance of the four men varied greatly ... He also details Grant’s unique achievement as a field commander―ending the war, which none of the other Union generals-in-chief were able to do." Among the flood of Grant books that have been published in recent years, one notable omission has been a standalone treatment of his role in the war as general-in-chief. With roughly half of this book's 400-plus pages of narrative devoted to that subject, we get close to that here.

More from the description: Hess's Managing the Union Army "upends our understanding of the general-in-chief, his role in the Union military system, and his influence on the conflict’s outcome. Hess reinterprets the accomplishments and failures of the four men who held the position, evaluating Winfield Scott, George B. McClellan, Henry W. Halleck, and Ulysses S. Grant in ways that might surprise many students of Civil War military history." For example, Hess "offers a much more positive evaluation of Halleck than is typical of the scholarly literature on Civil War commanders. Halleck was not only a successful general-in-chief but also fundamentally supported Grant during the last year of the conflict by serving as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, a fourth member of the management team."

Hess also examines the key part that personality played in carrying out the role of general-in-chief. His study "illuminates how personality traits helped or hindered the generals-in-chief during the war. McClellan’s deeply flawed personality contributed to his failure in fulfilling the duties of the position. Grant’s strongly positive personality and will-do attitude, by contrast, helped him to succeed more fully in the role than any of his predecessors."

This book, "through a close examination of administrative history, offers a dramatically new way of understanding how the Union army worked in the Civil War."

Booknotes: Military Honor on Trial

New Arrival:

• Military Honor on Trial: The Saga of Joseph Hooker and George H. Derby by Travis P. Wagner (Sequoia Grove Pr, 2026).

Travis Wagner's Military Honor on Trial: The Saga of Joseph Hooker and George H. Derby is "(p)art courtroom drama, part frontier history, and part exploration of a forgotten code of honor." The book "recounts the remarkable true story of two sensational antebellum courts martial involving two extraordinary U.S. Army officers: Joseph Hooker, the future Civil War general, and George H. Derby, better known as "Squibob," America's first nationally famous humorist."

Bvt. Lt. Colonel Hooker had arrested Lieutenant Derby for allegedly allowing an army deserter to escape custody. If convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, Derby faced dishonor and dismissal from the army. In retaliation, Derby charged Hooker with using his position as an army officer to engage in profiteering through the quartermaster department and using the ill-gotten gains for land speculation. The court martial proceedings took place in 1851, and Henry Halleck, a captain at the time, served as judge advocate in both trials. The cases "exposed not only the character of the men involved but also the powerful role that honor played in shaping careers, reputations, and lives."

The book also explains how these Old Army conflicts from the antebellum period had a direct impact on Hooker's Civil War relationships. In addition to providing a "a fresh and revealing assessment of Joseph Hooker's early military career," the book "examines how his arrogance, political maneuvering during the Mexican War, and profiteering from the army alienated many fellow officers and foreshadowed the leadership controversies that later marked his Civil War service." Indeed, the officer feud in Sonoma that played out in 1851 "drew in an extraordinary cast of officers who would later shape American history, including Henry Halleck, William Tecumseh Sherman, Winfield Scott, Ethan A. Hitchcock, Charles P. Stone, Braxton Bragg, Alfred Gibbs, George Stoneman, and many others."

In sum, Wagner's Military Honor on Trial "reveals how the pursuit of honor could inspire extraordinary courage, fuel personal vendettas, and alter the course of American history."

Booknotes: General George B. McClellan

New Arrival:

• General George B. McClellan: A Study in Controversy by Maurice G. Daoust (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Like many other controversial Civil War generals, George B. McClellan has passionate defenders, but the detractors are still far more numerous. One of the respected scholars who has most persuasively infiltrated aspects of an emerging middle ground is Ethan Rafuse. In more recent times, the most successful revisionism has been applied to issues related to the general's management of the 1862 Maryland Campaign, but that is also where the bulk of the work has been concentrated.

Maurice Daoust's General George B. McClellan: A Study in Controversy revisits the general's entire Civil War resume. From the description: "This study scrutinizes the critical moments that defined McClellan’s career, from his initial success at Rich Mountain to his final dismissal in November 1862. Daoust’s research challenges several long-held assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of a man whose intellect, discipline, and conviction shaped the war’s early years."

In reassessing McClellan's actions in the field, chapters address conflicting accounts of the Union victory at Rich Mountain, the general's organizational skills, his much-maligned interpretation of military intelligence, and his planning and conduct of the Peninsula Campaign. Others reexamine blame apportionment for the disastrous outcome at Second Manassas, the Lost Order and the Maryland Campaign, and the circumstances surrounding McClellan's post-Antietam removal from command.

Readers will have to decide for themselves whether this study succeeds in granting McClellan "the balanced appraisal history has long denied him," and I'll be interested to see how it goes about its business.

Booknotes: Hard Women, Hard War

New Arrival:

• Hard Women, Hard War: How Southern Women Shaped U.S. Policy During the Civil War by Laura Mammina (UGA Press, 2026).

From the description: Laura Mammina's Hard Women, Hard War: How Southern Women Shaped U.S. Policy During the Civil War "establishes a new interpretation of Southern women’s wartime behavior by examining their interactions with the Federal army. From the very beginning of the war to the bitter end of the conflict, women negotiated military policy toward civilians, motivated by their political loyalties, which were grounded in their ideas of home."

Mammina's study "demonstrates that Southern women forced Federal soldiers to adjust and sometimes change their civilian policies." Black women, both free and enslaved, "encouraged Federals to make hard war on unrepentant rebels" while Unionist white women from slaveholding households "advocated protection of their human property." At the same time, "elite Confederate ladies' defiance spurred the army to bring the war to Southern women's homes" (pp. 2-3).

As also mentioned in the introduction, the book "contributes to the growing scholarship on the decisive impact of guerrillas." The most recent scholarship on this topic argues that "Confederate women played instrumental roles in the origination and continuation of guerrilla warfare." First along the western edges of the conflict and then spreading elsewhere, federal forces were determined to "act against these women in order to curtail the threat they posed" to the Union war effort (pp. 4-5).

Chapter 1 "argues that conciliation was less of a policy than a mentality enjoining the army to treat civilians not as potential enemies but fellow members of the United States." Chapter 2 "argues that wartime social interactions" between soldiers and civilians "created a crisis for the Federal army." After the decisive turn toward hard war, the third chapter "argues that while confiscation, foraging, and emancipation were in theory separate policies, Federals often implemented them and civilians experienced them at the same time." Chapter four considers rape accusations made against federal soldiers in a variety of contexts. The final chapter examines raiding policies and practices "that sought to destroy Confederate resources and plantations while striking fear into the hearts of rebels" (pp. 10-12).

Booknotes: The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 3

New Arrival:

• The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 3: From the Chattahoochee to Peach Tree Creek, June 28 to July 20, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Beginning in 2024, publisher Savas Beatie has been releasing installments of David Powell's planned five-volume 1864 Atlanta Campaign series once per year. The latest is The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 3: From the Chattahoochee to Peach Tree Creek, June 28 to July 20, 1864. Within the past ten years, this part of the campaign has received extensive attention in the literature. Powell's Volume 3 covers much of the same ground that Earl Hess addressed in 2017 with The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta and Robert Jenkins did earlier in two volumes (2014's The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Sortie, July 20, 1864 and 2015's To the Gates of Atlanta: From Kennesaw Mountain to Peach Tree Creek, 1-19 July 1864).

Powell's Volume 2 concluded in the aftermath of the Kennesaw Mountain battle, with the Confederate army poised to once again withdraw, this time to a final position north of the Chattahoochee River. When it came to Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Joe Johnston's fast deteriorating standing with the government, the abandonment of that pre-prepared line of fortifications (with its string of "Shoupades") without a battle was another nail in the coffin.

From the description: "Frustrated at Kennesaw, Sherman returned to flanking maneuvers. On July 2, General Johnston abandoned the Kennesaw Line and fell back to the Chattahoochee River—the last major water obstacle between Sherman’s forces and Atlanta. Two months of combat had taken a heavy toll on both armies, especially Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. When Johnston retreated across the Chattahoochee on July 9, his army numbered about 60,000 men, while Sherman’s strength was roughly 100,000. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, meanwhile, watched Johnston’s withdrawals with growing frustration. The abandonment of the Chattahoochee River Line convinced Davis to replace the defensive minded and close-mouthed Johnston with corps commander John Bell Hood, who promised a far more aggressive strategy."

It looks like a bit over 40% of the narrative covers the remaining maneuvering and fighting north of the Chattahoochee (plus Rousseau's Raid); around 25% is devoted to the Confederate abandonment of the river line, the Union crossing, and the convergence of both sides along Peach Tree Creek; and the remaining text the Peach Tree Creek battle itself. 22 maps are included, along with detailed orders of battle (the Union OB even includes regimental strengths, and there are battery compositions for both sides).

Review - "Grant & Meade: An Uneasy Alliance" by Bradley & Linda Gottfried

[Grant & Meade: An Uneasy Alliance by Bradley M. Gottfried and Linda I. Gottfried (Seminole Press, 2026). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:170/203. ISBN:979-8-234-03694-0. $19.95]

When Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed U.S. Army general-in-chief, George Gordon Meade's position as Army of the Potomac commander faced renewed uncertainty. In March of 1864, Meade was still the hero of Gettysburg, but the escape of Robert E. Lee's defeated Army of Northern Virginia across the swollen Potomac River and the indecisive results of the autumn campaigning in Virginia that year combined to tarnish Meade's image in the minds of many. One doubts that the administration or public at large would have put up much of an objection had Grant been determined to replace Meade with a western theater favorite. To Meade's delight, Grant sustained him.

Grant's decision to locate his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac, where he would be figuratively looking over Meade's shoulder the entire time, was a unique command arrangement that carried both risks and rewards. As before, Meade would handle the myriad of administrative duties and tactical direction that army command required, but Grant would handle the big decisions of campaign operations and strategy. To maintain proper chain of command, Grant's orders would flow through Meade's headquarters. That command structure has been justly criticized by many historians. Though it freed Grant from having to carry out the time and energy consuming day to day duties of army administration and afforded him more freedom to manage the rest of the Union war effort and mull strategic options, the extra bureaucratic layer that was added to the theater's command structure slowed order transmission and army-wide reaction time (important factors to consider when it came to countering enemy moves and seizing opportunities as they arose). It was also true that there were more chances for orders to be garbled in the process, but Grant's trademark clarity in order writing helped ameliorate those possibilities. The personal and professional relationship between the two generals was solid from the beginning, but how well would it hold up under the pressures of the upcoming campaign season? That question and more are examined in Brad and Linda Gottfried's Grant & Meade: An Uneasy Alliance.

The authors acknowledge the unique and challenging nature of the late-war Army of the Potomac command structure as outlined above. Various aspects of the Grant-Meade relationship have been scrutinized at some length by other modern contributors to the now quite extensive secondary literature of the Overland and Richmond/Petersburg campaigns of 1864-65; however, devoting a volume solely to the topic, like this one does, allows for a clearer picture and understanding of the timeline and evolution of the command partnership. At points along the way, it can difficult to know for certain whether a particular tactical plan or movement originated in the mind of Grant or Meade, and this book also addresses those ongoing questions with informed insights.

Grant began the 1864 campaign in Virginia issuing broad "suggestions" to Meade, leaving the operational details and tactical conduct almost entirely to the army commander's discretion. However, as one might have expected from a highly confident and headstrong general-in-chief, Grant gradually asserted more direct control as the campaign dragged on, casualties mounted, and expectations often went unmet. To his credit, though, Grant still took great pains to transmit his increasingly detailed directions through Meade's headquarters (the authors only note one moment when time was of the essence and Grant issued orders directly to units subordinated to Meade). In marking that turning point, historians cite different dates (and these are reviewed in the book), but Gottfried argues that the May 12 fighting at Spotsylvania should be regarded as the true watershed moment.

In terms of documenting what Grant and Meade thought of each other in their own words, the overall picture is a bit one-sided. Meade wrote extensively about Grant in his wartime letters to his wife, but Grant wrote comparatively little about Meade in his celebrated memoirs. The Meade letters are an invaluable source for tracing the evolution of the relationship through all its ups and downs, at least from Meade's perspective, and the book uses them to good effect in documenting Meade's mounting frustration on a number of scores. Staff recollections are also effectively utilized to shine light on Meade's legendary temper and thin-skinned nature.

Throughout most the period examined in the book, Meade was appreciative of Grant's unwavering support and professed confidence in the prickly Pennsylvanian. When Grant failed to give Meade his just due as the latter saw it, Meade afforded Grant the benefit of the doubt and mostly attributed alleged slights to Grant being influenced by designing men. As casualties exploded during the Overland Campaign and the army continually failed, often with heavy losses, to decisively lever Lee's army out of its fortified defenses around Petersburg, Meade, while still admiring Grant's dogged vision, gradually became disillusioned with his chief's strategic oversight. As the authors explain, Meade also eventually gave up on his belief in Grant's professional friendship. That point arrived after Meade concluded that Grant was disingenuous in his involvement with both Meade's promotion to major general in the Regular Army and the process of appointing the head of the new Middle Military Division (a prestige post which Meade expected to gain but instead went to Sheridan). Meade could overlook not receiving rewards he thought he deserved, but he couldn't stand disrespect. That hypersensitivity to slights large and small, contrasted with Grant's relative insensitivity to press and public criticism, is a major theme of the book. For much of the war, Meade recognized and to a degree respected those differences in their personalities and outlook, but that tolerance eventually eroded completely in the face of Grant not giving Meade the unqualified public vote of confidence that Grant assumed unnecessary but Meade wanted desperately.

No one will argue that the command arrangement between Grant and Meade in the eastern theater over the course of the 1864-65 campaigns was ideal in nature and practicality, but it is also the case that the pairing achieved total victory over a strong, well-led, and determined foe. Grant brought to the East a well-earned record for issuing unambiguous orders while Meade faithfully carried them out thoroughly and without resistance. Both generals deserve credit for succeeding when others might have failed. A great many factors can be cited when attempting to explain why wars are won and lost, and this volume serves as a shining example of why personality matters a great deal. On can readily imagine another command relationship between officers possessing personal natures and temperaments as divergent as Grant's and Meade's were breaking down completely under the incredible stresses imposed by these brutal campaigns. As Brad and Linda Gottfried argue, the working relationship between Grant and Meade was indeed an "uneasy alliance," but one that proved effective in the end.

Booknotes: Treason and Traitors in Texas

New Arrival:

• Treason and Traitors in Texas: Facilitators of the American Civil War by Randolph W. Farmer (Histria Academic, 2026).

By their very nature, the size of secret societies and their influence upon history will always be sources of debate and conjecture. The Knights of the Golden Circle was one of the most prominent of such groups that operated during the Civil War era, and it has received quite a bit of attention in the recent literature. The latest addition to the discussion, Randolph Farmer's Treason and Traitors in Texas: Facilitators of the American Civil War, is a companion to his 2021 book The Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas. It is "(a)n exposé on the influential members of the Knights of the Golden Circle."

I have not read Farmer's earlier book on the subject, but from the description it seems clear that he heartily agrees with David Keehn's contention in Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (2013) that the KGC was a driving force of exceptional strength in Texas's secession movement.

George Bickley is the individual most commonly associated with the KGC, and both Keehn and Farmer devote a great deal of attention to reexamining his degree of involvement with the society. Farmer's Treason and Traitors in Texas "includes previously unpublished material on the lost years of George W. Bickley—often mistakenly credited as the organization’s founder—as well as new revelations about the role played by a member of his own Bickley family." All of that and more are detailed in the book's foreword and seven following chapters.

In addition to providing more information about Bickley and his family, the society's role in the Texas secession convention, and the KGC-implicated murders of two members of the Riedel Family during the war, the book "uncovers even more conspirators and provides in-depth biographical details on those involved." That collection of roughly 3 to 4-page (including endnotes) biographical treatments of the alleged conspirators comprise the bulk of the volume. All of the material is fully annotated. I can't tell exactly how many individuals are featured in total, but overall coverage of the volume's register of conspirators, aside from the Bickley material, runs nearly 350 pages.

Review - "Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army" by Earl Hess

[Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army by Earl J. Hess (Kent State University Press, 2026). Softcover, photos, tables, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:279/335. ISBN:978-1-60635-505-3. $39.95]

History has left us with the general impression that Civil War camps were decidedly unsanitary places that caused untold thousands of unnecessary soldier deaths on both sides. But were they really as badly arranged and administered as the literature would have us believe? It is true that two out of three Civil War deaths were attributed to disease (a great proportion of those contracted in semi-permanent army encampments), but it is also true that the U.S. government was able to field a mass volunteer army more than healthy enough to win a continental-scale war fought across a wide range of challenging, even extreme, natural environments. Of course, the American Civil War occurred well within the period of global military history when disease killed many more men than bullets (and the means did not then exist to flip that gross imbalance), so the question arises did Union Army camps at least do a reasonably good job of managing preventable deaths. Prolific Civil War military historian Earl Hess's 'yes and no' answer to that question might be predictable, but the way he arrived at it through quantitative sampling and analysis, as revealed in his new book Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army, is an extraordinary new development.

The available body of firsthand commentary from Civil War officers and men regarding camp conditions is vast, and it isn't difficult to arrive at a wide range of conclusions on the basis of anecdotal evidence. What sets Hess's study apart is its unprecedented systematic approach using a reliable and consistent set of data. Hess is not the first scholar to consult the U.S. Sanitary Commission's camp inspection reports housed at the New York Public Library, which are roughly 1,500 in number, but he is the first to orient (with the assistance of Fifteenth Corps inspection reports) a full-length, scientific-based study around them. The author's extensive review of both the reports themselves and the commission agents who conducted them (primarily trained civilian physicians) confirms the reliability and value of the inspection returns. In the context of providing a representative picture of the whole, Hess's sample of 280 returns, selected across the full range of unit branches/types and theaters, is equally convincing. The commission's best standardized inspection form examined fifteen main subjects of interest to northern sanitarians, and Hess's book organizes those into groups of up to three related areas and assigns an in-depth, chapter-length examination to each.

In order to come up with a practical means of producing useful data for comparison, Hess devised a seemingly valid method of converting the many questionnaire answers into three general rating categories: good, fair, and bad. By applying those ratings to the fifteen categories explored in the returns, we are able to quantify which elements of camp health and sanitation were most successful and which practices and guidelines were most badly implemented or followed. First up is camp situation. As one might have guessed, attention paid to semi-permanent camp site selection, physical layout, drainage, and both air and water quality varied widely during the war and was highly dependent on environmental conditions and officer knowledge and judgment. Overall, camp situation passed most inspections, with just under 20% qualifying as bad.

When it comes to shelter, many readers will likely assume that military barracks were best for maintaining soldier health, cleanliness, and comfort over an extended period of confinement (ex. during winter quarters), but both army officials and sanitarians maintained that tents, which their combined portability, utility, and ventilation properties better than any other shelter type, were preferable to either huts or barrack buildings. Shelter provided by the Union armies achieved high marks from the inspectors.

Army issues of clothing received fairly strong ratings from the inspectors, with nearly half the regiments awarded with a good rating and only around 10% bad. There were more mixed results when it came to assessing a unit's personal cleanliness. Bathing, grooming, and personal hygiene were emphasized in the service, but volunteer officers and men (similarly imbued with the carelessness of youth) all too often failed to follow the dictates of army regulations or heed the recommendations of sanitarians.

Two of the most important issues related to camp sanitation involved due care in cooking and food garbage (slops) disposal and managing sites designated for collecting bodily waste (sinks). Generally speaking, Union regiments did a much better job of handling kitchen waste than they did human waste, with 58% achieving good ratings for the former and only 37% for the latter. Fully a third of regiments failed sink inspection, a confounding result given how much proper attention to that category (perhaps more than any other) should have been rather simple to understand and implement for officers and men alike.

Inspectors generally found food issued to soldiers to be more than adequate in quantity but poor in variety (too much meat and not enough fruits and vegetables). When it came to cooking, sanitarians and their camp inspectors favored an organized approach at the company level with regular officer oversight, but soldiers themselves found most satisfaction with their small, relatively independent messes (one of their few remaining sources of personal autonomy) and the officers generally consented. In Hess's opinion, cooking was one of the categories that the inspectors (for some reason) graded most leniently, with just over half rated good.

Water sources and quality, alcohol use and abuse, and morale boosting efforts were also targeted by the inspectors. Camp inspectors rated water quality high (with around 73% getting a good rating), but it is also astutely pointed out that semi-permanent encampments were much better suited for obtaining healthy water sources than were temporary camps established on the march. When it comes to alcohol, inspection findings push back strongly against the popular view that Civil War camps were rife with drunken disruption. In Hess's sample, nearly 80% of officers claimed that discipline problems related to alcohol abuse were manageable in their regimental encampments. Since indiscipline in this area would reflect badly upon those very same officers, it is possible (even likely) that some degree of concealment was involved, but Hess offers up a reasonable case that the scale of the problem remains exaggerated in the general literature. The inspectors did not find that the army paid any particular attention to shaping soldier morale and emotional well-being. Hess notes that institutional initiatives in those areas really only arrived decades later accompanied by the rise of industrial-era corporate culture.

There were mixed efforts in the medical examination of recruits and vaccination against disease. In the main, the leadership of volunteer regiments, primarily concerned with warm body count and reluctant to turn away eager recruits, did a poor job of initially weeding out those physically or mentally unable to perform their duties. That cost the war effort millions of dollars and a great deal of trouble. While smallpox inoculation was a priority, there were nevertheless significant outbreaks of the disease. The volunteer army received high marks for containing such outbreaks after they occurred, but overall prevention remained problematic. According to the inspection returns, less than 30% of the regiments followed in full the army's vaccination program regulations, and over 36% were almost completely non-compliant.

Being well-trained physicians themselves, camp inspectors were quite strict in assessing regimental hospitals, only giving just over 18% a good rating (and over 45% bad!). Hess attributes this to poor management from medical personnel along with inadequate army-wide systems for stocking medical equipment and supplies at the unit level. The most successful hospitals were those closely supported by the officers at the top, and the inspectors found such oversight and supervision all too rare. Frequent conflicts between military officers and assigned medical staff over matters of authority didn't help either.

While Hess's focus is on the Union Army, he does provide a fairly lengthy Confederate Army chapter for limited comparison. Over the decades leading up to the conflict, the South lacked a sanitarian movement similar in size and scope to the one the spread across the North, and there was no army camp inspection regimen anything like the one conducted by the U.S.S.C. Lacking reliable data of a similar nature, the author nevertheless presents a brief overview of the same fifteen inspection categories using anecdotal evidence. Smallpox outbreak containment was noteworthy for being one of the few ways in which Confederate forces matched their northern counterparts in effectiveness. Generally speaking, preventive healthcare was for a variety of reasons inferior, and southern camps and soldiers arguably earned their reputation as being dirtier than their foes.

If all this sounds like dry reading, it really isn't at all. Each chapter is packed with engaging anecdotes, details, and insights (all conveyed through vivid firsthand observations) about many aspects of Civil War camp life. Inspection findings are routinely contextualized through interesting micro-treatises on related topics (the book's extensive review of the army's evaluation and supply of various tent types and its detailed coverage of army vaccination regimens are ones that immediately come to mind).

In common with much of Hess's more recent scholarship, this one extends its reach far into the postwar period. Given what was experienced during the Civil War, one might have expected lasting institutional reforms in the area of preventive health measures, but that was not the case. Camp sanitation and widespread soldiers deaths from disease were little different during the Spanish-American War of 1898 as they were during the Civil War's early period. Hess traces most of this to the country's decentralized system of inducting volunteers, which were broadly similar in both conflicts. Real change only came with the two World Wars, during which the federal government assumed direct control and oversight of national mobilization.

Though the topic is only addressed in fleeting fashion, Hess notes that sanitation enforcement in the much more regimented U.S. Navy shipboard life was superior. It would also be interesting to find some comparison between Regular Army unit camps (which were not visited by the commission's civilian inspectors) and the volunteer unit camps that are the subject of this study, the former group presumably much more attuned to following army regulations in regard to camp sanitation.

Clearly, and for a variety of reasons outlined and discussed in the book, the principles and practices espoused by the North's sanitarian movement had only a limited impact on soldier health and preventive healthcare associated with the war's semi-permanent volunteer unit encampments. With that in mind, Hess cautions readers against adopting the view that the Civil War was a major turning point in military medicine. When it comes to evaluating the practical impact U.S.S.C. inspectors had on military officials charged with enforcing camp sanitation, there is little doubt in the author's mind that their influence on preventive health and healthcare was quite limited in effectiveness, far more useful in identifying problems then effecting actual change. Nevertheless, it is Hess's conclusion that the attempt itself should be recognized as a positive deviation from the past. While the commission's sanitary reports may have had only a minimal impact on actual army and unit effectiveness, the study persuasively argues that the program was still well worth the effort.

In Civil War Camps and Soldier Health, Earl Hess effectively moves beyond the limitations of anecdotal evidence and contributes mightily to the field by offering up a fresh scientific approach that teaches us just as much about Civil War camp life in general as it does about its great many sanitary issues and concerns. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance

New Arrival:

• Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents by L. Tuffly Ellis & Richard B. McCaslin (UNT Press, 2026).

With conventional means of exporting Texas cotton gradually cut off by the naval blockade, trade with neutral Mexico assumed vital proportions. Although corruption and political instability south of the border made such lucrative exchanges high-risk, the potential rewards were extraordinary, and the Confederate war effort in Texas and other parts of the Trans-Mississippi could not have been financed otherwise. The subject has been discussed and debated in numerous articles and book sections, but L. Tuffly Ellis and Richard McCaslin's Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents, which describes itself as "an administrative history of efforts to use Texas cotton to sustain the Confederacy in the Trans-Mississippi" (pg. 2), is the first standalone, full-length study of the matter. Ellis began work on the manuscript but passed away before it could be finished, and his former student, Richard McCaslin, took it upon himself to complete the project.

When General Edmund Kirby Smith assumed command of the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi in 1863, he quickly realized that assistance from the Richmond government would be minimal. Indeed, the department was so isolated after the fall of Vicksburg, and Smith's military, political, and economic responsibilities so all-encompassing, that the region came to be known in some circles as "Kirby Smithdom." The establishment of the Cotton Bureau was vital in keeping administration of the department afloat. "The bureau became (Smith's) principal supply agency, and it did remarkably well in tandem with other efforts to benefit from cotton. In the end Kirby Smith got far more from Texas cotton than he got from Richmond officials."

The bureau was a cooperative effort between government and private efforts and interests. As time went on, government control increased. More from the description: "At first the Confederacy used private contractors during the first year of the war to move cotton, then at least two state agencies, a host of Confederate agents, the Cotton Bureau, and finally a branch office of the Confederate Treasury. There was also the Cotton Office, the most important subagency of the bureau, which operated from Houston."

The quality and results of the bureau's efforts during the war were mixed. According to Ellis and McCaslin, the Confederates "experienced as many lost opportunities as they did successes." As was the case in other parts of the Confederacy during the opening stages of the war, "(t)he weak Union blockade offered a great opportunity, and lots of Texas cotton went overseas, but the Confederacy did not fully take advantage of these circumstances." Other factors hindered success as well. "During and after the war, stories circulated about corruption and fraud, but there is little evidence of that. Instead, the real flaws in the system were inefficiency and conflict."