Author Q&A: Theodore Savas and "The Indispensable Man"

The site's long-running Q&A feature ends its rather long hiatus with the return of Theodore Savas. Ted wore his publisher's hat for our 2007 interview, but today we will be talking about his newest work on the authorial side of things: The Indispensable Man: George Washington Rains, the Confederate Powder Works, and the Civil War You Never Knew.

CWBA: Welcome back, Ted. It has often been said that no Confederate army lost a battle because of a lack of arms, powder, and shot. However, a wider reading uncovers a number of challenges to that long accepted claim. For example, antiquated arms were a key factor in the early-war Confederate defeat at Mill Springs and, accurately or not, bad powder was blamed for the mid-war loss to a much smaller Union force at Honey Springs. Also, in a general sense, defective shells and obsolete artillery dramatically impacted Confederate hitting power on a multitude of battlefields. What are your thoughts on the matter?

TS: This first question deserves a full reply, so here we go.

You’re right to challenge it, and so do I. That line is one of the most durable myths of the war. It survives and thrives because of what I call reverse-engineered thinking: the Confederacy fought for four years, none of the big-name battles were lost because of a lack of munitions, so it always had the means to fight a long war. It didn’t have the means to fight a war at all in 1861, and it lost a lot of engagements because of a lack of powder. Let me dig into this a bit more.

When George Rains sat down in a Richmond hotel room with Jefferson Davis and Josiah Gorgas on July 8, 1861, for what was essentially a final job interview in a meeting no one has ever written about, not a pound of military-grade powder was being made anywhere in the South. Davis put him in charge of locating, designing, and building a mammoth central government gunpowder mill from scratch to supply the entire war effort east of the Mississippi. We will come back to this later.

You noted Mill Springs. General Crittenden attacked in the rain on January 19, 1862, at the far eastern end of Johnston’s line three months before the Augusta Powder Works began production. We don’t have precise records of what the Confederates fighting there had at that time, and the powder they did have was probably subpar—wet and poorly made. The previous October, General Zollicoffer and some of his officers were complaining that they did not have two rounds of ammunition per man, and that artillery had arrived with empty shells.

After the Augusta Powder Works went into operation in April of 1862, no significant defeat east of the Mississippi River took place because of a lack of gunpowder. Before that, during the war’s first year, there are multiple examples of major defeats in several states directly related to a lack of powder. Rains and the Augusta mill, except for one small shipment, did not send powder to the Trans-Mississippi, but I have a significant amount of information about just how bad the powder was out there and the consequences.

Take Honey Springs. That was a quality problem, and the evidence is stronger than “accurately or not” suggests. That summer, Gen. William Steele complained that the powder he received from San Antonio “looks well when first opened, but attracts moisture to such an extent that exposure to damp weather converts it into a paste. The troops have no confidence in it.” Gen. Kirby Smith wrote about this in March 1864: Mexican powder made with nitrate of soda instead of nitrate of potash “caused our troops to be defeated on the Arkansas, and resulted in the loss of the greater portion of the Indian Territory.” None of that powder came from Augusta; it all came from Mexico by order of Richmond.

You’re right about “hitting power,” though that term has different applications. At Charleston in 1863, Beauregard complained that not more than one-fifth of the fuses he’d been sent “burst properly or with accuracy.” Rains watched the batteries engage the Union fleet and was alarmed by what he witnessed: “I regret to say that of the many shells I saw fired from our batteries at the enemy from the 10 inch Columbiad, but few fuzes took fire and hence the ammunition and projectiles were expended without effect.” But the problem was never Augusta powder, which was routinely tested. The lack of “hitting power” in my view came not only from bad fuses but from weak powder made in smaller state-run or quasi-private mills, especially in New Orleans. I mention this in more detail in a later answer below.

To summarize: once Augusta was running at full stride, from April 1862 and thereafter, the claim holds up reasonably well for quantity and quality east of the Mississippi. There was neither quantity nor much quality during the first year of the war anywhere, and this was true west of the river as well for essentially the entire war.

CWBA: There are a lot of senior Confederate/militia officers named Rains for Civil War readers to keep track of, including Gabriel Rains of the torpedo bureau, James E. Rains (killed leading his brigade at Stones River), James S. Rains (a Missouri State Guard brigadier primarily known for his alcoholism and military incompetence), and your Rains, George Washington Rains. For those not familiar with him, can you provide a short capsule bio?

TS: Even the newspapers couldn’t keep them straight. In July 1861, while George Rains was meeting Tennessee’s governor in Nashville, papers from Buffalo to Dallas were arguing over whether the “Gen. Rains” fighting in Missouri was the Major Rains who had been running an iron works in New York and had gone South. He wasn’t.

George Washington Rains was born in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1817, the younger brother of Gabriel of torpedo and landmine fame. Their father built fine furniture and cheap caskets, went broke, and moved the family to Alabama one step ahead of his creditors. George graduated from West Point first in chemistry and third in the class of 1842 (Longstreet, Rosecrans, D. H. Hill, and Abner Doubleday were classmates; Mansfield Lovell was his roommate).

He served as an engineer and artillery officer, taught chemistry at West Point, and had a remarkable Mexican War career as a spy, engineer, and combat staff officer for Gens. Winfield Scott and Gideon Pillow. In 1856, George married into one of the richest families in America (that’s a crazy story), resigned from the U.S. Army, and moved to upstate New York, where he helped manage and grow his father-in-law’s Washington Iron Works at Newburgh. He was a wealthy man by the time his home state of North Carolina seceded. He was also in communication with Richmond, which was trying to get him to join the Confederacy for a specific task. He left his wife and young daughter in June 1861 and traveled to Richmond, a move that permanently estranged him from his father-in-law; his marriage never fully recovered.

While designing and building the two-mile-long Augusta mill complex, he traveled to every state east of the Mississippi. He turned Tennessee’s lone blasting mill into a viable operation late in the year and helped design a second mill from scratch; without these, Albert Sidney Johnston could not have maintained any Western Theater line.

The Augusta mill was the only permanent industrial complex or construction project the Confederacy finished. Rains had a myriad of complex important duties, eventually commanded several arsenals, and during the war’s final weeks served as the Confederacy’s de facto chief of ordnance. He ended the war as a colonel but was probably promoted to brigadier during the final days.

He remained in Augusta, taught chemistry, served as dean of the Medical College of Georgia, and wrote several textbooks. He returned to Newburgh in 1894 after his father-in-law died, and died there himself in 1898.

CWBA: The Indispensable Man is clearly more than a Civil War biography that follows the standard format. How do describe what kind of book it is?

TS: It is three books, threaded together under the primary rubric of biography.

First, it’s a full biography. George Rains led five very different lives: birth to West Point, a distinguished career in the Old Army, a prosperous stretch as an industrialist and family man in New York, four years as the Confederacy’s powdermaker, and three decades as a teacher and college dean in Augusta. His prewar years are covered in full because you can’t understand what he was able to achieve during the Civil War without understanding how he built his talent stack.

Second, it’s an industrial and logistics history. That might sound boring, but it’s edge-of-your-seat front-row coverage of a shadow war you have never known. You’ll learn more about powder than you probably want to, but you must be versed in this if you study the war at any serious level. Most historians have no idea how hard and complex powder was to make, and why pistols, small arms, field artillery, and coastal guns all needed different grains of powder. They aren’t interchangeable. Making it and distributing it to where it needed to go was a nightmare that never ended. That gap in knowledge has distorted what historians have written, and how they and we have read and understand the war. Please note that this is not a criticism. I didn’t know much about this either until I began studying it.

Third, and this is what surprised me most, The Indispensable Man is a history of the strategy of the war told through the lens of gunpowder. Rains and the Augusta Powder Works are inextricably linked to grand strategy, and not indirectly. I have the firsthand accounts to prove it.

There were eye-popping shortages everywhere, at every level, nearly all the time during the war’s first year. This was true even in Virginia, where the Confederates hoarded most of what they seized from the U.S. arsenals and forts.

All of this raises a hard question about the other side: what did the Lincoln administration know and when did it know it? Lincoln and everyone in any position of power knew the South had very little powder and could not replace what little it had. Major newspapers like the New York Times explained the complexities of making powder, why the Confederacy could not make it quickly, and it specifically warned Lincoln not to give Jefferson Davis what he needed most: the time to develop a central mill to reach a war footing.

Despite all this knowledge, the United States adopted a long-war strategy for a conflict that could have ended quickly regardless of who was tactically victorious in the field. Pulling triggers and yanking lanyards anywhere—even vigorously sustained skirmishing—would have drained the Confederacy within weeks. I know that statement raises eyebrows, but I cover this in depth with numbers and firsthand accounts. Everyone of consequence on both sides knew this. The Confederate War Department reports it produced for itself and for the Congress shocked everyone—and not in a good way. The math was undeniable. If Lincoln pressed them, the war was over. You have never heard or read this because it never made it into the books.

The footnotes are almost a fourth book. They are deep and explanatory, and I urge everyone to read them carefully. All my work is there.

CWBA: In your introduction, you recount your experience of one of any scholarly endeavor’s greatest frustrations: being flatly denied access to key manuscript material. Did that top official with the county museum you referenced offer a reason why you couldn’t examine the Rains papers they held?

TS: Not specifically, but I think he was embarrassed that I flew in from California and had to point out what was jammed into drawers on an upper floor and what they really were. He called them “some Confederate drawings.” I explained what they were, why they were important, that only a few had ever been seen, and that they were the Rosetta Stone of Confederate industry. He was English, not American, and he was more interested in geology and dinosaurs than he was in history. He was not a helpful man. It was maddening.

The good news is that the story didn’t end there. Years later the museum had a new curator, Gordon Blaker, who understood exactly what he had. Those drawings became the foundation of Never for Want of Powder (2007).

CWBA: What was it about Rains’s background and skill set that made him a strong fit to manage the Augusta Powder Works?

TS: No one else in the Confederacy combined what he brought to the table, and no one else could have performed that task. That is not hyperbole. He had broad and deep experience in chemistry, science in general, math, teaching, engineering, and military science, as well as combat experience and years spent managing a major industrial complex in New York, where he learned business, logistics, shipping, hiring, firing, management, production schedules, and a lot more. If he had never married into the Ramsdell family and run the Washington Iron Works, he could never have designed, built, and managed the Augusta Powder Works. New York was a dress rehearsal, but of course he didn’t know that at the time. Quite literally, no one else had that talent stack. No one. And Rains used all of it to achieve what he did.

CWBA: You mention that this is a book decades in the making. One of the stops along the way was the publication of Never for Want of Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia (U. of S. Carolina Press, 2007) that you co-authored. Between then and now did you discover new sources that revised your understanding of what was presented in the 2007 study?

TS: Great question. Never for Want of Powder was a team effort led by Chip Bragg and blended several disciplines. My part was the Rains biographical chapters. The main subject was the works themselves: the architecture, the machinery, the process, and Charles Ross’s careful reconstruction of the production records. That research holds up, and I cite it often in my new book. What I found in the years following its publication changed my understanding of Rains and all that he did and why, and changed the book I thought I was writing into something quite different.

In 2010, I obtained a 30-page handwritten memorandum Rains wrote during the war’s final months. It had never been published or used in any manner. Unfortunately, like a lot of Rains items it ends mid-sentence, so it could have been 100 pages. I have no way of knowing. The candid memorandum walks through his entire service in personal and opinionated terms. It confirms his meeting with Davis and Gorgas and that he left Richmond for Nashville the same afternoon he got his orders. It explains all he did and why and offers chilling descriptions of how Albert Sidney Johnston was completely unprepared for combat of any kind for months on end during the fall and winter of 1861-62, and how worried Johnston, Rains, et al. were that Union forces would advance and force them to expend what little powder they had.

Second, the advent of digital research unlocked scores of sources and connected the dots. In January 2020, I started running keyword searches in the Official Records. If a document isn’t in the index, you’ll never find it, and the index is far from complete. Searching for “powder” and other keywords important to my study turned up letters, telegrams, and reports I’d never seen, from generals, governors, arsenal officers, citizens—you name it. I ended up compiling my own index of all 128 volumes, tailored to my study.

All these documents said the same basic thing: we have no powder, few or no shells, and if attacked cannot hold our positions. This was true of virtually every fort, city, coastal area, and field force large and small. The first time or two I read that I thought, “Huh, that’s interesting.” Then I learned that the Confederate War Department knew the problem was widespread. The common reply from Richmond was that it would send powder only to whomever was being threatened or attacked—when and if it could get powder. Meanwhile, hold on and show a bold front. The “Huh, that’s interesting” morphed into “My God, this was everywhere, and they could not hold, if pressed, anywhere.”

Searches in newspapers (worldwide) and letter books from arsenals and depots, compiled service records, and more uncovered a deeper treasure trove that supported and expanded on all this. I found so much I could not even use it all. My research produced a picture of a very different war than the one in the books.

The third was the discovery of a critically important, misfiled Jefferson Davis document that tied all this together to strategy. As far as I can tell, no one had ever used it, including his biographers and any other writers who would have had a deep interest in doing so. It’s not even in his collected papers. I shared it with a couple of Davis historians, and they admitted that they had never seen it. William C. Davis, a good friend of mine who read my manuscript, told me it surprised him and raised serious questions, especially about how the first year of the war was fought.

To summarize, these sources unlocked and explained two things. First, they put Rains’s heretofore unknown work for General Johnston in Tennessee (and in other states) in 1861 in proper context, and second, they reframed the strategy of the entire first year of the war. (I won’t get into it here, but it also alters, in my opinion, how we must look at the last eight or so months of the end of the war.) I have studied the Civil War for 50 years. I had never seen any of this.

CWBA: You estimate that Rains’s facilities produced over 3 million pounds of quality military-grade powder between April 1862 and April 1865. Of the combined total of domestically produced powder and that imported through the blockade over the length of the war, around what percentage was manufactured at Augusta?

TS: I’d love to give you a clean number, but no one can do it honestly, and I’d be skeptical of anyone who claims to be able to do so. It was clearly the large majority of all the powder available after April 1862.

The Augusta side of the equation is solid. Charles Ross worked through the daily ledgers and found the works made 3,168,450 pounds between April 1862 and April 1865, nearly half a million pounds more than Rains himself claimed. The import side is not. We know about individual cargoes, but there is no complete count, and the surviving figures often disagree. Estimates of the powder the Fingal brought into Savannah in 1861, for example, range from 17,000 pounds to 48 tons! In addition, a lot of imported powder arrived wet and often ruined. Much of it had to be reworked. How much was ruined or lost is unknown.

What I can say with confidence is that among domestic producers east of the Mississippi, Augusta dwarfed everyone else. The two Tennessee mills Rains established and/or reorganized and equipped were vital but small affairs and short-lived. Records for the mill at Columbia, South Carolina, have never been found, and that powder was for the Navy. The two North Carolina mills (one private and the other a quasi-state affair) blew themselves up repeatedly, and records are scarce. The two small South Carolina blasting mills at Pendleton and Walhalla turned out powder that was so bad that the Confederate government stopped working with them early in the war. Mansfield Lovell eventually erected two mills in New Orleans. Neither produced good powder. One blew up at the end of 1861, and the powder from the other was so bad that gunners watched their shells arc out of the barrels and drop into the water.

CWBA: With demand for Augusta powder coming from all parts of the Confederacy, how was distribution prioritized?

TS: Calls came routinely from all compass points, all the time. We know to the pound where it went, and it was mostly dictated by threat and need. A significant amount of correspondence among Rains, Josiah Gorgas, and the War Department, of course, is missing, but Richmond decided where the big shipments went, and that often meant whoever was in the most danger that month. When John Pemberton needed powder for Vicksburg in January 1863, for example, he didn’t wire Augusta. He wired Gorgas: “Please order General Rains, at Augusta, to send me at once 30,000 pounds of powder. Must have it immediately.”

Most of the powder went to arsenals. Richmond, Charleston, and the Augusta Arsenal received the most, and they turned it into the cartridges and fixed ammunition for the main field armies and the heavy guns. Beyond them, Rains shipped to about two dozen points east of the Mississippi. The records are detailed enough, for example, that we know what the major posts received, to the pound, and when. The daily records are incredibly detailed, and I include a full appendix breaking down the racial makeup of the employees and the skilled and unskilled laborers who ran the mill.

The priorities shifted with the fighting. Tons went to Lee before the Gettysburg campaign, and then more in its aftermath. Rains sent 100,000 pounds of columbiad powder to Mobile in the months preceding Farragut’s attack in 1864, and several tons to Wilmington in the run-up to Fort Fisher’s fall. There was often a cost to these choices. In April 1863, for example, with most of the powder cars headed up the coast to Charleston and Lee, the Macon laboratory (and I think an arsenal or two) shut down for a time for want of powder of all types. That meant the Army of Tennessee and other forces suffered a shortage, temporarily.

Geography set its own limits and restrictions. Getting powder to Selma, Alabama, or Jackson or Vicksburg, Mississippi, meant unloading trains onto wagons, then boats, then trains again, because the railroads didn’t connect. Rains had picked Augusta partly because it sat at the hinge of the Southern rail network between the two halves of the Confederacy, but even the best location couldn’t fix a railroad system that was never designed to work as one united artery.

CWBA: You also mention that Rains’s efforts in Tennessee over the latter half of 1861 are equally deserving of approbation. What did he accomplish during that time and how do you rate its significance?

TS: This is part of his story virtually no one has ever heard about, and I might rank it as important as Augusta. The completion of the Augusta Powder Works made it possible for the Confederacy to fight a long war. Rains’s work in Tennessee helped the Confederacy survive the first year to finish the Augusta mill so it could fight a long war. But for his work in Tennessee and the Western Theater (while he was simultaneously building the Augusta complex), the war would never have stretched beyond one year. Indeed, he, Johnston, and others were shocked they made it through the fall of 1861. Previous writers focus on Johnston’s lack of firearms (and only occasionally mention powder, though without context of what it really meant). That was not really the issue. Even if the Confederates had had triple the number of rifled muskets and artillery pieces they needed, it would have done them no good because they had no gunpowder and little or no niter to make it.

As Rains often noted, Johnston (and his lieutenants) could not fight more than a long skirmish. “There was no remedy,” wrote Rains, “until I could manufacture it for him [Johnston].” Without those mills and the niter refinery Rains built in Nashville (you can’t make military powder without pure niter, and it was the only refinery in the entire Confederacy at that time), there’s no defense of Kentucky, no defense of the major rivers, no Forts Henry and Donelson, no New Madrid and Island No. 10, and no Shiloh. By the time Johnston died at Shiloh, his army had the powder it needed for a major battle or two, and nearly all of it can be traced back to what Rains built from the ground up in Tennessee during the second half of 1861 and early 1862.

Fortunately for the Confederacy, it was at that precise moment in time (April 1862) that the Augusta Powder Works came online. It had taken nine months to finish, and the first month of production was woefully inadequate. Had the works come online just one month later, say in May 1862, Lee probably could not have fought the Seven Days’ Battles to save Richmond. It was that close. It’s not a coincidence that the Confederates were able to gather a large army around Richmond, fight there, and then carry the offensive north all the way into Maryland. None of that would have been possible if Rains had failed, or if President Davis had not had the foresight to erect a massive central powder mill.

All of this spans multiple chapters in great depth in my book. I don’t want to give too much away, because I think it is important for students to read and grasp all of this new information, and I am only sharing a tiny slice of what I have discovered. And as I noted earlier, all of this is in the notes so readers can look it up themselves.

CWBA: Thanks, Ted. You've left us with much to ponder. I am sure I join a great many in wanting to read more about these matters. Readers, The Indispensable Man is scheduled for release from Savas Beatie in the latter half of November so keep an eye out for it next month.

Booknotes: Texas and the Civil War

New Arrival:

• Texas and the Civil War: New Perspectives by Carl H. Moneyhon (UNT Press, 2026).

This looks like a new survey history of Civil War Texas, a major goal of which is to center the most recent scholarship and highlight the most prominent current trends in research and writing. Carl Moneyhon's Texas and the Civil War: New Perspectives also pushes back against the popular notion that Civil War disruption of the Texas home front and society at large was minimal in comparison to the widespread suffering, want, and destruction the war inflicted upon the other Confederate states.

Establishing the background for what is the follow, the study begins during the late-antebellum years. "With deep reliance on primary sources, Moneyhon first examines the set of ideas about the North, enslaved people, and slavery that developed in Texas during the 1850s that provided the framework for secession, war, and military mobilization."

Undoubtedly influenced by the works of Charles Grear and others in addition to his own research, Moneyhon also "explores who joined the Confederate armies, why they continued to fight despite desperate conditions, and how their experiences affected them."

The critical importance of the cross-border cotton trade in both supplying and financing the Confederate war effort in Texas and the rest of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department has been deeply investigated in the recent literature. These previously "overlooked questions of finance and supply provide the focus of two chapters." Indeed, a book devoted entirely to the topic of Civil War Texas cotton trade and finance was released from the same publisher and at the same time as this one. That new volume will be covered here on the site soon.

Civil War-era borderlands comprise another line of scholarly investigation that has received quite a bit of attention from professional historians in recent years. Much of it centers on social, political, military, and economic relationships, both cooperative and hostile, among the various peoples and groups inhabiting northern Mexico, Texas, and the rest of the Desert Southwest. In this book, Moneyhon "considers the question of frontiers, bearing in mind the existence of multiple frontiers rather than simply that of the state’s western and northwestern boundaries."

Internal divisions and their impact on Civil War Texas are also scrutinized, as the author "investigates the breakdown of Confederate consensus and the development of anti-Confederate sentiment and movements. How the war affected family and class are topics that have received considerable recent attention and are also explored herein."

Discussion of military events is interspersed, but the great bulk of it is grouped together in a single chapter that "examines military history and Union activities in Texas, considering both the effect these actions had on the people of the state and the impact of defeat on soldiers and civilians."

Booknotes: John M. Schofield

New Arrival:

• John M. Schofield: Soldier–Statesman of the Civil War and Gilded Age by Robert Wooster (OU Press, 2026).

Perhaps more than any other Union Army department-level command, the one involving oversight of Missouri required a general with political skills to match his military ones. In addition to trying to suppress a widespread regional guerrilla insurgency, the department commander had to cooperate effectively with a conservative state government hostile to many aspects of Washington war policy. In addition to that, the smoldering border war with Kansas that bled unabated into the Civil Wars years had to be kept in check. Then there were the Confederate forces themselves, who frequently launched mounted raids and other large-scale forays into Union-held territory from bases in Arkansas and Indian Territory, that had to be confronted on a regular basis. All this proved to be too much for most generals, but one who escaped the military-political quagmire that was Civil War Missouri with his reputation intact was John M. Schofield, who went on to hold army-level commands (albeit smallish ones) in Georgia and Tennessee during the late-war period before ending the conflict in North Carolina.

Robert Wooster's John M. Schofield: Soldier–Statesman of the Civil War and Gilded Age is the second full biography to spring from the scholarly literature. It follows in the twenty-year-old footsteps of Donald Connelly's John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship, (UNC Press, 2006). I didn't receive a review copy of Connelly's book at the time and never picked one up on my own, so it received no coverage on the site. Still, even though I have little to go on at this point (I do recall reading some reviews of Connelly's book that give it high marks), it seems clear from their titles and descriptions alone that the pair share major themes. Hopefully, someone will come up with a good comparative review someday. In his introduction, Wooster does offer some insights into differences between the two books. In addition to utilizing primary source material that Connelly didn't (or wasn't able to) use, Wooster's biography delves deeper into Schofield's personal life and political aspirations.

Schofield's public life resume was impressive by any measure. A young West Point-trained officer, he wasn't quite thirty when the war started and ascended the ranks of the Union Army high command in rapid fashion. Though I doubt that anyone would place him among the top tier of Union fighting generals, he held a number of important field and administrative commands.

After the war, Schofield remained in government service. From the description: "In the wake of Reconstruction and in an era of limited government, Wooster explains, the nation needed its soldiers to serve as diplomats, administrators, and agents of empire. Schofield rose to these challenges, moving on to serve, among other roles, as envoy to France, U.S. secretary of war, and, in retirement, as advisor to presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Today he is familiar to many as the namesake for the Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Hawaii, established to defend Pearl Harbor."

Even with that thirty-year record spanning "the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era," Schofield's list of achievements still didn't prevent him from becoming "arguably one of the most overlooked figures in the history of nineteenth-century United States." A booster shot to Connelly's inoculation, Wooster's study "draws on fresh scholarship to place Schofield’s remarkable career of military service within the broader contexts of American politics and social reform." Highlighting Schofield’s "successes and shortcomings" in an "unflinching" manner, Wooster's study "moves beyond military experiences and unearths the complex relationship between the U.S. Army and American politics in the nineteenth century." Wooster also depicts Schofield as a major bridging figure between eras, and his biography "reveals the inner workings and trajectory of the American military as it moved forward into the twentieth century."

Coming Soon (October '26 Edition)

Scheduled for OCT 2026¹:
• Managing the Union Army: Scott, McClellan, Halleck, and Grant as General-in-Chief by Earl Hess.
• General George B. McClellan: A Study in Controversy by Maurice Daoust.
• Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou by Matt Atkinson.
• From Blood to Ink: How the Press Covered the Gettysburg Campaign by Matthew Larson.
• American Civil War Siege Tactics by Ron Field.
• Smoke on the Battery: Charleston and the Longest Siege of the Civil War by Stephen Wise.
• Fighting with Stonewall in the Valley: The Diary of John Henry Stover Funk by Foster & Mortenson, eds.
• Occupied Alexandria: How the Civil War Transformed a Southern City by Madeline Feierstein.

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: Occupied Alexandria

New Arrival:

• Occupied Alexandria: How the Civil War Transformed a Southern City by Madeline Feierstein (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2026).

Stretched along the right bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the city of Alexandria, Virginia had zero chance of escaping Union occupation. Indeed, once Virginia seceded the town was instantly seized by eager U.S. volunteers and placed under tight military rule.

From the description: "Overnight, this bustling urban town on the Potomac River transformed into a center of disease, death, and debauchery. Viewing all residents as potential threats regardless of allegiance, the military government resorted to heavy-handed actions to control its transient soldier population, counteract civilian opposition, combat waves of gunshot wounds and illness, and imprison those deemed disloyal to the Union cause."

"Drawing upon true accounts of civilian and soldier experiences," Madeline Feierstein's Occupied Alexandria: How the Civil War Transformed a Southern City "explores whether Union authorities kept order within the city or watched it fall into chaos."

The war certainly did change the city in a multitude of ways, and the book offers a comprehensive overview of issues and events related to that wartime transformation, including the town's integration into the fortified buffer zone established on the south bank of the Potomac as part of the Washington defenses, the imposition of martial law, and the organization of prison, contraband, and hospital systems in and around the city. Criminal activities, health concerns, espionage, government investigations, and postwar restoration are also addressed.

Booknotes: A Glorious Fate

New Arrival:

• A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw by Kevin M. Levin (UNC Press, 2026).

From the description: "Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863) is best known as the heroic colonel who led the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment—one of the first regiments of Black soldiers in the Civil War—in its famous ill-fated charge against Confederate Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. Shaw’s sacrifice has been commemorated in monuments, books, and the award-winning film Glory."

In retrospect, Matthew Broderick's casting as Shaw in Glory seems almost perfect, but I distinctly remember leaving the theater in 1989 with the impression (mistaken as that proved to be) that he was horribly miscast as a far too youthful colonel. Little did I know at the time that Broderick was actually several years older than the character he portrayed. When it comes to its on-screen exploration of Shaw's relationship to the abolitionist movement of his parents' social circle, the movie also deserves credit for giving Shaw a character arc that seems to roughly correspond to history. Christ-like self-sacrifice only comes at the very end of the film.

Kevin Levin's A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is the first major Shaw biography to appear this century. In terms of comparable works, it is preceded most recently by Shaw correspondence editor Russell Duncan's 1999 combined biography and unit study Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.

When it comes to describing and assessing young Shaw's personal and ideological growth and progression, common themes emerge from both authors. Duncan's Shaw is "just past the cusp of manhood and still struggling against his mother's indomitable will, thrust unexpectedly into the national limelight." Shaw was the "rebellious son of wealthy Boston abolitionists who never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices yet went on to head the North's vanguard black regiment and give his life to the cause of freedom." This is not a review, so I don't know if Levin entirely agrees with Duncan's views on the mother-son relationship, but, similar to Duncan's overall assessment, Levin's Shaw "was a privileged young man who showed little interest in the reform movements that defined his parents' lives or in the moral crisis over slavery that was tearing the nation apart. Volunteering to serve as a duty, he awakened gradually and fitfully to the demands of conscience and command. Only in death was Shaw transformed into the champion for freedom his abolitionist parents hoped he would be."

More from the description: A Glorious Fate "traces (Shaw's) transformation from a rebellious son into one of the Civil War’s most celebrated heroes." Levin's biography "also reveals the sacrifice and service of the African American men who fought and died for their freedom afresh through Shaw’s eyes." In the end, "(t)hough Shaw never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices, Levin shows how the Civil War changed the young colonel as it did the nation."

Booknotes: Civil War Chaos in Texas

New Arrival:

• Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah by Lori Duran (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2026).

After Unionist Texas governor Sam Houston was removed from office in 1861, he was followed by Confederate governors Edward Clark, Francis Lubbock, and Pendleton Murrah. Murrah's involvement in the politics and strife of the period is the main subject of Lori Duran's Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah.

From the description: "Orphaned by his mother as an infant, Murrah was raised by a charitable organization, which saw to his education. Despite having tuberculosis, he moved to Texas and became a lawyer and politician. He was elected governor in November 1863 and served until the end of the Civil War."

Murrah entered office at a time of peak tension between the Trans-Mississippi Department's state officials and the Confederate government in far-off Richmond (the former accusing the latter of gross neglect on a number of important issues). Murrah frequently clashed with Confederate military authority in his state over conscription, troop dispositions, and the vital cross-border cotton trade. Nevertheless, Murrah maintained his Confederate allegiance to the end, fleeing to Mexico as Union occupation loomed and dying there soon after.

Duran's study begins with Murrah's arrival in Texas and his rise to social and political prominence there. The bulk of the narrative is devoted to Murrah's wartime activities before and during his war governorship. The final two chapters discuss Confederate surrender, the arrival of federal occupation troops, Murrah's exile in Mexico, and his death in August 1865.

Review - "'When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten': The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis" by Jerry Thompson, ed.

["When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis edited by Jerry D. Thompson (University of New Mexico Press, 2026). Hardcover, 5 maps, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vii,194/336. ISBN:978-0-8263-6983-3. $34.95]

By his own estimate, Union Army captain George H. Pettis (First California Infantry regiment) marched 4,245 miles during a Civil War volunteer service that spanned the entire length of the war. There is no way to know which soldier, North or South, put in the most miles during the conflict, but Pettis's odyssey over parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas certainly ranked among the war's most arduous given the harsh conditions involved. A printer and publisher by trade, Pettis also frequently put pen to paper both during and after the war, his valuable body of writings collected together for the first time by leading Civil War in the Southwest historian Jerry Thompson and published under the title "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis.

Thompson begins the book with a thorough overview, roughly two-dozen pages in length, of Pettis's life (1834-1909), which began and ended in Rhode Island. This fine mini-biography adds essential context to Pettis's public and private lives outside the topics of his writings. It also gives readers solid background information in regard to the places and events associated with Pettis's Civil War military adventures across the far flung Southwest. Thompson's compilation of Pettis writings is divided into three parts: Pettis's narrative "recollections," his newspaper articles, and his wartime letters to his wife.

Of the three recollections reproduced in Part I, the first is a brief summary of the 1861-62 New Mexico Campaign that Thompson ranks among the best early accounts (though Pettis did not personally participate in those parts of the campaign operating out of Fort Craig and Fort Union). The next piece recounts Pettis's own experiences as a junior officer of the California Column. Though he joins many Union supporters in perhaps exaggerating the Confederate threat to California, his descriptions of the marshaling of the famed California Column and its long and dangerous march across the lower Southwest from southern California all the way to New Mexico and West Texas is wonderfully descriptive and highly valuable as a firsthand account. In addition to assessing the dangers, real and imagined, from Apache Indian and Confederate foes, the text details the environmental and logistical conditions that necessitated the column's 900-mile march be conducted in stages and in small groups. That measured pace meant that the main campaign in New Mexico was already essentially over by the time they arrived at the front. Thompson praises the third recollection, a striking account of the November 1864 Battle of Adobe Walls, as the best of the trio, and it is indeed another excellent firsthand source that significantly enhances our understanding of the event. Students of Kit Carson's campaign will greatly appreciate Pettis's insights, as he led the mountain howitzer section generally credited with playing a central role in keeping the enemy at bay and staving off defeat (and perhaps even annihilation) at the hands of the aggressive and much more numerous Comanche and Kiowa. These recollections, but the last two in particular, are vividly written, abundantly detailed, and well balanced. As an example of the last point, in covering his own efforts at Adobe Walls Pettis does not try to make himself the hero of the battle.

Most prominent in Parts I and II, Thompson's annotations primarily consist of biographical information (often quite extensive) about noteworthy persons mentioned in the text, though there is also some background and commentary associated with places and events. These editorial notes occasionally raise objections, one being Pettis's perpetuation of the claim that the New Mexico volunteers and militia performed very poorly in action during the 1862 New Mexico Campaign. Rehabilitating the reputation of these New Mexico units is a major theme of Thompson's most recent scholarship.

After the war, Pettis, like many of his California Column comrades, settled in New Mexico with his family and contributed to the postwar economic boom and political scene there. The nine newspaper articles collected in Part II address a variety of events and personal anecdotes from the wartime and postwar periods. Their themes are eclectic, among them an account of a wartime mutiny, a humorous but respectful story related to Kit Carson's illiteracy, and a personal confrontation with the region's long tradition of debt peonage that persisted into the post-emancipation period.

The wartime correspondence consisting of Pettis's letters to his wife Annie between September 1861 and March 1865 is collected in Part III. In some ways the content is standard fare, with Pettis complaining about infrequent communications, highly irregular pay, homesickness, and loneliness. One can sense marital tension in many Civil War correspondence collections, but the sources of strain are uncommonly direct in Pettis's replies. We only have his letters to go on, but he frequently chastises her word choices, overall tone, and seeming neglect. It is an uncomfortable situation, and, as Thompson explains in the introduction, the pair eventually divorced. Beyond domestic concerns, the letters do recount at some length military activities that included recruitment duty in northern California, the long march to New Mexico over the spring and summer of 1862, and a number of mid to late-war campaigns and operations based out of New Mexico forts that were directed against Indian foes. All of that is useful source material for interested military scholars and researchers.

In addition to arranging and annotating Pettis's writings, Thompson includes in the volume a number of period illustrations and photographs rarely encountered in other Civil War publications, and extensive captions are attached to them. The book's map coverage is helpful in following the course of the California Column's epic march while also orienting readers to the major geographical points of interest in New Mexico that are mentioned at various points in the text.

George Pettis remains a little-known figure to the general Civil War reader. Fortunately, Jerry Thompson's edited collection brings Pettis's significant military service out of the shadows while also highlighting in full the quality, depth, and usefulness of his writings. "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten" is a wonderful resource for those craving firsthand accounts of the Civil War as played out along one of its most isolated and distant fronts.

Booknotes: The 54th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War

New Arrival:

• The 54th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War by Christopher A. Baran (McFarland, 2026).

It's understandable that publication of Union regimental histories of units that served in the eastern theater is still heavily weighted towards those attached to the Army of the Potomac for most of the war. At the same time, eastern regiments that didn't fit that mold are still fairly well represented in the literature. Part of that group is Christopher Baran's The 54th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War.

Dyer tells us that the 54th was organized during the war's first summer and was initially attached to the Washington defenses. Much of its early to mid-war service was spent behind the scenes in the Middle Department and Department of West Virginia. However, the 54th entered the war's main stage during the 1864 fighting in the Shenandoah Valley before joining the Army of the James in 1865. Captured on April 6, 1865 during the Union raid on High Bridge, the regiment's own war did not end on a particularly high note, but ultimate triumph at Appomattox was not far off.

From the description: "For the first two years of their service, the men in the 54th Pennsylvania felt forgotten. Assigned to guard the vital B&O Railroad, they received little press coverage. Many wondered if their service mattered and worried their entire war would be "fought" protecting isolated railroad bridges and depots." The first eight chapters of the book, a bit over 100 pages in total, cover this period.

More from the description: "Everything changed in 1864 when the 54th Pennsylvania finally marched onto the field and fought in every major battle of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The next year, the regiment joined the Army of the James for the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign." The remaining two-thirds of the book are devoted to these most eventful phases of the 54th's war.  There are chapter-length treatments of the regiment's experience of each battle fought in the Shenandoah, with the final two chapters of the book addressing the Petersburg and Appomattox campaigns.

Employing "extensive use of primary sources including the men's letters and diaries," Baran presents the 54th Pennsylvania's military service in detailed fashion, his narrative supported by numerous full-page maps of very high quality. An epilogue delves into postwar commemoration, and the appendix follows the peacetime activities of a selection of 54th veterans.

Booknotes: And Rest Under The Shade Of The Trees

New Arrival:

• And Rest Under The Shade Of The Trees: Essays In Honor of James I. Robertson, Jr. edited by Steven E. Woodworth, Christopher L. Jones, and Christopher J. Smith (Laurel Hill Pub, 2026).

Eminent Civil War historian James Irvin "Bud" Robertson Jr. passed away in 2019 at the age of 89. If you're around my age and serious interest in the ACW blossomed during the late-80s and throughout the 90s, heavies such as Robertson, Gary Gallagher, and Jack Davis were frequently encountered on both the written page and the television screen. Truth be told, I haven't read the majority of Robertson's books, but among those that I have read the Stonewall Jackson biography is the clear standout (a common feeling, I'm sure).

Earlier this year, Tom Perry's Laurel Hill Publishing released And Rest Under The Shade Of The Trees: Essays In Honor of James I. Robertson, Jr., edited by Steven Woodworth, Christopher Jones, and Christopher Smith. It honors Robertson "by bringing together a collection of essays that explore several aspects of the Civil War that were subjects of Bud's long and productive career of research, writing, and teaching."

The volume includes ten essays plus an epilogue from Robertson's widow, Elizabeth Lee Robertson. Along with the three co-editors, the list of chapter contributors includes William C. Davis, James Finck, Allen Guelzo, Akhil Rajasekar, David Snead, Emory Thomas, Brian Steel Wills, and Kelly Witherspoon.

In addition to the historical essays tied to themes drawn from a consideration of Robertson's career are perspectives and memories of Robertson himself. From the description: "From the high-ranking generals of the Civil War, to the gritty experiences of the soldiers in the ranks, to the travails of the civilians on the home front, this volume sheds new light on topics Bud might well have addressed had he lived longer, topics such as the real cause of Stonewall Jackson's death, a true understanding of the operational possibilities at the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, or the memory of the Confederacy in modern America. In addition, the book includes several reminiscences of Bud and his career, including his advisory role in the planning of the funeral of President John F. Kennedy." Click on the Read Sample button at the title link above to find the full table of contents.

Booknotes: The Civil War in Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks

New Arrival:

• The Civil War in Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks by Matthew Ericson (Arcadia Pub & The Hist Press, 2026).

Over their prolific (and, for the latter, ongoing) runs, The History Press's Civil War Sesquicentennial Series and Civil War Series published a number of titles covering various military events in southeastern Virginia and coastal North Carolina during 1861-62. Matthew Ericson's The Civil War in Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks brings much of that material together into a single integrated overview that incorporates early-war Union land and sea operations that secured Fort Monroe and surrounding areas, seized key towns and forts along North Carolina's Outer Banks and coastal plain, and finally forced the Confederate abandonment of Norfolk.

All of these Union victories achieved during the first twelve months of the war held significant strategic value, both in the short term and the long term. From Fort Monroe, "Union forces launched bold campaigns that would define the early course of the war. Their presence threatened Confederate supply lines and opened the way to North Carolina’s vulnerable shoreline. Across both regions, two vital canals linked the Confederate heartland to the coast, transforming Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks into a single, high-stakes theater of war." Ericson "unites these interconnected battles into one compelling narrative."

As is the case with all studies of this type from this publisher, photographs, illustrations, and maps abound.

Booknotes: A Michigan Cavalryman

New Arrival:

• A Michigan Cavalryman: The Life and Untimely Death of Major Noah Henry Ferry, Fifth Michigan Cavalry by Eric J. Wittenberg (Fox Run Pub, 2026).

One of the publishers that the late Eric Wittenberg developed a close relationship with over his prolific writing career was Keith Jones's Fox Run Publishing. As indicated in this press release from back in late March of this year, Eric had a number of projects going at the time his health took a tragic turn for the worst. His final finished work, a biography of Union cavalry officer Noah Ferry, was entrusted to Fox Run and is getting a wide release starting today.

A Michigan Cavalryman: The Life and Untimely Death of Major Noah Henry Ferry, Fifth Michigan Cavalry is a "detailed portrait of a Civil War cavalry officer’s life, leadership, and sacrifice at Gettysburg, emphasizing his legacy and battlefield experiences."

From the description: "Noah Ferry was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Michigan. Major Ferry and his men were only in their second major combat on July 3, 1863, where his life ended abruptly." With the famed Michigan Brigade, Ferry was killed instantly during his regiment's dismounted fighting along a Rummel Farm fence line on what we now call East Cavalry Field.

More: Wittenberg's biography "presents the compelling tale of Ferry’s life, legacy, and military experience. We learn about Ferry’s family legacy, uncanny business and leadership abilities, and finally his rise in rank from captain of a company of cavalry to a charismatic major destined to sacrifice his life in a heretofore obscure farm field in Gettysburg." The main narrative runs a brisk 120 pages in largish font and is supported by eight maps and numerous illustrations.

Review - "Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861" by Neil Chatelain

[Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 by Neil P. Chatelain (Savas Beatie, 2026). Hardcover, 12 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xviii,209/255. ISBN:978-1-61121-795-7. $32.95]

As Civil War naval historian Neil Chatelain revealed in his excellent 2020 study Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865, Union victory and Confederate defeat along the length of the Mississippi River could not be fully explained through simple recitation of the wide disparities in financial, industrial, and military resources available to each side. Of course, those differences, as stark as they were, defined the conflict in many ways, but it is also true that fairly prodigious amounts of Confederate funding and material were thrown into defending both ends of the great river valley. Unfortunately for the region's defenders, a lack of unified direction, competition between government and civilian authorities, interservice rivalries, and general dispersal of effort critically hindered the creation of an effective naval counter to the rapidly expanding and increasingly aggressive U.S. Navy.

Nevertheless, some noteworthy tactical victories were achieved by those scratch Confederate naval forces, one of which occurred quite early in the war at the Head of Passes on October 12, 1861. A number of brief overviews of the battle can be found in the literature (arguably the best being the relevant section of Chester Hearn's broader study The Capture of New Orleans, 1862 (1995), but Chatelain's new book Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 is the first full-length account.

The October 12 battle occurred at a time when blockading Union naval forces were rapidly gathering at the mouth of the Mississippi River as well as other key points of Gulf shipping ingress and egress. Even at this early stage of that process, enforcement had reached the point that Union forces felt confident enough to ascend the river and work toward constructing a fortified land battery below the Head of Passes. It was under this developing situation that the battle was fought, and Chatelain's study deals with matters associated with the establishment and tightening of the blockade during this period at length. Pertinent to that discussion is a detailed review of the types and capabilities of the ships involved as well as the uneven quality of their captains.

Arrayed against the growing Union threat was a hastily marshaled "mosquito fleet" led by Confederate naval captain George Hollins that consisted of a number of converted steamers with fire raft support, but what boosted Confederate confidence most was the availability and promise of the newly completed ironclad ram Manassas. Contradictory contemporary claims and assorted mysteries still impact modern appraisal of the vessel. They include what the ironclad really looked like, and design features as simple as whether it had one or two smokestacks (although Chatelain is confident in his answer to that latter question). Throughout his many attempts at cutting through the haze of conflicting accounts on a variety of matters, Chatelain judiciously weighs each side of a particular contested issue (explaining his thought process in the main text) and offers his own interpretation based on the best available evidence. A number of fresh insights emerge from this thorough review of the original source material, among them are some consensus-challenging suggestions surrounding the timing, place, and circumstances of Manassas's incorporation into the C.S. Navy. Every major secondary source claims that Manassas, a civilian-financed and owned privateer, was forcibly seized by Confederate authorities for their own use, but Chatelain cites primary source evidence strongly supportive of the possibility that Manassas's civilian captain, John Stevenson, first offered his powerful ram's services to the government.

The best writers of Civil War land campaign and battle narrative are able to convey a vivid mental picture and deep understanding of battlefield landscape and topography to their readers, and Chatelain is able to do much the same for the geology and hydrology of the Mississippi River's mouth. Knowledge and awareness of the shifting sand bars, scouring forces, "mud humps," and other noteworthy (and militarily significant) physical features of the river mouth geography are essential to reader understanding of the fleet action that occurred there, and the author provides that background information in full. Chatelain's detailed description and analysis of the river's five main passes (Southwest, South, Southeast, Northeast, and Pass á l'Outre) that branch off the aptly named Head of Passes like the fingers of a glove demonstrate why blockading the mouth of the Mississippi was difficult while at the same time in some ways simpler than one might realize. With those matters in mind, it's clear to see why both sides so closely coveted control of the inland Head of Passes.

The battle itself, which lasted only a few early-morning hours and apparently resulted in no casualties on either side, is recounted thoroughly and well. Map support is strong, with a series tracing ship movements and positions of both sides during each phase of the battle and its immediate aftermath. This is easily the most detailed account of the battle to date, unlikely to be surpassed unless a significant body of new source material emerges. After Manassas successfully, but not fatally, rammed the powerful steam sloop U.S.S. Richmond, the Union flotilla fled from the Head of Passes. Three ships (including the Richmond) ran aground below Southwest Pass and struggled mightily to refloat themselves. Under long-range harassing fire from the tug C.S.S. Ivy and fearing return of Manassas, which unbeknownst to them withdrew upriver after partially dislodging its ram and losing an engine during its strike on Richmond, some officers panicked and miscommunication even led to premature vessel abandonment.

In addition to exploring the battle itself in all its intricacies, Chatelain persuasively conveys to readers a solid sense of both its meaning and depth of its shadow. Head of Passes was the war's first fleet action as well as its first use of an ironclad in combat. As the author explains, the battle did not spark the ensuing flurry of ironclad building in general nor did it prompt the construction of ram fleets on the Mississippi (both initiatives were already well in swing by the time of the battle), but the limited success of Manassas offered encouraging proof of concept. October 12 was a very bad day for the U.S. Navy, and its handling of the engagement was shaky from top to bottom. After allowing themselves to be surprised, the Union vessels retreated in unseemly haste and, as mentioned before, orders to abandon grounded vessels were unnecessarily issued on more than one occasion. However, Chatelain makes an interesting point that the embarrassing U.S. defeat very well might have had a silver lining of major proportions. The command shakeup after the battle, which included reassignment of area commander Capt. William McKean and the sidelining or outright cashiering of his most underperforming subordinate ship captains, brought to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron daring new leadership that performed their duties phenomenally well during the devastatingly effective New Orleans campaign of the following spring. The author's suggestion that that decisive outcome might have been seriously in doubt had the October 12 battle not gone so poorly and the original leadership remained in place is an intriguing counterfactual to consider.

Recent years have been good ones for filling in gaps in the Civil War naval warfare and blockade literature, and Neil Chatelain's Ironclad Ambush represents yet another fresh and original contribution to those areas of study. In addition to providing the first truly comprehensive history of the Head of Passes naval battle, Chatelain's book adds essential context to our knowledge and understanding of the early-war blockade of the Mississippi River mouth. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: "Now I'm With the Invalids"

New Arrival:

• "Now I'm With the Invalids": The Veteran Reserve Corps in America’s Civil War by David A. Welker (Casemate, 2026).

Returning combat disabled soldiers to the army fulfilled an acute need for the government and recovered wounded alike. The U.S. military, facing ever increasing manpower pressures as the war progressed, searched far and wide for volunteers to fill needed roles of all kinds. A willing source was found in the tens of thousands of wounded veterans who still wished to contribute to the Union war effort. The existence of the corps is well known among Civil War students, but it is probably fair to say that few know the full story. That history is presented in comprehensive fashion for the first time in David Welker's "Now I'm With the Invalids": The Veteran Reserve Corps in America’s Civil War.

From the description: The struggle to come up with a workable and mutually beneficial arrangement was "solved by creation of the Invalid Corps—later renamed the Veteran Reserve Corps—which put these combat veterans to work in important military roles throughout the Union rear supporting the draft process, working in hospitals and government offices, guarding vulnerable locations, and in myriad other tasks." The Corps proved effective in its defined range of activities, the scope and nature of which widened under the exigencies of war. "Expanded in size and function by the war’s progress and demands, the Corps took on an ever-increasing list of new missions which further contributed to Union victory by performing important rear-area duties and freeing able-bodied men to continue fighting at the front. In a few notable cases, the “invalids” themselves even returned to battle, including playing a vital role in defending Washington DC from enemy attack in 1864." All of this is recounted and explored in Welker's study.

Useful reference material can be found in the appendix section. Detailed deployment information (by date range and place) for the various VRC units is provided in the first appendix. The Confederacy's own Invalid Corps, smaller and less effectively organized than its Union counterpart, is briefly explored in another appendix, as is a collection of celebratory poetry and song lyrics inspired by the U.S. Invalid Corps.

Through their service, the members of the VRC had a major impact on public perception of the image and capabilities of disabled veterans. More from the description: "The Corps not only helped enable Union victory, it also provided the sixty thousand men who served in its ranks a means to prove to the American public—and themselves—that their war wounds and injuries did not make them less than full men. In this way, those who served in its ranks carried on the Corps’ contribution long after the organization had ceased to be."