Booknotes: Military Captives in the United States

New Arrival:

• Military Captives in the United States: A History from the Revolution Through World War II by Craig A. Munsart (McFarland, 2025).

From the description: "Since the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the United States has actively pursued military operations both domestic and foreign. Prisoners of war represent a natural consequence of such actions, and throughout history, many of them have been incarcerated within the borders of the United States. Incorporating both existing and purpose-built prisoner facilities, the nation has held over one million prisoners, many transported here from across the globe.

Detention facilities existed in almost every state, from large population centers to remote rural areas. Many such facilities have been preserved, while others have been destroyed by the country's expanding population."

Craig Munsart's Military Captives in the United States "seeks to fill a void, examining the history of domestically imprisoned POWs from the Revolutionary War through World War II." The study is divided into two parts: "Domestic Wars" and "International Wars." The former consists of the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Discussing both combatant and noncombatant prisoners, the Civil War section runs 36 pages and summarizes camp conditions and locations on both sides along with the parole and exchange systems. The international wars section addresses the Revolutionary War, quasi-war with France, War of 1812, Texas War of Independence, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and post-WW2 captive noncombatants.

The author describes himself as a visual learner and consumer of information, and in service of that the volume is chock full of maps and tables. Extensive lists of camp names and locations are collected in the appendix section, organized by conflict. Munsart's study "presents a history that has long been ignored, and one which has a legacy in many Americans' own backyard."

Review - "Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs" by Thomas & Matthews

[Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs by Paul A. Thomas & Matt M. Matthews (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2025). Softcover, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography. Pages main/total:131/160. ISBN:978-1-4671-5808-4. $24.99]

Between the implementation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the end of the Civil War, the borderland between Missouri and Kansas was transformed into a landscape of violence that all too often crossed accepted boundaries. The irregular warfare that that extended conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces spawned possessed a nature and intensity that few other bitterly contested regions rivaled, and perhaps none equaled.

Literature coverage of the most infamous episodes and crimes of the Civil War period in eastern Kansas and western Missouri still focuses most closely on the actions and individuals involved with the pro-Confederate side of the irregular war, but Union guerrillas operating out of Kansas and cutting their own paths of murder, arson, and plunder could be just as ruthless as their Missouri counterparts. As continues to be the case with those studying the Missouri guerrillas, gaps in the available source material and persistent myths passed down through generations plague those writers who want to find the truth behind Kansas's guerrillas. Freshly wading into this heavily disputatious historiographical ground are Paul A. Thomas and Matt M. Matthews, the authors of Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs.

With the "Bleeding Kansas" period already the subject of an expansive modern library of scholarly work, Thomas and Matthews's contextualization of the 1850s Border War that created the Kansas Jayhawker is understandably brief. For the uninitiated, they trace the historical origins of the term 'jayhawking,' which was for decades prior a fairly non-specific word used to describe acts of thievery. The terms Kansas "Jayhawker" and "Red Legs" are defined and differentiated, the latter being a subset group of the former and which came into use after the start of the Civil War. Heavily associated with looting and arson that could be indiscriminate in nature and not strongly averse to committing outright murder, Jayhawkers and Red Legs at various times drew censure from all sides, although participants themselves along with many of their home front backers seem to have proudly accepted those labels. It is the distinct purpose of the authors to avoid playing the heroes versus villains game that has plagued the Border War historiography, focusing instead on portraying these men "in a way that fairly highlights the diverse and often complex reasons that they did what they did" (pg. 18).

Thomas and Matthews frame their largely biographical study around a representative sample of six major leaders: James H. Lane, James Montgomery, Charles R. "Doc" Jennison, George H. Hoyt, Marshall L. Cleveland, and William S. Tough. Of the half-dozen, Lane and Montgomery are the two most towering figures. Content found in their chapters, which offer fine summaries of how the authors interpret their backgrounds, character, and Civil War-era activities, will be familiar to those who have read any of the multiple book-length biographies of each that have been published in recent times. Though he still lacks a full biographical treatment of his own (Stephen Starr's 1974 combined unit history and leader study Jennison's Jayhawkers remains the classic source), Jennison's level of notoriety in the areas of deadly violence and marauding was top-tier. While household names in the region at the time, the rest are fairly obscure today. Hoyt, a lawyer who insinuated himself into John Brown's legal defense, was close to Jennison and was the individual most closely associated with the Kansas Red Legs. As revealed in the book, Cleveland was little more than a criminal freebooter (earning the moniker "Phantom Horseman of the Prairie"), using the Civil War as a means for stealing horses and other forms of property. Tough was another Jayhawker who gained enough wartime notoriety to be given a nickname (the "Paladin of the Kansas Prairie") but remains little known among today's Civil War students.

A number of common threads course through the pages of all six biographical chapters. All of the half-dozen jayhawking figures featured in the study were ostensibly antislavery in disposition. Each was situated somewhere on a spectrum between the ideological true believer (ex. Montgomery and Hoyt) and the most cynical brand of 'practical' abolitionist (ex. Cleveland and Tough). Jennison's abolitionist credentials are in dispute, and the authors note that his own wife denied that he marched to the abolitionist tune. Although the chapter devoted to James Montgomery duly recounts those of his actions that would be considered war crimes, it also generously describes him as the only truly "righteous" man in the bunch.

Although freeing Missouri slaves, regardless of slaveholder loyalties, was a major objective of Jayhawker raids, it was also the case that all the men that Thomas and Matthews profile in their book were involved in very serious episodes of arson and property crimes, the latter even to the extent of robbing banks. Personal motivations ranged among inflicting 'righteous' punishment on proslavery persons to making the war pay for itself to mere cynical personal gain, with the last far too often being primary. With Missourians of all political stripes commonly deemed to be inveterate enemies, many Kansans considered cross-border plunder and robbery justified, and many Jayhawkers used Civil War conflict to amass significant wealth for themselves and their closest associates.

To varying degrees, all of these men also played a role in the worst of all war crimes, the killing of prisoners and civilians. None of the six shied away from deadly violence, and, reading the book, one gains the strong sense that psychological and emotional instability was not uncommon. In recounting specific events, the authors do address conflicting reports. One prominent example involves allegations that emerged from the sacking of Osceola in September 1861. Many secondary sources in print and on the web today maintain that nine prisoners were executed, but Thomas and Matthews have determined that the best evidence points toward period sources mistakenly conflating what happened at Osceola with prisoner killings that did occur days earlier at Morristown.

The book also makes clear that Kansas Jayhawkers and Red Legs proved capable of moving back and forth between the irregular and conventional spheres of warfare, with some of the profiled individuals effectively leading both types of units at some time during their Civil War careers. That crossover led to frequent clashes between them and their military superiors who took a dim view of Jayhawker breaches in military discipline and behavior toward enemy civilians. Nevertheless, as the book shows, arrested Jayhawkers and Red Legs who possessed valuable knowledge and experience often escaped punishment by convincing their accusers of their unique usefulness as scouts and gatherers of intelligence.

It is also unsurprisingly the case that politics was keenly involved in Kansas's notoriously factional relations between prominent Jayhawkers and high-level politicians as well as within the Jayhawker leadership. Results from such political maneuvering often proved complicated, even contradictory. For example, the authors make clear that they could find no compelling evidence to support the common view that Lane and Jennison were friends. Instead, they determine the pair to have been "bitter enemies" (pg. 40). Yet the authors also reveal elsewhere in the book that Lane co-sponsored, with Kansas's other U.S. senator, a petition that strongly urged President Lincoln to appoint Jennison a brigadier general at the very moment the war's most infamous Jayhawker was suffering in official disgrace.

Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas makes a hefty contribution to our understanding of those Civil War Kansas leaders who were directly involved in the irregular conflict fought on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border. Sweeping away simplistic portrayals and partisan mythologizing, Paul Thomas and Matt Matthews's collection of Kansas Jayhawker leadership biographies reveals, using the best available evidence and reasoned conjecture, not only who those men were as individuals but how each was situated, relative to each other, within common themes associated with Jayhawker motivations, actions, and justifications of those actions. In that way, readers gain vital insights into an ideological conflict that attracted and produced, as the authors maintain, "both good and bad men who did good and bad things" (pg. 18).

Booknotes: The Lower Battlefield of Antietam

New Arrival:

• The Lower Battlefield of Antietam: The Forgotten Front of America's Bloodiest Day by Robert M. Dunkerly (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2025).

The action around Burnside's Bridge and A.P. Hill's Light Division saving the day for Lee's army are pretty iconic episodes in the Battle of Antietam, so collectively labeling those parts of the battlefield a "forgotten front" is almost surely just a way to draw a line between the differences in general understanding between events in those sectors and the more popular lore surrounding "The Cornfield," the West Woods, and "Bloody Lane."

From the description: "While Antietam remains one the most famous engagements of the Civil War, history largely overlooks the lower end of the battlefield. 

Only here did the Confederates use Antietam Creek as a barrier, so it was the only place where Union troops had to force their way across. Here the Union army waged its final attack, and the Confederates launched their last counterattack led by A.P. Hill’s division. It might as well have been a different battle entirely from the more famed northern field."

More: "Using dozens of journals, diaries, newspaper accounts and reports," Robert Dunkerly's The Lower Battlefield of Antietam: The Forgotten Front of America's Bloodiest Day "examines the action in detail and explores the gradual preservation of this oft-neglected portion of America’s bloodiest battle." Firsthand perspectives drawn from sources referenced above populate every page of Dunkerly's narrative. Quite a large number of well-framed modern photographs provide visual reinforcement of notable landmarks and vistas described in the text. Additionally, a half-dozen detailed tactical maps, along with a bunch of archival sketches, supplement the action. It's a very attractive package.

Review - "The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation" by John Bicknell

[The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation by John Bicknell (Stackpole Books, 2025). Hardcover, 2 maps, photo gallery, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:v,290/372. ISBN:978-0-8117-7665-3. $32.95]

When it came to what was to be expected from those individuals who were the most politically motivated appointments to the Union Army's high command, public confidence in John Charles Fremont's ability to produce battlefield victories ranked at or near the top. Though his Mexican War career was controversial and he was recognized much more for frontier exploration than organized fighting capacity, the famous "Pathfinder of the West" entered the American Civil War with a reputation that paid off with a lofty appointment as one of the Union Army's highest ranking major generals. As author John Bicknell argues in The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation, while battlefield glory in the Civil War entirely escaped Fremont, his legacy as an early and leading proponent of military emancipation was unparalleled. In Bicknell's estimation, Fremont, much more so than David Hunter, Benjamin Butler, or any other of the slate of prominent Union generals who targeted slavery early on, deserves to be remembered by history as the "military embodiment" of emancipation.

As Bicknell explains, Fremont did not plan to immediately go into military service. At the beginning of the conflict he was in Europe, where he facilitated significant arms purchases for Union forces. Amid the general rush and confusion among competing buyers, along with no little amount of trans-Atlantic miscommunication, Fremont's financial dealings were often, perhaps unavoidably, conducted in irregular fashion. Similarly haphazard procurement procedures led to accusations of waste and fraud throughout Fremont's subsequent tenure in Missouri as commander of the Department of the West. Much of the opprobrium was directed toward Justus McKinstry, Fremont's chief quartermaster, whose actions were given wide latitude by his superior. The author's own assessment of the accusations of official malfeasance in Missouri, and how much blame Fremont himself earned, is judicious in its approach. Taking the measure of administrative disorder on Fremont's end along with the likelihood that unofficial shortcuts, sketchy or not, were necessary to address crisis in the face of broad neglect from distant Washington, Bicknell's 'plenty of blame to go around' handling of the matter has merit.

It was during his abbreviated tenure at the head of the Department of the West that Fremont experienced the political meatgrinder that would plague every top commander in Missouri. As was the case with Nathaniel Lyon and William Harney before him, practically everything in Missouri ran through the very powerful Blair family. Like Lyon, but unlike Harney, Fremont, at least initially, had the support of the politically conservative but uncompromisingly pro-Union Blairs, who were basically the long arm of Lincoln in state and departmental affairs. Bicknell traces how the relationship mutually soured, a situation exacerbated by Fremont arresting serving officer Frank Blair. As the author keenly observes, it also didn't help Fremont's standing that key emissaries from Washington who were sent to Missouri to report on conditions there were far from impartial in their investigations and submitted slanted reports hostile to Fremont. Of course, any discussion of the home, military, and political life of John C. Fremont has to include his close partner in all of it, wife Jessie Benton Fremont. Their package-deal relationship has been explored at length in many publications, and this study ably traces the many ways in which Jessie's unflagging support and personal interventions aided, and at times hindered, her husband's Civil War-period military and political activities.

Among the growing list of ways in which the general aggravated his civilian masters, it was Fremont's penchant for striking out on his own path, even to the point of insubordination, that got him into the most amount of hot water with the Lincoln administration. Fremont is perhaps most remembered by Civil War students for his 1861 declaration of martial law in Missouri that included a revolutionary order forever freeing all slaves held by those in rebellion. While the order was immediately and fulsomely praised by many in the North, Lincoln, caught off guard and deeming such a weighty political decision the exclusive domain of the chief executive, immediately rescinded the emancipation measure. Fremont's refusal to revise his proclamation, forcing Lincoln to do it himself, was the strongest signal that his tenure in Missouri would likely be short. That impolitic reaction, combined with his failure to offer much relief to the besieged defenders of Lexington in September, placed Fremont's remaining military freedom of action in Missouri on a very short leash. His ponderous fall campaign into southwest Missouri achieved nothing of great note (partially due to persistent logistical limitations), and Fremont was finally relieved altogether on November 2, 1861, ending a tumultuous 100 days in command.

The book is clearly not intended to be a detailed examination of Fremont's generalship, providing only big-picture narratives of his operations and no tactical-level discussion of his battles. Sympathetic to Fremont's 1861-62 department commands occupying logistical backwaters, the author largely defends the general's operational conduct as reasonable when faced with the supply, transportation, and environmental challenges presented to him at the time. Bicknell agrees with Jeffrey Patrick, one of the most astute students of the 1861 campaigns in Missouri, that Fremont did not 'abandon' Lyon in the Missouri interior as much as he judged (correctly, in their estimation) securing the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to be the department's overriding strategic priority. As Mountain Department commander, Fremont's chief generalship woes, according to Bicknell, were his lack of enterprise and willingness to countenance calculated risks necessary to reap greater rewards. Fremont was, unlike Grant, not one of those commanders who could accept the limits he was presented with and simply do the very best with what he had in terms of men, equipment, and supplies. While outlining where he deems Fremont ill-used by the Lincoln administration and by history, the author nevertheless concludes that there's no evidence to support belief that Fremont was competent to lead a major army in the field.

There are a few niggles to bring up in the Missouri coverage, mainly in the area of the author's terminology choices. For example, Bicknell improperly calls the Missouri State Guard the Missouri "Home Guard," and he applies the "conditional" unionist brush to a large group of steadfast loyalists (Lincoln cabinet secretary Edward Bates being the most prominent among them) who would be more appropriately represented with the term "conservative" unionists.

Upon Fremont's departure from active service in mid-1862 after refusing a subordinate position in John Pope's Army of Virginia, he quickly fades from view in most general histories of the war, only to briefly reemerge during the nomination process of the 1864 presidential election season. However, Bicknell's more focused study offers a great deal of insight into Fremont's remaining military and political aspirations during this lesser-known gap period. His research reveals that Fremont maintained a wide base of support in the North, and not just among radicals, for both further command opportunities and high political office. On the military legacy side of things, Bicknell feels that Fremont made a major error in declining to pursue a leading role in organizing and commanding black troops. His reasonable supposition is that Fremont's wide popularity combined with his earnest regard for black freedom and advancement made returning to the war at the head of black troops his best remaining opportunity for producing a major military contribution to the Union war effort.

In his earlier study of the 1856 presidential election, Bicknell argued that Fremont's political campaign, though unsuccessful, paved the way for Lincoln's victory in 1860. That "pathfinder" theme connecting Fremont and Lincoln continues in this study. Fremont's next great trailblazing role, this time in military emancipation and application of hard war (with the conciliatory Lincoln trailing behind Fremont in follower status), is a principal part of Bicknell's narrative and analysis. Though the strength and implications of that line of thinking, as presented in the book, certainly possesses numerous elements of truth, it is also the case that that viewpoint benefits very heavily from the advantages of assessing history through the lens of hindsight. It is easy to see now that Lincoln's confidence in southern unionism and concerns over Kentucky's continued loyalty were overblown. However, given what was known and what was unknown at the time, one can argue that Lincoln's calculated caution was well justified, or at the very least not worthy of moral disdain to the degree exhibited by the abolitionists of the time. In comparison to those contemporary critics, the author is more nuanced in his criticisms of Lincoln's reticence.

In 1864, Fremont made it abundantly clear that his third-party presidential candidacy was primarily aimed at defeating Lincoln's chances at a second term. He told all who would listen that he would gladly drop out of the race once someone with better radical credentials than Lincoln received the Republican nomination. However, once he saw the writing on the wall that Lincoln was staying firmly in the race and retained broad-based support, Fremont, to his credit, stepped down rather than risk being the cause behind losing the White House to the Democrats in a three-way contest. He also wanted it made known that his withdrawal was unconditional, which caused some anxiety among the backroom deal makers but did not end up derailing anti-radical Montgomery Blair's exit from Lincoln's cabinet.

As revealed in John Bicknell's The Pathfinder and the President, the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and John C. Fremont was never a close one and quickly dissolved into mutual antipathy. Close reading of Bicknell's study essentially erases any thought that the pair's partnership could have been more productive had just a few things gone differently. The two men were just too far apart in personality and political disposition, and Fremont lacked the military ability to make better use of the high command opportunities that came his way. The modern Civil War literature has produced numerous fine studies of the many complications involved in managing a coalition war effort of pro-Union radicals and conservatives, and Bicknell's study of the Fremont-Lincoln relationship also offers readers another set of keen insights into the inseparability of political considerations from military affairs amid such a conflict. While Fremont was in many ways his own worst enemy when it came to antagonizing the president, he was also the target of powerful forces arrayed against his radical political alignment. The degree to which Fremont deserves credit for leading a cautious President Lincoln along the path toward military emancipation remains open to further debate, and, as the author maintains, the matter also raises intriguing questions in regard to how much the war might have been shortened (if at all) had Lincoln sustained Fremont's emancipation edict in Missouri, but Bicknell's arguments on both counts are a force to be reckoned with among the doubters. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: Glorious Courage

New Arrival:

• Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Major John Pelham had numerous things going for him on his path to legendary status among Civil War artillerymen. In Pelham, youth and high bravery were complemented with great leadership and competence, the combination drawing the personal attention and approbation of Lee himself. He was the Confederate Army's premier handler of horse artillery, and in commanding the long arm of Jeb Stuart's cavalry there was never a lack of visibility. Being mortally wounded in battle during the peak period of the Army of Northern Virginia's dominance of the eastern theater (in a reckless charge at Kelly's Ford in March 1863) further cemented Pelham's place among the Confederacy's most celebrated military martyrs.

From the description: "“It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!” So declared Confederate General Robert E. Lee on December 13, 1862, during the battle of Fredericksburg as he watched Major John Pelham fight at least five Union batteries with just one lone gun. The dashing and handsome 24-year-old Alabama officer earned the compliments and admiration of his men, the war gods of Virginia (Lee, Jackson, and Stuart), and Southern society—all while helping transform the concept of horse artillery on Civil War battlefields across Virginia and Maryland."

Sarah Kay Bierle's Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War, part of the Emerging Civil War series, "reconsiders Pelham’s extraordinary, if short, life." Her biography explores his battlefield greatness as well as his flaws. The resulting portrait frames Pelham's "place in history as he lived it, not varnished with the perspectives shoved upon him by later generations."

The book is a cradle to grave biography that covers Pelham's early life, his West Point education, his Civil War activities, and his historical memory. As we've come to expect from ECW titles in general, copious photographs and other illustrations pack the volume along with eight maps tracing Pelham's campaign and battlefield exploits. Other aspects of Pelham's life and Civil War career, such as his relationships with women, his parallels with G.A. Custer, and the CVBT's preservation efforts at "Pelham's Corner" (Fredericksburg), are explored in the appendix section.

Booknotes: Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson

New Arrival:

• Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson: The Twenty One Critical Decisions that Defined the Battles by Hank Koopman [(Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series) U Tenn Press, 2025].

From the description: "The Battles of Forts Henry and Donelson took place in February of 1862 and were early indicators of the success the US would have in the Civil War’s Western Theater. Due to Kentucky’s neutrality at the time, Brig. Gen. Daniel S. Donelson was instructed to find suitable sites for fortification along the Tennessee River but just inside the state boundaries of Tennessee. Forts Henry and Donelson were constructed in the summer of 1861 and were quickly identified by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as strategic fortifications that, if conquered, would open the Federal Army’s path to Alabama and Mississippi. Fort Henry fell to Federal control on February 6, 1862, and Fort Donelson fell six days later. With the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers now open to Federal gunboats, Grant and his army would head southwest to Memphis and on to Vicksburg."

This was one of those Civil War campaigns in which the actions of smaller forces produced enormous strategic consequences. While it may not have been, as Kendall Gott maintains, "Where the South Lost the War," there is no denying that the twin Union victories at Henry and Donelson were unmitigated disasters for Confederate fortunes. It also firmly placed the careers of two key generals of the war, Confederate western department commander Albert Sidney Johnston and Union army commander U.S. Grant, on opposite trajectories that were cemented conclusively at Shiloh. That things might have turned out differently at key moments during the campaign makes Henry-Donelson a strong candidate for an interesting addition to University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series.

More from the description: Hank Koopman's Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson: The Twenty One Critical Decisions that Defined the Battles "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Hank Koopman hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the conflict to provide a blueprint of the Battles of Forts Henry and Donelson at their tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened."

Of added interest is the presence of a new voice in the series, this being Koopman's first contribution. I look forward to delving into his interpretation of the campaign's key moments and how well he works within the well-established structure of the series.

Coming Soon (June '25 Edition)

Scheduled for JUN 2025¹:
• Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle.
• Reckless in their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War by Leigh Goggin.
• Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster: The Untold Story of the Abolitionist Southern Belle Who Helped Win the Civil War by Gerri Willis.
• The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign by Nese & Harding.
• Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York by Akela Reason.
• American Civil War Amphibious Tactics by Ron Field.
• West Virginia's War: The Civil War in Documents by William Kerrigan.
• The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches, and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves ed. by Stephen Davis.
• The Civil War by Jeremy Black.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's books, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Upcoming Honey Springs battle study

Advance notice of anthropologist/archaeologist William Lees's Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield (Sept '25) recently popped up. Needless to say, my interest was immediately piqued.

Readers who have been following this site over its nearly two decades of existence know what types of subject matter grab me most, and this one checks a lot of boxes for me. First off, the long-awaited return of Texas A&M University Press to a Civil War topic is worthy of celebration. Check. An original contribution to Trans-Mississippi theater military history (which has been languishing in recent years). Check. First book-length study of one of the most significant battles fought in Indian Territory. Check. Battlefield archaeology being a central component of the study. Check. All nice. I can hardly wait to get my hands on a copy of it.

Booknotes: Late to the Fight

New Arrival:

• Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg by Alexandre F. Caillot (LSU Press, 2025).

From the description: In Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg, historian Alexandre Caillot "explores the combat performance of the Union soldiers who filled newly raised regiments that fought through the Civil War’s final year. Historians have typically regarded these late enlistees as substandard to those who signed on at the war’s start. Using the experiences of the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiments to assess the record of late-arriving soldiers under fire, Caillot shows that these forgotten boys in blue left behind a record of valor and sacrifice essential to achieving the destruction of the Confederacy."

Focusing on late-war volunteer units that fought in the eastern theater, this looks like a strong companion work to pair with Edwin Rutan's excellent High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor (2024). In addition to the more specific insights offered through concentrating one's efforts on only two regiments, it'll be interesting to compare how Caillot defines and assesses combat performance/effectiveness with how Rutan did so in his broader examination.

So why the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine? According to the introduction, they were selected because both regiments were conventional infantry, their ranks were filled with new enlistees, no conscripts served in either, and they shared the same heavy combat record. With both assigned to the Second Brigade of the Ninth Corps's Second Division, they fought in the same eight battles that were part of the 1864-65 Overland and Richmond-Petersburg campaigns. Thus, the author feels that the two regiments were "ideal choices for a comparative study of combat performance because of their similar experiences" (pg. 5).

Booknotes: Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas

New Arrival:

• Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs by Paul A. Thomas & Matt M. Matthews (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2025).

From the description: "Both before and during the American Civil War, ragtag groups of Kansas militants patrolled the Kansas-Missouri border. Known as “Jayhawkers” and later “Red Legs,” they raided anyone they believed sympathetic to secession. For many in the state, these irregular warriors were heroes fighting for a Free Kansas and preservation of the Union; for their victims, these men were little more than opportunistic thieves."

The pro-Union/antislavery irregulars that operated along the Missouri-Kansas borderland have long been overshadowed by their pro-Confederate counterparts, especially Quantrill's raiders and lieutenants. That has changed a great deal in recent years, prominently through with a pair of James Lane biographies from the early 2000s, a 2009 history of the Lane Brigade, and, most recently, two James Montgomery biographies released in 2022 and 2023. In addition to revisiting the lives and Civil War careers those two towering Border War figures, Paul Thomas and Matt Matthews's Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs offers mini-biographies of four other leading individuals: Charles "Doc" Jennison, George Hoyt, Marshall Cleveland, and William Tough (the latter pair probably the least commonly recognized among the wider Civil War readership).

History has presented the Border War militants of both sides in a variety of ways that have changed over time. In their own words, Thomas and Matthews "have consciously chosen to neither gloss over nor exaggerate" the more infamous actions of the Kansas Jayhawkers. Instead, they "have attempted to describe these men in a way that fairly highlights the diverse and often complex reasons they did what they did." Their book might be summarized as "the story of both good and bad men who did good and bad things" (pg. 18).

Review - "The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864" by Eric Wittenberg

[The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864 by Eric J. Wittenberg (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 5 maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:ix,127/173. ISBN:978-1-61121-619-6. $29.95]

After the Dix-Hill exchange cartel dissolved amid mutual recriminations and irresolvable differences, the prisoner of war camps of both sides, which were unprepared for that eventuality, rapidly filled to overcrowding. Some of the worst conditions on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line were found at Point Lookout, Maryland, which held captive roughly 15,000 Confederates by the summer of 1864. If there was a chance that those prisoners could somehow be freed and reintroduced into the depleted ranks of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, any risks involved in the process would be well worth it. Timed to coincide with, and branch off from, Confederate general Jubal Early's raid on Washington by way of the lower Shenandoah Valley, just such a daring scheme was put into play by Confederate authorities. Its history is recounted in Eric Wittenberg's The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864.

With Point Lookout's military prison and hospital complex separated from Confederate lines by a wide body of water, the camp was to be liberated through the tandem efforts of cavalry raiders moving down the peninsula from above and an amphibious force landing directly at the point from below. Unfortunately for its Confederate planners, all-important operational secrecy was lost right off the bat. With public discussion of the naval raid (which would have been led by one of the Confederate Navy's most competent and highly respected officers, John Taylor Wood) overheard on city streets, the waterborne component was abruptly cancelled. Though doing so basically wrecked the entire plan, cancellation was necessary given U.S. naval supremacy in the Chesapeake and all along the coastal approaches to the bay.

The ground component of the operation, however, went ahead as planned. On July 9, Confederate Brigadier General, and Marylander himself, Bradley Johnson left the main body of Early's army at Frederick and initiated his part of the Point Lookout operation. Ranging in a wide arc across central Maryland and zig-zagging down toward Washington (and, along the way, burning the country home of Maryland Governor Augustus Bradford in retaliation for Union general David Hunter's firing of Virginia Governor John Letcher's Lexington house), Johnson slipped past Washington to the northeast and continued on toward his goal. The expedition was operating under a very tight timetable (made even more unyielding by a two-day delay in receipt of orders for its launch), however, and Johnson was forced to turn back one-hundred miles from the POW camp. How much closer he might have gotten had all extraneous activities been ruthlessly excised is difficult to assess.

On the other hand, while Johnson was ordered back well before reaching his destination, Major Harry Gilmor's side raid (July 10-14), aimed toward threatening Baltimore, disrupting its rail and telegraph communications with the North, and destroying key bridges, achieved quite a bit for its size (only 150 troopers were assigned to it). Fanning out north of Baltimore, Gilmor applied the torch to what infrastructure he could and caused the enemy general consternation. A particularly interesting episode involved his capture of William B. Franklin, one of the Union Army's highest ranking generals. The book's account of that event, along with the hobbled officer's escape and trek to restored freedom, is an engrossing tale told well. While the damage inflicted by Gilmor's men was restored quickly, the raid went about as well as could be expected, and the author offers high praise for what was accomplished by so few and at comparative negligible loss.

Civil War mounted operations and military biography are Wittenberg's forte, and this slim volume exhibits all the best characteristics of the author's previous works. The background and wider context of the raid are fully explained, and the operations themselves revealed to the reader in a blow-by-blow fashion that makes for a reading experience that is both engaging and easy to follow. The steadily mounting tension and fatigue that went hand in hand with long-range cavalry raiding ooze out of every paragraph, as do the many possible dangers that lurked around every crossroads and fence corner. The volume's fine collection of maps further enhance reader knowledge and understanding of the paths of Johnson and Gilmor's raiders.

The author's lucid descriptive account of the Johnson-Gilmor raid is accompanied by his equally typical clear-eyed analysis and sound conclusions. In line with the general consensus (Jack Shairer's 2008 book Lee’s Bold Plan for Point Lookout is likely the only study to insist that the plan should have succeeded), it is Wittenberg's studied viewpoint that the original plan clearly constituted an act of extreme desperation. As Wittenberg explains, the combined land and seaborne operation was already highly unlikely to accomplish its designed goal of freeing the prisoners en masse. Dropping the naval component then rendered the meeting of that goal nearly impossible, with the slashed timetable finally excluding even reaching Point Lookout from the realm of possibility. While the ultimate objective may have been beyond reach from the start, as Wittenberg maintains, the mounted raid as it unfolded was "bold and well-executed" (pg. 126), a credit to the leadership abilities of both Johnson and Gilmor.

Material found in the appendix section includes an order of battle, insights into equine care during raiding operations, brief discussions of Point Lookout POW burials and the state of the site today, and a new look into the "strange case" of Maryland Agricultural College president Henry Onderdonk's actions during the raiders' visit to his campus. Another appendix examines the Point Lookout operation in the context of two other long-range raids aimed toward freeing prisoners, the piece focusing in particular on shared reasons as to why they failed.

With the publication of Eric Wittenberg's The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864, the Savas Beatie Battles & Leaders series now sits at four volumes. Those campaigns, battles, and raids that can be fully addressed through mid-size publications seem to be primary targets for the series, and this volume fits very well within that range. With the quality already displayed, future titles should be regarded with eager anticipation.

************************** Finally, on a more personal note, I am sure I join everyone in wishing Eric the best on his long road to recovery from a recent series of serious health setbacks. According to what I've read, it's been a bumpy road filled with ups and downs, and here's to a future filled with much more of the former and much less of the latter.

Booknotes: The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign

New Arrival:

• The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign by John M. Nese & Jeffrey J. Harding (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2025).

Among the many unappealing aspects of Civil War soldiering, horrific wounding on the battlefield and intense suffering from any number of camp diseases without the benefits of modern medicine tend to send shivers down the spines of today's readers. However, one of the things that gets me most is the prospect of marching twenty miles or more for any number of days in a row during extremely hot summers amid choking humidity and dust, all the while enduring a thick woolen uniform, little protection from the sun, poor hydration, and iffy footwear. The other side of the equation, having to navigate days of seemingly endless driving rain and seas of mud, offered challenges of their own. Throw in some chronic diarrhea and the fact that you have to fight a major battle at the tail end of all that, and you gain nothing but respect for the physical and psychological hardiness of our Civil War forebears. Such weather effects and human endurance tests are on full display in John Nese and Jeffrey Harding's The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign.

The 1863 Gettysburg Campaign has been viewed from a variety of perspectives, but while we all know that heat and other elements of weather played a major role in the soldier experience there hasn't been a full-length volume specifically dedicated to the subject until now (I could be wrong about that, but no others immediately come to mind).

From the description: "As the nation’s future hung in the balance, the Weather Gods delivered a wrath of fury on Union and Confederate forces throughout the Gettysburg Campaign. First, record-breaking heat and humidity wore down the warring armies during ungodly forced marches. Next, relentless storms plagued the soldiers with resultant muddy slogs on nearly impassable roads. As the armies met in mortal combat, soul-crushing heat turned the bucolic fields of Gettysburg into a sanguinary and barren expanse. Finally, torrential rains haunted the Confederate retreat and narrow escape across a swollen Potomac River."

In The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign, meteorologist Nese and independent scholar/licensed GNMP battlefield guide Harding "present firsthand accounts, harrowing narratives and groundbreaking meteorological research that reshapes how we view the Civil War’s Gettysburg Campaign." Background material includes some introductory-level weather science discussion as well as information as to where Civil War-period weather data was recorded and compiled. How weather affected the campaign on a day by day basis is then presented and analyzed through narrative text heavily augmented with primary source excerpts, that writing in turn supported by copious numbers of combat maps, weather maps, data tables, photos, and other illustrations.

This study looks to be a real treat for readers on a constant search for those rarities that offer fresh lenses through which our previous understanding of Civil War military campaigns can be materially enhanced and/or altered.

Booknotes: Sisterhood of the Lost Cause

New Arrival:

• Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South by Jennifer Lynn Gross (LSU Press, 2025).

With over a quarter of all Confederate combatants losing their lives during the Civil War, postwar southern society was left with a lot of widows. Even so, according to historian Jennifer Lynn Gross, this "mass widowhood" has been "studied very little by scholars" (pg. 12). Gross's Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South "helps rectify that historical omission by supplying a sweeping analysis of women whose husbands perished in the war."

The two chapters of Part I center on exploring the "myriad of experiences of Confederate widowhood for the widows themselves, with the primary focus on women who lost their husbands during the war or shortly thereafter because of it." This "includes a focus on how widows grieved and dealt with the emotional pain caused by their loss." The "practical realities" of these women's unexpected and undesired new role in traditional southern society, including the many financial challenges involved with it, are also discussed (pg. 11).

Part II, in three chapters, "shifts attention outward to how other southerners perceived Confederate widows and their plight." According to Gross, white southern society enshrined these women as angels of the Lost Cause "rhetorically through poetry, literature, and memorial activities; and practically through the benevolence of postwar Confederate associations and the distribution of pensions." Their sheer numbers as well as their practical and symbolic significance meant that these widows would play a key role in reconstructing southern society, and closely studying them "necessarily reconfigures how historians have understood the postbellum period" (pp. 11-12).

Booknotes: Lincoln's Assassination

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Assassination by Edward Steers, Jr. (SIU Press, 2025).

Reader and writer interest in many important Civil War-period topics tends to wax and wane. While these days we don't hear much about new books or new information related to the Lincoln assassination (or at least it seems that way to me), there was certainly a lot of that going on around the time that Edward Steers's popular and influential study Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln was first published back in 2001. In 2014, Steers's Lincoln's Assassination was published as part of SIU Press's Concise Lincoln Library series, and today (or rather last month) marks the release of that same title in paperback format.

Steers's work addresses numerous myths and controversies surrounding the assassination, and he's always been a leading opponent of those who have fought to drum up sympathy for Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd. From the description: "Over time, the traditional story of the assassination has become littered with myths, from the innocence of Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd to John Wilkes Booth’s escape to Oklahoma or India, where he died by suicide several years later. In this succinct volume, Edward Steers, Jr. sets the record straight, expertly analyzing the historical evidence to explain Lincoln’s assassination."

The author has also resolutely rejected some of the more popular conspiracy theories that have developed over time. "As Steers explains, public perception about Lincoln’s death has been shaped by limited but popular histories that assert, alternately, that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton engineered the assassination or that John Wilkes Booth was a mad actor fueled by delusional revenge. In his detailed chronicle of the planning and execution of Booth’s plot, Steers demonstrates that neither Stanton nor anyone else in Lincoln’s sphere of political confidants participated in Lincoln’s death, and Booth remained a fully rational person whose original plan to capture Lincoln was both reasonable and capable of success." Lincoln's Assassination again "implicates both Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd, as well as other conspirators, clarifying their parts in the scheme."

This volume's intended audience is "anyone seeking a straightforward, authoritative analysis of one of the most dramatic events in American history."