Review - "Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA" by McCaslin & Stewart

[Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA by Richard B. McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart (Texas State Historical Association, 2025). Paperback, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,119/189. ISBN:978-1-62511-090-9. $29.95]

While upwards of 70,000 men joined Confederate forces during the Civil War, an estimated 2,000 Texans volunteered instead to serve in the Union Army, the majority of those enlisting in the First and Second Texas Cavalry (U.S.). For a variety of reasons, both regiments struggled mightily to fill their ranks to regulation strength, and the First only reached its full complement after the Second was merged into it in September 1864. Though some of its activities are fairly well documented within a number of modern campaign studies, the First Texas Cavalry still lacks a dedicated regimental history of its own. Among prominent Texas Unionist leaders, Edmund J. Davis (the First's colonel and later a brigadier general) is the subject of a 2010 biography by Carl Moneyhon. Another general officer, Andrew Jackson Hamilton, was appointed military governor of Texas by President Lincoln. Authored by John Waller, Hamilton's only book-length biography was published way back in 1968 by Texas Western Press. Another noteworthy Texas Unionist military officer and political figure is Francis Asbury Vaughan. His life, Civil War service, and postwar political career are explored in Richard McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart's biography titled Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA.

The book opens with discussion of Vaughan's early life, and the migratory movements of his extended family are also surveyed, the common emphasis being on southern geographical and cultural roots. When the Civil War broke out, everything in Francis Vaughan's family background suggests that Confederate service was most likely to be in his immediate future, but that did not turn out to be the case. A record of antebellum voting patterns is absent (and it is not revealed in the book, if such information exists, who Francis voted for in the 1860 presidential election), but the slaveholding Vaughan family had a kinship network located across multiple southern states. As historian Charles Grear explains in his book Why Texans Fought in the Civil War (2010), it was that kind of extended geographical family network that bound a great many Texans to the Confederate movement and inspired them to defend not only Texas but other states on the other side of the Mississippi. Most pertinent to Francis were the twenty-one brothers and cousins spread between Texas and Mississippi who joined either state or Confederate units. According to the authors, the Texas branch seemed more lukewarm toward the Confederacy than the family's Mississippi branch, but Francis was the only open Unionist among them. Nevertheless, in regard to depth of commitment, excellent recent work from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot on late-war Union recruits usefully reminds us to exercise caution before making too many assumptions about the loyalties and motives of those who weren't early-war volunteers, and the same might be true for the other side. Echoing the views of a great many fellow Southern Unionists, Francis himself described joining the Union Army as a means to "defend our famlys and our homes & our country from the roothless hands of the Rebels who would sink the Country with the honest part of the Community to the deps of Pardision for the sake of establishing an Aristocratic government" (pg. 141).

Vaughan's early-war experiences consisted of a dangerous month-long (July 1862) journey across South Texas and northern Mexico, beginning at his home in Prairie Lea (northeast of Seguin) and ending at Matamoros, his arrival at the Mexican port preparatory to a voyage across the Gulf to New Orleans. Arriving in Union-occupied New Orleans, Vaughan enlisted in the First Texas Cavalry, drilling with the new regiment and getting promoted to Second Lieutenant. All of this is detailed in Vaughan's own account as written in his travel 'memorandum,' which was transcribed from the original document by Stewart and reproduced in this volume's appendix section for readers to peruse. Vaughan's escape from Confederate patrols and his travel group's harrowing experiences in Mexico (where their reception by local authorities was at all times uncertain and potentially life-threatening) are the lengthiest, and arguably most colorful and interesting, part of Vaughan's memorandum. Unfortunately for us, Vaughan's account abruptly ends with his regimental detachment's approach to Galveston by sea in January 1863, everyone onboard initial unaware that the city had been recaptured by the Confederates on New Year's Day. While Vaughan's wartime memorandum comes to a frustratingly early end, it is a precious document given the rarity of surviving firsthand accounts of any kind from Texas Unionists.

Other sources are brought on board to assist with the volume's chapter-length summary of the remaining war service of Vaughan and his regiment in Louisiana and Texas. Subsequent to the aborted landing at Galveston, members of the First participated in Louisiana operations against Camp Moore and other sites supporting the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson. The regiment also joined other Union forces for the Bayou Teche operation, Sabine Pass, the Fall 1863 Texas Overland Expedition, and Nathaniel Banks's Rio Grande Expedition. During the summer of 1864, the First was consolidated with the Second regiment, and Vaughan was promoted to captain. Remaining active service was largely spent conducting raids in Louisiana and Mississippi before being mustered out in November 1865 while on occupation duty in their home state. It is beyond the scope of McCaslin and Stewart's book to provide more than a brief overview of the First Texas Cavalry's activities, but the quality and extent of that service, along with status as the war's premier Texas Unionist military unit, mark the First as being sorely in need of a full regimental history.

The final two chapters trace Vaughan's postwar years, from Reconstruction through his 1896 passing. Those sections, plus the Afterword, compile an abundance of information regarding Vaughan's family relationships and activities of his descendants. They also fully explore Vaughan's postwar political engagement. For more than two decades, Vaughan was active in Republican Party politics. In addition to being a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, he held elective offices on a local level and secured a number of federal patronage appointments. He was also a lawyer and businessman. As noted in the book, trust and personal regard for Vaughan among his fellow Texans crossed party lines. This is evidenced by his cultivation of business partnerships with ex-Confederates and the fact that, after his death, newspapers across the political spectrum praised Vaughan's character in their eulogies.

With just a few individuals among the Civil War's Texas Unionist military and political leadership grabbing the lion's share of attention, this new biography is a breath of fresh air. While not holding the same lofty military rank or political clout of an Edmund Davis or Andrew Jackson Hamilton, Francis Asbury Vaughan, as documented in the pages of McCaslin and Stewart's Texan in Blue, nevertheless managed to establish a Texas historical footprint significant in its own right.

Booknotes: Between Worlds

New Arrival:

• Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South by Eric C. Smith (LSU Press, 2026).

From the description: "John A. Broadus (1827–95) was a highly influential Southern Baptist leader, preacher, scholar, and educator during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He cofounded the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which today is among the largest seminaries in the world." Eric's Smith's Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South is billed as "the first scholarly biography of Broadus." It "joins recent historical scholarship in reevaluating Broadus’s legacy."

One chapter covers the Civil War years, the Confederate experiment being something that Broadus ardently supported. Physical limitations kept Broadus from being able to travel with the Army of Northern Virginia on a sustained basis as an official chaplain. Nevertheless, he did what he could to provide spiritual support to the army. At the behest of others, he authored a religious pamphlet aimed toward upholding soldier morals whilst in the service and was a camp minister serving Lee's army on a number of occasions, his preaching contributing to the religious revivals of 1863-64 that swept through the army and helped sustain its fighting morale.

More from the description: "A prominent southerner before and after the Civil War, Broadus actively shaped his region during the shift from the Old South to the New." A major element of Broadus's legacy was his enduring impact on the act and manner of preaching itself, which "stems in part from his 1870 homiletics manual, a widely adopted textbook that ministers continue to use today."

Booknotes: Lincoln's Minister of Mystery

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Minister of Mystery: Henry Shelton Sanford and Civil War Intelligence by David D. Perry (McFarland, 2026).

By the time Abraham Lincoln appointed Connecticut native Henry Shelton Sanford to the post of U.S. Minister to Belgium in 1861, Sanford had already established a foreign service career dating back to 1847. Undoubtedly, that prior experience served him well in hitting the ground running. Sanford held that diplomatic position until replaced by a Grant administration appointee in 1869. As its title suggests, David Perry's Lincoln's Minister of Mystery: Henry Shelton Sanford and Civil War Intelligence focuses on Sanford's diplomatic and covert activities during the Civil War years. These were significant contributions to the Union war effort.

From the description: "As Abraham Lincoln's unofficial "secret service" and intelligence chief based in Europe during the Civil War, Henry Shelton Sanford bought rifled guns, hired private detectives to spy on Confederate purchasing agents and developed a comprehensive intelligence network throughout Europe, providing the U.S. State Department with the data and insight necessary to allow Lincoln to have "one war at a time" and save the country. "

Central to Perry's research were Sanford's personal papers housed at the Sanford Museum in Sanford, Florida. These documents number in the thousands and cover Sanford's private business activities as well as his Civil War services. Among other things found in the appendix section of this book are a detailed chronology of Sanford's life, a list of individuals involved with his secret service network, and a list of Confederate agents that were targeted by his organization. Much of this information was compiled from Sanford's papers.

Unfortunately, Sanford's public and private fortunes took a downward turn over the latter stages of his life. More from the description: "In the end, primal ambition, powerful enemies, and extravagant living with his wife, whom many considered to be the most beautiful woman in America, were Sanford's downfall. He died in debt and was quickly forgotten by history."

Sanford may be a largely forgotten figure on history's stage and remains a little-known actor in the minds of the vast majority of Civil War readers, but Perry's biography "brings back the power and the mystery of this important figure and gives him the credit due for his "secret service" work during the American Civil War."

Booknotes: Death or Victory

New Arrival:

• Death or Victory: The Louisiana Native Guards and the Black Military’s Significance in the Civil War by A.J. Cade (LSU Press, 2026).

From the description: "Originating as a division of the New Orleans Home Guards in May 1861, the Native Guards consisted of free Black and Creole men who leveraged the city’s established military customs to gain entry into the Home Guards. Although not officially part of the Confederate forces, their involvement compelled the federal government to contemplate forming a similar regiment, setting the stage for their transition to the Union army the following year."

James Hollandsworth's 1995 study The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War (also from LSU Press) was the first book-length history of the Native Guards, but it is a slim volume that is more than thirty years old at this point. More expansive in depth and scope, A.J. Cade's new study Death or Victory: The Louisiana Native Guards and the Black Military’s Significance in the Civil War promises to be the fullest treatment to date.

More from the description: "Cade’s research highlights the Native Guards’ crucial role as a testing ground for Black participation in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, the War Department, and the entire nation regarded these early regiments as an experiment in understanding the implications of Black service. The Native Guards exceeded expectations, engaging in significant battles and sieges." Even though the First Kansas Colored Infantry regiment had already demonstrated their combat mettle at Island Mound on October 29, 1862, that event was a minor engagement fought in a relatively isolated part of Missouri. Though Island Mound drew some national attention, the prominent combat role of the Native Guards in May-July 1863 during the far more important Port Hudson Campaign more significantly advanced popular opinion of the fighting capabilities of black troops and paved the way toward mass expansion of black enrollment in the Union Army. "Cade’s work challenges existing Civil War narratives by shedding light on the overlooked contributions of the Louisiana Native Guards, rectifying misconceptions, and highlighting Black and Creole individuals who fought for their nation."

While Cade's book is "intended to be a complete regimental history of the Louisiana Native Guards and all of their subsequent iterations in the U.S. Army," it also "explores the nuanced social, political, and economic conditions in the city that set the stage for the Native Guards to form and fight in the war" (pp. 8-9). So, in addition to documenting Native Guard military service in detail, Death or Victory "shows how the Native Guards reflected the unique racial dynamics of the city, where free Black and Creole men of color had long enjoyed a degree of social and economic autonomy. These men were often educated, property owning, and deeply invested in the city’s civic life. Their service in the Native Guards was not just about fighting for the Union; it was also about asserting their rights as citizens and challenging the racial hierarchies that sought to deny them full participation in American society."

Each chapter "follows a theme that is accentuated" by its title, but they all revolve around "one central question: What was the significance of the Louisiana Native Guards to the Black society of Louisiana during and after the American Civil War?" The first few chapters "strive to correct mistakes in the historiography of the regiments". Subsequent chapters examine Native Guard recruitment and training (along with white reaction to them), the Guard's first combat experience, the purging of black officers from Native Guard units, their part in the Port Hudson Campaign and their later Civil War service, and, finally, their "fight for social and political rights" after the war ended (pp. 10-11). "By examining the motivations and experiences of these men, Cade provides a compelling portrait of a community that defied easy categorization and played a pivotal role in shaping the course of the Civil War."

Review - "They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory" by Michael Manning

[They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory by Michael J. Manning (Prairie Star Music & Pub, 2025). Hardcover, maps, photos, chapter notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:564/586. ISBN:979-8-9997957-1-7. $49.95]

When addressing a reading audience interested in the lesser-known parts of the Civil War fought west of the Mississippi River, it is worthwhile to never lose an opportunity to sing the praises of Mary Jane Warde's award-winning When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (2013) and recommend it as the best single-volume treatment of its subject. Nevertheless, with her book's broad approach directing roughly equal focus and attention toward the conflict's political, social, and military aspects, Warde's campaign and battle coverage necessarily lacks the depth of detail that a more specialized study can offer. Providing just that is Michael Manning's They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory, which documents the area's collection of 1861-65 skirmishes, battles, and campaigns in a comprehensive fashion not found anywhere else in the literature. Readers might recall Manning's earlier exploration of this topic in two issues of Blue & Gray Magazine published in 2011 and 2015, the limitations of the periodical format in terms of available examination space being obvious. While some of that previously published material makes its way into this work, the new approach to the subject found in They Fought Like Veterans exhibits a marked overall increase in depth and breadth. Indeed, the volume's double-column narrative, numerous accompanying maps, and front/back matter together fill nearly six hundred 8.5"x11" pages.

While military events tower above all other topics of discussion in the book, there is ample social and political background history explaining the forces that drove the many internecine tribal conflicts that emerged in Indian Territory during the secession period and Civil War years. It has been well established in the literature that the bitterest internal divisions within the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek/Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) of Indian Territory were rooted decades earlier in unresolved animosities that developed between pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions (i.e. those who adamantly opposed removal during the 1820s and 1830s and those who reluctantly adopted the path of pragmatic acceptance). Especially among the Cherokees and Creeks, those differences directly impacted the ways in which the various tribes responded to southern secession. Heavily lobbied by Confederate representatives wielding big promises of support, each tribe had to decided for itself whether to maintain treaty ties with the U.S. (which created widespread mistrust by evacuating all of its military posts in the territory) or forge new ones with the nascent Confederacy. All of that background is explored at some length in the book's first three chapters. At the opposite end of the volume, a final chapter summarizes the Reconstruction-era struggles experienced by all the tribes, regardless of wartime loyalties, who had to both rebuild after the war's mass destruction and negotiate new treaties with the restored United States.

In terms of presentation style, the text melds author narrative with extensive block quotes from O.R. reports and a host of other government documents and firsthand accounts. In addition to referencing those government sources, chapter notes and bibliography cite Oklahoma and Kansas manuscript collections, published primary sources of various types, newspaper articles, and the secondary literature. Often full-page in size, military maps number in the many dozens and feature tactical and operational-scale movements and unit positions superimposed upon modern topographical maps. The breadth of map coverage is atlas level in scope. This is a big deal due to map numbers and quality being persistent weaknesses across the Civil War in Indian Territory literature. In many cases, the maps created by Manning are notable improvements upon the best examples found in other publications or are the first of their kind. The most sparsely detailed ones are likely the consequence of inescapable source limitations. Photographs are similarly plentiful in number and feature both archival images and the author's own battlefield photography. On the less positive front, the finished manuscript does exhibit a number of drawbacks common to self-publishing, among them frequent name misspellings and inconsistent rank designations.

In addition to covering many smaller-scale skirmishes and raids, the book offers detailed accounts of all of the major military campaigns fought inside the borders of Indian Territory, among them the battles associated with Opothleyahola's flight to Kansas, the Union Army's First and Second Indian Expeditions, the Battle of Old Fort Wayne, First and Second Cabin Creek, the Battle of Honey Springs, and the 1864 Phillips Expedition and its Battle of Middle Boggy. With Indian Territory situated as a strategic buffer between Union Kansas and Confederate Texas as well as being in close proximity to the Missouri-Kansas border war and the fighting in NW Arkansas, Indians units and other forces stationed in the territory were heavily involved in major and minor campaigns conducted along the periphery. With emphasis on Indian unit participation, Manning also covers those campaigns—which include Pea Ridge, Cane Hill/Prairie Grove, the 1863 Union capture of Fort Smith, and the 1864 Camden Expedition—at appropriate depth.

Manning's comparison of Union and Confederate Indian regiments raised for service in the territory flatters the former far more than the latter. The three (First through Third) Indian Home Guard regiments raised for federal service were better armed, equipped, and clothed than their Confederate Indian counterparts, whose own military upkeep was routinely low priority, but factors behind their success went deeper than just material support. Confederate Indian units operating inside Indian Territory were frequently bolstered by Texas (and sometimes Arkansas) cavalry, but Manning's campaign accounts clearly show that the Indian Home Guard regiments consistently exhibited stronger unit cohesion, were better integrated in the order of battle, and enjoyed far stronger artillery support. On the Confederate side, too many Indian officers and men came and went as they pleased, leaving their forces chronically scattered and understrength when the critical moment of doing battle arose. Of course, some of that could be blamed on poor top leadership (ex. from generals Albert Pike and Douglas Cooper), but it does seem to be the case that the Union Indian regiments more successfully adapted their own martial cultures to what would have been to them alien structures of military organization and discipline.

In keeping with the July 17, 1863 Battle of Honey Springs being widely recognized as the most significant battle fought in Indian Territory during the war, the campaign and its aftermath are accorded extensive coverage. In describing the battle and explaining Confederate defeat, Manning addresses some of the same issues and concerns raised in William Lees's recently published archaeological study. Both authors note the imbalanced concentration of fighting in the center, but, while Lees suggests that Confederate commander Douglas Cooper's leadership deficiencies were primarily responsible for the Indian units on either flank not getting into the action in any meaningful way, Manning sees the problem as being with the poor fighting and leadership qualities of the Indian units themselves (much of the blame for that being due to unfulfilled promises and neglect from the Confederate government). Like Lees, Manning credits clear superiority in Union firepower and the possibility of poorly manufactured/weather ruined powder on the Confederate side as being major contributors to Union victory and Confederate defeat. Manning's analysis follows the established narrative of marking Honey Springs as a significant turning point in Confederate prospects for success in Indian Territory, but he also sees it as coinciding with downsized Union aims. After the demoralizing defeat, Confederate forces inside the territory assumed a largely defensive posture punctuated by occasional mounted raids against Union supply lines. On the other side, the Federals abandoned grandiose plans of using victories in Indian Territory as a springboard for launching offensives into North Texas. Instead, after the occupation of Fort Smith, Arkansas in September 1863 secured the eastern flank of Union occupation forces in Indian Territory, resettlement of tribal refugees to their formerly abandoned homes and maintaining supply and communications with key military posts such as Fort Gibson were prioritized.

Manning is not the only writer to characterize the guerrilla war in Indian Territory as being perhaps the most destructive produced during the war, rivaling the worse excesses in Missouri. The brunt of that mass-scale horse theft, crop losses, livestock rustling, and homestead destruction was concentrated in the northeastern corner of the territory, in the Cherokee and Creek domains. What isn't clearly documented is which bushwhacker-style guerrilla chieftains and bands operated in Indian Territory. Manning blames some of the chaos on Cherokee leader Stand Watie's raiding, but Watie and his men were not guerrillas. Perhaps the source material is too sparse to support such a project, but a truly full study of the guerrilla war in Indian Territory and its impact is sorely needed. What does seem clear is that the relative safety of the Choctaw and Chickasaw home fronts strongly contributed to those tribes maintaining consistent, and largely unified, popular support for the Confederate war effort up until the conflict's waning moments.

Throughout the book, Manning compares the quality of high command leadership demonstrated by both sides, mostly finding the administrative, planning, and fighting capacities of Union generals, particularly James G. Blunt and Samuel R. Curtis, far superior to the string of Confederate commanders that led combined white and Indian forces. The author maintains that Union commanders were generally better able to concentrate their forces at decisive moments, that contention supported by numerous examples of Confederate forces (even when possessing superior overall numbers in the territory) being caught scattered when forced to give battle. Manning is among those who hold General Blunt in high regard for his aggressiveness and military leadership. Unlike historian William Shea, a deep admirer and biographer of Curtis but who has also closely studied Blunt's career, Manning believes Blunt was destined for greater responsibilities (perhaps even departmental command) before his career was derailed (unfairly, in Manning's opinion) by the Baxter Springs debacle of October 1863. Manning's characterization of John Schofield as a petty schemer and intraservice squabbler will be familiar to most Trans-Mississippi Civil War readers but perhaps less so to those primarily acquainted with Schofield's later 1864-65 army command performances in Georgia and Tennessee.

Easily the most comprehensive military history and map study of the Civil War in Indian Territory, Michael Manning's They Fought Like Veterans successfully bridges a longstanding gap in the literature. Recommended.

Booknotes: A Desperate Fight

New Arrival:

• A Desperate Fight: The Lives of Louisiana's Confederate Soldiers by Henry B. Motty (LSU Press, 2026).

From the description: Henry Motty’s A Desperate Fight: The Lives of Louisiana's Confederate Soldiers "views Civil War Louisiana through the lens of its soldiers’ experiences―and interdependence―with civilians. Louisiana fielded approximately sixty thousand men for the Confederacy, equaling nearly 18 percent of the state’s white population. Most of these men came straight from civilian life."

After Union land and naval forces seized New Orleans in April 1862, they quickly moved upriver, capturing the capital city of Baton Rouge the following month. The economic and political heart of the state was in Union hands for the rest of the war. Those stunning blows were followed by the loss of the Port Hudson fortress the next year, solidifying complete Union control of the Mississippi River's passage through the state. Other campaigns large and small ranged across the Louisiana interior, engaging Confederate defenders in battle, ravaging the rural economy, and destroying slavery. Nevertheless, Louisianians stayed in the fight, the strong ties between the fighting and home fronts sustaining the Confederate war effort in the face of increasingly long odds.

More from the description: "Although separated from their loved ones, soldiers and civilians did not endure the war in isolation, and the importance of the social bonds that developed between soldiers and civilians cannot be overstated. Motty focuses on these vital relationships and interactions, explaining how these communal attachments kept most of the state’s soldiers fighting throughout the war."

Of course, the distinction between home and fighting fronts was very much blurred across large swathes of battle-scarred Louisiana. "Participation in military campaigns and engagements shaped the world of Louisiana’s soldiers and also affected civilians, who had to deal with the ensuing destruction. Both civilians and soldiers contended with the injury or death of family members, property damage or loss, and shortages or lack of necessities; their wartime experiences were intertwined." Alongside those shared experiences was an inseparable reliance upon each other. "Soldiers, the majority of whom intended to be citizen-soldiers, needed civilian support, and many civilians who sympathized with the Confederacy expected their soldiers to protect and defend them."

As was the case with many Confederate soldiers regardless of state origin, the motivations and sustaining forces behind Louisianians and their support for the war were often complicated in nature and could evolve as the war progressed and defeat became more and more probable. "While the ideology of patriotism and nationalism motivated men to enlist, Motty argues that soldiers’ civilian relationships provided a meaningful connection to their sacrifices and that many soldiers believed they were fighting primarily to protect and defend their families and conceptions of civilian freedom."

Booknotes: William Henry Seward's Quest to Save the Nation During the Secession Winter

New Arrival:

• William Henry Seward's Quest to Save the Nation During the Secession Winter (November 1860-April 1861) by C. Evan Stewart (Twelve Tables Pr, 2026).

Sorely disappointed at being passed over as the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 1860 in favor of compromise candidate Abraham Lincoln, it quickly became apparent that New York Senator and incoming Secretary of State William Henry Seward operated under the assumption that he would be the power behind the throne in the new administration. He has been criticized heavily by writers and historians for going behind Lincoln's back during the Fort Sumter crisis and conducting unauthorized negotiations with Confederate authorities, his conciliatory approach including promises to evacuate the fort (which he correctly deemed indefensible) and weirdly raising the prospect of drumming up a foreign war to unite both sections of the country in a common cause.

From what I can gather after perusal of the Preface and promotional blurbs, C. Evan Stewart's William Henry Seward's Quest to Save the Nation During the Secession Winter offers a more sympathetic picture of Seward's character and actions during the tumultuous months preceding the Confederate bombardment of Sumter: "Seward’s prodigious efforts have either been ignored, given short shrift, or looked upon as something less than honorable. This short book – based upon original archival research and a comprehensive review of secondary sources – tells the story of Seward’s efforts. Counter-factual history is always an iffy business. But Seward’s “plan” did help to keep the Upper South States in the Union during the months before the president-elect became the president. And had his counsel been followed after March 4th, perhaps the course of American History would have played out very differently." In sum, Stewart's book "will attempt to provide a complete explication of Seward's plan and his prodigious efforts to save the Union..." (pg. xi)

Coming Soon (March '26 Edition)

Scheduled for MAR 2026¹:
• Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign by Kelly-Fischer & Greenwalt.
• Mollie Brumley's Civil War: Surviving the Guerrilla War in Arkansas by Theodore Catton.
• Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War by Earl Hess.
• Buckeye Odyssey: A Civil War History of the 82nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Through the Stories of Six Men by Samuel Fink.

Comments: It will be a light month for sure, but I am still hoping that a good number of January and February titles that fell out on the march will show up in camp soon.

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

Booknotes: The Greatest Calamity

New Arrival:

• The Greatest Calamity: Tennessee in the Civil War Era by John D. Fowler (U Tenn Press, 2025).

From the description: "The last state to secede and the first to fall to Federal forces, Tennessee played a pivotal role in the war’s political, military, and industrial struggles. Crisscrossed by key rail lines and blanketed by rich farmland, the struggle to control it fueled both Union and Confederate war efforts. More than 450 battles—at Shiloh, Stones River, Chattanooga, and beyond—turned the state’s landscape into hallowed ground."

In terms of strategic value, Tennessee was arguably the most critical Confederate state outside of Virginia, the latter (of course) housing the Confederacy's capital city. John Fowler's new overview history of the Volunteer State's Civil War experience, The Greatest Calamity: Tennessee in the Civil War Era, certainly highlights what made Tennessee so important to both sides.

Fowler's book is the first installment in University of Tennessee Press's revival of its Tennessee Three Star Series. Existing titles address a number of topics related to the state's history, including "primers on such topics as the Civil War, Native American history, historic homes, and more." One way the series is being 'revitalized' is through revision and expansion of past volumes. Fowler's The Greatest Calamity "expands upon" Thomas Connelly's 1979 series contribution Civil War Tennessee: Battles and Leaders by integrating "new perspectives on the home front, Reconstruction, and the struggles of freed people."

More than triple the page length of Connelly's slim classic, Fowler's narrative explores Tennessee's antebellum history and development, the secession crisis, the major Civil War campaigns fought inside the state's borders, the homefront ("examining issues such as life under Federal occupation, wartime conditions, the struggle of East Tennessee Unionists, the plight of the freedpeople, and the collapse of slavery" pg. xviii), and Reconstruction. Augmenting the text are sixteen color maps.

Review - "From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War" by Patrick Garrow

[From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War by Patrick H. Garrow (University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Hardcover, map, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,221/292. ISBN:978-1-62190-963-7. $75]

A companion volume to his 2020 book Changing Sides: Union Prisoners of War Who Joined the Confederate Army, Patrick Garrow's From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War strives to both redefine and expand our understanding of the "Galvanized Yankee" phenomenon of altered wartime allegiances. In his Centennial-era study The Galvanized Yankees (1963), author Dee Brown narrowly defined the term as encompassing those captured Confederate soldiers who were recruited into the U.S. Army straight from northern prisoner of war camps. An escape from the deadly health dangers and overall harsh living conditions of the camps was offered to these men in exchange for a defined period of army enlistment that was typically, but not always, served in the frontier West (where the chances of encountering former comrades in battle were minimal). Subsequent scholars and popular history writers alike have accepted and adopted that characterization ever since. However, Garrow sees that longstanding definition as being too restrictive in nature. In this volume, a Galvanized Yankee is any soldier "who first served in the Confederate army and then changed sides and joined the Union army" (pg. x). So added to the POW cohort are those who completed their Confederate term of service and subsequently enlisted in the Union Army as well as those who deserted Confederate service and later wore the blue uniform. In addition to bringing more motivational factors into play, the scale of numbers involved also increases from the thousands into perhaps tens of thousands through Garrow's examination.

Previous research, including Garrow's own, has made it clear that the overwhelming preponderance of Union soldiers who switched sides did so out of sheer desperation born of the miserable living conditions inside overcrowded and under-resourced Confederate POW camps. With northern facilities exhibiting many of the same problems, Confederate prisoners often shared similar motivations. However, Garrow's more expansive definitional approach and his broader research into Union and Confederate service records, regimental histories, pension records, and newspapers move additional motivational factors to the fore. One is money. Without further access to Confederate army pay, which was consistently in arrears and constantly devalued anyway, mid to late-war prisoners, especially those with increasingly destitute families of their own to support, were attracted by the financial prospects of stable pay in U.S. dollars and even enlistment bonuses. Latent unionism (or simply anti-Confederate feelings) among conscripted Confederate soldiers also led many of those individuals to switch sides when the opportunity arose. According to Garrow, perhaps the most significant yet least appreciated factor was the growing sense among many that the Confederate government had broken faith with its volunteer soldiers, in terms of both the direction of the war and promised support for them and their families, and was no longer deserving of loyalty and sacrifice.

After providing brief summaries of the living conditions within the camps that many of these individuals came from and the respective role each camp assumed in the recruitment of Galvanized Yankee units, the book profiles a selection of units that, in part or in whole, were composed of galvanized (or, as others put it, "whitewashed") recruits. These are the Twenty-Third and Sixty-Fifth Illinois, Ahl's Battery (aka First Delaware Heavy Artillery), First Connecticut Cavalry, Third Maryland Cavalry, First Florida Cavalry, Second North Carolina Infantry, Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, and, most significantly, the First through Sixth United States Volunteer Infantry. As one comes to realize, this group of unit selections—consisting of company and battalion-sized augmentations to existing northern regiments, new regiments raised locally within Confederate states (the assumption being that sizable numbers of Confederate deserters or those with expired enlistments joined them), and full regiments of former prisoners destined for the western frontier—together paint a strong representative picture of the types of Galvanized Yankee units that existed, their range of duties, and their areas of service. For each, Garrow explores recruitment and organization (with emphasis, of course, on the galvanized elements), outlines a basic demographic profile (state of birth, prewar occupation, etc.) of the recruits, and traces a fairly detailed account of the unit's military service. Also rather heavily emphasized in the unit histories are selections of medical case histories. That information is more anecdotally descriptive than thematic in nature but, to an extent, does speak to the lingering effects of the unhealthy conditions at the camps. Some indication of local civilian reaction to the presence of Galvanized Yankees in their midst is also of interest. For example, given the events of the previous ten years, the intensely negative reaction of Kansas newspapers to having their streets policed for a time by ex-Confederates of the Third USVI is easy to fathom.

There are some research limitations that hindered the author's efforts to dig deeper into the subject and provide the kinds of engaging and informative firsthand accounts that color the more standard Civil War unit histories. Understandably, some otherwise good resources for obtaining Civil War soldier information (such as newspaper obituaries) were reluctant to mention galvanized service. According to Garrow, prisoner accounts from Galvanized Yankees are exceedingly rare, and only a single dairy from one of those individuals (John C. Riggs of the Fifth USVI) is known to exist.

As mentioned above, Dee Brown's The Galvanized Yankees is a classic of the Civil War literature, but it is dated at this point, and Garrow offers some revisionist engagement with Brown in addition to his own study's expanded definition and analysis. As an example, Brown's study claimed that only one officer attached to the six USVI regiments (Capt. John Shanks, Co. I/Sixth USVI) had previously served in the Confederate Army, and it spends an entire chapter on that person's story, but Garrow's research identified more examples from the First, Fourth, and Sixth regiments.

In the end, the question arises as to whether organized units composed of Galvanized Yankees were worth the U.S. government's effort and expense. The record was mixed. Often, the soldiers were not trusted by officers, either those within the unit or those leading regiments that served alongside them in the field. Many of the units profiled in the book suffered from outrageous levels of desertion (as much as 50+%), the combination of that and disease dwarfing actual combat losses far more than was the case with the typical Civil War regiment of either side. What was behind that could be traced to a number of things, one being the three-year enlistment terms of some units organized very late in the war. With leading galvanized units not being necessarily an attractive prospect, officer quality could also be mediocre. Indeed, many of the galvanized units were not seen as reliable enough for front line combat and were relegated to rear area duties. Others did come to be relied upon to carry out important tasks. For example, the Second North Carolina suffered significant losses fighting in the eastern part of the state, and Garrow credits the First Florida Cavalry for becoming a principal stabilizing force in the often chaotic borderland between Florida and Alabama. Ahl's battery, which had a desertion rate far below other galvanized units and lost few men to disease or disability, is rated as the most successful unit in the study, but the gunners also had a comparatively cushy position as Fort Delaware camp guards during the entirety of their 1863-65 term of service. At the end of each unit treatment, Garrow rates the unit as being either successful or unsuccessful. Though a concrete set of criteria for differentiating between successful and unsuccessful galvanized units is not developed, it does seem to be the case that those units operating on the messier fringes of the conflict, where conventional manpower was at its most scarce, are often judged to have been the most successful. Shorter enlistment terms helped, too, particularly with desertion rates. Indeed, it is Garrow's studied opinion that the roles of the USVI soldiers as western frontier security troops and wagon train escorts filled a critical need for the United States at a fraught period of transition.

The postwar lives of a few individuals are profiled in an epilogue to offer readers a sense of the variety of social receptions they experienced upon returning home, but, as Garrow explains, broader analysis is beyond the scope of his study. Undoubtedly, many Galvanized Yankees were ostracized by their home communities and others were accepted depending on circumstances. The author's suggestion that the mass desertion that occurred within the late-war Confederate Army may have, at least to some extent, softened the home population's overall judgment of these men is an interesting point worthy of consideration.

Patrick Garrow's From Gray to Blue significantly widens and deepens our understanding of those Confederate soldiers who decided to switch sides during the Civil War and fight for the Union. While the contributions of Galvanized Yankee units to Union victory were relatively limited in scope, a strong case is made that they nevertheless assumed important military roles at a number of different times and on a variety of fronts.

Booknotes: Soldier of the South

New Arrival:

• Soldier of the South: Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace by Edward J. Hagerty (Univ of SC Press, 2026).

Civil War titles have been absent from a worryingly extended run of USC Press's most recent seasonal catalogs, so I was delighted to see this one pop up. Hopefully, it is a sign of more to come.

Getting an idea of the book's structure and measure through its table of contents, Edward Hagerty's Soldier of the South: Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace has all of the appearances of a Civil War military biography presented in the traditional format. Hagerty's study "is the first comprehensive examination of Anderson's life, providing a view of an officer's experiences on the frontier, in Mexico, and during the American Civil War. Anderson led Confederate soldiers first in Florida, then from the Peninsula Campaign to Sailor's Creek, where his patchwork corps disintegrated." Hagerty's assessment of the general's military career "considers both the strategic details of Anderson's failures and successes on the battlefield and his personal struggles off it."

After Stonewall Jackson's death in May 1863, Lee struggled to find a dependable replacement for his celebrated wing commander. Expanding the army order of battle from two wings to three corps, the additions of A.P. Hill and Richard Ewell, both strong division commanders, to the Army of Northern Virginia's top command echelon did not produce the hoped for result. After a strong start, Ewell settled into being a lackluster corps commander and Hill's higher command potential was severely hampered by chronic health problems. A late-war addition to the club, Richard Anderson was yet another promotion from within. After James Longstreet was wounded during the opening battle of the 1864 Overland Campaign, Anderson replaced him and went on to serve in corps-level leadership posts until the Army of Northern Virginia dissolved in defeat.

However, even though "Anderson was the most senior ranking soldier from South Carolina" and was a key component of the Army of Northern Virginia high command in 1864-65, he "fell into relative obscurity after the war." In the final chapter, Hagerty "examines the causes for Anderson's postwar decline and makes the case for his continued significance." Of new Confederate general biographies, this one and Chris Hartley's D.H. Hill study sit high on the to-read pile.

Booknotes: From a Yankee to a Rebel Diary

New Arrival:

• From A Yankee to A Rebel Diary: The Collective Civil War Diaries of Private George Washington Hall, 14th Georgia Infantry, and Private Jacob L. Elsesser, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves edited by Mary T. Hall (Lot's Wife Publishing, 2025).

One might suppose that combined Union and Confederate soldier diaries are a Civil War rarity, and, indeed, Foreword contributor Frank O'Reilly is aware of only two in existence. The first pairs Union soldier Joseph Myers and Confederate soldier Thomas Lutman, the former obtaining the latter's diary after Lutman was killed during the Chancellorsville Campaign. The second shared diary, the one under consideration here, has been newly edited by Mary Hall and published under the title From A Yankee to A Rebel Diary: The Collective Civil War Diaries of Private George Washington Hall, 14th Georgia Infantry, and Private Jacob L. Elsesser, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves.

From the description: "When Private Jacob Elsesser of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves carried a small Daily Remembrancer [the Daily Pocket Remembrancer for 1862 was a widely published blank diary purchased by Elsesser] into the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, he had no idea his diary would one day be continued by the enemy. After months of recording the grinding uncertainty of war, Elsesser abandoned the book in the chaos following the battle of Beaver Dam Creek near Richmond." The diary was then found and kept as a souvenir by editor Mary Hall's great-grandfather. "Fast on the heels of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves was the 14th Georgia Infantry, including Private George Washington Hall, who discovered the small book in the smoldering ruins of the deserted Union camp. Claiming it as his own, he vowed to turn "a Yankee diary into a Rebel one" and proceeded to fill its remaining pages for nearly three years."

Prior to the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, Hall fought in the mountains of western Virginia. After the Seven Days, camp sickness kept him out of action during the Army of Northern Virginia's ensuing battles until his return in 1863 for Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. During the 1864 Overland Campaign, he was captured at Spotsylvania and held at Fort Delaware until exchanged in March 1865. Like Hall, French-born Elsesser enlisted in May 1861. His three-year service term with the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves expired in May 1864, ironically the same day that Hall was captured.

Mary Hall's From a Yankee to a Rebel Diary is more than the shared Elsesser-Hall diary. It "includes George Washington Hall's additional journal writings from 1862-1863 and a unit history written by Elsesser and preserved by his descendants." Over five-hundred pages in length, Hall's impressive presentation of these collected historical writings is enhanced through numerous photos and detailed battle maps from cartographer Hal Jesperson. Each chapter contains extensive bridging narrative that supplies the reader with a prodigious amount of essential campaign and battle context. Footnotes provide both source identification and further commentary. More reference material can be found in the appendix section, notably Hall's weather log and additional daily activity logs from both soldiers.

In sum, "George Washington Hall's and Jacob Elsesser's diary entries, preserved across generations, offer a rare and deeply human window into America's defining struggle, with the degree of context that converts those entries into a true narrative of the war in the Eastern Theater."

Booknotes: A Mother's Work

New Arrival:

• A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse by Megan VanGorder (UNC Press, 2026).

If you ask general Civil War readers and enthusiasts to name the most famous, or most important, Civil War nurse, it is doubtless the case that the most common answer would be Clara Barton, that response also likely influenced by Barton's postwar leadership role in the origins of the International Red Cross's American branch. However, others might bring up the name of Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke, a figure whose efforts and accomplishments in the Union Army's military nursing field certainly ranked among the highest.

From the description: "Mary Ann Bickerdyke led a remarkable life. A widowed mother from Illinois, she became an influential traveling nurse and Sanitary Commission agent during the American Civil War. She followed the Union army through four years and nineteen battles, established hundreds of hospitals, assisted surgeons with amputations, treated fevers, and fed the soldiers in her care. Known affectionately as “Mother” to thousands of soldiers, Bickerdyke bridged the private world of home caregiving and the public demands of wartime and institutional medicine."

Megan VanGorder's A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse is not a cradle to grave biography written in a popular narrative format. Instead, the author describes her work as approaching "life writing" through the "self-determined American school of microhistory," its tenets consisting of "a small unit of primary analysis; a micro-macro link or some indication of the wider implications of the analysis; transparency, in which the author acknowledges unanswered questions as they arise in the research process; and the use of an academic narrative style" (pg. 8).

The concept of motherhood as contextualized both internally and externally throughout Bickerdyke's public life (she apparently fully embraced the "Mother" moniker) is undoubtedly the primary micro-macro link referenced above. More from the description: "Drawing on a rich archive of personal letters, military records, and newspapers, Megan VanGorder explores how Bickerdyke used her maternal identity to challenge norms, advocate for soldiers, and pioneer compassionate care practices before, during, and after the Civil War." VanGorder's examination "uses key episodes from Bickerdyke’s life to reveal broader truths about motherhood, medicine, and women’s roles in the nineteenth century, and offers an intimate and historically grounded portrait of one woman’s evolving identity and the moniker that made her famous. In reassessing Bickerdyke’s work and legacy, this book also serves as a new perspective on how white working-class women contributed to the transitional period of the Civil War era and reshaped public health, social care, and national memory."

Booknotes: Point Lookout, Maryland

New Arrival:

• Point Lookout, Maryland: The Largest Civil War Prison by Robert E. Crickenberger Jr. (Savas Beatie, 2026).

From the description: "As the exchange cartel collapsed and relentless campaigns swelled Northern prisons beyond capacity, Point Lookout emerged in July 1863 as a grim solution. Officially dubbed “Camp Hoffman,” this sprawling 45-acre compound on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay opened in the shadow of Gettysburg and soon became the largest prison of the Civil War. By August 1865, more than 52,000 prisoners had crossed its gates, marking it as a cornerstone of the “second wave” of Union prison camps." Sources tell us that the Andersonville prisoner population peaked at just under 33,000 men. This was far more than were held at Point Lookout at any one time (around 22,000), so "largest" must be referring to the total number of prisoners cited above, with the longer existing Point Lookout facilities exceeding shorter-lived Andersonville's on that measure. Perhaps it had the largest physical footprint of any other Civil War prison, too. At any rate, Robert Crickenberger's Point Lookout, Maryland: The Largest Civil War Prison "is a meticulous and groundbreaking study that reexamines the prison and its place in Civil War history." It "dismantles accepted assumptions, offering a balanced perspective that questions the validity of memoirs taken as gospel by earlier scholars."

From skimming the bibliography and from my own cursory online search, there are two previous book-length histories of the Point Lookout prison and hospital system (both privately published). I reviewed the most recent of the pair for the site in 2021 [here]. Other recent titles have addressed the planned (but never carried out) Confederate operation, as part of the July 1864 Johnson-Gilmor Raid, to free the prisoners there. Crickenberger, who has been (as his author bio reveals) closely associated with Point Lookout in numerous capacities since 1978, has spent decades researching the prison's Civil War history. "Challenging the traditional portrayal of guards as uniformly brutal and prisoners as mere victims, he draws on extensive, previously unpublished research to explore the complex experiences of both. Postwar accounts, steeped in survivor bias and “Lost Cause” rhetoric, have long dominated the story—until now."

In addition to recreating a physical portrait of the Point Lookout POW camp, Crickenberger's comprehensive examination touches upon both guard and prisoner experiences, prison procedures, living conditions, the camp's place in the parole and exchange system, the camp's supply system, and various prisoner breakout schemes. Camp hospitals and burials are also part of the discussion, as are the Point Lookout defenses. All of this "illuminates Point Lookout’s critical role in shaping not only the Civil War but also the future of American incarceration." Additional map, death rate assessment, camp leadership, and guard unit information is collected in the appendix section.