Robison: "CONFEDERATES IN MONTANA TERRITORY: In the Shadow of Price's Army"

[Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price's Army by Ken Robison (The History Press, 2014). Softcover, illustrations, photos, bibliography, index. 190 pp. ISBN:978-1-62619-603-2 $19.99]

During and shortly after the Civil War, thousands of Border State men and their families sought to escape the war and its consequences by relocating to the American West, that great American destination for ambitious fortune seekers as well that those fleeing a variety of personal, economic and social pressures. Rich mining prospects were incentive enough, but factors like deserter status, draft evasion, threats against life and property, and outright banishment led many southern sympathizers to places like Montana Territory, which roughly doubled in population between its informal September 1864 census and its mid-1860s peak (before dropping back to just over 20,000 residents by 1870).

A Montana paper referred to this influx as the "left wing of Price's army" and the migration patterns into and then out of the territory would make for an interesting research project. Ken Robison's Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price's Army is not that kind of study, but it does touch upon key overlying themes. The opening section outlines population, political, and economic trends in the territory, with 1862 and 1863 gold strikes attracting a flood of opportunists and an uneasy alliance between Irish immigrants and Southern Democrats facilitating that party's strong showing in the territorial legislature. The book's final section briefly examines Confederate monument placement and other aspects of Lost Cause public memorialization in Montana during the decades following the war.

Background elements aside, individual stories are the real focus of Confederates in Montana Territory. More than a dozen chapter length biographies trace the Civil War and territorial activities of a selected group of men who left war and Reconstruction behind to become Montana miners, businessmen, militia leaders, and even criminals. Henry Kennerly is unusual in that he began his public life in the territory before going east to Missouri to fight, returning to Montana to prosper as a Democratic leader. John Rogers is another Missourian and prominent territorial politician who fought with Price. Yet another ex-Missouri State Guardsman active in the Montana legislature was Thomas Thoroughman, who was banished from the state during the war but later returned home. A successful lawyer, Mississippian Horace Buck didn't enter the territory until after the war. German immigrant and Kentucky Confederate trooper John Lilly rode with Forrest, his wartime experiences presented in the book through extensive diary excerpts. Moving to Montana after the war, Lilly was a renowned saloon operator and Indian fighter. Representing the criminal element is ex-bushwhacker Jim Berry, who robbed stagecoaches with the Sam Bass gang. The Conrad brothers served with Mosby's Rangers and became successful merchants in Montana after leaving their war torn Shenandoah home behind. Perry and John Moore were part of Jefferson Davis's escort party and joined their family in Montana after the war. Shirley Ashby was yet another Confederate cavalryman who made the post war journey to Montana, where he worked for the Conrad brothers mentioned above. Another Virginian, Frank Brown, was a bison fur trader and active UCV promoter. Finally, the story of ex-slave Joseph Wells, who was a body servant to his Missouri master during the war and a successful Montana miner after, is told. Beyond the fact that no Confederate women were profiled, it's a pretty good cross section of colorful backgrounds and experiences.

In common with other books from this press Confederates in Montana Territory is profusely illustrated. In this particular case, the narrative format is that of popular rather than scholarly history. The text is not footnoted and the bibliography, represented in an unorthodox manner, is organized by chapter. In connecting modern Montana residents with their Civil War history through lively personal stories, the book achieves what it sets out to do. Hopefully, it will also inspire others to study the Civil War era's influence on the social, political and economic development of the Mountain West region.

S-B's North Carolina spring

Students of the late war period inside North Carolina cannot help but be pleased with the Spring '15 lineup that Savas Beatie has scheduled, from battle history "To Prepare for Sherman's Coming": The Battle of Wise's Forks, March 1865 to atlas The North Carolina Civil War Atlas: The Old North State at War to edited journal Resisting Sherman: A Confederate Surgeon's Journal and the Civil War in the Carolinas, 1865 to biography Fighting for General Lee: Confederate General Rufus Barringer and the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade to accessible overviews Calamity in Carolina: The Battles of Averasboro and Bentonville, March 1865 and To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place, and the Surrenders of the Confederacy. Now we all know there isn't a chance in hell that these books get a collective release anywhere near the tightly bunched dates given but the important thing is they will all see the light of day sometime.

The atlas and Wise's Forks volumes interest me the most. Mark Moore is a special cartographer and Mark Smith and Wade Sokolosky's followup to their sterling No Such Army... has been on my radar for years.

Camp Pope Publishing news

It's been a long long while since the last Camp Pope newsletter but it's always great to get one because it means that a new Trans-Mississippi related release or two is in the immediate future. This new notice did not disappoint.

For December:

THE MARCH TO THE RIVER: FROM THE BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE TO HELENA, SPRING 1862. By Robert G. Schultz. 454 pages, 6 x 9 paperback, illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $25.95. (Should be available before Christmas)

This is the first detailed study of the campaign of Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Southwest following its important victory at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas (March 7-8, 1862). After the withdrawal of Earl Van Dorn’s Confederate army from northwest Arkansas, General Curtis’s next obvious move was to capture Little Rock, the state capital. Poor roads, raging rivers, tenuous supply lines, and harassing Rebel partisans made for a meandering march back up into Missouri, then down into Arkansas along the White River. For the first time a Union army had to depend largely on foraging off the enemy’s resources for its sustenance—a feat repeated more famously two years later in General William T. Sherman’s “March to the Sea.” Bob Schultz has thoroughly researched his book in private archives, period newspaper accounts, published and unpublished soldiers’ diaries, letters, and memoirs, and the Army and Navy Official Records. Published for the first time are maps drawn by Lyman G, Bennett of the 36th Illinois Infantry.

Coming Soon:

CONFEDERATE "TALES OF THE WAR" IN THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI, Part Four: Spring 1864: From Winter Camp to Pleasant Hill and Jenkins’ Ferry. Edited by Michael Banasik. 245 pages, 6 x 9 paperback, illustrations, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. $17.95.(Maybe late 2014, but January 2015 for sure.)

In 1885, the St. Louis Missouri Republican began a Saturday series of articles on the Civil War by the participants, from the lowliest private to the most exalted general. The series ran for two years, comprising in all 94 articles, which dealt with all theaters of the war, including the high seas, from both the Northern and Southern perspectives. Being the home of most readers of the Republican, Missouri figures prominently in the series. Due to the number of pieces on Missouri and the Trans-Mississippi, editor Michael Banasik has grouped them by year. Part Four of CONFEDERATE "TALES OF THE WAR" contains only those articles dealing with events of 1864, specifically Pleasant Hill, the Camden Expedition, and Jenkins’ Ferry, from the Confederate perspective. Appendices include detailed orders of battle for Pleasant Hill and the Camden Expedition, plus biographies of significant individuals. Subsequent volumes in the series will include articles covering the rest of the war, also those from the Northern point of view.

Booknotes IV (Nov '14)

New Arrivals:

1. The Chickamauga Campaign - A Mad Irregular Battle: From the Crossing of the Tennessee River Through the Second Day, August 22 - September 19, 1863 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2014).

Throw away your other Chickamauga books.

2. Unionists in Virginia: Politics, Secession and Their Plan to Prevent Civil War by Lawrence M. Denton (The Hist Pr, 2014).

This book traces the unsuccessful efforts of Virginia Unionists (among them George Summers, John Brown Baldwin, John Janney and Jubal Early) to strike a political solution to the secession crisis and avert Civil War.

Suderow & House: "THE BATTLE OF PILOT KNOB: Thunder in Arcadia Valley"

[The Battle of Pilot Knob: Thunder in Arcadia Valley by Bryce A. Suderow and R. Scott House (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2014). Softcover, maps, photos, notes, appendices, bibliography. Pages main/total:390/418. ISBN:978-0-9903530-2-7 $20]

Bryce Suderow's Thunder in Arcadia Valley: Price's Defeat, September 27, 1864 (1986) was the first major study of the Battle of Pilot Knob to appear since the 1914 publication of Cyrus Peterson and Joseph Hanson's Pilot Knob: Thermopylae of the West. It certainly remains a serviceable account, but a newly released expanded edition (with co-author Scott House), one that roughly doubles the the page length of the original and incorporates new source material, photographs, and maps¹, should raise its profile even more. Timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the battle and retitled The Battle of Pilot Knob: Thunder in Arcadia Valley, the new volume both augments Suderow's work and enhances coverage with large sections of completely original content [the second edition also compares favorably with another recently published full length study²].

The background setup in The Battle of Pilot Knob effectively goes all the way back to 1861, stressing the significant pull Missouri had upon Confederate military interests and planning in the Trans-Mississippi West, a large factor in this being that many of the best officers and units in the department were from that state (notwithstanding some comparatively mediocre senior Missouri generals like Sterling Price and John S. Marmaduke). The initial phase of the 1864 campaign, from Price's felicitously unopposed crossing of the Arkansas River through his army's largely unimpeded passage through southeast Missouri, is covered well.  The book demonstrates how the ineptitude and extreme caution of Frederick Steele, the senior federal officer in Arkansas, facilitated Confederate freedom of movement. Not only did Steele decline to take advantage of opportunities to intercept Price in Arkansas when the Confederates were most vulnerable, he failed to track enemy movements and provide Union forces in Missouri with timely reports of their progress.

The depth at which the Pilot Knob tactical narrative is presented should prove satisfactory to most readers. Suderow and House clearly outline the terrain considerations, command decisions, and troop movements most crucial to understanding the skirmishes and battles in Arcadia Valley — specifically the fighting at Shut-In Gap and Ironton on September 26, the Confederate approach to and abortive assault on Fort Davidson on the 27th, and the evacuation and escape of the Union garrison during the night. The updated volume is superior to prior studies in its integration of personal accounts from both military and civilian participants.

One might quibble with some of the command assessments. The authors present Price's battle plan as unqualified blunder but fail to provide an alternative strategy. Clearly Price was a weak practitioner of the operational art and one can certainly question whether he should have attacked at all given that surprise was lost, but his tactical plan for reducing the fort was pretty conventional by Civil War standards. Suderow and House strangely insist that a Confederate battery placed atop Shepherd Mountain could have spared southern blood by shelling the federals out of their earthworks when their own narrative notes the ease by which Union siege guns silenced all Confederate cannon deployed on those heights on the 27th. Ewing is also censured for dispatching small detachments outside the main defenses to develop enemy intentions, a perhaps overzealous criticism of a textbook practice (though much of the authors' condemnation seems to revolve around the late timing of their recall, a circumstance that led directly to the capture of Major Wilson).

The battle narrative is good, but one might argue that the treatment of Ewing's epic retreat to Leasburg is where the book shines brightest. Boosted by a late start from Marmaduke and an atypically dilatory Jo Shelby, the entire Union column from Ewing on down displayed a remarkable degree of coolness in safely traversing over 60 dangerous miles to safety with little in the way of lost men and equipment. An insightful explanation of how the topography along the route simultaneously aided foot-bound retreat and thwarted mounted pursuit is offered, as are solid reports on the handful of clashes that did occur along the way. A rough tracing of Ewing's final defensive position at Leasburg is made available as is some discussion of the light skirmishing that was as far as the Confederates were willing to go to test it. Apparently much of the ground along the historical pathway remains similar in appearance today and House's modern photographs of key places mentioned in the text are very helpful in visualizing the action.

Also included in the new edition are a large number of maps at both operational and tactical scales. Both types generally convey the information needed, but some readers might need a magnifying glass to make out some of the features. More supplementary material is present in the appendices, which contain Union and Confederate orders of battle, a casualty discussion, an annotated photographic reference of the battlefield, and an ordnance report for the fort.

There are some complaints. The quality of evidence behind the Confederate loss figure cited in the new edition of between two and three times the number indicated in Suderow's original study will not impress every reader (including this one) and some very useful reference material was excised (see note 1 below). Also, an index is missing and an unfortunate number of typos made it through the editing process.

As one of the most dramatic and important episodes of the 1864 Confederate campaign in Missouri, the Battle of Pilot Knob is certainly worthy of renewed attention. Significantly enhanced by the inclusion of entirely new chapters, enriched original material, and numerous maps and photographs, this new edition of a work long considered to be the standard treatment of the subject is a welcome update that should please both well informed students and a new generation of readers unfamiliar with the scarce and long out of print original.

Notes:
1 - A detailed rundown of the differences between the editions is beyond the scope of this review. New material, which includes fresh military and civilian participant accounts, is inserted throughout the book, but the extensive coverage of the retreat from Pilot Knob to Leasburg in The Battle of Pilot Knob is a significant augmentation to the original edition, which ended with the evacuation of Fort Davidson. The new edition adds more appendices but curiously the expanded casualty discussion displaces Suderow's extensively documented unit strength tables. The authors seem to be at odds with each other when it comes to Confederate losses, with Suderow's figure estimated at just over 500 and House going with the much higher 1,100 to 1,500 range. Frankly, Suderow's conclusions in this regard seems the more credible of the two. The maps, greater in number and completely redone for the new edition, better address the campaign's operational movements (although the new tactical maps for the Ironton and Pilot Knob fighting do not demonstrate marked improvement over the originals). Suderow's often lengthy explanatory endnotes do not appear to have been preserved in their original form, but rather pared down or subdivided. I would strongly recommend that interested readers keep both editions.
2 - Coincident with the release of the Suderow-House edition was the publication of Douglas Gifford's Where Valor and Devotion Met: The Battle of Pilot Knob [review], another full treatment of the campaign and battle. I would rate Gifford's description and analysis of the Pilot Knob battle as the better of the two, but give Suderow-House the edge when it comes to overall campaign framework, incorporation of civilian (black and white) accounts into the narrative, and coverage of the Leasburg retreat. For the last, The Battle of Pilot Knob is preferred for its arguably richer terrain discussion (aided by House's evocative series of photographs) and more in depth treatment of the clashes at Huzzah Creek, Red Haw and Leasburg/Harrison Station itself.  As above, serious students would really benefit from owning both studies.

From the Spring University Press catalogs

LSU:
* Civil War Infantry Tactics :Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness by Earl Hess.
* The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers during Sherman’s March by Lisa T. Frank.
* The Papers of Jefferson Davis Volume 14, 1880–1889 edited by Lynda Lasswell Crist and asst. ed. Suzanne Scott Gibbs.
* Patrick Henry Jones: Irish American, Civil War General, and Gilded Age Politician by Mark Dunkelman.
* The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America by James L. Huston.

Kent St (catalog covers entire year so some are late 2015):
* One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the American Revolution While Marching
toward the Civil War by Michael F. Conlin.
* Border Wars: The Civil War in Tennessee and Kentucky edited by Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker and W. Calvin Dickinson (companion to Sister States, Enemy States).
* “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune”: Major General Lew Wallace in the West, 1861–1862 by Charles G. Beemer (lots of Wallace defenders out there).
* African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War by Richard M. Reid
* Conspicuous Gallantry: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of James W. King, 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry edited by Eric R. Faust.
* Citizens and Communities: Civil War History Readers, Volume 4 edited by J. Matthew Gallman.

Kentucky:
* For Brotherhood and Duty: The Civil War History of the West Point Class of 1862 by Brian R. McEnany.
* The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth edited by Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert.
* For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War by Patrick A. Lewis.

Nebraska:
* Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War by Perry D. Jamieson.
* The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War by Todd W. Wahlstrom.
* Civil War Washington: History, Place, and Digital Scholarship edited by Susan C. Lawrence.

North Carolina:
* Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton by William Marvel.
* The Battle of Ezra Church and the Struggle for Atlanta by Earl J. Hess.
* Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina by Thomas J. Brown (we need more puns in our titles).
* Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front by J. Matthew Gallman.
* An Agrarian Republic: Farming, Antislavery Politics, and Nature Parks in the Civil War Era by Adam Wesley Dean.
* Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South by R. Douglas Hurt.
* Writing Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the Postwar South by Sharon D. Kennedy-Nolle.

That's quite a catalog season of reading from only five publishers.

B&G Volume 31 Issue #1 "The Bermuda Hundred Campaign"

I am aware of only two major Bermuda Hundred Campaign histories, William Glenn Robertson's Back Door to Richmond: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, April-June 1864 and Herbert Schiller's The Bermuda Hundred Campaign both published in the late 1980s.  I read Robertson and liked it very much, but have never opened a copy of Schiller before.  Blue and Gray first featured the campaign way back in Vol. VII (presumably with Robertson as author) and they revisit the subject with Schiller in the upcoming first issue of Vol. XXXI. The magazine used to have a 'dueling historians' sidebar every once in a while and I seem to recall Schiller and Robertson pitted against one another on the question of whether Butler was, as the saying went, "corked in a bottle" or not.  I don't recall who believed what or which writer made the strongest case but it appears Schiller has another opportunity to state his opinion.

Booknotes III (Nov '14)

New Arrivals:

1. Marauder: The Life and Times of Nathaniel McClure Menefee by Randall Osborne (East KY Pr, 2014).

Osborne is an expert on the Civil War in the East Kentucky and was a frequent collaborator with Jeff Weaver, who wrote extensively on the units that fought along the borderlands of E. Kentucky and S.W. Virginia. Marauder explores the colorful life and Civil War career of Nathaniel Menefee (also frequently spelled Menifee) who was a one-legged Confederate irregular fighter. This is the first full account of the Civil War activities of Menefee, who remains a relatively obscure figure outside the region.

2. The 2nd Maine Cavalry in the Civil War: A History and Roster by Ned Smith (McFarland, 2014).

Formed near the end of 1863, the 2nd Maine Cavalry was a latecomer to the war, seeing its first combat in Louisiana during the Red River Campaign and spending the rest of the war conducting raids in Alabama and Florida (mostly the latter). Health wise, they had a tough time in the Deep South during the war, suffering 334 deaths from disease and only 10 from combat.

3. Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price's Army by Ken Robison (The Hist Pr, 2014).

Both during and after the Civil War, ex-Confederates migrated west to Montana Territory. This book is basically a collection of their individual stories, each chapter length.

4. Antebellum and Civil War San Francisco: A Western Theater for Northern & Southern Politics by Monika Trobits (The Hist Pr, 2014).

"In just two years, San Francisco's population skyrocketed from eight hundred to thirty thousand, making it an "instant city" where tensions between transplanted Northerners and Southerners built as war threatened the nation. Though seemingly isolated, San Franciscans took their part in the conflict. Some extended the Underground Railroad to their city, while others joined the Confederate-aiding Knights of the Golden Circle. Including a directory of local historic sites and streets, author Monika Trobits chronicles the dramatic and volatile antebellum and Civil War history of the City by the Bay."

Longacre: "THE EARLY MORNING OF WAR: Bull Run, 1861"

[The Early Morning of War: Bull Run, 1861 by Edward G. Longacre (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014) Hardcover, 12 maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:520/680. ISBN:978-0-8061-4498-6 $29.95]

First Bull Run isn't exactly a neglected topic. In addition to a pair of recent atlases by Bradley Gottfried and Blaikie Hines, quite a number of narrative histories have been published over the years, among them books by Robert M. Johnston (1913), Russel Beatie (1961 and 2002), William C. Davis (1977), John Hennessy (1989), JoAnna McDonald (1998), Ethan Rafuse (2002), and David Detzer (2004). However, the preceding are all small to mid-sized overviews, with Edward Longacre's The Early Morning of War: Bull Run, 1861 truly the first attempt at the type of exhaustive modern treatment accorded so many Civil War campaigns and battles.

In keeping with a practice that's become de rigueur for books of this type, Longacre devotes a great deal of space (though quite a bit more than normal) to the biographical backgrounds and antebellum careers of the four army commanders involved in the campaign — Irvin McDowell and Robert Patterson for the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia and Army of Pennsylvania, respectively, and Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard (Army of the Potomac) and Joseph E. Johnston (Army of the Shenandoah). While so much ink spilled on the Old Army experiences of these men doesn't exactly pay off in terms of insights into how they would perform at Bull Run, it is important to understand how each found their way to high command (especially for McDowell, who was a junior officer and unexpected choice to lead the nation's premier army in the field). That Patterson is presented at length, and as a fully fleshed out historical figure rather than caricature and object of ridicule, is one among many of the book's more refreshing aspects.

With the Bull Run battle not commencing until the book's midpoint, the Shenandoah confrontation between Patterson and Johnston gets coverage roughly equal to that of Union campaign preparations in Washington and the Confederate military buildup at Manassas. The book perceptively treats its subject as a two-pronged Northern Virginia Campaign rather than a Bull Run primary operation with a supporting action in the Shenandoah. General in Chief Winfield Scott deemed it so, at least initially before his overall direction became entirely muddled. The only treatment of Patterson that rivals Longacre's in detail and analysis is the one by Russel Beatie contained in The Army of the Potomac: Birth of Command, November 1860-September 1861 (2002). Like Beatie and David Detzer before him, Longacre feels that Scott deserves more of the blame for Patterson's failure to hold Johnston in place. Patterson's timid performance cannot be dismissed (and it isn't) but Scott's unclear orders, including his constant admonitions to move with extreme caution and threats to take away Patterson's best troops, might erode the confidence of any early war army general inexperienced in independent command.

For Bull Run, fine accounts of the major fighting at Blackburn's Ford, Matthew's Hill, and Henry Hill already exist, and how much Longacre's own meticulous rendering of events enhances our deeper understanding of the battle is largely a matter of degree, alterations in detail here and there but no major rearrangement of the character of each engagement. That said, the quantity and variety of first hand perspectives populating Longacre's narrative exceeds that of any prior work by a wide margin. The amount of research material amassed by the author during his decades long search is astonishing. The bibliography alone is 70 tightly packed pages in length, with the number of unpublished document collections consulted approaching 500.

Tactical discussion is generally conducted at the appropriate regimental and battery scales, with frequent diversions describing action at the lower battalion, company, and section levels. In common with other Bull Run studies, Longacre's narrative emphasizes the piecemeal nature of the fighting (especially for McDowell, who carried the operational and tactical burden of attack) as well as the extreme difficulty both sides experienced in determining friend from foe on the battlefield. Longacre's account of the decisive Henry Hill phase of the battle certainly deserves consideration as the finest yet written.

Throughout The Early Morning of War, Longacre dutifully addresses the many myths and misconceptions surrounding the battle. The author disputes the conventional view that the railroad necessarily comprised a key component in Confederate victory, citing the inadequate equipment, poor track beds, and general mismanagement of the Manassas Gap Railroad as well as the fact that Johnston's entire command could conceivably have marched the full distance to Manassas in the same or shorter period of time that the portion that participated in the July 21 fight did (though he perhaps underestimates the fighting condition the men might have been in upon arrival). Every Bull Run study is obliged to offer an opinion on the famous "Stonewall" incident and Longacre does not come down firmly on whether Bee intended his now immortal words as positive or negative toward Jackson, though he is more amenable than most to the negative connotation. Regardless of Bee's opinion, it would be difficult to make a case against the the Virginian's defensive arrangements (though Detzer was game to try in Donnybrook), which anchored the Confederate left throughout the afternoon and made victory possible. The popular myth that a huge crowd of politicians and other civilian onlookers picnicked near the battlefield and disrupted the retreat has already been dispelled and the author briefly offers his own conclusion that only around 80 gawkers were present and they were largely gone (Congressman Ely a major exception, of course) by the time panic ensued. On the matter of the disastrous squandering of Griffin's and Ricketts's batteries atop Henry Hill, recent reinterpretation of these events has cast doubt on Charles Griffin's self serving testimony that his superior, Major Barry, ordered him not to fire on advancing Confederates, mistaking them for supports. According to Longacre, no evidence of this conversation exists beyond Griffin's claim. Every Bull Run history includes the tragic exchange and it may very well  rank high among the many examples of Civil War storytelling gold passed on uncritically by succeeding generations of scholars.

Longacre's coverage of the immediate aftermath of the battle is also strong. His account of the Confederate pursuit is the best one this reviewer has encountered in the Bull Run literature. From the high level of unit and command disorganization present in the winners, as well as the lack of logistical support necessary for continued operations, it becomes pretty clear that Confederate fantasies of following up their victory with the capture of a large proportion of McDowell's fleeing army or Washington itself were just that. The interpretation that the Union defeat at Bull Run was less of a disaster and more of a much needed wake up call to the enormity of the task at hand has gathered momentum in recent times and Longacre expresses support for this idea. In terms of omissions, post battle allegations that Union dead were mutilated by vengeful Confederates is a point of contention not addressed in the book.

Depicting the action at regimental level, the battle maps support the text's similar scale well, though a few more detailing the fighting around Henry Hill were needed. In terms of a wish list, the orders of battle might have been fleshed out more given existing resources.  Also, in terms of expansive source discussion, the endnotes are a bit spare.  Contrasting views on familiar topics are certainly noted in the main text and notes, but one cannot help but think that more could have been done to appease the more obsessive student of the campaign. Undoubtedly, creeping page length for a study already pushing 700 pages had a hand in limiting the explanatory nature of the notes.

But really, the above wishes and complaints are only nitpicks in the overall scheme of things. With its exhaustive research and fullest single volume rendering yet of the military and political dimensions of the 1861 campaign in Northern Virginia, The Early Morning of War is clearly the new standard bearer of Bull Run studies.


More CWBA reviews of OU Press titles:
* Battles and Massacres on the Southwestern Frontier: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives
* The River Was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest & Fort Pillow
* Civil War Arkansas 1863: The Battle for a State (PB edition)
* Torn by War: The Civil War Journal of Mary Adelia Byers
* Columns of Vengeance: Soldiers, Sioux, and the Punitive Expeditions, 1863-1864
* Los Angeles in Civil War Days, 1860-1865
* Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 4th edition
* George Crook: From the Redwoods to Appomattox
* Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres
* A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico, 1846
* Patrick Connor's War: The 1865 Powder River Indian Expedition (Arthur H. Clark)
* Texas: A Historical Atlas
* Civil War Arkansas 1863: The Battle for a State
* Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane
* Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865 the Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts (Arthur H. Clark)
* Three Days in the Shenandoah: Stonewall Jackson at Front Royal and Winchester
* The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare In The Upper South, 1861-1865
* The Civil War in Arizona: The Story of the California Volunteers, 1861-1865

Smith's Shiloh's impending arrival

With any luck, Timothy Smith's Shiloh: Conquer or Perish should be greeting me at the mailbox any day now. The table of contents has recently been uploaded at the link provided. Just going from the chapter titles, it looks like the second day action begins on page 252 of a narrative running over 420 pages. As promised, that's a good chunk of text devoted to the neglected Monday fighting.

I still think Shiloh: If They Were A Million would have been a snappier title.

Booknotes II (Nov '14)

New Arrivals:

1. The Civil War in the Border South by Christopher Phillips (Praeger, 2013).

I haven't had the chance to see much of this series of introductory histories to various Civil War subjects, but liked the one that I did read (Daniel Sutherland's American Civil War Guerrillas).

2. The Bloody 7th by Glen Allan Swain, Jr. (Broadfoot, 2014).

This is one of the newest volumes from the South Carolina Regimental-Roster series.  The 7th certainly forged an enviable reputation within Kershaw's brigade.  Author Glen Swain also revealed that 8th and 20th volumes are on the way (from different authors), these last two filling out the brigade's full complement of subunits.

3. The Last Citadel: Petersburg, June 1864 - April 1865 by Noah Andre Trudeau (Savas Beatie, 2014).

It's probably safe to say that for many Civil War readers Trudeau's The Last Citadel served as their first comprehensive introduction to the Petersburg Campaign. The just released "150th Anniversary Edition" from Savas Beatie has "updated text, redrawn maps, and new material."

Civil War Infantry Tactics

For far too long, the Civil War literature has lacked a serious book length study of small unit tactics, one that really looks into the nuts and bolts of the march, maneuver, and assault formations of the period from training manual to practice in the field to innovation spawned from the laboratory of battlefield experience. This excerpt from the catalog book description of Earl Hess's Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness (LSU, Spring '15) has many of the key words I'm looking for.

"Drawing on the drill manuals available to officers and through a close reading of battle reports, Civil War Infantry Tactics demonstrates that linear tactics provided the best formations and maneuvers to use with the single-shot musket, whether rifle or smoothbore. The linear system was far from an outdated relic that led to higher casualties and prolonged the war. Indeed, regimental officers on both sides of the conflict found the formations and maneuvers in use since the era of the French Revolution to be indispensable to the survival of their units on the battlefield. The training soldiers received in this system, combined with their extensive experience in combat, allowed small units a high level of articulation and effectiveness. Unlike much military history that focuses on grand strategies, Hess zeroes in on formations and maneuvers (or primary tactics), describing their purpose and usefulness in regimental case studies, and pinpointing which of them were favorites of unit commanders in the field."

Wittenberg: "'THE DEVIL'S TO PAY': John Buford at Gettysburg - A History and Walking Tour"

["The Devil's to Pay": John Buford at Gettysburg - A History and Walking Tour by Eric J. Wittenberg (Savas Beatie, 2014). Hardcover, maps, photos, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:219/287. ISBN:978-1-61121-208-2 $32.95]

Unlike many other fragments, legendary or otherwise, of the massive Gettysburg campaign and battle, John Buford's famous delaying action conducted in the rolling hills and valleys west of the Pennsylvania town on July 1, 1863 has never before been the subject of a book length treatment. As you might have guessed, this is no longer true. The product of a career's worth of specialized research and an obvious labor of love, Eric Wittenberg's "The Devil's to Pay" fully documents this aspect of Gettysburg lore, as well as several other important July 1-2 feats of arms from Buford's First Cavalry Division.

Before getting to the main event, Wittenberg, the author of many eastern theater cavalry books and articles, effectively sets the scene for the great drama that was to follow. Unusual to Civil War battle histories, the author carefully recounts Buford's selection of the battlefield and June 30 placement of his line of videttes west and north of Gettysburg in the context of the military manuals of the period. This educates the reader on the nuts of bolts of Civil War cavalry responsibilities, but it also serves to highlight Buford's skill and dedication in utilizing the best practices of his profession. The textbook execution illustrates why the Kentuckian earned the nom de guerre "Old Steadfast."

The book's centerpiece is the three hour period between Buford's initial clash with the vanguard of General Henry Heth's Confederate division and the arrival on the battlefield of the Union I Corps. During this critical time interval, the Union troopers (two cavalry brigades under William Gamble and Thomas Devin supported by John Calef's horse artillery) conducted a masterful fighting withdrawal, forcing Heth to undertake the time consuming task of deploying his division from road column into line in order to make headway.  Solidly based on primary sources, Wittenberg's methodical reconstruction of events is clear and presented at a level of tactical detail that should prove satisfying to demanding readers.  With contemporary Union source quotations dominating the narrative, my only complaint (a minor one) surrounds the author's general reluctance to temper some of the rampant partisan hyperbole and odds exaggerations present.  With so much mythology surrounding the morning encounter, one wishes the author hadn't waited until the end of the book to remind readers that Buford directly fought only two out of Heth's four brigades before the arrival of Reynolds.

The martial achievements of Buford's division after the arrival of the I Corps infantry were perhaps even more impressive than the much more heralded early morning action.  Wittenberg's chapter title of "Gamble Saves the First Corps" hints at the importance he attaches to the cavalry's efforts at keeping the Confederates from decisively turning the southern flank of the Union army.  Gamble's troopers first slowed the enemy advance then, at Seminary Ridge, offered the kind of stubborn resistance not often seen when dismounted cavalry faced first class veteran infantry.

Even then, their day wasn't over.  In the waning moments of the first day's battle, Buford's exhausted division was ordered into the fields west of the Emmitsburg Road, where their imposing line of battle was credited with extinguishing any further thoughts the Confederates might have had of continuing their offensive against the gathering Union host atop Cemetery Hill.  Faced with difficult tests at three major junctures on July 1, the First Division passed each challenge with flying colors.

Two more chapters cover the balance of Buford's Gettysburg experience, which comprised picketing the extreme left of the Union army during the night of July 1-2 and skirmishing with Confederates in Pitzer's Woods on the morning of the 2nd.  Ordered south to Westminster after being relieved by III Corps, the division was not present on July 3.

Spread throughout the book are 17 maps at a variety of scales, all of which are effectively linked to the narrative. Typical of the publisher, the book is well stocked with photographs both familiar and rare. On the downside, there's a noticeable number of typos. The four appendices address a variety of subjects.  Appendix A is an order of battle, B tackles the myth of Buford's cavalry being armed with Spencers (they weren't), C explores the proper military terminology for the morning fight on July 1 (with the modern term "covering force action" being the author's preferred label), and Appendix D examines the question of whether Lane's Confederate brigade formed squares or not when it faced Buford late on the 1st (the evidence is doubtful but inconclusive). Finally, the book offers a battlefield tour of Buford sites complete with detailed walking and driving directions, photographs, and GPS coordinates.

Most Civil War students are familiar in at least a general way with the significance of John Buford and his cavalry in the Union victory at Gettysburg, but "The Devil's to Pay", with its robustly detailed narrative of events and sharp analysis, puts a definitive stamp on the subject. In addition to being another incomparable contribution on the part of the author to the Gettysburg Campaign bookshelf, the study also argues powerfully for the placement of Buford among the top echelon of Union cavalry commanders.

A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia

It would be difficult to overestimate the value of historian Jerry Thompson's research and publications to the study of the Civil War in the desert Southwest. With books like Mexican Texans in the Union Army, Vaqueros in Blue and Gray and Tejanos in Gray, he's also demonstrated a special interest in the Hispanic soldiers of both sides. With this background, I couldn't be happier that he's tackling a unit history project that I've wished for for a long time, A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia (UNM Pr, Spring 2015). It's a massive book with a price to match so I hope the press is willing to send me a review copy.

From the description:

"The Civil War in New Mexico began in 1861 with the Confederate invasion and occupation of the Mesilla Valley. At the same time, small villages and towns in New Mexico Territory faced raids from Navajos and Apaches. In response the commander of the Department of New Mexico Colonel Edward Canby and Governor Henry Connelly recruited what became the First and Second New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. In this book leading Civil War historian Jerry Thompson tells their story for the first time, along with the history of a third regiment of Mounted Infantry and several companies in a fourth regiment.

Thompson's focus is on the Confederate invasion of 1861-1862 and its effects, especially the bloody Battle of Valverde. The emphasis is on how the volunteer companies were raised; who led them; how they were organized, armed, and equipped; what they endured off the battlefield; how they adapted to military life; and their interactions with New Mexico citizens and various hostile Indian groups, including raiding by deserters and outlaws. Thompson draws on service records and numerous other archival sources that few earlier scholars have seen. His thorough accounting will be a gold mine for historians and genealogists, especially the appendix, which lists the names of all volunteers and militia men."

Dozier (ed.): "A GUNNER IN LEE'S ARMY: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter"

[A Gunner in Lee's Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter edited by Graham T. Dozier (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Softcover, photos, notes, bibliography, index. 367 pp. ISBN:978-1-4696-1874-6 $39.95]

Students of the campaigns of the Army of Northern Virginia have undoubtedly encountered the name Thomas Henry Carter here and there in their readings. Of the many talented young artillerists that occupied the lower and middle command levels in Lee's army, Carter was regarded as one of the finest. Fortunately, those interested in Carter's life and wartime experiences now have an excellent resource in A Gunner in Lee's Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter edited by Graham Dozier of the Virginia Historical Society (where the original documents reside).

At 31 years of age, Thomas Carter began the war as a battery commander, leading the King William Artillery during the Peninsula, Maryland, and Fredericksburg campaigns. Promoted rapidly from major and then lieutenant colonel, he was a battalion commander at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. In 1864, now Colonel Carter served in the Overland Campaign and was 2nd Corps Chief of Artillery during Jubal Early's Shenandoah Campaign. The next year, he found himself in the Richmond-Petersburg siege lines, ultimately following the army to its demise at Appomattox and surviving the war.

The Carter correspondence, 103 letters nearly all of which were written to his wife Susan, exhibits all the qualities of the best candidates for publication. The writing is voluminous and frequently touches upon the type of subjects most interesting to readers and scholars alike. Letters often open or close with talk on personal business matters, reminding readers yet again of the many non-traditional plantation and farm management duties thrust upon wives when their husbands went off to fight.  Home matters aside, Carter writes about his own war experiences in some detail (especially later on).  He also frequently commented on military bureaucracy, slavery, and politics while also freely offering pointed assessments of the strengths and shortcomings of his fellow officers^*. Though it's unstated if he ever made his position public, Carter told his wife he supported arming slaves to fight in the Confederate army in exchange for immediate manumission. In his writings, he could be very critical of the Confederate government and its president, projecting deep frustration toward how the army was raised, organized and run.  Lamentations surrounding discipline, mainly the lack of it among members of the Confederate government and military, is a common theme throughout. Carter's disgruntlement with the army boiled over during the series of 1864 disasters in the Shenandoah, his letters praising Union army discipline while at the same time denouncing the independent spirits of his fellow Confederate officers and the infantry they commanded as destructive to unit cohesion and effectiveness. 

It should be mentioned that large coverage gaps exist in the letters. The absence of correspondence for long periods of time encompassing the Seven Days battles, Gettysburg, and the Overland Campaign is doubly unfortunate given the significance of those events.

Editor Graham Dozier performs well all the tasks expected of the job. While he transcribes the letters largely as is, the footnotes are numerous and extensive. Like all top quality edited letter collections, the breadth and depth of Dozier's own research is on par with that found in original manuscripts, his work in this regard clearly demonstrated in the editorial narrative and notes. The first chapter comprises a fine biographical essay for Carter, his pre-war life one rather typical of a member of his class. With two prestigious medical degrees, Carter nevertheless passed on a career in that profession in favor of managing his father's estate with its 100 slaves. Dozier also provides narrative introductions to each of the seven chapters covering the war years, always keeping the reader abreast of Carter's personal activities during each campaign and battle (whether covered by the letters or not). He concludes the book with an account of Carter's life after the war, when the Virginian carved out new occupations in education and railroad arbitration while remaining active in Confederate veterans organizations.

The Carter letters collected in A Gunner in Lee's Army comprise an exceptionally informative primary resource for those researching the mid-level command structure of the Army of Northern Virginia's artillery arm. On top of the significant intrinsic value of the correspondence, Graham Dozier's expert editing considerably enhances the scholarly merit of the material.


Comments:
* - Carter has nothing but positive things to say about Earl Van Dorn (affectionately calling him "the Earl", which I've never come across before), but then again he never served with him in the West and Trans-Mississippi!  Carter also frequently praises D.H. Hill, Robert Rodes, and Robert E. Lee, though he criticizes Lee for being too soft on underperforming subordinates (the command discipline issue again). Carter was very protective of the artillery's reputation, successfully obtaining a retraction from Jubal Early, who found general fault with his command's performance during repeated defeats at the hands of Phil Sheridan's army in the Shenandoah. Carter's observation that Richard Ewell appeared "pale", "thin", and "feeble" at the outset of the Gettysburg Campaign might add fuel to the notion that physical limitations lay behind Ewell's rather passive behavior during the battle, at least to a greater degree than typically conceded (by most estimations, Ewell's amputation recovery seems to have gone well).


More CWBA reviews of UNC Press titles:
* Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia
* A Field Guide to Gettysburg: Experiencing the Battlefield through Its History, Places, and People
* Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign
* With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North
* The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi
* Shifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina
* West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace
* Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign (link to author interview)
* A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (link to author interview)
* In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat
* The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
* Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign
* Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession
* Trench Warfare under Grant & Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign
* Plain Folk’s Fight: The Civil War & Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia
* Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign
* Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

Booknotes (Nov '14)

New Arrivals:

1. An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War by Robert Weible, Jennifer A. Lemak and Aaron Noble (SUNY Pr, 2014).

From the publisher's description: "A companion to the award-winning exhibition of the same name, displayed at the New York State Museum from September 2012 to March 2014, An Irrepressible Conflict includes reproductions of objects from the collections of the New York State Museum, Library, and Archives, as well as more than twenty-five different institutions across the state. Among the many significant objects are a Lincoln life mask from 1860, the earliest photograph of Frederick Douglass, the only known portrait of Dred Scott and a bronze medal given to the defenders of Fort Sumter by the City of New York."

2. The Fighting Fifteenth Alabama Infantry: A Civil War History and Roster by James P. Faust (McFarland, 2014).

With only brief chapter narratives covering the 15th's many campaigns and battles, a very limited bibliography, and much of the page space devoted to detailed casualty lists for each battle and a unit roster, this one doesn't sit among the fuller treatments available from the publisher's catalog of Civil War regimental roster studies.

3. The Civil War: The Story of the War with Maps by M. David Detweiler (Stackpole, 2014).

Perhaps the accompanying text is okay, but the content and design of the color cartography in this book is decidedly uninspiring, none of its qualities matching those found in the best modern atlases. A subject newbie might find it acceptable.

Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War

Unlike Ameer on the gridiron, Nebraska's academic publisher hasn't exactly been killing it during the Sesquicentennial (though acquiring Gettysburg Magazine was a bit bold). It's been such a long period of time since they released a new title (a true original volume, not a paperback reprint) from their Great Campaigns of the Civil War series that I was wondering if it went defunct. Apparently not, as spring 2015 will see the publication of Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War. This is the first output from this series since 2008's Counter-Thrust (the best of the bunch, in my opinion) and it will also mark the return to the Civil War world of Perry Jamieson.

"In Spring 1865, Perry D. Jamieson juxtaposes for the first time the major campaign against Lee that ended at Appomattox and Gen. William T. Sherman’s march north through the Carolinas, which culminated in Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender at Bennett Place. Jamieson also addresses the efforts required to put down armed resistance in the Deep South and the Trans-Mississippi. As both sides fought for political goals following Lee’s surrender, these campaigns had significant consequences for the political-military context that shaped the end of the war as well as Reconstruction."

Sounds like it might be worth a look.

"Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History"

Ohio University Press's Civil War in the Great Interior series does fine work in presenting readers with all-embracing selections of published and unpublished Civil War documents on a state by state basis, the whole accompanied by expert editing. From the same publisher and similar in presentation style, Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History edited by Theodore J. Karamanski and Eileen M. McMahon (Ohio University Press, 2014) narrows the documentary subject focus even further. The editors, both professors at nearby universities and published authors of Chicago history, are well placed to know where to find interesting materials (obscure or otherwise) as well as interpret them.

The volume is packed with newspaper articles, letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, government papers and more related to every conceivable home front and military topic directly related to Civil War Chicago. Among the many themes addressed are the 1860 election, early war enlistment fever, Chicagoans and the battlefield, Chicago as Confederate prisoner of war camp, opposition politics in the city, labor and management in Chicago industry, class and ethnic tensions, and, finally, events surrounding the end of the war. There's even a select history and photographic tour of Chicago's Civil War memorials and other sites. In addition to curating the documents, Karamanski and McMahon also contributed book and chapter introductory essays that are substantive enough in their own right to together comprise a quite comprehensive short form Civil War city history.

This is a really impressive documentary immersion project. With no shortage of Midwestern candidates, perhaps Civil War Chicago can be the first title in a new city series.

The Civil War Guerrilla

One of the better developments in the Civil War literature over recent years has been a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of guerrilla fighting as something more than a rear area irritant (though the strategic implications of irregular warfare overall remain hotly debated). University Press of Kentucky's spring 2015 catalog will contribute to the topic in the form of The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth, an essay compilation edited by Joseph Beilein and Matthew Hulbert. In it the editors "assemble a team of both rising and eminent scholars to examine guerrilla warfare in the South during the Civil War. Together, they discuss irregular combat as practiced by various communities in multiple contexts, including how it was used by Native Americans, the factors that motivated raiders in the border states, and the women who participated as messengers, informants, collaborators, and combatants. They also explore how the Civil War guerrilla has been mythologized in history, literature, and folklore."

Kentucky's website also mentions a new Ebook Loyalty Program that makes physical copy owners eligible for a free electronic edition. This isn't quite the same thing, but I've often thought that a good way to encourage direct ordering from university and private presses would be to simultaneously offer a free or nominally priced e-book copy with the purchase.