Coming Soon (September '23 Edition)

Scheduled for SEPT 2023¹:
• Bayou Battles for Vicksburg: The Swamp and River Expeditions, January 1-April 30, 1863 by Timothy Smith.
• Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War by Matthew Hulbert.
• Losing the Thread: Cotton, Liverpool and the American Civil War by Jim Powell.
• A Man by Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood by Joseph Beilein.
• Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves ed. by Jordan & White.
• Michigan's Company K: Anishinaabe Soldiers, Citizenship, and the Civil War by Michelle Cassidy.
• My Dearest Lilla: Letters Home from Civil War General Jacob D. Cox ed. by Eugene Schmiel.
• Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke: The Civil War Letters of William F. Keeler, Paymaster on the USS Monitor by Charles McLandress.
• From the Wilderness to Appomattox: The Fifteenth New York Heavy Artillery in the Civil War by Edward Altemos.
• Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War by Stephen Hyslop.
• Calamity at Frederick: Robert E. Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam Alexander Rossino.
• Contrasts in Command: The Battle of Fair Oaks, May 31 - June 1, 1862 Victor Vignola.

Comments: Both Losing the Thread and Oracle of Lost Causes were released a bit early (click on the link at left to read the Booknotes entry for the latter). Scheduled for release at the very end of the month, Vignola's Fair Oaks/Seven Pines book has received a title change, from A Mismanaged Affair: The Battle of Seven Pines/Fair Oaks, May 31-June 1, 1862 to Contrasts in Command: The Battle of Fair Oaks, May 31-June 1, 1862. I guess the altered title better reflects the content, as the description text notes that the book "focuses primarily on the Fair Oaks portion of the battle." I can't find the Cox letters book anywhere on UT Press's website yet, so there seems little chance it will actually be published next month (but, just in case, I include it anyway as a placeholder). BTW, Smith's book does cover Arkansas Post.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, 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: Outwitting Forrest

New Arrival:

• Outwitting Forrest: The Tupelo Campaign in Mississippi, June 22 - July 23, 1864 by Edwin C. Bearss, ed. by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2023).

For those seeking the best single source for learning about the 1864 Tupelo campaign and battle in Mississippi, the current gold standard is Tom Parson's Work for Giants: The Campaign and Battle of Tupelo / Harrisburg, Mississippi, June-July 1864 (2014), which was also expertly condensed by its author as a Blue & Gray magazine feature. Before that, an excellent summary of the campaign and battle was placed in the middle section of Ed Bearss's Forrest at Brice's Crossroads, published by Morningside (1979, R-1987).

A number of 'firsts' were produced by Bearss during his long and distinguished government service career, among them many detailed campaign/battle narratives and sets of battlefield troop movement maps that together provided the groundwork for subsequent studies (including a number of his own). One of those seminal works is the 1969 publication The Tupelo Campaign, June 22-July 23. A Documented Narrative & Troop Movement Maps. I haven't taken the time to closely compare the appropriate parts of Bearss's Morningside title with his 1969 monograph, but several chapter headings are closely shared and the wording used in the opening passage of both is remarkably similar.

Regardless of the amount of shared material, it's always worth preserving (and, just as important, making more widely available) those works that 'started it all' and are of such timeless quality as to heavily influence more modern titles written decades later. The latest installment of Savas Beatie's Battles & Leaders series and freshly edited by David Powell, Bearss's 1969 manuscript has now been reissued under the title Outwitting Forrest: The Tupelo Campaign in Mississippi, June 22 - July 23, 1864.

Though often overshadowed by the stunning Confederate victory at Brice's Crossroads that preceded it by mere weeks, the campaign had significant consequences. By keeping Confederate forces in northern Mississippi occupied and away from the Union Army's main effort in the West, the Tupelo Campaign materially aided Sherman's advances in North Georgia.

From the description: "The engagement came about when Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith marched a Federal expeditionary force (his XVI Army Corps) into northern Mississippi in early July 1864. The thrust forced a response, the largest of which was delivered by the combined Confederate cavalry of Stephen D. Lee (who was in general command) and Forrest.

The tactical result was a Union defensive success. The larger Confederate strategic play, however—one that might have impacted the course of the war in the Western Theater—would have been to unleash Forrest on a raid into Middle Tennessee to destroy the single line of railroad track feeding and supplying the Union armies of William T. Sherman in his ongoing operations around Atlanta. Instead, his troopers were contained within the Magnolia State, where his combat effectiveness was severely curtailed."

In addition to penning a new foreword discussing the context and significance of Bearss's original monograph, Powell appends some of Bearss's chapter notes. Six new maps were also commissioned for this edition.

Booknotes: Hoosier Spies and Horse Marines

New Arrival:

• Hoosier Spies and Horse Marines: A History of the Third Indiana Cavalry, East Wing by James A. Goecker (McFarland, 2023).

From the description: Hoosier Spies and Horse Marines "traces the history of a remarkable troop of Hoosier horsemen—the East Wing of the Third Indiana Cavalry—during the Civil War. From the backwaters of the war in eastern Maryland to the epicenter of cavalry action in the eastern theater, they fought at Antietam, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and around Petersburg, and helped subdue Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way they served as spies and fought in dozens of vicious skirmishes and battles. At Appomattox, they escorted one of the most famous generals to come out of the war."

The six companies (A-F) that make up the object of this unit study were initially intended to become part of the First Indiana Cavalry, which was oversized at 14 companies and geographically scattered. To bring order out of this bit of organizational mess, the demi-regiment in Washington, D.C. was detached and formally redesignated as the East Wing of the new Third Indiana Cavalry. If there's an East Wing there has to be a West Wing, and that Third Indiana unit, eventually consisting of the remaining companies G-M, served in the western theater. The two units never fought alongside each other.

Upon quick perusal of the bibliography, it looks like author James Goecker was able to mine archives (in Indiana and elsewhere) for a fair number of member journals, letters, and other personal papers. The text appears to be primarily a military history narrative of the unit's campaigns and battles with the Army of the Potomac, bookended by organizational and postwar chapters. A number of fine-looking, full-page battle maps are sprinkled about in support. The appendix section consists of a Gettysburg casualty list and a detailed unit roster, the latter also including a more simplified list from an 1864 reorganization.

Review - "Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma" by Dale Chlouber

[Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma by Dale Chlouber (New Forums Press, 2023). Softcover, maps, photos, notes, appendix section. Pages:vi,164. ISBN:978-1-58107-378-2. $26.95]

In a rare diplomatic victory over its Union foe, the Confederate government in 1861 successfully negotiated alliance treaties with the major tribal nations residing within Indian Territory. However, even after principal chief John Ross finally succumbed to the pressure and aligned the powerful Cherokee with Richmond, there were many among the Creeks and other groups who believed their best interests still lay in honoring the old agreements with the U.S. government. Numbering in the thousands, they rallied around the highly respected Muscogee Creek former chief Opothleyahola. On the other side, the now Confederate Indians and their new Texas and Arkansas allies were determined to deny the possibility of armed opposition blossoming under their noses. That rising threat of open warfare caused Opothleyahola and his followers to flee north, a winter trek that some have called the "Trail of Blood on Ice." Pursuit led to a running series of engagements, the most significant of which were the "battles" of Round Mountain (November 19, 1861), Chusto Talasah (December 9), and Chustenahlah (December 26). The last was a rout of Opothleyahola's remaining warriors, but the harried Indian loyalists ultimately reached asylum in Kansas. There they huddled in refugee camps under less than ideal conditions, their sufferings endured amid the hope and promise of eventual return to their former homes under the protection of U.S. forces.

Perhaps the most notable historiographical controversy of the entire campaign revolves around the disputed location of the Battle of Round Mountain (less commonly known as the Battle of Red Fork or Round Mountains). Strong oral history and local tradition built up around the Twin Mounds site west of Yale, Oklahoma, but the controversy really started with the public dissemination of the findings of avocational historian John Melton and the 1949 Chronicles of Oklahoma article authored by professional historian Angie Debo. Their arguments in support of the Twin Mounds site convinced many, and the issue seemed resolved. However, Debo's scholarship was soon challenged by Chronicles of Oklahoma editor Muriel Wright, who initially seemed satisfied by Debo's analysis before rejecting it wholesale in favor of promoting a location (or locations) near the confluence of the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers, the so-called "Keystone Site" or sites. That was followed by decades of back and forth arguments and competing claims among historians, interested individuals, historical societies, and local communities. The conflict, which frequently reached unseemly depths, resulted in competing monuments and enduring questions. This contentious and nearly three quarters of a century-long debate is the subject of Dale Chlouber's Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma.

Chlouber's book is divided into two parts of roughly equal length: (1) "Background on the Controversy of the Battle of Red Fork" and (2) "Revisiting the Battle of Red Fork." "Background" re-explores the source of the controversy in depth, one of its most useful reference features being its creation of an extensive and well-documented timeline of events spanning 1949-1996. After professional historians lost interest in the debate, sometimes due to the career problems involved with it, amateurs stepped forward, and Chlouber also critiques the merits of the battle location advanced by Robert DeMoss (called, appropriately enough, the "DeMoss Site"). In strong fashion, the author explains why he is unconvinced by DeMoss's arguments and unsupported conspiracy charges, finding instead that the best features of DeMoss's analysis not only do not reject the Twin Mounds/Yale site but buttress it.

In point by point fashion, the "Revisiting" section reevaluates the merits of the best sets of evidence put forth by proponents of both main locations: the collective Keystone area site(s) and the Twin Mounds/Yale site. Chlouber judiciously weighs the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of evidence, and persuasively concludes that the preponderance of best sources (including maps, participant accounts written closest to the time of actual events, and oral history) strongly supports the Twin Mounds/Yale location over any other suggested site. In determining this, Chlouber is not a lone wolf. By his estimation, knowledgeable persons today support the Twin Mounds/Yale site with near unanimity.

In text and photos (including the results of his own amateur relic hunting), Chlouber also advances the notion that available artifact discoveries tend to support Twin Mounds as being the true battle site. What's really needed, as Chlouber admits, is a more systematic survey of the location candidates using the most current technology and professional practices of battlefield archaeology. Douglas Scott and others have used such tools to great effect on other Civil War battlegrounds. Chlouber reminds us, however, that man-made Keystone Lake has placed some potential survey sites underwater.

In terms of suggestions for improvement, typos were pretty heavy, especially in the first section. Inclusion of an updated, article-length narrative summary of the battle itself would have helped many readers more fully comprehend the events themselves along with their historiographical dimensions. The volume seems to assume that most, if not all, prospective readers possess at least a rudimentary prior understanding of the battle, but the topic along with its sources and critical geography will undoubtedly be alien to a number of interested readers (as they mostly were to this one!). Additionally, key sources excerpted in the main text are limited enough in number to be fully reproduced in the appendix section. For a future edition, the book's overall organizational structure might also be gainfully reconsidered. There is some needless repetition between sections, and, at least from this reader's perspective, there's a great deal of information presented in the second part of the book that provides useful context for sounder comprehension of key matters explored in the first. In some ways, I wish I had read the second part first. Those concerns might have been resolved through employment of a more integrative approach.

In highlighting the negative consequences of institutionalized personal animosity, incomplete and selective research, misuse of sources and context, flawed assumptions, and community rivalry, Chlouber's Round Mountain examination draws sober lessons from the controversy that can be more broadly applied to the practice of history. In what seems appropriate, the author broadly faults Wright's leadership of the publication arm of the state historical society, The Chronicles of Oklahoma, as doing a disservice to history. By "neutralizing and subduing critiques," (pg. 71) Wright's editorship promoted deeply flawed history and engendered a fear of reprisal (i.e. through refusal to publish other professional articles in The Chronicles) that suppressed healthy scholarly dissent.

Out of an abundance of caution, one might still deem the matter of the Round Mountain battle location to be lacking an unassailable resolution. Nevertheless, this volume thoroughly and effectively compiles and analyzes the available evidence in ways that significantly reinforce those assessments favoring the Twin Mounds site. In doing so, author Dale Chlouber strongly rebuffs the claims of those who still argue that good evidence, or not enough of it, in support of one site over the others does not exist. Revisiting the Battle of Red Fork is a very useful tool for guiding readers through a long, complicated, and lesson-filled historiographical dispute.

Booknotes: Oracle of Lost Causes

New Arrival:

• Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War by Matthew C. Hulbert (Bison, 2023)

Historian Matthew Hulbert accurately describes his subject, John Newman Edwards, as a "B-list celebrity" among the war's many colorful military and civilian figures, but the lively journalist is certainly a household name among students of the Civil War in Missouri. Edwards made a career out of advancing the fame of others and attempting to steer readers toward his version of how the war should be understood and remembered. Considering Edwards's influence, in Hulbert's view he is deserving of a biography of his own. As the author puts it, Edwards "furnishes the scaffolding of a tale far larger, and more geographically expansive, than a treatment of any single contemporary might yield" (pg. xxviii).

From the description: "John Newman Edwards was a soldier, a father, a husband, and a noted author. He was also a virulent alcoholic, a duelist, a culture warrior, and a man perpetually at war with the modernizing world around him. From the sectional crisis of his boyhood and the battlefields of the western borderlands to the final days of the Second Mexican Empire and then back to a United States profoundly changed by the Civil War," Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War "chronicles Edwards’s lifelong quest to preserve a mythical version of the Old World—replete with aristocrats, knights, damsels, and slaves—in North America."

The introduction colorfully summarizes the book's most prominent themes (Hulbert is an engaging writer), though I must admit the author's psychological profiling of his subject, at least when it comes to addressing Edwards's motivations, hopes, and fantasies, seems a bit too strongly assured for my taste. Of course, that's just a first impression, and one would have to read the rest of the book to gauge the degree to which such interpretations are justified.

More from the description: "This odyssey through nineteenth-century American politics and culture involved the likes of guerrilla chieftains William Clarke Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson, notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James, Confederate general Joseph Orville Shelby, and even Emperor Maximilian I and Empress Charlotte of Mexico. It is the story of a man who experienced Confederate defeat not once but twice, and how he sought to shape and weaponize the memory of those grievous losses."

Hulbert also presents his biography of Edwards as another means through which to usefully expand the boundaries, geographical and otherwise, of Civil War studies. His work "ultimately reveals how the Civil War determined not only the future of the vast West but also the extent to which the conflict was part of a broader, international sequence of sociopolitical uprisings."

Booknotes: Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork

New Arrival:

• Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma by Dale Chlouber (New Forums Pr, 2023).

While significant bits and pieces of the campaign's history are spread among numerous scholarly books and articles, we still lack a single, comprehensive, book-length examination of the series of 1861 battles fought between Confederate troops from Texas, Arkansas, and Indian Territory on one side and on the other a sizable minority alliance of anti-Confederate tribal dissenters under the Muscogee (Creek) leader Opothleyahola, the latter attempting to flee to presumed refuge in Kansas. In addition to being confronted by very poor period maps of the region and published information that is often dated and incomplete, readers new to the topic also quickly find that the very location of one of the major engagements (the Battle of Round Mountain) is a complicated topic of long dispute.

Dale Chlouber's Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork (Red Fork being one of the alternate names favored by some) represents the latest attempt at making sense of the competing claims surrounding the various Round Mountain controversies. The book is organized into two sections "Background on the Controversy of the Battle of Red Fork" and "Revisiting the Battle of Red Fork." In conducting his research for this book, Chlouber "has accumulated every scrap of information relating to the battle that could be located and has evaluated the arguments forwarded by those seeking to place the battle." In the end, the author finds that "there is no real controversy and the controversy lingers for reasons that have little to do with the battle" itself.

Having never waded into this historiographical morass beyond simply following a number of messageboard arguments about it over the years, I am looking forward to reading Chlouber's analysis and conclusions.

Booknotes: The Bone Ring

New Arrival:

• The Bone Ring: Civil War Journals of Colonel William James Leonard by Gari Carter (Donella Press, 2023).

This book's title refers to one example among many types of war art produced by soldiers throughout the history of warfare, particularly by those with a lot of free time on their hands but little in the way of traditional art-making supplies. Common examples include the celebrated trench art of WW1 and the artistic renderings of American Civil War POWs, this remembrance ring, of course, being among the latter. From the description: "When Colonel William Leonard died in 1901, among his effects was found a lovely jewelry box containing a simple ring carved of cow bone and engraved with his birthdate and the year of his imprisonment in Libby Prison. This humble memento, so carefully preserved, was made for him by his men to mark his 46th birthday when they were all prisoners of war in the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia."

Preserved along with that cherished ring was Leonard's wartime journal, "which begins when he was colonel in Purnell's Legion Infantry, which was charged with protecting telegraph and rail lines in Maryland and Virginia, and ends after he was paroled from Libby Prison and returned to Maryland." Now his great-granddaughter, Gari Carter, "presents Col. Leonard's journal, richly annotated and supplemented with family lore and local history."

The resulting publication, The Bone Ring: Civil War Journals of Colonel William James Leonard, supplements the journal with an introduction (which includes a summary of Leonard's pre-Civil War life as well as a capsule history of the Purnell Legion), an epilogue describing the Colonel's service after his release from Libby Prison as well as his postwar life, and some Leonard family genealogy. The text is also extensively footnoted by Carter.

Leonard and his men participated in the Eastern Shore expedition of 1861, and his command also served in Baltimore, the Lower Shenandoah Valley, and northern Virginia. Essentially a record of Leonard's POW experience, the journals (dated August 20, 1862 through September 28, 1862) transcribed in the book "begin when he was serving on guard duty for the Orange & Alexandria rail lines from Catlett's Station to Culpeper Court House, Virginia" (pg. 10), mere days before he was captured and sent to Richmond. They end with his return to Union lines upon release from Libby Prison.

With so many individual Civil War stories lost to history, Leonard is fortunate in having a caring, and capable, custodian of his memory in descendant Gari Carter, who has also published the Civil War journals of another ancestor (see her 2008 book Troubled State: Civil War Journals of Franklin Archibald Dick.

Booknotes: From Western Virginia with Jackson to Spotsylvania with Lee

New Arrival:

• From Western Virginia with Jackson to Spotsylvania with Lee: The Civil War Diaries and Letters of St. Joseph Tucker Randolph edited by Peter C. Luebke (35th Star Pub, 2023).

From Western Virginia with Jackson to Spotsylvania with Lee "presents the diaries and letters of St. Joseph Tucker Randolph, a young Confederate soldier from Richmond, Virginia. As might be expected of the son of a bookseller, Tucker's writings offer lucid and candid descriptions of the Civil War." Along with line and staff observations, Randolph's writings also offer both eastern and western perspectives of the war. More from the description: "He began the war in the 21st Virginia Infantry, a part of the famed Stonewall Brigade, before moving on to staff roles with Henry M. Ashby in Tennessee and John M. Pegram in Virginia." The last Randolph letter dates from May 23, 1864, for he was killed in action seven days later at Bethesda Church.

In terms of content, Randolph's "lengthy accounts of campaigning in western Virginia in 1861 and early 1862 give many rich characterizations of the area and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. His writings from Kentucky and Tennessee in 1862 offers trenchant commentary on the failures of the western armies. Tucker's return to Virginia in late 1863 as a staff officer gave him the perfect vantage point to write about Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, including a particularly vivid account of the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864." According to the blurb written by ANV primary source authority Robert K. Krick, "the book's best content prints Randolph's accounts of Spotsylvania."

In addition to a general introduction to the volume, Peter Luebke's editorial contributions include organizing the material into twelve chapters and providing a contextual introduction and endnotes to each of those. Four maps and numerous other illustrations supplement the text. Additionally, Gary Gallagher "contributes a foreword that amplifies the importance of Tucker's writings."

Booknotes: Shipwrecked

New Arrival:

• Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade by Jonathan W. White (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).

In Shipwrecked, prolific historian Jonathan White "tells the riveting story of Appleton Oaksmith, a swashbuckling sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California Gold Rush, filibustering schemes in Nicaragua, Cuban liberation, and the Civil War and Reconstruction."

With a Dickensian character name like Appleton Oaksmith, one can't help but live an adventurous nineteenth-century life that defies easy description. White's writing topics are always unpredictable (few match his range), and it's easy to see why this individual appealed to the storytelling aspect of his repertoire. I can't say that I've ever come across the name before, and it was the same with the author until a research assistant brought him to White's attention. At the time, White was researching the illegal slave trade.

Since 1808, it was illegal for American citizens to engage in the international slave trade, but that didn't stop individuals from attempting to profit from it nonetheless. White credits Lincoln, early on in his presidency, for firming up previously lax enforcement. More from the description: "Most importantly, the book depicts the extraordinary lengths the Lincoln Administration went to destroy the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade. Using Oaksmith’s case as a lens, White takes readers into the murky underworld of New York City, where federal marshals plied the docks in lower Manhattan in search of evidence of slave trading. Once they suspected Oaksmith, federal authorities had him arrested and convicted, but in 1862 he escaped from jail and became a Confederate blockade-runner in Havana. The Lincoln Administration tried to have him kidnapped in violation of international law, but the attempt was foiled."

Oaksmith, who always maintained his innocence, eventually fled to England by way of Havana, Cuba. He stayed abroad until 1871, and the following year, helped by the persistence of friends and allies, received a pardon from President Grant. Residing in North Carolina, Oaksmith embarked on a political career that was notable in its opposition to KKK involvement in the state. "Through a remarkable, fast-paced story, this book will give readers a new perspective on slavery and shifting political alliances during the turbulent Civil War Era."

Review - " Righting the Longstreet Record at Gettysburg: Six Matters of Controversy and Confusion " by Cory Pfarr

[Righting the Longstreet Record at Gettysburg: Six Matters of Controversy and Confusion by Cory M. Pfarr (McFarland, 2023). Softcover, 9 maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:ix,180/213. ISBN:978-1-4766-8597-7. $49.95]

Cory Pfarr's 2019 book Longstreet at Gettysburg: A Critical Reassessment strenuously challenges a number of deeply ingrained negative interpretations of Old Pete's generalship that the author feels continue to be repeated in major works even though their foundations fly in the face of the best available primary source evidence. However, while Longstreet at Gettysburg is comprehensive in scope, there were still some matters touched upon earlier that Pfarr hoped to revisit at greater length. Those remaining points are now addressed in the companion essay collection Righting the Longstreet Record at Gettysburg: Six Matters of Controversy and Confusion.

The opening essay, appropriately enough, goes back to the origins of the hotly disputed 'Longstreet at Gettysburg 'historiography in both popular debate and scholarly print. In 1896, Rev. John William Jones, a leading figure in the Southern Historical Society and its influential print arm, penned a fiery response to Longstreet's criticisms of Robert E. Lee's management of the Gettysburg Campaign, opinions that were solicited by William Swinton for the journalist's 1866 book Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. Opinions might differ, but Pfarr, who concedes that Longstreet technically "started" the controversy by providing his critics the opening salvo, merely sees Longstreet's input as a polite response to an earnest writer asking for assistance in enhancing the historical record. Additionally, he reasonably determines the measured tone and content of the criticisms leveled against Lee by Longstreet undeserving of the highly emotional, vitriolic response they received from fervent Lee partisans such as Jones.

The second essay revisits the postwar friendship that developed between Longstreet and his principal Gettysburg Day 2 foe, Third Corps commander Daniel Sickles. With both men beset by fierce criticisms from their own side of the aisle, a cynic might suspect that the strong defense each had for the other's performance on that day was one of expedience; however, the mutual respect, on both personal and military fronts, appears genuine. The chapter's adoption of the devil's advocate position when it comes to assessing Sickles's forward redeployment of his corps is one of its most intriguing elements. Though there have been notable modern modifications to the old arguments, the traditional objection is that Sickles disobeyed the word and spirit of Meade's orders by moving west to seize the higher ground situated along the Emmitsburg Road. Worse, the movement created a salient that left Third Corps relatively isolated in its forward position, and when Longstreet subjected the jackknifed line to his two-division hammer blow, the Union corps was effectively destroyed as a fighting force. With Sickles's salient crushed, the argument goes that the Union left was saved only by General Meade's deft shuffling of multi-corps reinforcements toward the critical point. Eventually, and at great human cost, those arrivals took the steam out of Longstreet's attack. Judiciously supplementing the views of Sickles, Longstreet, and their supporters, Pfarr constructs a defensible argument in support of Sickles's actions on that day, one that might reasonably lead readers to conclude that the Third Corps's role on that day was that of primary stopping force rather than unnecessarily sacrificed tripwire. On the other hand, the sheer scale of army-wide reinforcements for the endangered left that were required to stop Longstreet argues powerfully against assigning that much credit to Third Corps. Also, we'll never know whether Third Corps might have achieved a similar result (the repulse of Longstreet's attack) had it simply adopted a shorter, denser, straight-line position anchored on Cemetery Ridge to the north and on the south by the Round Tops. Pfarr seems to believe that that arrangement could, with a strong degree of likelihood, have been overcome in front and southern flank by Longstreet. It very well might have, but this reviewer has his doubts, especially when it comes to the argument that the higher ground along the Emmitsburg Road could have been effectively exploited as a platform for Confederate massed artillery support. With rare exception, effective movement and coordination of concentrated artillery, mid-battle and on the tactical offensive, was not among the fighting forte of Confederate armies.

Long before now, the myth of the dawn or early morning attack Lee allegedly intended on July 2 for the Union left has been thoroughly debunked for the nonsense that it always was. It would be late-morning before Lee had even determined where the army's main effort would be on the second day. While Longstreet has been thoroughly exonerated on that front, he remains criticized by many current authors for still dragging his feet, not doing his utmost in gathering intelligence, and not paying his usual attention to detail when preparing his attack. Pfarr, citing the literature's common focus on the morning reconnaissance of the Union left conducted by Lee staffer Capt. Samuel Johnston, challenges the critics with a careful and detailed recitation of evidence that reveals a multitude of recon missions conducted on the Confederate right during the morning and early afternoon hours. Taking to task a number of authors whose writings allege that Longstreet was largely inactive, Pfarr feels that many of the most strongly worded charges lack a basis in primary source evidence. In the chapter, the author offers the sound suggestion that flaws in the quality and reporting of the intelligence (the earliest crop of which was rendered essentially useless by the surprise forward movement of Sickles's Third Corps, the "force of circumstances" blamed in General Lafayette McLaws's later post-battle writings) were the main problem, not the quantity of effort or lack thereof. In Pfarr's estimation, the focus on Longstreet himself is misplaced and largely based on assumptions not borne out by source strength commensurate to the gravity of the charges. On that score his views are convincing.

Two of the war's most infamous mid-battle countermarches, one occurring on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh and the second on July 2 at Gettysburg, subjected their leaders, Lew Wallace and James Longstreet respectively, to decades of intense popular and academic denunciation. While Longstreet, unlike Wallace, was never accused of getting lost, his countermarch of the divisions of McLaws and Hood, and the time lost performing it, fed into the accepted narrative of a sulking and dawdling corps commander, one that proved popular among a wide range of writers. Pfarr's fourth chapter revisits the countermarch in great detail. The author effectively defends Longstreet's actions on several fronts, the overarching one being the concealment imperative. In addition to the Lee directive prioritizing concealment over speed, before the move to the right even started precious time was required to discover a suitable march route that could not be observed by the enemy. At that point, a practical assault launch time was already in the mid to late-afternoon range. Once the march was underway, it soon became apparent that the chosen path would result in the column being seen by the Union signal station atop Little Round Top. Pfarr offers several reasons for not simply reversing the order of march, as many Longstreet's critics say he should have, placing Hood in the lead. One of these was Lee's desire for McLaws to lead the attack, but arguably the strongest reason was based on knowledge of the ground. It was McLaws who suggested the countermarch route through his own earlier personal reconnaissance of the area, and Longstreet (who most closely communicated with McLaws during the march) needed to make a snap decision. With those factors and others guiding the decision-making process, it was natural, in Pfarr's view, that McLaws lead the countermarch. Further, the author makes a good point that, with those circumstances in mind, there's really no guarantee that having Hood take the lead would have saved considerable time. There's room remaining for reasonable minds to differ on some of these points, but, in this chapter and other sections of the book, Pfarr constructs a well-supported case arguing that the lateness of Lee's decision of where to concentrate his army's main effort on July 2, the concealed route imperative, the additional reconnaissance required to prepare that unobservable route, and the unexpected shift forward of the Union left were collectively far more responsible for the assault's 4:30 pm launch time than any alleged sulky attitude, indecision, dereliction of duty, generalship slows (purposeful or not), or insubordination on the part of Longstreet.

Count this reviewer among those dismayed to learn that anyone might seriously believe Richard Anderson's Third Corps division to have been under Longstreet's direct command during the attack on July 2, but apparently it is a common misconception/question raised during the author's public talks. The book chapter discussing it duly confirms its untruth while also generously explaining the possible ways in which some readers and writers might have come to believe it. Again, the author thinks a large part of its appeal lies in it being another way to confirm fault, given the division's poorly coordinated attack that left two of five brigades unengaged, with Longstreet's conduct of the Day 2 battle. He could be right about that.

In the final chapter, Pfarr enjoins readers and scholars to reconsider the value of Lee and Longstreet at High Tide, a work the author feels too often ignored or disparaged on the grounds of its source, Helen Dortch, Longstreet, the controversial general's second wife. The chapter makes the case that Mrs. Longstreet's work actually demonstrates better adherence to historical methods of research and writing than the output of most contemporary critics of the general. In, for example, addressing the published allegations of Longstreet opponents such as former Confederate generals John B. Gordon and William Nelson Pendleton, Pfarr finds her opposing analysis largely sound and several arguments historiographically farseeing.

Profoundly negative interpretations of the character and military conduct of a number of well-known Civil War generals are so deeply entrenched in the most popular and influential secondary works that they've become almost written in stone. While critical analysis of James Longstreet's Gettysburg Campaign role certainly continues to evolve, Cory Pfarr's investigation uncovers and effectively counters a number of persistent myths and misconceptions, some of which still make it into the pages of well-regarded one-volume histories of the Gettysburg campaign and battle. With these six essays (in conjunction with Pfarr's earlier book Longstreet at Gettysburg: A Critical Reassessment), Civil War readers, both novitiate and deeply experienced alike, have powerful arguments and accumulated evidence with which to reevaluate Longstreet's actions at Gettysburg. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: Lincoln's Lost Colony

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Lost Colony: The Black Emigration Scheme of Bernard Kock by Boyce Thompson (McFarland, 2023).

During the antebellum period (when Lincoln first publicly spoke of his support for black emigration and colonization), the issue was considered a moderate social/political position. Historians and writers continue to debate what was at the core of Lincoln's motivation in this area. The nebulous time frame of his support for colonization is also vigorously contested in the literature.

Possible destinations took two forms, colonies in Africa and within the Caribbean rim. During his presidency, Lincoln endorsed a number of public and private projects in the latter sphere. One of these was the proposed Haitian colony of Bernard Kock, and this story is the subject of Boyce Thompson's Lincoln's Lost Colony: The Black Emigration Scheme of Bernard Kock.

From the description: Lincoln's Lost Colony "tells the quiet but bloody history of Bernard Kock, a New Orleans entrepreneur with an ill-fated attempt at establishing a cotton plantation on Ile-a-Vache, a deserted Haitian island, using formerly enslaved Americans. It also covers Lincoln's involvement and support of Kock's plan, as well as his pledge of $50 in government funding for each of the 453 colonists." The scheme ultimately failed, and in early 1864 the government evacuated the settlement.

More: "With chapters on Lincoln's encouragement of black deportation, the establishment of the plantation, the futile attempts at damage control and more, this text reveals an untold part of Lincoln's history."

Booknotes: Captured Freedom

New Arrival:

• Captured Freedom: The Thrilling True Story of POWs Escaping the Grasp of the Rebels by Steve Procko (Author - There's History Around Every Bend, 2023).

Chance encounters often serve as the inspiration behind interesting history book projects. That is certainly the case with Steve Procko's second Civil War-related endeavor, which began life after a neighbor showed him an old studio photograph consisting of the man's ancestor, eight other Union officers, and three Southern Unionist guides. Curiosity about the identities of the rather 'worse for wear'-looking collection of men and their stories sparked what would become Procko's Captured Freedom: The Thrilling True Story of POWs Escaping the Grasp of the Rebels.

From the description: Captured Freedom "is the epic true story of nine Union prisoners-of-war who escaped from a Confederate Prison known as Camp Sorghum in Columbia, South Carolina in November 1864. They scrambled north on foot in rags that had once been uniforms of blue. Traveling in brutal winter conditions more than 300 miles with search parties and bloodhounds hot on their trail. On the difficult journey they relied on the help of enslaved men and women, as well as Southerners who sympathized with the North, before finally reaching Union lines on New Years Day 1865." As noted by the author at the beginning of the book, the men did not all escape together (and one actually came not from the POW camp but the county jail), but they did eventually meet together in western North Carolina for the final leg of the journey.

The text provides information about the men's military service, the circumstances of their captures, their POW experiences, day-by-day accounts of their escape flights, and their postwar lives. Near the end of the book can be found an extensive look at the "archeology of a photograph and its photographer," Prussian immigrant Theodore Schleier. In it, the author addresses past misidentifications of the photograph and its different versions, six of which are discussed at length.

As several recent books, among them Lorien Foote's Yankee Plague, have reminded us, Civil War prisoner escape narratives were popular reading and writing subjects during and after the war. However, this particular story may have become lost in the shuffle had the men not chosen to commemorate their trek with an evocative photograph. More from the description: "After arriving in Knoxville, Tennessee, and checking in with Union authorities, one of the men had a wonderful idea. The nine officers and their three mountain guides found a local photographer, hoping to commemorate what they had accomplished by posing together for a photograph. The instant, frozen in time, showed twelve ragged men with determination strong on their faces. It was a Civil War selfie."

The officers hailed from states east and west (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and Iowa). As Procko relates in the book, their remarkable winter trek to freedom, an estimated 350 miles in all, took them from the South Carolina capital to Union-held East Tennessee. Along the way, the men successfully evaded dedicated search parties as well as enemy guerrillas and local home guards. POW escape lore is full of tall tales, but Procko, while framing the story in popular fashion, backs up his telling with extensive research in primary and secondary sources, among them government documents, "never-before-published original diaries," letters, memoirs, and newspaper articles.

For more information, visit the book's website capturedfreedom.com.

Booknotes: Onward to Chicago

New Arrival:

• Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois by Larry A. McClellan (SIU Press, 2023).

From the description: "Decades before the Civil War, Illinois’s status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives." According to Larry McClellan, author of Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois, "traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men." His new study "reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help."

The region's modernized transportation networks also played an important role in the process. More from the description: McClellan's Onward to Chicago "charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. The 1848 completion of the I & M Canal and later the Chicago to Detroit train system created more opportunities for Black men, women, and children to escape slavery."

Numerous individual experiences and "significant biracial collaboration" are major parts of McClellan's narrative, as the book "includes specific freedom seeker journey stories and introduces Black and white activists who provided aid in a range of communities along particular routes." "Through deep research into local sources, McClellan presents the engrossing, entwined journeys of freedom seekers and the activists in Chicagoland who supported them."

Booknotes: I Dread the Thought of the Place

New Arrival:

• I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign by D. Scott Hartwig (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023).

This long-awaited tome announced its arrival tonight with a thunderous bang as the UPS driver carelessly (maliciously?) flung it against the front door, a collision felt throughout the entire house. The book weighs a full 4 1/4 lbs, more than some early-19th Century cannonballs, so, while the damage was less than expected, I can be forgiven for being highly annoyed by the courier's unprofessionalism.

While things have begun on a sour note, there's no denying the high level of anticipation attached to this book. It's been slightly more than a decade since the publication of Scott Hartwig's very well-received To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 (2012), and its big follow-up, I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign, is undoubtedly one of the year's most celebrated publishing events. Beginning with the legendary cornfield fighting at dawn on the 17th and continuing through to the final escape of Lee's army back to Virginia, the book not only covers the battle itself but "the powerful reverberations―military, political, and social―it sent through the armies and the nation."

From the description: "Based on decades of research, this in-depth narrative sheds particular light on the visceral experience of battle, an often misunderstood aspect of the American Civil War, and the emotional aftermath for those who survived. Hartwig provides an hour-by-hour tactical history of the battle, beginning before dawn on September 17 and concluding with the immediate aftermath, including General McClellan's fateful decision not to pursue Lee's retreating forces back across the Potomac to Virginia."

Supplementing the text (the main narrative runs nearly 800 pages) are 21 maps "illustrating the state of the battle at intervals ranging from 20 to 120 minutes." The appendix section contains a formation and tactics primer, orders of battle, and unit strength & loss tables. Endnotes are included, as is a source essay, but to save space the full bibliography is maintained online at the publisher's website.

This is definitely one of those 'clear my schedule' books.