Booknotes: Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part 1

New Arrival:

• Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part 1: 1861 edited by Michael E. Banasik (Camp Pope Pub, 2024).

With all five Confederate titles of Volume VII finished and well out the door, Camp Pope Publishing has now officially launched the first installment of Volume VIII, the Union compilation of newspaper reminiscences published by The Missouri Republican in its Saturday editions from 1885-87.

Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part 1: 1861 is organized into three chapters. In Chapter 1, Michael Banasik (the editor of every title in the Unwritten Chapters of the Civil War West of the River series) collects and annotates articles covering the January-July 1861 period encompassing the securing of the U.S. arsenal at St. Louis, the emergence of Nathaniel Lyon, Camp Jackson, and the raising of Missouri troops by state and federal authorities. The second chapter addresses various aspects of the military contests at Carthage (July 5) and Wilson's Creek (August 10) from the Union perspective. Chapter 3 looks at the fall campaigns conducted on opposite sides of the state, focusing on the Lexington siege and the Battle of Belmont.

As was the case with the Confederates volumes, the appendix section contains a large body of useful supplemental material. In addition to a selection of official documents, letters and correspondence that provide more context to the newspaper articles, readers will find a number of capsule biographies, a series of editor-authored addendums (of varying nature) to the Missouri Republican articles, and annotated orders of battle for Carthage, Wilson's Creek, and Belmont.