Review - "J.E.B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man" by Edward Longacre

[J.E.B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man by Edward G. Longacre (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 12 maps, photos, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,392/442. ISBN:978-1-61121-680-6. $34.95]

Inevitably, the big four of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia—commanding general Robert E. Lee, wing/corps commanders James Longstreet and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and cavalry leader James Ewell Brown Stuart—have each drawn the interest of multiple biographers over the decades. Just within the past few years we've had a major new Lee biography published as well as two full-length reexaminations of Longstreet's military career. Yet another current title reappraises Longstreet's post-war activities. Next up is a new full biography of the "Beau Sabreur of the Confederacy."

The first major twentieth-century biography, John William Thomason Jr.'s Jeb Stuart, was first published in 1930. That was followed in 1957 by Burke Davis's Jeb Stuart: The Last Cavalier. Nearly thirty years would pass until the next full-length treatment, Emory Thomas's Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart (1986), set the standard. More recently, Jeffry Wert, also a Longstreet biographer, was the next to contribute with his well-received 2008 study Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J.E.B. Stuart. Also striving toward a more balanced assessment of Stuart's military successes and failures along with his leadership and character strengths and flaws is Civil War cavalry historian Edward Longacre's J.E.B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man. Longacre's study is primarily a Civil War military biography but it does also offer solid coverage of Stuart's early life, West Point educational experience, and antebellum Regular Army service.

Generally speaking, Longacre joins most current historians in charting the course of Stuart's Civil War career as a tale of two halves. Between the beginning of the conflict and the middle of 1863, Stuart outclassed opposing cavalry formations inferior in leadership and organization. In the process he famously ran rings around the Army of the Potomac and seriously embarrassed the fledgling Army of Virginia. Additionally, in the performance of his duties as the eyes and ears of Lee's army, Stuart left little room for serious complaint. As 1863 progressed, however, the Army of the Potomac's cavalry branch finally came into its own in terms of leadership, training, and organization while at the same time surpassing Stuart's command in both individual trooper firepower and overall quantity and quality of horseflesh. In the views of Longacre and other eastern theater cavalry experts, Stuart from 1863 onward still largely excelled in the standard roles assigned to mid-19th century cavalry—from outpost operations when the armies were seasonally static to intelligence gathering, advance guard, screening front and flanks, rear guard, and direct attack actions—but his vastly improved opponents proved more capable of exposing Stuart's missteps and shortcomings.

Stuart scored high in artillery tactics at West Point, and the author credits him throughout the book with exceptional skill in the use of that support arm. How Stuart's tactical thinking may have evolved over the course of the war is mostly tangentially addressed. Longacre brings up Stuart's late-war attempt to create a tactical manual (through which he hoped to foster more standardized practices among his subordinates), and one might appropriately wonder why the general waited so long to do so. In the main, Longacre concludes that Stuart, though he displayed strong skills at managing combined arms, had an overall mixed record in terms of leadership judgment and performance (who among Civil War generals of Stuart's breadth of responsibility and length of service didn't?). On those occasions when Longacre feels Stuart's actions most deserving of censure he is very upfront about it, but one is hard pressed to discern a persistent pattern indicative of any fatal flaws in the flamboyant general's operational or tactical thinking (though the author is of the opinion that Stuart failed to adapt as readily as others did to the benefits of employing mixed—mounted and dismounted—cavalry formations in combat).

Stuart's Civil War military career has been exhaustively recounted in the pages of innumerable articles, biographies, battle/raid studies, and campaign histories, so there's no reason to list them again here. Suffice it to say that Longacre's coverage is fully comprehensive and his summaries of events more than suitable in depth. In well-rounded fashion, the author blends his own measured assessments of Stuart's leadership and actions with accounts judiciously representative of both contemporary and historiographical criticism and praise. The most controversial aspects of Stuart's military career, including his widely condemned decision-making during the march to Gettysburg, are addressed from multiple angles and points of view, leaving open-minded readers with much to consider. Critics then and now cast a judgmental eye toward Stuart's alleged surfeit of vanity, excessive love for the pageantry aspects of war (in dress, behavior, conducting military reviews, camp entertainment, etc.), and his enjoyment of the adulation and company of young women not his wife, but it's difficult to argue that those personal traits (and gossipy complaints attached to them) were of any great consequence when it came to Stuart's performance of his professional duties.

In most ways, Stuart was a genial and nurturing boss. Though he could be thin-skinned in response to public and professional barbs, in his reports Stuart routinely and generously shared credit for his command's successes and, when they deserved it, cast his own personal differences aside and praised officers with whom he did not get along (prominent examples being Grumble Jones and Beverly Robertson). Even when doing so helped take them away from his command, he also heartily supported the promotions of cherished subordinates. In the book Longacre documents numerous examples of the types of professional bickering and jealousies common to the hierarchies of Civil War military formations. Even though Stuart was one of his chief sponsors, Tom Rosser constantly sniped at him. Just as often, Wade Hampton moaned about Stuart's alleged favoritism toward any units but Hampton's own to anyone who would listen, but that did not stop Stuart from consistently affirming Hampton's value to his command. On a side note, Longacre suggests that Hampton might have been better suited than Stuart to lead the army's cavalry corps during the late-war phase of the arm's operational and tactical evolution. He is not alone in suggesting that.

Even for achievements that might seem largely critic-proof, Longacre reserves plenty of room for dissenting opinion. For example, Stuart's raids behind enemy lines were celebrated accomplishments inside and outside the army but more than a few serving in his ranks believed the wear and tear produced on man, beast, and equipment all too often not worth the result. With many of the factors that progressively hampered the efficiency of Stuart's command being structural (one being the Confederacy's lack of a central horse remount/rehabilitation system similar to what the U.S. Army created for its cavalry arm), the author does not note any particular administrative deficiencies in Stuart's leadership.

One of the most tantalizing what-ifs of Stuart's Civil War career surrounds the question of his retaining command of Stonewall Jackson's infantry corps after Chancellorsville. By most accounts, including Lee's, the poise with which Stuart assumed his mid-battle service branch transition and his seamless handling of Jackson's large command after it was abruptly thrust upon him were impressive. Wert's biography also awarded Stuart will similar plaudits. Given Stuart's history and personality, one might have expected him to be eager to return to the cavalry, but Longacre finds some reason to believe that Stuart was honestly disappointed when he wasn't offered the infantry corps leadership position, which would also have come with a much cherished promotion to lieutenant general, on a permanent basis. According to Longacre, Stuart also floated the idea in 1864 of leaving Lee's army if it meant a bump up in grade, though he does question the seriousness of the thought. Even though he led a corps-level command, Stuart never received that much hoped for promotion, dying a major general. The book does consider whether Lee lost confidence in Stuart from mid-war (post-Gettysburg) onward, but there's really not enough clear information available to arrive at a strong conclusion on that matter.

Combining the author's own extensive archival research with a strong engagement with the published literature, Edward Longacre's J.E.B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man clearly and convincingly explains what made his subject such an effective cavalry commander. On the other side of the equation, the book vigorously but fairly articulates and explores the general's shortcomings and their consequences during specific campaigns and actions. The result is a comprehensive portrait of the military career of the Civil War's most iconic cavalryman, one that healthily rejects both hagiography and unwarranted fixation on critical assumptions regarding Stuart's character and motivations.

Booknotes - The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Peach Tree Creek to the Fall of the City

New Arrival:

• The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Peach Tree Creek to the Fall of the City by David A. Powell (Casemate, 2024).

Following up on yesterday's introduction to the first installment of Dave Powell's two-part Atlanta Campaign contribution to the Casemate Illustrated series is today's brief announcement of its companion book, The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Peach Tree Creek to the Fall of the City.

Beginning where the previous volume left off, with John Bell Hood taking command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee and attempting to flip the switch on who would be campaign's initiative holder during its second great phase, this book takes the reader through to the final battle at Jonesboro and the evacuation of Atlanta. In sum, it "portrays the final months of the struggle for Atlanta, from mid-July to September, including what remains to be seen of the battles around the city: Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, Decatur, and Ezra Church. The siege will cover historic views of Atlanta, operations east of the city, and the city’s capture. The cavalry chapter focuses on the Union cavalry raids south of Atlanta which ended in disaster. Finally, the fighting at Jonesboro will bring the series to a close."

As content format and presentation style are consistent series features, refer to the coverage of part one (linked above) for a few notes on those matters. I should mention that, in terms of unit and formation levels depicted, the maps in the books limit themselves to the higher elements of the army orders of battle. So they range from single lines representing entire army fronts to a bit more detailed depictions of division and brigade-scale actions for the larger, more involved battles covered in the second volume.

Booknotes - The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta

New Arrival:

• The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta by David A. Powell (Casemate, 2024).

Dave Powell's The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta is part of the Casemate Illustrated series. As it now stands, the series is heavily focused on WW2 topics but an 1862 Maryland Campaign installment was recently published, and Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Overland Campaign volumes are scheduled for this coming summer. As will be the case with Vicksburg, Powell's Atlanta coverage comes in two parts.

The course of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign is commonly divided into two major phases, the natural transition point being the arrival of both armies at the Chattahoochie River and the replacement of Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Joseph E. Johnston with John Bell Hood. Powell's pairing adopts that same concept.

From the description: "The first half of the campaign, from May to mid-July, can be defined as a war of maneuver, called by one historian the “Red Clay Minuet.” Under Joseph E. Johnston the Confederate Army of Tennessee repeatedly invited battle from strong defensive positions. Under William T. Sherman, the combined Federal armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio repeatedly avoided attacking those positions; Sherman preferring to outflank them instead. Though there were a number of sharp, bloody engagements during this phase of the campaign, the combats were limited. Only the battles of Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain could be considered general engagements."

Covered in this part one are Dalton, Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Pickett's Mill, Dallas, Kolb's Farm, Kennesaw Mountain, and the Chattahoochee River Line. Visually oriented, the general format hearkens back to the classic Osprey style of overview presentation. So in addition to the tight narrative text there is a campaign timeline, orders of battle, color maps, photographs (both period and modern), classic artwork and illustrations, and army/leader profiles and sidebars.

Knowing that Powell is in the middle of writing a grand series of tomes that will do for the 1864 Atlanta Campaign what was done in three hefty volumes for the Chickamauga Campaign, the text here should provide some hints at lines of thinking that will be more fully developed in the future.

Booknotes: The Limits of the Lost Cause

New Arrival:

• The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory by Gaines M. Foster (LSU Press, 2024).

From the description: Gaines Foster's The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory is "a collection of essays that challenge the prevailing ways of thinking about the impact of the Civil War on the American South." In Foster's introduction he discusses what he sees as the two main patterns that emerged in the interpretation of Civil War remembrance in the South. His "introduction provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship on the Lost Cause and Civil War memory that highlights the emergence of two ways of thinking about these topics: an older one, pioneered by C. Vann Woodward, that made a case for a southern identity shaped by defeat and guilt; and a more recent one, prevalent not only in current scholarship but in the press and public discussion, that suggests the South is still fighting the Civil War."

Eight essays covering a range of topics follow the introduction. More from the description: "Foster challenges Woodward's definition of southern identity in his first three essays, one of which also compares the South's response to defeat to America's response after the Vietnam War. His next four essays address diverse topics: how Civil War became the war's name and what that reveals; the promotion of racist symbolism and also a renewed nationalism in Thomas Dixon's The Clansman and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation; an exploration of the memory of Robert E. Lee that evaluates his suitability to be a hero for today; and the white South's role in the expansion of federal power in the first half of the twentieth century."

Foster's essays challenge the interpretation, popular among many today, of the unending Civil War. Collectively, his essays "make a case for reunion and sectional reconciliation by the early twentieth century, which undermines the idea that the South was still fighting the Civil War. They also point to other lines of division within the United States, particularly between the nation's core and its periphery, in addition to the one between the North and South."

Of course, no book of this type would be complete without a discussion of the Confederate Battle Flag's place in recent public debates over historical memory and the unending Civil War. Saving that examination for the end, Foster's final essay "explores the complex divisions that have marked the fight over the public use of the Confederate battle flag over the last thirty years, making the case that the Lost Cause has had limited impact on support for the flag. Instead, Foster suggests, debates over the Confederate flag are rooted in differences in wealth and education, as well as urban-rural and deep partisan divides."

In sum: "Throughout these essays, and more explicitly in his conclusion, Foster argues that whenever one sees a Confederate flag or listens to an argument about Confederate symbolism, the temptation to talk about a continuing Civil War obscures more than it illuminates. Far more important, he suggests, is the extent of reunion and reconciliation between North and South, as well as the limits of the Lost Cause."

Booknotes: War in the Western Theater

New Arrival:

• War in the Western Theater: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War edited by Chris Mackowski & Sarah Kay Bierle (Savas Beatie, 2024).

With something posted on the Emerging Civil War blog seemingly every day (and often multiple times per day), regular crew and guest writers there are a busy bunch. Every so often, founder Chris Mackowski and another editor compile theme-based articles for print publication as part of the Civil War history collective's 10th Anniversary Series. The latest, and eighth in the series, is War in the Western Theater: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War.

According to ECW's series description, the anniversary titles "not only collect some of our best blog posts, but they also include selected transcripts from Symposium talks and podcasts. Plus, each include original scholarship, as well, plus new maps and lots of photos. They’re not intended as complete narrative histories but are rather meant to reflect the eclectic conversation of topics and voices readers find on the blog itself." The goal is not just to provide a physical copy of previously published, and readily accessible, digital material but to truly embark on a "value-added" exercise. So the original blog pieces are "updated, and, in most cases, expanded and footnoted" (pg. xiv).

Around four dozen articles are compiled in this western-themed volume. In addition to discussing campaigns and battles (along with frequently featuring the involvement of individuals and units during particular episodes), chapters explore a variety of city, state, and family connections to the war in the western theater. Remembrance, what-if ponderings, debate, and analysis articles are also sprinkled about. Supplementing the text are eight maps and numerous other photographs and illustrations.

As summed up in the description, the articles collected in War in the Western Theater "bring together the best scholarship from Emerging Civil War’s blog, symposia, and podcast, revised and updated, together with original pieces designed to shed new light and insight on some of the most important and fascinating events that have for too long flown under the radar of history’s pens."

Review - "The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864" by Robert Jenkins

[The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 by Robert D. Jenkins, Sr. (Mercer University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 21 maps, 32 exhibits, photos, appendix section, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,247/402. ISBN:978-0-88146-931-8. $39]

Both Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston remained very much in character as their 1864 campaigns unfolded. On the Virginia front, despite the near-catastrophic leadership and manpower losses suffered by his army the previous year, Lee still maintained his customarily aggressive mindset against advancing Union forces. In stark contrast to Lee, Johnston ceded the initiative in North Georgia from the outset, adopting a far more passive approach to his wilderness clash with William T. Sherman's mighty western army group. Believing the odds stacked against his Army of Tennessee much too great to risk attacking moves and pitched battles, Johnston elected to trade space for time and hope that his wily opponent gifted him a favorable opening for an offensive counterstroke. It has often been proposed that the events of May 17-19, 1864 provided Johnston with just such an opportunity to turn the tables on his foe. Contrary to Confederate hopes and expectations, however, no such potentially campaign-altering battle materialized. Instead, the failure and disappointment stemming from the infamous "Cassville Affair" became a topic of enduring misunderstanding and controversy.

As the story goes, a plan involving a sharp backhand blow germinated in Johnston's mind on May 17 at Adairsville and matured by May 19 into an offensive operation. With the Army of Tennessee concentrated at Cassville after falling back from Adairsville upon multiple routes, John Bell Hood's corps would spring back and launch a surprise attack against an isolated and presumably strung-out portion of Sherman's pursuing host. That never came about. Rather than initiating a grand battle, Hood, who encountered the unexpected presence of a Union force of unknown size opposite his own flank, called off the May 19 morning attack and returned to a defensive posture. A disappointed Johnston, who doubted the veracity of Hood's claim, accepted that his plan miscarried and ordered his army to fall back again and entrench atop a new patch of high ground southeast of Cassville. There, the Army of Tennessee would await an expected Union attack on the morrow. Once again, things did not go as planned. Two of the army's senior officers (Hood and Leonidas Polk) pointed out that the high ground abandoned earlier in the day provided Sherman's gunners with prime rifled artillery platforms from which to enfilade Confederate lines. According to those two trusted corps commanders, such fire would render their fronts indefensible within hours. Startled by Hood and Polk's misgivings, though disagreeing with their stance, Johnston immediately ordered a general retreat across the Etowah River. The morning and afternoon/evening events comprising what came to be known as the Cassville Affair distressed the civilian leadership in Richmond, prompted the campaign's first major schism within the Army of Tennessee's high command structure, and demoralized an army rank and file promised both an end to retreats and an opportunity to inflict a telling blow on the enemy.

The problem with the traditional line of interpretation outlined above is that it was largely formed and perpetuated by Johnston in defense of himself and his actions. There have always been doubters of Johnston's version of events as handed down to posterity (Richard McMurry being one of the most prominent among them), but the substance of the entire affair has received remarkably little in the way of detailed reexamination over the years. That has changed in a major way with the publication of Robert Jenkins's The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864.

Examining each key component of the Cassville Affair in turn, Jenkins divides his analysis into two distinctive yet obviously connected sequences. These major event groupings are the Cassville Affairs of the book's title, the first being the aborted offensive that was the morning Cassville Affair and the second the abruptly abandoned defensive action that was the evening Cassville Affair. In each part, Jenkins, an attorney by profession, effectively combines blow-by-blow narrative accounts of the military movements and key decisions of both sides with the kinds of meticulously argumentative evidence breakdowns that one might assume lawyer-historians would revel in presenting to their captive reader-jurors. In addition to demonstrating a clear mastery of the confusing cartographic history of the series of events and misunderstandings that unfolded between Adairsville and Cassville, Jenkins skillfully enhances his own prodigious primary source research with a 'back to basics' critical analysis of original sources and influential secondary works. An item of particular interest is the author's reintroduction of McMurry's decades-old research findings in regard to a notable staff officer journal, samples of which underwent revision and one version of which (termed the "O" Sample of the T.B. Mackall journal) was submitted in altered form by Johnston himself for publication in the Official Records.

All key events that led into and comprised the May 19 Cassville Affair—including the Confederate retreat from Adairsville to Cassville, the Union pursuit and the fighting for Rome, Hood's movements north of Cassville and the Union cavalry operations that undid his plans, the May 19 afternoon redeployment of both armies southeast of Cassville, and what went into Johnston's ultimate decision to retreat across the Etowah without a battle—are described at consistently satisfying levels of clarity and detail. As Jenkins convincingly demonstrates, the high command's flawed knowledge of the road network around Cassville, in particular along the path of Hood's flanking march, directly led to a major thoroughfare (the Spring Place Road) being left completely unguarded by the Confederate cavalry screen. Union cavalry exploited that critical gap, and their startlingly aggressive plunge into Hood's flank and rear disrupted and ultimately halted the ambush offensive planned for the day. Of course, when military plans badly miscarry it is very often the case that the enemy also had something to do with it, and the book makes the case that Sherman's posture and decision-making profoundly influenced what happened and what didn't happen at Cassville. Disappointed in his mounted arm up to that point, Sherman lit a fire under his cavalry subordinates, and the book argues persuasively that that had a demonstrable impact on the cavalry's newfound aggressiveness. Significantly, is also pointed out by Jenkins that even if Union cavalry hadn't discovered and exploited the gap in Wheeler's screen northeast of Cassville the road principally targeted by Hood's ambush would have been empty that day solely due to Sherman's direct intervention.

Several noteworthy conclusions emerge from Jenkins's study. The author could find no evidence that Johnston, as he later claimed, developed a full-fledged offensive plan beginning on the 17th at Adairsville. Even the offensive action outlined for the 19th was Hood's plan, to which Johnston acquiesced. Additionally, instead of demonstrating a commanding general's mastery of the situation at Cassville on the morning of the 19th, Johnston's subsequent writings (as critiqued at length by Jenkins) instead revealed that the general possessed remarkably ill-informed conceptions of Hood's flank movement, the enemy threat to it, and the road network over which the day's events unfolded. Dismissing Hood's and Polk's claims that the army's afternoon orientation was indefensible in the face of concentrated enfilade fire, Johnston still ordered another retreat, citing the dangers inherent in attempting to hold defensive positions that two of his corps commanders had no confidence in maintaining. Citing evidence that points in a different direction, Jenkins alternatively concludes that this was essentially a latter-day excuse and Johnston most likely retreated upon receiving false reports that Sherman's men had already crossed the Etowah in force and were threatening Confederate lines of communication. In presenting that justification for his actions, Johnston failed to cite Hood and Polk on record in regard to their dual support for launching a major attack from those same positions both generals felt could not be defended. One might be tempted to believe that Johnston's story, in which he professed a determination to hold his ground and only retreated after two of his principal subordinates lost their nerve, was chiefly formulated to make the Fabian general, who was justifiably skeptical of the advisability of attacking Sherman's concentrated forces over the ground favored by Hood and Polk, look more like a fighting general to his critics. In sum, the book presents a strong case that the available evidence does not support Johnston's popular version of the Cassville Affair and his role in it.

Critical to understanding both the military movements meticulously traced in the narrative and the historiographical arguments and debates that emerged later, the volume's prodigious map set does not disappoint. Ranging from contemporary rough sketches and detailed military engineer drawings to well-executed modern cartography, the book's 21 numbered maps (and around a dozen more 1-2 page maps presented under the "exhibit" label) provide all the military detail readers might wish to have at their fingertips when evaluating the text. The maps are critical pieces in explaining all the period and modern understandings (and misunderstandings) associated with the historical road network spanning the large area of operations south of Adairsville, north of the Etowah River, and well east and west of the Western & Atlantic Railroad corridor. Rather than being interspersed throughout, the exhibits and maps are collected together near the front of the book. It is perhaps worthy of recommendation that knowledgeable and novice readers alike familiarize themselves with both before grappling with the volume's complicated discussions of the relevant geography. The maps, in conjunction with their detailed captions, bountifully arm the reader with the situational awareness necessary to more fully and more readily grasp the essential nuances found in the book's historiographical arguments and source debates, many of which tend to plunge deeply into the weeds.

This volume weighs the evidence and persuasively reasons toward a fresh understanding of a key series of disputed events from the early stages of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. As is always the case with historical discourse, questions and points of disagreement surely remain, but all future studies will have to contend with Jenkins's powerful arguments. Indeed, one looks forward to reading how David Powell, with whom Jenkins frequently discussed matters pertaining to Cassville, addresses this period in the first installment of his upcoming multi-volume history of the campaign. The Cassville Affairs is highly recommended.

Booknotes: Chorus of the Union

New Arrival:

• Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation by Edward Robert McClelland (Pegasus Bks, 2024).

Over a number of consecutive weeks straddling March and April it started to look like old times again with new releases pouring in, then the spigot turned off again. This book is actually a June 4 title. I don't know if you'll have to wait until then for its general release.

Numerous biographies and political histories examine at length the long record of political differences between Whig (then upstart Republican) Abraham Lincoln and the Democracy's "Little Giant" Stephen Douglas. Over time, their relationship evolved into one of the great rivalries of eighteenth-century American political discourse. From the description: "Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas are a misunderstood duo. History remembers them as antagonists, and for most of the years the two men knew each other, they were. In the 1830s, they debated politics around the stove in the back of Joshua Speed’s store in Springfield, Illinois. In the 1850s, they disagreed over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and debated slavery as opponents for a Senate seat. In 1860, they both ran for president."

Rather than return to the pair's classic antebellum political clashes, Edward Robert McClelland's new book Chorus of the Union instead stresses the key period when the two men came together to serve a single cause. More from the description: "When Douglas realized he was going to lose the 1860 election, he stopped campaigning for himself and went South to persuade the slave states to accept Lincoln as president. After that effort failed, and the newly formed Confederate States of America bombed Fort Sumter, Douglas met with Lincoln to discuss raising an army." With Douglas dying soon after on June 3, 1861, less than three weeks before First Bull Run, we'll never know how their relationship might have developed as the war progressed.

McClelland also discusses the role of environment and timing in Lincoln's rise. "(B)y focusing on the importance of Illinois to Lincoln’s political development, Chorus of the Union will challenge the notion that he was an indispensable “great man.” Lincoln was the right person to lead the country through the Civil War, but he became president because he was from the right place. Living in Illinois provided Lincoln the opportunity to confront Douglas over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The debates with Douglas during the 1858 Senate campaign brought him the fame and prestige to contend for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Lincoln's moderate views on slavery, which he developed in the swing region of a swing state, made him the ideal candidate for an election that had sweeping historical consequences."

Booknotes: Wide Awake

New Arrival:

• Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War by Jon Grinspan (Bloomsbury, 2024).

Every student of the 1860 election period recognizes that the Republican Wide Awakes played a significant role in mobilizing support for their party's candidate, but Jon Grinspan's Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War makes some especially strong claims about the youth movement's place on American history's political stage.

From the description: "At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes--mostly working-class Americans in their twenties--became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history."

Wide Awake chapters quickly spread across the North during Lincoln's campaign and some membership estimates were as high as half a million. A group of that size, especially one with paramilitary pretensions, was bound to draw a range of reactions among the nation's heatedly divided populace. More from the description: "To some," the movement "demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there."

My initial impression of the stylistic approach is that of an immersive popular-style narrative that attempts to place the reader on the ground and in the middle of the action. From that perspective, the book "examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war."

Booknotes: Dranesville

New Arrival:

• Dranesville: A Northern Virginia Town in the Crossfire of a Forgotten Battle, December 20, 1861 by Ryan T. Quint (Savas Beatie, 2024).

When it comes to 1861 battles fought on Virginia soil, the July 21 Battle of Bull Run understandably absorbs the lion's share of attention, but a number of smaller affairs have also received one or more standalone studies. Among the best are James Morgan's A Little Short of Boats: The Civil War Battles of Ball's Bluff and Edwards Ferry, October 21 - 22, 1861 (2004, 2011-rev) and Cobb, Hicks, and Holt's The Battle of Big Bethel: Crucial Clash in Early Civil War Virginia (2013). This month publisher Savas Beatie adds to that lineup with their release of Ryan Quint's Dranesville: A Northern Virginia Town in the Crossfire of a Forgotten Battle, December 20, 1861. A topic usually dispensed with quickly in books devoted to larger subjects, Dranesville is an engagement that I am looking forward to learning much more about through this first full-length treatment.

From the description: "The fall and early winter of 1861 was a hotbed of activity that culminated in the December combat at Dranesville. The Union victory, although small when measured against what was to come, was sorely needed after the string of defeats at Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, and Ball’s Bluff; it also helped shape many of the players in the bloody years to come." I encountered Dranesville most recently in Longacre's Stuart biography, and the author describes the battle as being the cavalier's first bloody nose.

Tucked into the northwest corner of Fairfax County (not too far from the Potomac), Dranesville experienced war on its doorstep early and often. More from the description: "No one knew what was coming, but soon civilians (sympathetic to both sides) were thrown into a spreading civil war of their own as neighbor turned on neighbor. In time, this style of warfare, on the home front and on the battlefield, reached the town of Dranesville in Fairfax County."

As expected, the conventional war and titular battle get the most thorough attention in the book. More: "A host of characters and commanders that would become household names cut their teeth during these months, including Generals J. E. B. Stuart and Edward Ord. The men of the Pennsylvania Reserves saw their baptism of fire at Dranesville, setting the Keystone State soldiers on a path to becoming one of the best combat units of the entire war. Though eclipsed by larger and bloodier battles, Dranesville remained a defining moment for many of its participants—soldiers and civilians alike—for the rest of their lives."