Booknotes: Garden of Ruins

New Arrival:

• Garden of Ruins: Occupied Louisiana in the Civil War by J. Matthew Ward (LSU Press, 2024).

After New Orleans, a trade and industry center that was by far the most populous city in the Confederacy, fell to the Union Navy on April 25, 1862, accompanying army forces under Major General Benjamin Butler quickly fanned out and expanded the federal foothold in Louisiana. Occupying forces secured the Lake Pontchartrain area and spread northward to Baton Rouge and westward to the east bank of the Atchafalaya River. While Confederate forces threatened those forward outposts at various times during the war, even securing a considerable victory at Brashear City in June 1863, their presence in and around the occupation zone was always transitory and New Orleans itself was never close to being recaptured. The long-term nature of the ironclad federal stranglehold over New Orleans and much of southern Louisiana made the state a prime laboratory for experimenting with reconstruction policies back then and for studying Union occupation today.

In his introduction, J. Matthew Ward describes his book Garden of Ruins: Occupied Louisiana in the Civil War as a "social history of military occupation in Civil War Louisiana." In it, he "examines occupation as both an institution of government power and a daily social process that altered the lives of soldiers and citizens." It is a political history examined "through the policies and attitudes of occupation officials" and social history as examined "through the relationship that common southerners, Black and white, developed with military government and soldiers." The study is not a narrative history in the conventional sense but more of a collection of theme-based chapters (go through the title link above to check out sample pages that include the table of contents and introduction).

In both urban and rural settings, Ward applies to his project the "household war" conceptualization developed by others. Occupation's destruction and reorganization of household order is a major theme. In the introduction, the author also mentions that the book examines oath-taking in a variety of contexts and contrasts tactics, and attitudes, employed by different provost marshals.

From the description: After the shocking fall of New Orleans, "the Confederate state experienced the initial attempts of the U.S. Army to create a comprehensive occupation structure through military actions, social regulations, the destabilization of slavery, and the formation of a complex bureaucracy. Skirmishes between Union soldiers and white civilians supportive of the Confederate cause multiplied throughout this period, eventually turning occupation into a war on local households and culture. In unoccupied regions of the state, Confederate forces and their noncombatant allies likewise sought to patrol allegiance, leading to widespread conflict with those they deemed disloyal."

More: "Ward suggests that social stability during wartime, and ultimately victory itself, emerged from the capacity of military officials to secure their territory, governing powers, and nonmilitary populations." In the end, Garden of Ruins "reveals the Civil War, state-building efforts, and democracy itself as contingent processes through which Louisianans shaped the world around them. It also illustrates how military forces and civilians discovered unique ways to wield and hold power during and immediately after the conflict."