Review - "We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky" by Derrick Lindow

[We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky by Derrick Lindow (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 10 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,209/238. ISBN:978-1-61121-668-4. $32.95]

Though the title choice might seem to suggest a more general survey of the subject, Derrick Lindow's We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky is very specific in its content and focus. It closely follows two budding Confederate officers (Adam Rankin "Stovepipe" Johnson and his principal lieutenant Robert M. Martin) and their activities over an expansive, roughly triangular-shaped area bounded on each side by the Ohio River, the Cumberland River, and the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Seeking to take advantage of the formal protections offered through the Partisan Ranger Act passed by the Confederate Congress in April 1862, Johnson and Martin conducted numerous behind-the-lines raids between June and October 1862, gaining for themselves precious arms, ammunition, supplies, and recruits with each passing success. Their most notorious raid even took them across the Ohio River into Indiana. Impressively, the pair were able to form an entire regiment, which came to be known as the 10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers. With each triumph, however, came a stronger state and federal response. Before too long, western Kentucky became too hot for Johnson's command to handle. Though the 10th was thoroughly defeated in Johnson's absence during its largest fight of that period, at Sutherland's Hill on September 20, 1862, the regiment continued the fight elsewhere in the western theater (thenceforth as conventional cavalry), with Johnson himself eventually promoted to brigadier general.

The hybrid warfare careers that Johnson and Martin embarked upon together were relatively unusual but not entirely unique. Rapid, large-scale Union gains in the West and Trans-Mississippi early on in the conflict seized control of Missouri and Kentucky along with vast sections of Arkansas and Tennessee. Those occupied areas still contained large pockets of potential recruits, both for the Confederacy's conventional armies and for small partisan groups more interested in fighting Union forces near their own homes and communities. In many ways, Johnson and Martin's success in organizing a sizable command deep behind Union lines in Kentucky mirrored what was going on across Missouri during the same period. With Missouri largely denuded of frontline federal forces destined for the downriver campaigns of 1862, Confederate recruitment officers eagerly spread out across the state. One of the most successful in recruiting and organizing large numbers of troops was Colonel Joseph C. Porter, who was able to raise two active regiments in the northeastern part of the state. The immediate problem confronted by Porter and Johnson alike was isolation, as both leaders operated far from any sustainable logistical support. Time needed for proper training was also limited. There was heightened personal danger involved in these undertakings, too, as Union authorities proved more than willing to execute captured recruiting officers, even those that were in uniform and in possession of legitimate Confederate military commissions. As Lindow shows, that risk to life and limb was something always on the minds of Johnson and Martin. In the end, the commands of both Porter and Johnston-Martin felt the enemy's wrath for their temerity, the former even more severely than the latter.

Early on, Johnson experienced the dilemma common to many youthful and aspiring partisan officers, namely how to garner recruits without any lofty community stature or prior record of success. In order to make a big splash one had to have the manpower to do it, but potential recruits were understandably wary of risking their lives by joining unknown and untried leaders. So Johnson and Martin had to start at the bottom, and Lindow traces how they used a series of small raiding successes to build their reputations and their following. When needed, they and their growing band were also able to temporarily blend into the countryside in a similar manner employed by Mosby's Rangers in Virginia.

Lindow performs a signal service to the Civil War's irregular warfare literature by providing deeply informative discussions of a series of lesser-known events at places such as Clarksville and Dover in Tennessee and Madisonville, Uniontown, Owensboro, Geiger's Lake, Ashbyburg, and Sutherland's Mill in Kentucky. Most of those actions still garner little attention in either general or specialized works. A fine book-length history of Johnson's most celebrated, or infamous depending on one's perspective, raid (and the one that gave him his "Stovepipe" moniker) already exists in Ray Mulesky's Thunder from a Clear Sky: Stovepipe Johnson's Confederate Raid on Newburgh, Indiana (review), so Lindow does not attempt to retrace all of those steps. However, he does embark on a detailed study of the federal and state response to the Newburg raid, and the leaders and men of the Indiana Legion figure very prominently in Lindow's overall narrative. The wider counter-guerrilla strategy employed in Kentucky over the length of the war, including specialized units raised for that purpose, is beyond the book's 1862 scope and is only briefly addressed, but a full picture of the coordinated response that was specific to Johnson's activities, and that involved both land and naval forces, is presented in the text.

Unfortunately for the 10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers regiment, Martin, though earnest and personally brave, proved to be a battlefield leader notably inferior to Johnson. That gulf in natural leadership and talent is starkly illustrated in the book's rendering of the batterings experienced in Johnson's absence at Dover and especially at Sutherland's Mill. The book's centerpiece is a unique and thoroughly satisfying account of the Battle of Sutherland's Mill along with the events at Owensboro and Panther's Creek that led up to it.

Civil War militia units hold a very mixed fighting reputation that's richly deserved, and the Indiana Legion [which has one modern history in John Etter's The Indiana Legion: A Civil War Militia (review), a 2006 study based on the author's master's thesis] is most often brought up in the context of its role in opposing John Hunt Morgan's "Great Raid" of 1863. As Etter's did earlier, Lindow's study portrays elements of the Indiana Legion at their finest. At Sutherland's mill, Legion leadership, tactics, and discipline more than made up for their inferior numbers in defeating the Martin-led partisan regiment additionally hampered by deficient arms and more limited ammunition stocks.

As a writer Lindow demonstrates a well-developed eye for assessing terrain, and he skillfully conveys to the reader the many ways in which the ground affected the course of the battle at Sutherland's Hill. He also possesses a gift for writing clear and meticulously drawn tactical narrative that also proves powerfully evocative in places. The key elements behind Union victory and the reasons why the previously successful Confederates were so badly defeated in the end effectively shine through the author's writing. The text is additionally enhanced through strong map coverage and inclusion of a number of modern photographs of the Sutherland's Hill battlefield. All of those visual supplements are immensely helpful given the general obscurity of the topic.

A highly original work, Derrick Lindow's We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky presents a fresh and highly detailed picture of a connected series of lesser-known, early-Civil War episodes associated with the irregular conflict within a key Border State. It also provides by far the best and most in-depth coverage of the partisan phase of Adam Johnson's Confederate officer career while also raising renewed awareness and appreciation of the Indiana Legion's major role in securing Union-controlled rear areas on both sides of the Ohio River. This is a highly commendable first effort, and one looks forward to finding out what Lindow might have in store for the future.