Booknotes: The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah

New Arrival:

• The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah: The 1864 Valley Campaign’s Battle of Cool Spring, July 17-18, 1864 by Jonathan A. Noyalas (Savas Beatie, 2024).

Though I didn't pick up a copy of it until 2006, my first significant exposure to the Battle of Cool Spring was through reading Peter Meaney's The Civil War Engagement at Cool Spring, July 18, 1864: The Largest Battle Ever Fought in Clarke County, Virginia (1980). In addition to being a bit of a novelty [I don't know of any other Civil War battle history authored by a Catholic priest (Meaney was a Benedictine monk)], it's a pretty good little book on a fascinating little battle. More recently, the Battle of Cool Spring was well contextualized in Scott Patchan's Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign (2007) and additional perspective on it can be found in one of the chapters inside Clarence Geier and Stephen Potter's edited anthology Archaeological Perspectives on the American Civil War (2003). Fast forward to today and this lesser-known engagement has just received a new standalone treatment in Jonathan Noyalas's The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah: The 1864 Valley Campaign’s Battle of Cool Spring, July 17-18, 1864.

From the description: "While largely overlooked or treated as a footnote to Gen. Jubal A. Early’s raid on Washington in the summer of 1864, the fight at Cool Spring, which one soldier characterized as “a sharp and obstinate affair,” proved critical to Washington’s immediate safety. The virtually unknown combat became a transformative moment for those who fought along the banks of the Shenandoah River in what ultimately became the war’s largest and bloodiest engagement in Clarke County, Virginia."

More: The latest installment of the Emerging Civil War series, The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah "examines Gen. Horatio Wright’s pursuit of Jubal Early into the Shenandoah and the clash on July 17–18, 1864. It analyzes the decisions of leaders on both sides, explores the environment’s impact on the battle, and investigates how the combat impacted the soldiers and their families—in its immediate aftermath and for decades thereafter." The text is enhanced through five maps and a multitude of photos and illustrations.

Happily, much of the battlefield has been preserved, and the appendix section includes a seven-stop tour. Other appendices discuss the Civil War career and death of Col. Joseph Thoburn, provide a roster and analysis of the battle's Union and Confederate dead, highlight the little-known Civil War poem "A Christopher of the Shenandoah," and recognize the battlefield preservation duties assumed by Shenandoah University. Another appendix contains a collection of Cool Spring participant accounts, and the final one briefly explores some of the responsibilities involved in battlefield interpretation.