Update on UNC's Military Campaigns of the Civil War series

Back in 2015, University of North Carolina Press's classic Military Campaigns of the Civil War anthology series reemerged from a decade-long hiatus with the publication of Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign and introduction of Carolina Janney as new general editor. That one was followed three years later by the release of Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia. Filling in the final gaps in its eastern theater coverage, the remaining goals are to address the two Manassas battles, and we'll get the first installment in April '25 with The Second Manassas Campaign edited by Janney and Katherine Shively.

The more recent series volumes have applied similar weight to a wide spectrum of issues and topics both on and off the battlefield. The Second Manassas Campaign continues that trend by presenting an essay compilation that offers "valuable attention to matters of strategy, tactics, and logistics; the performances of key commanders on each side; the campaign's political dimensions; the connections between home front and battlefield; and the memory of the campaign's aftermath."

Ironically, the series grand finale will take us all the way back to the very beginning of the war in the East. Hopefully, it won't be another seven years until we see it!

Review - "High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor" by Edwin Rutan

[High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent State University Press, 2024). Softcover, 7 maps, 32 tables, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,211/317. ISBN:978-1-60635-486-5. $39.95]

Mistrust, even outright disdain, forced upon fresh replacements by grizzled army veterans has probably been around as long as war itself, and during the Civil War strong tensions certainly emerged between the Union volunteers of 1861-62 and the new regiments and later enlisting volunteers of 1863-64. Though the depth of hostility held by the former against the latter has perhaps been exaggerated, it was nonetheless a very real phenomenon. Beginning during the war itself, further ingrained through the pages of contemporary memoirs and veteran-authored articles and unit histories, and commonly accepted by trained historians ever since, the idea that late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac were less patriotic, overwhelmingly motivated by monetary gain, and poor fighters in the field has gained widespread and lasting traction. But are those profoundly negative views and historical interpretations actually supported by the evidence? Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor reexamines those questions and more.

Rutan begins his study with a fine background overview of the evolution of economic incentives involved in Union Army recruitment. Though enlistment bounties offered by local, state, and federal governments reached $1,000 or more by the late-war period, it is correctly pointed out that economic inducements of varying kinds played a factor in recruitment from the very beginning, and direct bounties were around since 1862. In the end, the degree to which financial considerations drove enlistment choices remains, of course, up for debate. Perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else in the literature, William Marvel's Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (2006) and especially his Lincoln's Mercenaries (2018) persuasively argue that economic concerns have been greatly undervalued in the scholarship's attempts to explain what was behind early-war Union enlistment fervor. Rutan agrees and finds similar conclusions to be made, albeit reaching them from a different angle than that employed by Marvel.

Clearly, late-war enlistees were far more expensive to the country than their comrades of 1861-62, and Rutan is somewhat sympathetic to the notion that the largest bounties could be overly generous, but the author's assertion that the combination of high bounties with a conditional draft (the carrot and stick approach) was a societal necessity, one that productively balanced the priorities of both home and military fronts, forms a potent argument. In contrast to the Confederate South's economy, which was comprehensively wrecked over the course of the war, the North's economy boomed, and it needed to stay that way in order to close the deal during the conflict's second half. High-ranking Union officers, with the army's needs naturally foremost in their minds, urged the institution of a unconditional draft administered by the federal government. Civilian leadership recognized that such a draconian measure would be a political dead-end that additionally threatened flourishing local and state economies. With current wages several times their prewar levels, high bounties were necessary to pry workers from their jobs and incentivize late-war volunteerism enough to fill local and state draft quotas and forestall conscription on a scale disruptive to the work force. Readers are also reminded that the veteran volunteers, when reenlisting, also accepted not-insignificant economic incentives without being subjected to similar imputations against their patriotism. Broadly speaking, bounties represented cooperation at all levels of government toward a common goal, filling the ranks and defeating a faded yet still highly dangerous national enemy. With the alternative being divisive dictatorial measures handed down from Washington, high bounties undoubtedly assisted the war effort by helping secure continued broad-based home front support for the war. In the big picture, the benefits more than made up for the costs involved, and the negative fall out from desertion and bounty jumping proved manageable. Rutan's framing of high bounties in these ways is enlightening.

Self-gain certainly factored into the decision-making process, but a refreshingly nuanced picture of issues surrounding accusations that late-war recruits lacked patriotic motives is presented in the book. As other recent scholarship confirms, a number of factors impacted whether individuals enlisted in the army to do their part on the fighting front or stayed home and continued to contribute to the war economy. Rutan points out that contemporary evidence fully supports claims that family, work, and business obligations were socially acceptable (even desired) reasons for staying home and that local communities did not as a rule view that as being incompatible with patriotism. It should also not be forgotten that age also figured into the equation, with many late-war recruits willing enough to do their part but were simply underage up to that point.

Rutan does not gloss over the fact that the new regiments had higher rates of desertion than the old regiments, but his point that it never proved unmanageable is worthy of distinction. He also effectively reminds us that there were so many factors involved in desertion that more analytical work on the relative impact of each (including high bounties) is necessary in order to really draw sound conclusions. One interesting tidbit that emerged from Rutan's quantitative investigation is that desertion essentially ceased in late-war units once they reached the front, a quality that was not shared by old regiments restocked with large numbers of substitutes and later enlisting replacements.

Rutan's research suggests that rapid internalization of army culture (or as he puts it, the "normative influences of army life in the field") led these regiments to perform far better than their contemporary and modern critics have maintained. Indeed, as others have also noted, new units frequently offered the army a fresh injection of offensive elan, a much-needed trait that became tempered amongst many veteran units through their extensive records of high casualties, failed attacks, and past defeats. Traditional suggestions that the quality of manhood present in late-war recruits was somehow deficient in comparison to the early war volunteers are strongly disputed in the book. Recognizing that assessing soldier "quality" can be a highly nebulous process, Rutan selects a small number of quantifiable demographic traits that arguably correspond to soldier quality as felt at the time, and his number crunching reveals late-war and early-war recruits as being roughly comparable. It is also worthwhile to recall that these new late-war regiments were not entirely composed of rookies. The officers were typically experienced and it was also commonplace that a solid number of rank and file members previously served in short-time units.

In yet another body of strong writing and analysis, Rutan contests the common interpretation that the combat effectiveness of late-war regiments in 1864-65 was so poor by comparison with veteran regiments that they comprised an almost worthless addition to the army. Recognizing that rating effectiveness can be as ill-defined a process as grading quality, the author employs a modern two-step process that ties mission-based performance assessment to a set of seven readiness capability factors. Rutan persuasively argues that his sample sets of new late-war regiments and old regiments with more than half of their strength being late-war replacements fought generally well during both the Overland and Petersburg campaigns of 1864. Given how much the negativity directed against late-war recruits was based upon the outcomes of particular battles, specific attention is paid to the embarrassing Union defeat at Second Reams's Station. Contrary to the overgeneralized and self-serving claims of Winfield S. Hancock and other officers and generals, the late-war regiments did not as a group perform poorly during the battle or really that much different from the old regiments. At Reams's Station both groups suffered the consequences of remarkably poor command decisions and the debilitating effects of sustained combat attrition, but it would be the late-war regiments that would be scapegoated for the shortcomings of their leaders. Finally, though one might argue that the opposition was so run down by the spring of 1865 that demonstrating effectiveness on the attack was much easier than before, Rutan does clearly determine that late-war regiments [specifically six new regiments in Hartranft's Division at Ft. Stedman and five Fifth Corps regiments at Five Forks) could get the job done during the waning moments of the war and with noticeable merit.

Sure, the examples cited in the above-mentioned chapters are selective rather than comprehensive, but it was never the author's intention to try to argue that the fighting prowess and battlefield achievements of the late-war recruits and regiments were entirely on par with their longer serving predecessors. What he does powerfully show is that, without a doubt, a great many of these units proved highly capable in the field, more than enough in number to greatly complicate the oversimplified and vastly overgeneralized negative impression of their service as presented in most of the historiography.

Every chapter in the book reveals Rutan to be a meticulous researcher, skilled parameter setter, and effective sorter and presenter of data. Much of that quantitative approach is compiled in the volume's nearly three-dozen tables. As Rutan readily admits, this particular study, which employs limited sampling scope and no corresponding attention to late-war western theater replacements and new regiments, is far from the last word on the topic. From a reader's perspective, the work strikes one as being on the strong side of representative status, but there is more to be done and the author frequently offers insightful recommendations in regard to areas needing further research.

Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac is a thoughtful, compassionate, and convincing exploration of the perceptions and realities commonly attached to the men comprising the massive body of late-war Union recruits that not only sustained the fighting strength of the Army of the Potomac during the bloody months of 1864-65 but were indispensable in finally defeating Robert E. Lee's powerfully resilient Army of Northern Virginia. Logic already suggested that the late-war infusion of nearly three quarters of a million men into the Union Army was instrumental in sustaining the momentum toward victory that was dearly bought through the blood and sacrifices of the early-war volunteers, but Rutan's truly groundbreaking study successfully confirms that uncommon assumption with strong documentary research, compelling writing, and deft quantitative analysis. As its subtitle suggests, this exceptionally fine book truly allows the late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac to reclaim service honors unjustifiably withheld for far too long.

Update on Krick's Gaines's Mill study

Robert E.L. Krick's Gaines's Mill and Frank O'Reilly's Malvern Hill books are two of CWBA's most highly anticipated releases. Both have been gestating for a very long time, but we've finally received some clarity on the former. Thanks goes to a pair of long-time site readers, Pete H. and John F., for sharing their recon.

The news brings some surprises. That the Gaines's Mill project will be two volumes is unexpected, but the publishing route taken, a partnership with the American Battlefield Trust, is the bigger surprise of the two. John sent me this link: https://www.battlefields.org/give/save-battlefields/phase-5-gaines-mill-cold-harbor-saved-forever-campaign. It reveals that Krick's The Battle of Gaines's Mill: Volume 1 - To the Banks of the Chickahominy will be, for a limited time, given as a gift by the Trust as a thank you for a $100 or more donation to their Gaines’ Mill Cold Harbor Saved Forever Campaign, which needs an additional $500K to meet its goals (see the link above for more details). Its release is slated for sometime in early 2025.

Whether the book will also be made available for standalone purchase is unknown at this time (at least by me). If memory serves, other ABT-affiliated "gift" books have received general releases. Two recent ones that come to mind are the eastern and western theater ABT atlases that were published through an outfit called Knox Press.

I wonder if spreading the material across two volumes means that Beaver Dam Creek will also be examined in some detail. Who knows. Again, thanks to John and Pete for bringing this to my attention. [edit (10/19): I've been informed (see comment below) that the books will be in hardcover format, so to head off any confusion I've removed the original ABT cover image of it on this post as it depicts a paperback version]

Booknotes: The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg

New Arrival:

• The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg: Like A Perfect Hornet's Nest by Mark W. Allen (McFarland, 2024).

From the description: "The many works on the Battle of Gettysburg have neglected the role of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, known for their extensive training and specialized tactics. This history is the first to explore the actions on July 2, 1863, of this Union Army regiment largely composed of men from Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont." Readers wanting to obtain a broader picture of the 2nd USSS's Civil War service can be referred to Gerald Earley's 2009 book The Second United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War: A History and Roster from the same publisher.

Mark Allen's The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg: Like A Perfect Hornet's Nest "revolves around the 2nd Sharpshooters' defense of the Union left flank from Slyder Farm to the Round Tops" on July 2, 1863. Its self-stated objective is to "tell the sharpshooters' important story and put their actions into context, knowing the events described did not happen in a vacuum" (pg. 1). Opposing Confederate perspectives along with the actions and command decisions of other Union units and leaders are brought into the discussion only as they directly affected the sharpshooters.

After a brief organizational summary, Allen's coverage moves on directly to the Gettysburg Campaign and events of July 2. Based on a diverse range of source materials, the volume's detailed, roughly 175-page tactical narrative is richly supported with cartography, seemingly one map placed every few pages or so (a remarkably large collection). Photographs are also sprinkled about liberally. The appendix section contains a selective order of battle, some unit numbers information; a few more supplemental maps, drawings, and images; and a set of 2nd USSS company commander capsule bios (with photos).

More from the description: "Drawing on newly discovered primary sources, this book seeks to clarify mysteries such as the identity of the non-commissioned officer who met with Company B of the 20th Maine and the location of Major Homer R. Stoughton during the battle. Following the understrength regiment as it confronts two Confederate brigades, this thorough historical narrative presents a long untold story of the Battle of Gettysburg."

Review - "United States Military Justice in the Civil War: Court-Martial Practices and Administration" by R. Gregory Lande

[United States Military Justice in the Civil War: Court-Martial Practices and Administration by R. Gregory Lande (McFarland, 2024). Softcover, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vii,219/253. ISBN:978-1-4766-9584-6. $39.95]

R. Gregory Lande's United States Military Justice in the Civil War: Court-Martial Practices and Administration is a descriptive and quantitative survey of cases prosecuted by the judicial arm of the Union military services.

Though the process employed in creating a statistically significant sample is not fully detailed, there is enough explanation in the author's introduction to leave the reader confident that the sample is representational in composition. At 5,000 cases, its size is certainly impressive. Sample breadth includes cases involving regular and volunteer officers and enlisted men of all three major services (Army, Navy, and Marine Corps), medical personnel, black and white servicemen, and individuals from every state. Proportions also strike one as being suitably representative, with largest sample contingents hailing from the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, and the majority of army cases involving infantrymen followed in descending order by cavalry, artillery, and engineer defendants.

There are a lot of criticisms leveled against how military justice was handled during the Civil War, but Lande sympathetically reminds us that the American military courts, being tasked with maintaining the delicate balance between keeping the overall discipline and effectiveness of the Union Army from unraveling while also respecting the cherished civil rights of its individualistic volunteer citizen-soldiers, had a very difficult job to perform. After providing a very brief big-picture summary of court-martial law and practices, the book is organized around four major groupings of common offenses. Naturally, those sections begin with the two most prevalent charges, unauthorized absences of various kinds and alcohol-related offenses, the former encompassing "desertion, absence without leave (AWOL), leaving a duty area without permission, overstaying a pass, failure to repair, and straggling" (pg. 28). Military charges associated with the third group of charges—the "violent misconduct" explored in Chapter 4—include "assault, murder, mutinous conduct, rape and other sexual crimes, threats of violence, marauding, manslaughter, maltreatment, pillage, plunder, and torture" (pg. 129). The final chapter is reserved for the "subordinate military crimes," among them theft, forgery, consequential criticisms, malingering, gambling, and medical malfeasance, that were prosecuted by general courts-martial on a less frequent basis.

Each of the above chapters, and their subsections where applicable, start with numbers analysis of each charge's sample prevalence among the three major services. Conviction rates are also highlighted. Case summaries, ranging in length from just a few paragraphs to several pages, form the bulk of each chapter. These collections of examples drawn from the sample group demonstrate to readers the range of offenses within a given category along with insights into prosecutorial practices, defense strategies, types of sentences, post-conviction reviews, and trial misconduct. In places Lande also engages with the published scholarship, pointing out where his findings agree with or clash against the work of earlier researchers. Rather than being placed in footnotes or endnotes, the volume's source notes are embedded within the main text.

By representing all three services in his sample, Lande sheds light upon a number of noteworthy interservice differences among both court processes and prosecuted offenses. For example, in addition to its own officers, the U.S. Navy employed civilian lawyers and U.S. attorneys in their cases while all Army courts-martial were conducted solely by uniformed officers (the suggestion being that the Navy was more progressive in its legal processes). Data on specific offenses also frequently points toward stark differences between the services. In just one example, the large preponderance of unauthorized absence convictions for army officers were for AWOL offenses with desertion a distant second, while the direct opposite was the case for naval officers. Some of the widest interservice disparities defy easy explanation, and, in those cases, one wishes the author had more often attempted to explore possible reasons behind them.

While differences ranging from slight to truly striking abound between the services, there were significant commonalities, one being the shared preponderance of multiple charges attached to most Army, Navy, and Marine Corps court-martial cases. Another was the similarly high conviction rate (guilty verdicts were roughly 84 percent in the Marine Corps, a bit lower than the Army's nearly 88 percent and the Navy's 91 percent). Also, for many offenses, it was often generally the case that sentences increased in severity as the war progressed.

The volume ends rather abruptly, without a summary or conclusion chapter within which the author might have shared his own general thoughts on how effectively United States military courts enforced and maintained armed forces discipline. Given all the labor and thought that Lande has devoted to the subject, it would have been interesting to read his own views in regard to whether the evidence supports longstanding criticisms that Civil War-era court-martial practices and outcomes were too arbitrary in dispensing justice and unnecessarily draconian in their punishments. Even without that, though, the volume still serves as a very useful survey and reference guide to the numbers and practices involved in the Civil War military justice system.

Booknotes: Sherman's Other Army

New Arrival:

• Sherman's Other Army: The Second Army of the Ohio 1863-1865 by Michael J. Klinger (Little Miami Pub, 2023).

The first iteration of the Union Army of the Ohio (1861-62) was dissolved during the major transition period between the mixed results of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign causing its commander, Don Carlos Buell, to fall out of favor and the appointment of William S. Rosecrans to lead the successor Army of the Cumberland. In anticipation of the long-awaited (and frequently aborted) campaign to seize control of East Tennessee, the Army of the Ohio was revived in 1863 under the leadership of Ambrose Burnside. Its infantry strength was composed of Ninth and Twenty-Third Corps, though Burnside was forced to await the return of the former from Vicksburg.

Earl Hess authored the most recent (and only major) military account of the Confederate campaign to reverse Burnside's achievements in the region and just this year a fine study of Union cavalry operations in East Tennessee was published inside Dennis Belcher's The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio: A Civil War History, but we still do not have a single volume designed to represent a comprehensive history of the Army of the Ohio's successful capture of Knoxville in 1863 and occupation of the region surrounding it. Michael Klinger's Sherman's Other Army: The Second Army of the Ohio 1863-1865 is not that book, but it does devote a significant portion of its just under 300-page narrative to those operations.

After describing the 1863 organization of the second Army of the Ohio, Klinger recounts the aforementioned operations in East Tennessee, the army's integral role in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, and the Twenty-Third Corps's part in both the Franklin/Nashville Campaign and 1865 denouement in North Carolina. In our brief email exchange, the author hinted that his book contains some unique observations related to Spring Hill and Franklin.

The volume is heavily illustrated. Klinger reproduces from other publications a large collection of battle maps, encompassing actions both large and small. Two organizational tables are provided, and period and modern photographs are sprinkled about. Bibliography and chapter notes feature published primary and secondary sources, marking the study type as one of synthesis.

Released last year, Sherman's Other Army is only available direct from the linked publisher plus a few select outlets. I can't find the email to confirm, but I seem to recall that the author told me that copies can be obtained from one or more of the relevant NPS bookstores.

Booknotes: Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior

New Arrival:

• Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior: The Life of Cavalry Commander and Railroad Businessman, Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham by Sheridan R. Barringer (Fox Run Pub, 2024).

I'm not sure how close we are filling out the full roster of modern biographies associated with Lee's cavalry brigade commanders, but retired NASA engineer Sheridan Barringer has spent the past decade doing his part to fill in the remaining gaps. His prolific work commenced with 2016's Fighting for General Lee: Confederate General Rufus Barringer and the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade, and that was followed by Custer's Gray Rival: The Life of Confederate Major General Thomas Lafayette Rosser (2019) and Unhonored Service: The Life of Lee's Senior Cavalry Commander, Colonel Thomas Taylor Munford, CSA (2022). His latest contribution is Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior: The Life of Cavalry Commander and Railroad Businessman, Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham.

Wickham's extensive public life embraced military service, politics, and postwar industry. From the description: "Williams Carter Wickham fought bravely for the south as a Confederate cavalry officer, finishing the war as a brigadier general. He also steadfastly opposed secession, believing that it was illegal. From a prominent Virginia family, he was a natural leader in the field and, late in the war, Confederate Congress. He rose from the rank of captain and after the war broke with his fellow generals by joining the Republican Party, urging compliance with Reconstruction. He became an organizer of railroad improvements and expansion, becoming leader of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and served in the Virginia State Senate."

In similar vein to the Munford book that preceded it, Barringer's Wickham study is a full biography. Though naturally the bulk of the book deals with Wickham's Civil War military career, additional chapters address his family history, early life, postwar activities, and death in 1888. The book has nine maps covering Wickham's battlefield exploits from First Bull Run through to his late-war entry into politics. During his active service he was elected to the Confederate Congress, and Wickham left the army (his resignation having been officially accepted in early November 1864) to take up his seat.

Booknotes: High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac

New Arrival:

• High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent St UP, 2024).

It is a common enough suggestion in both the popular and scholarly literature that the Union Army of the Potomac's late-war volunteers were highly mercenary in motive (taking advantage of the high enlistment bounties offered by local, state, and federal governments) and far more prone to shirking and deserting than their presumably more patriotically motivated veteran comrades. When they did go on the offensive against Lee's hardened veterans in 1864-65 they were so unreliable that they were next to useless—expensive to feed, clothe, and equip but through their bad conduct on the line were more dangerous to their comrades around them than they were to the enemy. What few seem to ask is whether all, some, or none of those longstanding assumptions and damning opinions (which began during the war itself) are actually supported by hard evidence. Edwin Rutan's fresh examination of the topic in High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor seeks to set the record straight on the matter.

In Rutan's view, perspective has been skewed by a number of factors. For instance, "historians have relied on the accounts of 1861 and 1862 veterans who resented these new recruits who had not yet suffered the hardships of war, and they were jealous of the higher bounties those recruits received. The result, he argues, is a long-standing mischaracterization of the service of 750,000 Union soldiers."

The author adopts a systematic approach to his reexamination of late-war Army of the Potomac recruits. More from the description: "Rutan argues, using combat-effectiveness methodology, that they were generally competent soldiers and indispensable in defeating the Army of Northern Virginia. He also examines the issue of financial motivation, concluding that the volunteers of 1862 may have been more driven by economic incentives than once thought, and 1864 recruits were less driven by this than typically described. Thus, Rutan concludes that the Union “high-bounty” men do not deserve the scorn heaped on them by early volunteers and subsequent generations of historians."

In the end, Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac "offers a much-needed correction to the historical record, providing a more balanced assessment of the “high-bounty” replacements in the Army of the Potomac." Looking forward to reading this.

Review - "Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War" by Kenneth Burchett

[Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War by Kenneth E. Burchett (McFarland, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,256/334. ISBN:978-1-4766-9465-8. $49.95]

Kenneth Burchett's The Battle of Carthage, Missouri: First Trans-Mississippi Conflict was published back in 2012. While it is unstated whether the author has any current plans in place to go forward from that point in time and address the Battle of Wilson's Creek and beyond, his current research and writing project goes back to the very beginning and addresses in two volumes the historical events that led up to that July 5 running battle around Carthage fought between Union volunteer forces and the Missouri State Guard. The first of the pair is the recently released Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War. The second book, Nathaniel Lyon's River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union, is scheduled to follow sometime next year.

The military aspects of Union general Nathaniel Lyon's 1861 campaign in Missouri are well established in the literature, as are the social and political contexts that inform them. The early chapters of Burchett's book follow in those footsteps by (a) considering Missouri's complicated part in the antebellum period's growing sectional schism between North and South, (b) recalling the ways in which 1850s "Bleeding Kansas" radicalized regional and national politics, (c) reminding readers how the heavy and sustained influx of German immigrants into Missouri during the decades immediately leading up to the war transformed the social and political structure of the state, and (d) tracing the development of the desire on the part of many Missourians to counter extremism by crafting a unique Western identity distinct from purely sectional entanglements. Even though political moderation was still the order of the day after the contentious 1860 election put the first Republican president in the White House, polarizing elements on both ends of the spectrum sought to influence and guide Missouri's course of action in response to southern secession. Burchett covers all of that and more over the first third of the book, expanding his reach further afield than most in also exploring more generally the impact of slavery on the continent since Colonial times.

As is the case with essentially every book covering this period, secession-sympathizing Governor Claiborne Jackson and the politico-military alliance between Lyon and the unconditional Unionist Blair family form the principal antagonistic structure of the narrative. Burchett's descriptions of the character and motivations of each of those agents will be broadly recognizable to those already steeped in the relevant literature, though one might have wished the author had made more explicit exactly where the Jackson-related "(p)reviously unpublished materials," as touted in the publisher's description, were incorporated into the narrative. Perhaps it is made clearer somewhere in the notes.

Biographers and popular observers alike tend to explain Nathaniel Lyon's rash employment of military solutions to every problem by emphasizing his almost messianic fanaticism in defense of the perpetuation of the Union and constitutional self-government as he saw it, the principal enemies of those things in Lyon's mind being slavery and secession. Burchett's impression of Lyon is much like those that came before him, although he does rate the spiritual practice of mesmerism as having a stronger place in the officer's outlook on life (the source being Ashbel Woodward's 1862 biography of Lyon). If memory serves, Lyon's most recent biographer, Christopher Phillips, does not make much of that.

Of course, the physical location that drew the most attention from opposing sides in Missouri was the U.S. arsenal at St. Louis. Estimates of the number of shoulder arms collected there at the time are wildly variable, somewhere between 20,000 and 60,000 muskets and rifles. Assessing the many different claims made during that time and ever since, Burchett (in step with most modern research) favors the lower end of the spectrum.

It was tradition for some of the older state militia companies to hold a muster at St. Louis, but the greatly larger 1861 affair was unusual for its size and time of year. All political persuasions on the issue of secession were present in the militia ranks (and a large number of Unionist officers and men defected early on, leaving around 700 men at Lindell's Grove when Lyon advanced upon it). Most ominous to those who might have supposed it an innocuous gathering, the Southwest Battalion and its component artillery battery were summoned to the encampment to join a core of five companies of pro-southern Minute Men. Burchett properly infers, one thinks, that the common knowledge of the immense strength of Lyon's command in combination with the much improved defenses of the arsenal rationally precluded further thought of either direct assault or siege. It seems reasonable to suggest that the encampment was maintained as a means of counterbalancing federal control and influence in the city.

One factor that is suggestive of Jackson and militia commanding general Daniel Frost abandoning hope of capturing the arsenal was the detachment of the militia's best trained and armed unit, Joseph Kelly's Washington Blues company. Kelly's company left the encampment with a large store of powder and munitions to distribute among newly formed caches dispersed throughout the state's interior. Lyon, of course, could only guess their underlying motives. Burchett holds Lincoln administration dithering (primarily the very odd and disruptive decision to relieve then reappoint loyal U.S. general and political moderate William S. Harney, whom Lyon and the Blairs viewed as an untrustworthy ideological enemy, as head of the Department of the West) to have played a major role in creating unnecessary confusion and fostering tragedy. As the author suggests, Harney's impending return likely played a key part in expediting Lyon's determination to march upon the militia encampment at Lindell's Grove.

State provocations also played an instigating role. As Burchett explains, the aid that the Confederacy sent to the Missouri Militia did more harm than good. The donated war material itself was practically useless yet its mere presence in the encampment only bolstered politico-legal cover for Lyon's proposed actions. As explained in the text, Lyon's legal advisors pointed out that the impulsive officer could act against the state's lawfully assembled state militia body by serving camp authorities with a writ of replevin for the return of munitions illegally seized earlier from the Baton Rouge arsenal.

When Lyon did finally act, he displayed uncommon organizational skills. At this earliest of moments when all of the volunteers were green recruits with only rudimentary training, Lyon's multi-column march from the arsenal to Lindell's Grove (as meticulously retraced in the book) proved to be a marvel of coordinated precision. Burchett even goes on to suggest that the planning and execution of the march revealed a mind capable of considerable tactical genius. While there is no detailed map provided of the area between the arsenal and Lindell's Grove, the author makes the complicated movement more comprehensible by superimposing marching routes and unit positions over 1870s street maps of the city. Burchett's highly positive assessment of Lyon's initial plan and its execution, however, is quickly downgraded during the post-surrender pause. In a decision that the author deems to have been a "callous military blunder" (page 231), Lyon, who had clearly witnessed the growing crowds of angry and fearful civilians pressing against his men, opted to march the prisoners directly through the gathering unrest. In the author's view, one of Lyon's biggest mistakes was not planning ahead for contingency. By Burchett's understanding, the self-assured Lyon simply assumed the captured militiamen would accept paroles and disperse, so when they didn't he was forced to improvise. That led to lengthy delays, the most unforeseeable one being Lyon getting kicked in the chest by an aide's horse. That alone stopped proceedings for a period of time some estimates placed at nearly two hours. As a result, the civilian crowds got larger and more volatile.

The entire truth can never be known for certain, but Burchett does what he can to determine where, when, and by whom initial and subsequent bursts of violence occurred. Gamely attempting to bring some narrative order to what was erupting chaos that produced a mass of conflicting eyewitness accounts, Burchett vividly breaks down the sequence of events as best and as fully as he can. Shooting clashes broke out at the front, middle, and rear of the column (in that order), with the federal troops (nervous and angry at the constant stream of taunts and insults hurled from the crowd) firing warning shots first at the front. It was at the rear where the greatest tragedy unfolded. There, Lyon's men responded with deadly force to a flurry of pistol shots. According to Burchett's interpretation of the sources, the largest concentration of pistol fire came from a group of men situated around a construction site. The reply, principally from the Second and Third regiments, was to fire indiscriminately into swirling, panic-stricken crowds of predominantly unarmed men, women, and children. Claims that officers ordered their men to fire volleys into the crowd were hotly disputed by eyewitnesses. It appears that many of the volunteers intentionally aimed high. Though the author opines that that might help account for the high proportion of head shots inflicted, those isolated acts also spared the citizenry from an even greater casualty list. Order was quickly restored by Lyon and his chief subordinate John Schofield, and it was all over in minutes. However, the damage was done.

Later chroniclers along with contemporary partisans offered a range of different casualty figures, many of which are sampled in the text. When it comes to the death count, the best official figures from county coroner records are twenty-five civilians (including three women and at least five individuals under sixteen years of age), three of Lyon's volunteers, and three of the captured militiamen. Noting that the coroner report only counted the dead discovered on or just after the day of the event, Burchett's research strongly suggests that at least twenty more fatal gunshot victims emerged later. These persons were either discovered deceased in public spaces days later or passed away from their wounds at home over the ensuing days and weeks. Thus, Burchett suggests a grand total of at least fifty dead and many more wounded. Though the word is provocatively placed in the title, the book itself avoids entering the quagmire of what constitutes a "massacre" and whether the tragedy in St. Louis should be properly considered one.

In stark contrast to the arguably overlong prologue sections of the book, the weighty consequences of the bloody Camp Jackson Affair are relegated to a comparatively brief epilogue. Some of the lingering violence across the city is mentioned, but one might wish for a more thorough examination of events there along with detailed assessment of the popular mood in St. Louis during the days and weeks following the May 10 clash between soldiers and civilians. In an important turn of events, previously successful legislative opposition to Governor Jackson's desire to expand, reorganize, and arm a new state army (what would become the Missouri State Guard) under his own personal control melted away once news of the mass civilian deaths in St. Louis spread. Additionally, Lyon's rash application of military force drove a great many pro-Union men into the opposing camp. In the author's view, Lyon's actions in charge of Union forces in Missouri compared unfavorably with how fellow pro-Union civilian and military leaders in charge of Kentucky handled that key Border State's difficult governor and large pro-secession minority during the same period. It's a brief consideration worthy of further development, though it's derailed by the incredible summary statement on page 256 that "(n)ot a single Civil War battle took place on Kentucky soil" (a mistake so out of character that one might charitably assume it to have been a mental block of some sort that escaped correction in final editing).

Massacre at St. Louis's background chapters arguably drag a bit, but the narrative picks up handsomely over the final two-thirds, where fresh pieces of information abound in regard to the arsenal itself, the dramatic capture of the Missouri Militia at Lindell's Grove, and the tragic mass shooting of civilians that followed it. Indeed, while it may be the case that the Civil War context of those places and events will be broadly familiar to readers, the historical geography and details associated with them are presented in Burchett's book at unprecedented clarity and depth.

The volume ends with the pending return of General Harney to a city in turmoil. Presumably, Burchett's next volume, Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union, will pick up directly from there.

Booknotes: Kidnapped at Sea

New Arrival:

• Kidnapped at Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White by Andrew Sillen (JHU Press, 2024).

From the description: "David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor from Lewes, Delaware, was kidnapped by Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate raider Alabama on October 9, 1862, from the Philadelphia-based packet ship Tonawanda. White remained captive on the Alabama for over 600 days, until he drowned during the Battle of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864."

Andrew Sillen's Kidnapped at Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White "is the first book to focus on White's actual life, rather than relying on Semmes and other secondary sources."

More from the description: "In a best-selling postwar memoir [Memoirs of Service Afloat, During the War Between the States (1869)], Semmes falsely described White as a contented slave who remained loyal to the Confederacy. In Kidnapped at Sea, archaeologist Andrew Sillen uses a forensic approach to describe White's enslavement and demise and illustrates how White's actual life belies the Lost Cause narrative his captors sought to construct."

Booknotes: United States Military Justice in the Civil War

New Arrival:

• United States Military Justice in the Civil War: Court-Martial Practices and Administration by R. Gregory Lande (McFarland, 2024).

Opposing Civil War armies were filled with individualistic and often unruly volunteers loath to give up their hard-won rights and protections under the nation's unique republican system of government in order to become European-style military automatons. In order to instill and maintain discipline, it was necessary to develop a military justice system that balanced societal expectations of civil rights with the collective needs of the military. Opinions vary as to how well that necessary compromise was addressed in the Union Army. From the description: "While some scholars have criticized the Union military courts as arbitrary and excessively harsh, others have defended it as a necessary means of maintaining order in the face of unprecedented challenges faced by the Union."

R. Gregory Lande's United States Military Justice in the Civil War: Court-Martial Practices and Administration draws on "extensive primary research" to present a "compelling narrative based on a statistical analysis of 5,000 Union military trials, court records, historical legal publications, and insights from contemporary historians." "Offering a balanced perspective on the struggle between maintaining discipline and protecting the legal rights of service members," Instead of taking the more common approach and focusing on the U.S. Army system of justice, Lande's fresh overview takes in account all branches of the service. His book "analyzes the relationship between alcohol misuse and misconduct, covers the differing approaches to sexual misconduct across the services, and exposes the uneven and sometimes unfair application of military justice."

In addition to chapters covering alcohol's influences and various violence-related offenses, chapters addressing prosecutions over unauthorized absences and the category of "subordinate military crimes" [defined as "theft, forgery, consequential criticisms, malingering, gambling, and medical malfeasance"] are also included.