Booknotes: Reckoning with the Devil

New Arrival:

• Reckoning with the Devil: Nathan Bedford Forrest in Myth and Memory by Court Carney (LSU Press, 2024).

Court Carney’s Reckoning with the Devil reexamines "the troubled, complex legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest―a slave trader, Confederate general, and prominent Klansman." In it, Carney "explores how historical omissions and erasures continually reshape perceptions of Forrest as well as the Civil War." Of course, Forrest's military brilliance in certain roles was a major part of his Civil War historical legacy (for a good modern overview of that see John Scales's The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1861-1865), but that aspect is not a focal point of Carney's work.

As Carney see it, "the slave trade, the Fort Pillow massacre, and his Klan affiliation were the fundamental elements shaping Forrest’s image." Forrest's wealth gained through slave trading was "a key to his ascent in the southern social hierarchy." In the book, Carney "traces Forrest’s trajectory from a prosperous slave trader in Memphis to a politician and eventual military leader in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Forrest’s postwar years reveal his struggle to rebuild his life, leading him to engage in various economic ventures and eventually join the Ku Klux Klan." The "ambiguity and malleability" involved in the above "allowed Forrest to attract admirers as well as detractors as his image was memorialized in postwar white southern culture."

Reckoning with the Devil "covers distinct phases of Forrest’s memorialization, from the unveiling of statues in Memphis in 1905 to his representation in literature and media and the controversies surrounding his monuments in the 2010s." In the end, it is Carney's view that "Forrest’s significance lies in his capacity to encompass conflicting narratives―hero and villain, rebel and patriot. Carney contends that understanding Forrest’s legacy is essential for comprehending the intricacies of the southern past and its enduring impact on American society."

Booknotes: "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day"

New Arrival:

• "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske (Savas Beatie, 2024).

It dismays modern observers today as much as it frustrated contemporary proponents way back then that it took so long for Union forces to finally close the vital Gulf port of Mobile, Alabama to Confederate blockade runners. When the campaign against Mobile did get underway at long last, it unfolded in two distinct stages. The first, consisting of both a naval offensive into Mobile Bay that famously damned the torpedoes and accompanying amphibious attacks that forced the fall of bay entrance guardian forts Morgan and Gaines, occurred during August 1864. The second and final phase played out during March and April of 1865, culminating in the April 12 surrender of the city.

The finest modern overview of the 1865 campaign is Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018), but given its nature the fights for the east bay Confederate forts (Blakeley and Spanish Fort) could only be summarized. The solid discussion of the action at Fort Blakeley (the April 9 assault in particular) found in Mike Bunn's The Assault on Fort Blakeley: The Thunder and Lightning of Battle (2021) addresses one of those two gaps in book-length standalone coverage, and Brueske's new study, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, fills the other with an even more detailed account.

From the description: "The bloody two-week siege of Spanish Fort, Alabama (March 26–April 8, 1865) was one of the final battles of the Civil War. Despite its importance and fascinating history, surprisingly little has been written about it. Many considered the fort as the key to holding the important seaport of Mobile, which surrendered to Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby on April 12, 1865."

Canby had a large army at his disposal for operations on both sides of the bay (over 40,000 men), but the Confederates were able to slip in a number of veteran units, albeit battered ones, into the defenses. Though still greatly outnumbered, the Confederates were able to offer fairly stiff resistance given the circumstances.

More from the description: "After the devastating Tennessee battles of Franklin and Nashville in late 1864, many Federals believed Mobile’s garrison—which included a few battered brigades and most of the artillery units from the Army of Tennessee—did not have much fight left and would evacuate the city rather than fight. They did not. Despite being outnumbered about 10 to 1, 33-year-old Brig. Gen. Randall Lee Gibson mounted a skillful and spirited defense that “considerably astonished” his Union opponents. The siege and battle that unfolded on the rough and uneven bluffs of Mobile Bay’s eastern shore, fought mainly by veterans of the principal battles of the Western Theater, witnessed every offensive and defensive art known to war."

In support of the text are six maps. The appendix section offers a broad range of supplementary material, including army and navy orders of battle, ordnance information, casualty and prisoner lists, and much more.

Giving thanks, and a seasonal reminder of ways to support the site

With 2024 fast winding down, I wanted to pause and give thanks to the sponsors who support CWBA. Both the Windy City's Abraham Lincoln Book Shop and Charleston's The History Press/Arcadia Publishing are long-time partners that have been with the site since the very beginning. University of Tennessee Press has also come on board this year for a limited time. All are valued sustaining forces.

A big shout out also goes to 2024's individual patrons (for privacy I'll just use their first names): Steve, Anand, John, and Thomas. Any amount and frequency sent through the yellow donate button in the sidebar is greatly appreciated. Thank you again, gentlemen of generous spirit.

Just as important, some of you also help keep CWBA going by assisting the site through online purchases initiated through affiliate links. It's free, completely private, and nearly all items are eligible. This holiday season, or any other time throughout the year, please consider using these links (typically the boldface book titles with hyperlinks) as your shopping portal. In return, CWBA receives a % commission from the purchase total, all at no additional cost to you.

Review - "Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations" by Edward Cotham

[Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. (University of Tennessee Press, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix, orders of battle, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages:xiii,170. ISBN:978-1-62190-913-2. $24.95]

It's easy to see why Galveston, Texas was considered a strategic point of interest for both sides during the Civil War. Galveston was Texas's most populous city, its most important commercial center, and it possessed the state's finest deep water port. Its rail connection with the interior also made it a prime base for a Union campaign to seize Houston. The occupation of both places would make Union forces masters of the heart of Texas and its limited modern transportation network. Initially determined to be indefensible with the meager resources available at the time, Galveston was reluctantly abandoned by its Confederate Army defenders. It was quickly occupied in turn by a small Union garrison supported by a naval squadron that easily outgunned anything the Confederates could muster against it. Before the Union foothold on Texas soil could be exploited, however, the port city was recaptured during a dramatic and improbably successful New Year's Day 1863 land and sea assault. Compounding the US Navy's embarrassment, just ten days later the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama lured out to sea and sank the Galveston blockader USS Hatteras. City and island remained in Confederate hands for the duration of the war.

The hits to US naval pride only continued. Approximately sixty miles up the coast, another Confederate naval attack surprised and defeated a US blockading force at Sabine Pass in 1862, and on September 8 of the following year a tiny earthwork battery turned back a massive combined operation that outnumbered the defenders roughly 100 to 1. In the fall of 1863, a two-pronged grand campaign, which consisted of a large overland expedition through western Louisiana and a substantial amphibious landing at the mouth of the Rio Grande that was accompanied by a follow-up movement up the coast, also failed (through a variety of reasons) to knock Texas out of the war. The decision-making involved in all of these events, many of which had military and political repercussions felt far and wide, is examined in Edward Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations.

Fast approaching two-dozen volumes, University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series possesses a unique analytical framework that has proven its value over time. Rather than repeat background material that has already been covered numerous times here on this site, please refer to previous CWBA reviews (such as this one here) for the series definition of a "critical decision" and brief explanation of the flow and structure of the steps involved in the decision analysis.

With published expertise [see Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (1998) and Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae (2004), both gold standard histories of their topics] and over thirty years of ongoing research at his disposal, Cotham is the ideal author for this particular series installment. Calling upon that unique body of knowledge and using it to identify key moments of contingency, Cotham's approach to critical decision selection along with his situational summaries, option formulations, result(s)/impact discussions, and visions of alternate scenarios all display levels of nuance that a less robustly informed contributor tasked with the matter at hand would find very difficult to match. At first glance, it might appear unlikely that one could come up with this high a number of critical decisions (21) for a series of mostly small-scale events that unfolded in the war's tertiary theater (and this reviewer still struggled with one or two), but Cotham's keenly developed arguments and analysis consistently remove most lingering doubts.

The typical book in the series addresses a campaign and/or battle fought between major eastern or western theater field armies, making tactical-level critical decision analysis a common feature. However, Cotham notes that in his own area of study it was faraway decisions that most often and most deeply impacted the course of events. Also, an unusually high number (for the series as a whole) of his volume's critical decisions are personnel related. As Cotham amply demonstrates, leadership selection alone went a long way toward explaining why the underdog Confederates were so successful and how it was that Union forces failed in such disastrous fashion. President Davis's selection of John B. Magruder, that general's reputation under a dark cloud from allegations related to underperformance during the Seven Days, matched man and moment with results few could have foreseen, and the officers Magruder chose as his own principal subordinates no less so. On the other side, US naval hero David Glasgow Farragut, commander of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, made leadership appointments on the Texas coast that he would come to bitterly regret. As Cotham outlines, key officers at Galveston and Sabine Pass served their faraway superior poorly, delivering some of the few black marks against Farragut's otherwise sterling Civil War record.

Magruder proved to be a particularly interesting case to examine. So many Confederate generals thrust into unenviable coastal command situations similar to what Magruder faced wallowed in pessimistic passivity when tasked with pitting their own meager manpower and resources against Union combined operations having the overpowering capability of concentrating superior land and naval forces at nearly any point of their choosing. Magruder broke the mold, confidently seizing the initiative and making his own luck with boldness, creative planning, and decisive leadership. During this shining moment of his Civil War career, all of his decisions struck gold. Like Robert E. Lee did at Chancellorsville, Magruder employed against a dangerously superior enemy at Galveston a complicated battle plan with a lot of moving parts. Such high-risk plans often produced disaster, but, as Cotham effectively reminds us, it could also be an important factor in achieving success against long odds. Unfortunately for the rest of Magruder's Civil War career, his signal success along the Texas coast in 1863 did little to restore his profile as general worthy of being entrusted with coveted commands on major fronts.

Much like historian Donald Frazier has recently done in his Texas and Louisiana series of military history books, Cotham insightfully outlines significant connections (through decisions made and their results) between events in the Trans-Missisippi theater and future plans for the war on the other side of the river. Most notable among them are those involved in delaying the targeting of the key Gulf blockade-running port of Mobile, Alabama.

A mixture of modern maps and others borrowed from the atlas to the O.R. accompany Cotham's text. In the other series titles, the featured tour appendix is designed to be closely tied to the critical decisions presented before it. With his own subject matter more geographically dispersed than the others and with so many of its critical decisions produced from great distances, Cotham elected instead to include a walking tour of Galveston Civil War sites and some brief recommendations for hardy souls willing to take the 133-mile roundabout drive to Sabine Pass.

Joining the top rank of the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War collection of titles, Edward Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns, in addition to its atypical features recited above, carries some notable series firsts. The author points out that his book is the first to have a major focus on ship vs. ship and ship vs. shore movements and encounters, and one can also add that it is the first Trans-Missisippi theater volume in the series. Another one, an 1864 Red River Campaign book, is soon to follow, with hopefully even more in the works.

Booknotes: The Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War

New Arrival:

• The Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: "Obstinate Devils" from Middle Fork Bridge to Cedar Bluff by David D. Perry (McFarland, 2024).

Over roughly 150 pages (including preface and introduction), David Perry's The Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: "Obstinate Devils" from Middle Fork Bridge to Cedar Bluff offers readers a briskly paced overview of the three-year regiment's Civil War service in Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky.

Mr. Dyer tells me that the Third was organized in June 1861 and saw its first action in western Virginia during McClellan's successful campaign there. This is the Middle Fork Bridge of the book's subtitle. The regiment went on to serve with Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio, where it marched south through Middle Tennessee, eastward across northern Alabama, and back north into the heart of Kentucky (fighting at Perryville). When Buell was dismissed his command (including the Third Ohio) was reorganized into the Army of the Cumberland under William S. Rosecrans. The regiment fought at Stones River and was one of the unfortunate regiments assigned to Abel Streight's disastrous raid targeting Rome, Georgia that ended in surrender. Upon exchange, the unit was assigned rear area duties, often chasing Confederate cavalry raids, and was mustered out of service in June 1864.

Perry's main narrative essentially ends with the regiment's surrender to Nathan Bedford Forrest's pursuers near Cedar Bluff, Alabama in May 1863. The final year of service is summarized in a single paragraph. The epilogue briefly discusses postwar reunions. The appendix section includes a unit chronology from the 1861 campaign in Virginia through the May 3, 1863 surrender; a unit roster; a list of Union generals from Ohio; and a trio of organizational notes explaining the Third's place in the order of battle over the course of its war service.

Booknotes: Black Americans in Mourning

New Arrival:

• Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Leonne M. Hudson (SIU Press, 2024).

Of course, there were members of every race and ethnic group who disapproved of Abraham Lincoln as a person, politician, policy-maker, and war leader. Much more unifying in crossing party and racial lines was the collective nature of national grief that followed Lincoln's sudden passing from an assassin's bullet. The black population's responses to the president's sudden demise just as the Civil War was drawing to close are the focus of Leonne Hudson's Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. According to Hudson, "no group mourned Lincoln more deeply than people of color. African Americans did not speak with a monolithic voice on social or political issues, but even Lincoln’s Black contemporaries who may not have approved of him while he was alive mourned his death, understanding its implications for their future."

More from the description: "Beginning with the assassination itself and chronicling Lincoln’s three-week-long national funeral, historian Leonne M. Hudson captures the profound sadness of Black Americans as they mourned the crafter of the Emancipation Proclamation and the man they thought of as their earthly Moses, father, friend, and benefactor. Hudson continues the narrative by detailing the postwar efforts of African Americans to gain citizenship and voting rights" during the Johnson administration.

In the book, Hudson attempts to gather contemporary first-hand perspectives of individuals from every level of black society while also examining group-level activities. Thus, his study "includes the tributes of prominent figures such as Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and Elizabeth Keckley, who raised their voices to honor Lincoln, as well as formal expressions of grief by institutions and organizations such as the United States Colored Troops. In a triumph of research, Hudson also features the voices of lesser-known Black people who mourned Lincoln across the country, showing that the outpouring of individual and collective grief helped set the stage for his enduring glorification."

Book News: "Yankee Autumn in Acadiana" back in print

Thanks to reader Curt T. for bringing to my attention the news that University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press has just released a third edition of David C. Edmonds's Yankee Autumn in Acadiana: A Narrative of the Great Texas Overland Expedition through Southwestern Louisiana, October–December 1863.

First published in 1979 in hardcover from Acadiana Press, the groundbreaking study of the campaign and the hard war effects it had on the local population received a paperback facsimile reprint in 2005 from ULL's Center for Louisiana Studies. This new 2024 edition from them, also a paperback release, has a new Foreword from historian and director of the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies Samuel C. Hyde Jr. There is no mention of any other additional material being added.

If you're interested in the topic I would recommend picking it up. Richard Lowe has authored a fine overview of events in his 1998 book The Texas Overland Expedition of 1863 and Donald Frazier provided us with additional context crucial to our understanding of the campaign in his 2020 book Tempest over Texas: The Fall and Winter Campaigns of 1863–1864, but Edmonds's pioneering book remains the most densely detailed account.

Booknotes: The Lead Mine Men

New Arrival:

• The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry by Thomas B. Mack (SIU Press, 2024).

Thomas Mack's The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry "explores the Civil War ordeals and triumphs of the “Lead Mine men” who hailed from eleven counties in northern Illinois." Whenever I encounter a new Union regimental study the unit number of which does not immediately flash images of the more significant events of its Civil War service in my brain, I immediately turn to Dyer's Compendium and its trusty summary of the unit's record for a refresher. Mustered into U.S. service in December 1861, the 45th had a long fighting career with the Army of the Tennessee, from Fort Henry to Bennett Place.

The description summarizes their time in blue thusly: "During their service the regiment compiled an exceptional record. The 45th fought under General Ulysses S. Grant in the war’s western theater, earning honors at Vicksburg and in Tennessee. The men later reenlisted as veterans and served in General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta, Savannah, and Carolina campaigns. Mack considers the soldiers’ community, discipline, and faith in Providence during their service in the Union Army of the Tennessee and how, despite the unit’s high casualties, they upheld the lowest rate of desertion due to their fervent patriotism."

Given the far more detailed attention directed toward all aspects of the West and Trans-Mississippi theaters in recent decades, it's become clear that elements of hard war (as it came to be known) developed much earlier in the conflict than previously supposed. Going from the amount of emphasis placed on it in the description, it appears the men of the 45th were among the practice's more ardent early adopters. From the publisher: Mack's study "uncovers the history on this unit of resilient midwesterners and how they brought hard-war to the Confederacy in 1862, earlier than other historians have previously suggested."

According to Mack's author bio, the soldiers of the opposing armies are his primary research interest. That perspective is reflected in this book. More from the description: "Throughout The Lead Mine Men, Mack’s focus remains on the soldiers—their extensive training in Galena and Chicago and their time in camp and in combat. He follows their experiences from recruitment to their celebratory march in the 1865 Grand Review to their postwar lives in which many struggled to adjust, receive their government pensions, and protect the unit’s legacy."

Booknotes: Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns

New Arrival:

• Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. (U Tenn Press, 2024).

Currently sitting at twenty volumes balanced between east and west (with more on the immediate schedule), University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America's Civil War continues to release titles at a steady pace. One thing that has invigorated the series is the successful recruitment of top-level published subject matter experts, such as contributors David Powell for Chickamauga and Robert Tanner for the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The latest in that line of strong gets is Edward Cotham, the author of Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (1998) and Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae (2004), the latter the winner of the 2005 Laney Prize. Both books are Civil War Texas classics and rank high among the very best studies of the war west of the Mississippi. Those publications and Cotham's decades of research and thoughtful consideration of the topics at hand make him the ideal author behind Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations, which is also noteworthy for being the first Trans-Mississippi installment of the series.

In the book, Cotham explores the series of critical decisions that guided the course of events along the most important stretch of Texas coastline north of the Rio Grande. Coverage includes the series of contests for control of Galveston, Texas's best deep water port, between 1861 and 1863 along with events culminating in the September 8, 1863 battle for Sabine Pass. Both Sabine Pass and the New Year's Day 1863 Battle of Galveston were startlingly improbable Confederate victories.

From the description: "The Galveston Campaigns were a series of naval and overland battles that pitted Confederate General John B. Magruder and his often-improvised Confederate forces against General Nathaniel P. Banks and a variety of Union army and naval forces. A Federal fleet entered Galveston Bay on October 4, 1862, and the city surrendered after the expiration of a four-day truce. However, on New Year’s Day of 1863, Magruder coordinated a bold new attack to retake Galveston using a land bombardment and two cottonclad Confederate gunboats. Aided by victories at the Battle of Sabine Pass and two purely naval engagements in Texas waters, the city would remain in Southern hands and end the war as the last major Confederate port."

More: Edward Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the campaigns and examines how these decisions shaped their outcome. Rather than offering a history of the operations, Edward Cotham concentrates on a sequence of decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of each campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened." I am a fair bit into it right now and like what I'm seeing so far.

"Late to the Fight" - Another late-war Union unit and soldier study

Though confident in the conclusions presented in his award-worthy book High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor, Edwin Rutan recognized that his study of late-war Union volunteers and new regiments raised during the late-war period was selective in scope and more work on the subject was needed. I don't know if he knew or anticipated that help would arrive so soon!

Among the Spring '25 crop of upcoming LSU Press titles is Alexandre Caillot's Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg (May). The challenging process involved in defining and measuring unit combat performance was a major part of Rutan's 2024 book, which employed modern tools for grading unit effectiveness. Like Rutan's earlier study, Caillot's investigation is restricted to the Army of the Potomac. Concentrating his own historical lens even further, Caillot's research is devoted to examining two regiments, the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine (why those two, I am curious to find out). Using those units to "to assess the record of late-arriving soldiers under fire," Caillot, like Rutan, helps demonstrate "that these forgotten boys in blue left behind a record of valor and sacrifice essential to achieving the destruction of the Confederacy."

Booknotes: The Maps of Second Bull Run

New Arrival:

• The Maps of Second Bull Run: An Atlas of the Second Bull Run (Manassas) Campaign from the Formation of the Army of Virginia Through Chantilly, June 26-September 1, 1862 by Bradley M. Gottfried (Savas Beatie, 2024).

With last month's release of The Maps of Second Bull Run, the Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series is now up to ten volumes. Aligned with the primary interests of its creator, Bradley Gottfried, the series has a predominant eastern theater flavor, with previous volumes covering Gettysburg, cavalry operations during the Gettysburg Campaign, First Bull Run, Antietam, Bristoe Station/Mine Run, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, and the interval from Spotsylvania to Cold Harbor. The lone western theater atlas is David Powell and David Friedrichs's Chickamauga volume.

Charting future developments, Gottfried mentions in the Preface that his original intention was to finish The Maps of Petersburg and Appomattox next, but during the pandemic he decided instead to put that project aside temporarily and backtrack, filling in the first half of the war's remaining gaps. So the next installment after Second Bull Run will be the one that I have looked forward to the most, The Maps of the Peninsula Campaign. After that, there will be volumes dedicated to Chancellorsville, the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, and the 1864 operations in the Valley.

The Maps of Second Bull Run starts with the initial rounds of jockeying between John Pope's Army of Virginia and Stonewall Jackson's corps. From there, atlas coverage moves on to the Battle of Cedar Mountain and subsequent repositioning and skirmishing leading up to Brawner's Farm and the Second Battle of Bull Run itself. The volume concludes with the federal withdrawal toward Washington and the Battle of Chantilly.

From the description: The atlas breaks down the aforementioned series of events "into 24 map sets or “action sections,” enriched with 122 detailed full-page color maps. These cartographic originals bore down to the regimental and battery level. They include the march to and from the battlefields and virtually every significant event in between, including cavalry actions. At least two—and as many as ten—maps accompany each map set. Keyed to each piece of cartography is a full-facing page of detailed text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) depicted on the accompanying map, all of which make the cavalry actions come alive." As was the case with all preceding volumes, orders of battle are provided and the accompanying text is annotated.

Booknotes: Playing at War

New Arrival:

• Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games edited by Patrick A. Lewis & James Hill Welborn III (LSU Press, 2024).

If you're a Gen X wargamer like me you grew up in time to catch a part of the golden age of traditional board gaming and experienced the additional opportunity to participate in the new and exciting rise of computer gaming. For those who lacked an abundance of long-term table space and, just as important, a dearth of flesh and blood opponents, playing these types of games on the home PC held a great deal of interest and promise. Though the current military board game scene remains both vibrant and innovative (along with being very high priced!), it has evolved into a very small sub-niche within the recent board game industry revival. In terms of wider cultural appeal, the current state of the hobby cannot match its heyday when every shopping mall of size and consequence had a store that stocked board games simulating an awe-inspiring range of history's conflicts. Even local department stores in the relatively small town that I grew up in sold them. Broadly speaking, today's youthful wargamers undoubtedly are grounded not in games of the physical kind but in console, computer, and app-based ones.

Emphatically of the opinion that video games were not art, the popular movie reviewer Roger Ebert famously ignited an online grudge match with those who claim otherwise. I don't recall if the flood of responses that he received ever led him to walk back on that opinion to any great degree before his untimely passing. Art or not, it's clear that video games continue to have a significant cultural impact, and they're the subject of countless academic authored and themed papers, books, and articles. Unique in its American Civil War focus is Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games, a new essay compilation edited by Patrick Lewis and James Hill Welborn. The editors apply a very broad-stroke definition of "video game" that encompasses everything from the most popularly appealing console-based first-person shooters to the most niche-oriented and micro-detailed wargames designed for the PC. In their volume, Lewis and Welborn enjoin their large group of contributors to apply the same serious critical eye toward video games that they would more traditionally apply to the media forms of fiction writing, movies, and music.

From the description: "Playing at War offers an innovative focus on Civil War video games as significant sites of memory creation, distortion, and evolution in popular culture. With fifteen essays by historians, the collection analyzes the emergence and popularity of video games that topically engage the period surrounding the American Civil War, from the earliest console games developed in the 1980s through the web-based games of the twenty-first century, including popular titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and War of Rights."

With the book's body of contributors consisting primarily of university-based historians and similar professionals, it's perhaps natural, as conveyed by the subtitle, that scholarly concerns surrounding identity, inclusivity, and memory would be the predominant themes explored by the essay writers. Though nuts and bolts matters such as design philosophies, gameplay mechanics, and gaming technology take a backseat to those concerns, there is also some discussion of game research methodologies and general issues related to differing perceptions of historical accuracy. An example of a particularly innovative approach is the Part III essay exploring game portrayals of the final-stage fight for the U.S. capital in the context of the common "boss battle" game convention.

More from the description: "Alongside discussions of technological capabilities and advances, as well as their impact on gameplay and content, the essays consider how these games engage with historical scholarship on the Civil War era, the degree to which video games reflect and contribute to popular understandings of the period, and how those dynamics reveal shifting conceptions of martial identity and historical memory within U.S. popular culture." A book of this type cannot offer more than a selective picture of its subject matter, thus many important games in the evolution of the genre are left out of the discussion, but it is nevertheless a bit odd that an entire essay is devoted to Oregon Trail, which is not by any stretch a Civil War game. On the other hand, one might consider that popular classic a roughly suitable stand-in for the great many violent conflicts that did occur along western emigrant trails during the 1861-65 period.

Playing at War "traces the drift of Civil War memory into digital spaces and gaming cultures, encouraging historians to engage more extensively with video games as important cultural media for examining how contemporary Americans interact with the nation’s past." In a Civil War publishing sphere that often exhibits extended periods of thematic and topical sameness, editors Lewis and Welborn (along with publisher LSU Press) are to be commended for their collective wherewithal in putting out this fresh-focused and completely original anthology.

Booknotes: A Wonderful Career in Crime

New Arrival:

• A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age by Frank W. Garmon, Jr. (LSU Press, 2024)

In a reading culture that continues to display great interest in true crime stories, largely of the murder variety, it's not too surprising that there would be a recent uptick (or at least it seems that way to me) in books about the lives and misdeeds of prominent Civil War-era criminals. Authors investigating some of the darker corners of postwar Gilded Age society especially are fairly common guests on a history podcast I regularly listen to. Often the subject of major newspaper headlines at the time, popular knowledge of most of these nineteenth-century figures rapidly dims with the passage of time, and they become virtual unknowns to modern generations of readers and scholars alike. That is likely the case with Charles Cowlam, the subject of Frank Garmon's A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age, which "brings Cowlam’s stunning machinations to light for the first time."

Cowlam's "career in crime" is notable for its length across multiple eras, great variety of dastardly enterprises, and intersection with famous historical figures. From the description: "Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” He was a chameleon in a world of strangers, and scholars have overlooked him due to his elusive nature. His intrigues reveal how Americans built trust amid the transience and anonymity of the nineteenth century. The stories Cowlam told allowed him to blend in to new surroundings, where he quickly cultivated the connections needed to extract patronage from influential members of American society."

Charles Cowlam's career as a confidence man reached the highest levels of government. More from the description: "Rather than perpetrating frauds against average citizens, Cowlam reserved his most fantastic schemes for officials in the highest levels of government. He is the only person to receive presidential pardons from both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. When the fighting ended, he conned his way into serving as a detective investigating Lincoln’s assassination, later parlaying that experience into positions with the Internal Revenue Service and the British government."

The times during which Cowlam lived experienced rapid changes, and he took advantage of every twist and turn. More: "Reconstruction offered additional opportunities for Cowlam to repackage his identity. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal and persuaded Republicans in Florida to allow him to run for Congress. After losing the election, Cowlam moved to New York, where he became a serial bigamist and started a fake secret society inspired by the burgeoning Granger movement. When the newspapers exposed his lies, he disappeared and spent the next decade living under an assumed name." He returned to the Civil War for his final scam, when he "resurfaced in Dayton, Ohio, claiming to be a Union colonel suffering from dementia in an effort to gain admittance into the National Soldiers’ Home."