Booknotes: Somewhere Toward Freedom

New Arrival:

• Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

Numerous books have been written about William T. Sherman's famous "March to the Sea," and they collectively bring to the table a variety of perspectives. In terms of major modern works, Burke Davis's Sherman's March (1980) got things going with its popular-style rendering of the 1864 Georgia and 1865 Carolinas campaigns. Those events are examined through the lens of the common Union soldier experience in Joseph Glatthaar's celebrated book The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (1985). More recently, Noah Andre Trudeau's Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea (2008) provided readers with the first detailed military account of the operation. In subsequent works, home front interactions between slaveholding Confederate women and Sherman's men are the focus of Lisa Tendrich Frank's The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers during Sherman's March (2015), and Anne Sarah Rubin's Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory (2014) is a prominent Civil War memory study. Bennett Parten's upcoming book Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation adopts yet another important perspective, that of the many thousands of slaves that attached themselves to Sherman's columns.

According to Parten, "as many as 20,000 enslaved people had attached themselves to Sherman’s army" by the time the hard-marching federals finally reached their goal, the city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way, they "endured hardships, marching as much as twenty miles a day—often without food or shelter from the winter weather" and their ability to stay with the army, which operated deep behind enemy lines during the march with severed lines of supply and communications, was frequently tenuous (even hostile).

More from the description: In Somewhere Toward Freedom, Parten expansively "reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how Sherman’s March impacted the war, and what it meant to the enslaved, but also reveals how it laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction. When the war ended, Sherman and various government and private aid agencies seized plantation lands—particularly in the sea islands off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts—in order to resettle the newly emancipated. They were fed, housed, and in some instances, taught to read and write. This first real effort at Reconstruction was short-lived, however. As federal troops withdrew to the north, Confederate sympathizers and Southern landowners eventually brought about the downfall of this program."

This is a 2025 title that will go into general release about a month from now.

Booknotes: Lincoln and the War's End

New Arrival:

• Lincoln and the War's End by John C. Waugh (SIU Press, 2024).

By its very nature, SIU Press's Concise Lincoln Library series lends itself toward a long run of titles limited only by the imagination of its contributors, with each compact volume exhibiting a focused bearing on some aspect of the celebrated president's life, personality, character, relationships, career, and elected office. Many of the installments also get paperback reissues, and that is the case with John Waugh's Lincoln and the War's End, which was first published in hardcover in 2014.

From the description: "On the night of his reelection on November 8, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln called on the nation to “re-unite in a common effort, to save our common country.” By April 9 of the following year, the Union had achieved this goal with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House." Waugh's book addresses the events of that momentous five-month interval, "revealing how Lincoln and Grant worked together to bring the war to an end." The words of a number of other well-known voices from the war, "including New Yorker George Templeton Strong, southerner Mary Boykin Chesnut, Lincoln’s secretary John Hay, writer Noah Brooks, and many others" contribute to the discussion.

Naturally, the volume highlights the series of Union military victories that together extinguished any remaining Confederate hopes for independence. Thus, Waugh "recounts the dramatic final military campaigns and battles of the war, including William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea; the Confederate army’s attempt to take Nashville and its loss at the battle of Franklin; and the Union victory at Fort Fisher that closed off the Confederacy’s last open port. Other events also receive attention, including Sherman’s march through the Carolinas and the burning of Columbia; Grant’s defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Five Forks, and Lincoln’s presence at the seat of war during that campaign; the Confederate retreat from Petersburg and Richmond; and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox."

Just as important as the battlefield results were their social and political ramifications. Intertwined with his military narrative, Waugh "presents the key political events of the time, particularly Lincoln’s final annual message to Congress, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Second Inaugural, Lincoln’s visit to Richmond the day after it fell, and Lincoln’s final days and speeches in Washington after the Confederate surrender." The celebratory capstone to the Union Army's victory, "the farewell march of all the Union armies through Washington, D.C., in May 1865," is also covered.

Major modern biographies of Lincoln's cabinet secretaries

Yesterday's post about the new Bates study got me thinking about remaining gaps in the modern biography of Lincoln's cabinet. I know "major" and "modern" are subjective labels, but I tried to keep the selected list below to conventionally published works from the past fifty years or so.

State

William H. Seward (1861–1865):
• Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man (2012) by Walter Stahr.
• William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand (1991) by John Taylor.

Attorney General

Edward Bates (1861–1864):
• Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates (2024) by Mark Neels.
James Speed (1864–1865):
None

Navy

Gideon Welles (1861–1865):
• Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (1973) by John Niven.

War

Simon Cameron (1861–1862):
• Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War (2016) by Paul Kahan [site review].
Edwin M. Stanton (1862–1865):
• Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary (2017) by Walter Stahr.
• Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton (2015) by William Marvel.

Postmaster General

Montgomery Blair (1861–1864):
None
William Dennison (1864–1865):
None

Treasury

Salmon P. Chase (1861–1864):
• Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2022) by Walter Stahr.
• Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (1995) by John Niven.
• Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (1987) by Frederick Blue.
William P. Fessenden (1864–1865):
• Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (2011) by Robert Cook.
Hugh McCulloch (1865)
• Hugh McCulloch: Father of Modern Banking (2004) by Susan Lee Guckenberg.

Interior

Caleb B. Smith (1861–1863):
None
John P. Usher (1863–1865):
A short biography was published in 1960, but none since then
James Harlan (1865): - Appointed by Johnson after Lincoln's assassination
None

It's expected that the cabinet biggies would have multiple treatments, and it still surprises me that it's been half a century since the last Welles biography. Blair is another notable omission.

Booknotes: Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor

New Arrival:

• Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates by Mark A. Neels (SIU Press, 2024).

When it comes to fresh biographies of Lincoln administration cabinet secretaries, empty boxes continue to get checked on a fairly regular basis. The latest is Mark Neels's Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates. According to the description, it has been nearly six decades since the last full biography [presumably Lincoln's Attorney General: Edward Bates of Missouri (1965) by Marvin R. Cain] was published.

Covering all the essential ground, Neels's study "begins with Bates’s youth in Virginia and follows him through his political and judicial career, his candidacy as a Republican presidential nominee in 1860, and his appointment to Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet as attorney general." Missouri, and Border State support in general, was critical to Lincoln's goal of keeping the Union together, and its easy to see why Bates, "a founding father of Missouri and leader of the Missouri Whig Party," would be considered for a high position in the new administration.

In the unprecedented times that would follow the outbreak of Civil War, Lincoln's war policies and measures would operate within a legal gray zone subjected at various times to attacks from all sides. As Attorney General, "Bates became an essential advisor to the president on key legal, military, and political matters from emancipation to civil liberties and equal rights, and his official opinion on Habeas Corpus would have a permanent effect on presidential authority and separation of powers."

As a political moderate, though, Bates also at times found himself at loggerheads with both the president and the more radical wing of the Republican Party. Indeed, he was a central figure in navigating the divide. More from the description: "When Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, Bates found himself at odds with the president and the radical anti-slavery members of the cabinet. But more than simply highlighting the conflict within Lincoln’s administration, Bates’s example lays bare the strong philosophical divisions within the Republican Party during the Civil War era. These divisions were present at the party’s inception, crystallized during the war, and ultimately sparked a political realignment during Reconstruction. Bates was at the center of this divide for most of its existence, and in some cases assisted in its promulgation."

According to Neels, Bates's conservative values and principles guided him throughout his lengthy public life and service. More: "Bates, a fierce opponent of radical Republicanism, embodies the conflict among Republicans over issues of slavery and citizenship. In both judicial and elective office, he was compelled by a sense of duty to defy the populism of President Andrew Jackson and Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and, later, the proslavery forces that threatened to tear the nation apart. Though he had owned slaves, Bates represented at least one enslaved woman’s suit for freedom, released from bondage the people he had enslaved, and aided Lincoln in his efforts to end slavery nationwide. Bates’s opinion on citizenship as attorney general helped pave the way for equal rights. His opinions were not always popular with either his colleagues or the greater populace, but Bates remained true to his conservative principles—a set of values shared by a large swath of Lincoln’s Republican Party—which positioned him as a leading opponent of radical Republicanism during the Reconstruction Era."

Booknotes: Dread Danger

New Arrival:

• Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Cambridge UP, 2024).

I've been looking forward to reading Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War for quite a while now, and after some publishing delays (it was in my June "Coming Soon") it's finally here. With so many subjective elements involved with it, evaluating cowardice in Civil War combat seems like it would be a daunting task to undertake. Nevertheless, I fully anticipate that Gordon has come up with some valid and interesting ways of looking at the topic that together impart "a fuller understanding of the soldier experience and the overall costs and sufferings of war." The book is surely an extension of Gordon's highly praised earlier work in A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut's Civil War, which also examined a regiment that suffered from a stained martial reputation (the 16th broke at Antietam and suffered further humiliation in 1864 at Plymouth, North Carolina).

The book is structured around two case study regiments, one a Union short-timer and the other a Confederate unit that served throughout the entire war. From the description: "When confronted with the abject fear of going into battle, Civil War soldiers were expected to overcome the dread of the oncoming danger with feats of courage and victory on the battlefield. The Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry went to war with high expectations that they would perform bravely; they had famed commanders and enthusiastic community support. How could they possibly fail? Yet falter they did, facing humiliating charges of cowardice thereafter that cast a lingering shadow on the two regiments, despite their best efforts at redemption."

The two unit selections are intriguing ones. I'm familiar with the reputational hit suffered by the 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" regiment, which infamously broke and ran at First Bull Run, but, at least for me, nothing like that immediately comes to mind for the 2nd Texas. My own lasting image of them is their incredibly brave and costly charge against Battery Robinett on October 4, 1862 at Corinth (you might recall the fairly frequently reproduced photograph of Texas bodies, including that of its colonel, William P. Rogers, piled up against the earthwork battery's exterior slope) and the regiment stalwartly defended the 2nd Texas Lunette at Vicksburg. The specific circumstances surrounding the substance of General Hardee's charges against the Texans at Shiloh doesn't ring a bell for me (was Hardee a major general who frequently singled out regiments for alleged bad behavior?), and I'm quite interested to learn more about that.

According to Gordon, public allegations of collective cowardice directed toward the 11th New York and 2nd Texas didn't much survive the conflict itself let alone stalk those individuals throughout the rest of their lives. More from the description: "By the end of the war, however, these charges were largely forgotten, replaced with the jingoistic rhetoric of martial heroism, a legacy that led many, including historians, to insist that all Civil War soldiers were heroes."

Booknotes: The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process

New Arrival:

• The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process by John F. Schmutz (McFarland, 2024).

Thanks to McFarland for breaking the site's near month-long cold spell of no new arrivals.

One among many of the war's large-scale human tragedies was the mid-war collapse of the POW exchange system. Both sides contributed to it, and, predictably, each blamed the other for the general breakdown. John Schmutz's The "Immortal Six Hundred" and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process is not intended to be a broad examination of the exchange system. Instead, it "focuses on 600 Confederate officers, made prisoners of war, who were dispatched to Charleston Harbor to act as human shields, and were subsequently imprisoned elsewhere and deliberately starved nearly to death. These actions were the result of the breakdown of the exchange cartel, as well as the "retaliation" policies promoted by the Secretary of War and the Lincoln administration."

The descriptive passage quoted above might be construed as adopting a particular angle and tone, but the author insists in the Preface that his book is "not intended to display either a pro-Confederacy or Yankee bias. Nor is it intended to glorify the "Lost Cause"...Nor is it merely a "victim's history"."(pg. 3)

At a glance, the book offers detailed accounts of the Six Hundred's initial capture and their assembly as a human shield on Morris Island, South Carolina. The men were housed in the line of fire as a retaliatory measure against the Confederate confinement of Union officers in the bombarded district of nearby Charleston. Detainment of the Confederate prisoners in camps located on Hilton Head Island and Fort Pulaski, where deprivations to the extent of causing preventable deaths have been alleged, are also detailed, as is the prisoners' final stop at Fort Delaware in 1865. The book does not contain a roster of the Six Hundred, but a pretty substantial selection of prisoner "Post-Release Sagas" is included in the appendix section. Another appendix offers some general commentary on the military prisons of both sides and analysis of the circumstances/consequences surrounding the national exchange system's suspension.

Review - "'Digging All Night and Fighting All Day': The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865" by Paul Brueske

["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). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiv,243/331. ISBN:978-1-61121-710-0. $32.95]

By the summer of 1864, northern military planners and political leaders had been advocating a combined operation to seize Mobile, one of the South's largest cities and the western theater's most significant remaining blockade-running haven in the Gulf, for nearly two years. Everyone recognized Mobile's strategic importance, but organizing a campaign against it always got derailed by other priorities. When finally underway, Mobile's reduction proceeded in two major phases: (1) the August 1864 sea and land assault that wrested control of Mobile Bay from Confederate naval forces and captured the masonry forts guarding the bay's entrance, and (2) the March-April 1865 operation that drove the Confederates from their eastern shore fortifications and forced the evacuation of the city. One can argue that each of these stages was sufficiently spaced apart from the other to be considered a separate campaign, and no existing scholarship integrates the two into a single study devoting equal detail and attention to the events of 1864 and 1865.

In terms of modern book-length treatments currently available, readers wanting to learn about the August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay commonly consult Chester Hearn's Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War (1993), its content overwhelmingly weighted toward the 1864 campaign, or Jack Friend's West Wind, Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay (2004). Preceded only by Sean Michael O'Brien's scantily detailed Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (2001) and even briefer works from John Waugh and Russell Blount, Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018) provided readers with the first truly satisfactory book-length overview of the land campaign against Mobile. Even then, though, only limited space could be devoted to the campaign's two main actions, the siege of Spanish Fort and the storming of Fort Blakeley. In his new book, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, Brueske is able to offer his full attention to the strongly contested fight over the east bay's southernmost guardian.

Some contend that the results of the 1864 Mobile Bay campaign effectively neutered the city of Mobile's strategic significance, rendering a massive spring campaign against it unnecessary, but Brueske effectively argues that proponents of that view unduly benefit from the advantages of hindsight. In addition to its value as a logistics and communications hub that effectively blocked Union forces from gaining river access into the Alabama interior, Mobile's defenses also housed in early 1865 one of the western theater's few remaining Confederate troop concentrations of any great consequence. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was never again able to conduct army-scale operations after its devastating defeat at Nashville in December 1864, but it was nevertheless the case that powerful sub-units, though reduced in manpower strength, retained combat effectiveness. Some were dispatched east to North Carolina and others south to Mobile. The handful of veteran brigades sent to Mobile formed the backbone of its defense in 1865, and Brueske makes a strong case for the city's enduring military significance during this waning period of the war.

Brueske's deeply researched operational and tactical-level narrative devotes equal attention to the military actions and strategic concerns of both sides. Union land forces during the 1865 Mobile Campaign were led by Major General Edward S. Canby, and strong elements of two army corps (Thirteenth and Sixteenth) were directed against Spanish Fort upon completion of a brief west bay diversion. Canby's men outnumbered the Confederate defenders of Spanish Fort, initially a mixture of garrison troops and Army of Tennessee veterans under Brigadier General Randall Gibson, by roughly eight to one. Many expected Canby to launch an immediate assault, but he elected instead to reduce the fort by siege approaches. After nearly two weeks of progress, Colonel James Geddes's brigade was able to traverse a covered route around and behind the Confederate left that was previously thought impassable to organized forces. His thinning defenses finally unhinged by Geddes's bold action, Gibson withdrew the garrison overnight, escaping under the enemy's noses using a previously built plank causeway to march north to safety. There was little time for Gibson and his men to celebrate their close call, however, as the subsequent storming of Fort Blakeley left too few men overall to attempt a final combined defense of Mobile. The city's remaining garrison, including Gibson's command, withdrew upriver to Meridian, Mississippi and surrendered soon after.

Events of the two-week siege are meticulously recounted in the text and their details visually well represented in the accompanying cartography. All of the elements of offensive and defensive siegecraft honed by both sides during the war were displayed by the Spanish Fort combatants, including controversial use by the Confederates of subterra shells. Brueske credits the veteran presence of Gibson and the stubborn fortitude of his men for dragging out the operation as long as possible. Gibson's Confederates were able to make expert use of the preexisting earthworks and slowed enemy progress through well-timed sorties and effective sharpshooting. The besiegers were initially stymied through lavish expenditures of rifle and artillery ammunition along with naval support fire, but dwindling powder, bullet, and shell stocks eventually forced the Confederates to adopt drastic cutbacks. With Rebel guns increasingly silent in response, Union superiority in manpower and firepower gradually gained ascendancy. After two weeks, the garrison was forced to either surrender or withdraw. As Brueske details in the book, the latter operation was astoundingly successful.

The siege was noteworthy for the Confederate Navy arguably having a greater impact than its more typically dominant Union counterpart. Before ammunition ran short, the heavy guns of the Confederate naval squadron, in particular its pair of partially completed ironclads, was able to successfully hinder the Union advance by providing enfilade fire down the line. Rear areas also came under heavy fire, disrupting Union command and control. Additionally, Confederate vessels were able to ferry men, guns, and supplies into the fort (and out, as necessary) relatively unhindered. On the Union side, Admiral Henry Thatcher struggled to get his ships within range close enough to materially affect events. The east bay's network of distant shoals, water obstructions, and well-placed torpedoes hindered Thatcher's approach toward Spanish Fort and its supporting batteries, and the admiral's insufficient precautions against floating mines contributed to the shallow water sinking of two monitors and a tinclad.

Though respected by his peers, Canby was widely known to be an abundantly cautious general, and many critics (including U.S. Grant then and later) condemned his methodical approach to reducing the east bay forts as not keeping requisite pace with military events developing elsewhere. Nothing in Brueske's study is about significantly elevating Canby's modest historical stature among Union Civil War army commanders, but he does persuasively lead readers to approach Canby by fairly assessing the general's actions within the context of what was known and expected at the time. Canby initially had to overcome challenging weather limitations (ones that his critics consistently overlook), but he also got the job done with relatively low casualties. We can never know for certain whether an all-out assault to open the campaign would have resulted in fewer overall casualties than those accumulated over the two-week siege, but one can certainly take the position that the probability of suffering high casualties against the small but well led, strongly situated, and highly motivated band of Confederate defenders backed by plentiful artillery made an immediate attack not worth the risks involved. At this stage of the war, no apology was needed for employing a methodical approach that minimized casualties.

A very useful compilation of supplemental material is assembled in the volume's extensive appendix section. Found within are detailed army and navy orders of battle for both sides, lists of casualties and naval vessels lost, POW numbers, and an inventory of captured stores. Another appendix traces the postwar journey of the siege's most famous cannon, the Lady Slocomb. Preservation information is also provided as is a brief but interesting look at the history of the old Spanish Fort, its colonial period origins (Spanish versus British) still in dispute.

In addition to providing the Civil War literature with the first full-length account of the siege of Spanish Fort, the strategic arguments presented in Paul Brueske's "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day" (combined with the author's earlier work on the campaign) offer powerful counterpoints to those that maintain that the late timing and slow pacing of the 1865 Mobile Campaign essentially erased its strategic utility within the overall plan to end the war that spring. Highly recommended.