Review - "The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War" by Lindsay Rae Smith Privette

[The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War by Lindsay Rae Smith Privette (University of North Carolina Press, 2025). Softcover, illustrations, tables, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiv,154/221. ISBN:978-1-4696-9027-8. $29.95]

In the twelve months following the July 21, 1861 Battle of Bull Run, environmental extremes significantly impacted a number of major Civil War areas of operation. In the process, those outside pressures further taxed medical services already unprepared to handle the conflict's unprecedented scale of battlefield casualties. In the wake of hard-earned lessons in handling the sick and wounded, the Union Army systematized a number of medical reforms under fresh leadership. Many were the handiwork of Surgeon General William Hammond and Army of the Potomac Medical Director Jonathan Letterman. The westward spread of these much-needed changes, in combination with popular outcry over messy casualty management after the Fort Donelson and Shiloh campaigns, resulted in notable improvements in how U.S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee managed the health and fighting trim of its soldiers during the long December 1862-July 1863 Vicksburg Campaign. That transformation is the subject of historian Lindsay Rae Smith Privette's The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War, which examines the medical department's impact upon the course of arguably the conflict's most environmentally challenging military campaign.

Privette shows that by the time Fifteenth Corps commander William T. Sherman launched his December 1862 Chickasaw Bayou operation the Hammond/Letterman reforms were already taking shape. Among the most important initiatives were the reorganization of medical care and distribution of medical supplies. Previously done at the regimental level, it was determined that effectiveness and efficiency demanded that those tasks to be more centralized at the division level, and actual practice confirmed that wisdom. Outfitting well-stocked hospital ships to bed, treat, and transport sick and wounded soldiers was another priority that greatly benefited the health of the western army. As the author notes, perhaps least appreciated among the new mandates was the marked improvement in record-keeping, which was abysmally neglected after Donelson and Shiloh. This system allowed patient location to be tracked as well as the progress of care. Implementation made it possible for the first time to fully document and closely follow case studies that would later be used to improve the quality of wound and disease treatment. Chickasaw Bayou was, by any estimation, a complete military failure, but Privette argues that it did mark a turning point in medical service improvements, though there was still more left to be done.

The many ways in which Northern aid societies enhanced Union soldier health and welfare are well described in the literature, as is the fact that those well-intentioned civilian activities frequently clashed with military administrators, who also didn't appreciate the frequent criticisms that aid society inspectors aimed in their direction. Privette remarks upon the administrative clashes between the army and government-approved soldier aid agencies such as the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) and Western Sanitary Commission (WSC), showing that their conflicts extended well beyond mere jealousies over authority and into practical matters of managing soldier health. Asserting control over bodily care was also a major issue down the army chain of command, where military priorities frequently clashed with rank and file health concerns. At the bottom of it all was the private soldier, whose options for what we today call "self-care" were limited. After Chickasaw Bayou, Army of the Tennessee soldiers camped along the swamps, bayous, and levees of eastern Louisiana suffered terribly from disease and the elements, and Privette's findings amplify much of what fellow historian Eric Michael Burke revealed in his excellent, award-winning Fifteenth Corps study published in 2022. According to both authors, from the shocking scale of non-combat losses incurred to the widespread believe among the common soldiers that their own health needs, indeed the value of their very lives, lay at or near the bottom of their corps commander's list of military priorities, it was clear that much needed to be done in order to restore faith in the army's high command. General John A. McClernand's Thirteenth Corps also enters the discussion, and the book helpfully reminds readers that heated accusations back and forth in regard to McClernand's alleged neglect of his corps' medical services contributed heavily to the rising friction between the general and army commander Grant.

Citing military necessity and the impossibility of avoiding the ravages of regional endemic disease, Grant and Sherman refused to abandon the Vicksburg canal project that ended up stretching between January and March 1863, even insisting that sickness and loss claims over that period were greatly exaggerated. The army's medical department concurred, and Privette acknowledges the difficulties involved with reconciling critical claims originating from the rank and file level against those from defensive-minded top leadership. Nevertheless, regardless of the weight one might assign to the various factors involved, it was clear to all that general health (measured by the army sick list) had improved substantially by April.

In contrast to other histories of the Vicksburg Campaign, Privette presents an interesting angle centered around the environmental context of the military operation. The cold rains and flooding of the winter months (which restricted camp space, contaminated water, and presented troops with conditions rife for respiratory and intestinal disease) and the summer months (which exposed the army to peak malaria and yellow fever) were essentially a extra defender on the Confederate side. With those environmental obstacles in mind, the author notes that Grant crossed the Mississippi, swept across the state's interior, and invested Vicksburg at essentially the perfect time for the health of his men, the month of May being right between the two aforementioned seasonal extremes. While liberal foraging largely compensated for the inland movement's imperfect supply line situation, as least for the short term, other challenges to soldier mind and body needed to be addressed. Appropriately stressed in the study is the impact that regular sleep deprivation during the rapid marches of May had on the men's immune systems, although it is also acknowledged that the May victories had uplifting follow-on psychological and physical endurance effects. The biggest potential non-combat killer during the active phase of the campaign was high heat exacerbated by the punishing pace of the army's advance. Denied adequate rest, shade, cooling, and fluid replacement, soldiers struck with heat exhaustion resorted to straggling to both save themselves for the present and recharge themselves for the future when they rejoined their units.

Though General Grant had a reputation for being a strong supporter of the medical service, his army did prioritize ammunition over medical supplies when it came to utilizing the limited transportation that accompanied the army across the river into Mississippi. This isolation had the potential for disaster, as, just like it was for supplies, the army's tenuous path of supply and communications back to Grand Gulf would have been dangerously insecure if the army was bogged down into static, high-casualty warfare before reaching Vicksburg itself. Fortunately, Union casualties were manageable for the series of battles fought between Port Gibson and Big Black River, and the failed assaults that caused half of the army's total casualties for May occurred after establishment of a secure logistical base nearby on the Yazoo River had been assured. It is also noted that the administration and requisition policies of the army's recently appointed medical director, Madison Mills, had resulted in medical supply stockpiles in close proximity west of the Mississippi that were sufficient to handle the influx of patients that preceded the investment of Vicksburg.

The author also sees the geographical and logistical isolation that Grant's army operated under during much of the Vicksburg Campaign as having positive aspects. For the medical services, they were able to go about their business with less direct civilian and political interference than ever before, and Privette also considers that isolation an opportunity for surgeons to improve their self-reliance in ways that would serve them well over the balance of their Civil War careers. It is also noteworthy that case studies authored by Vicksburg Campaign surgeons as well as other documentation created in fulfillment of Mills's new requirements formed significant contributions to the medical literature.

After the failure of the May 19 and 22 assaults, the beginning of summer siege operations heralded the return of health concerns inherent to static warfare, namely camp sanitation and contaminated water. From May into June, the flooding, cold, and wetness that caused so many problems was replaced by spring into summer challenges such as high heat, humidity, and dried up water sources. However, as Privette notes, the medical corps's enhanced operations over previous months resulted in improved care, better defined authority, and refined administration, and the army's close proximity to its river communications made possible a constant flow of medical and aid society supplies along with rapid evacuation of the most ill and most severely wounded soldiers.

Lest one think that weather changes and other environmental factors chiefly explained the army's healthier state, Privette notes that private-sphere medical inspectors previously critical of the army, such as physicians employed by the USSC and WSC, abruptly changed their tune after witnessing the surprisingly (in their view) strong health of the soldiers besieging Vicksburg and improved efficiency of army medical services. Rather than try to block civilian aid workers altogether, Grant sagely facilitated aid society medical supply supplementation with the caveat that it be tightly regulated by army officials. The reshaped relationship worked well, and, in the author's view, the army at Vicksburg experienced far less civilian interference and authority conflicts than it did during the contentious aftermath of Shiloh.

By June, however, malarial diseases and diarrhea/dysentery exploded among the heavily reinforced Vicksburg besiegers, with total sick numbers double what they were during the earlier canal-building winter. Nevertheless, only the worst cases were evacuated to general hospitals upriver, and the new division and corps field hospitals (with assistance from the hospital ships) were able to keep the temporarily disabled soldiery nearby and, working together, managed the army's health well enough to earn credit for being a strong sustaining force along the army's path to final victory. Aiding those efforts, supplies and medicine (one of the most critical being quinine) flowed into the field hospitals via the Milliken's Bend transit depots with noteworthy, albeit imperfect, consistency.

During the siege itself, oppressive heat and humidity affected both sides regardless of the impression that southerners were more physically accustomed to it. With the besieging army swelling to 77,000 men, getting sufficient supplies of potable water was paramount, and both sides utilized the nearby Mississippi River as a supplement to local sources. Just as important as medical care for Grant's soldiers was the positive effect the practice of regular unit rotation into and out of the trenches had on the men's physical and mental well-being. The Confederate defenders did not have that luxury. Though drawing detailed comparisons between Union and Confederate medical services lies beyond the scope of this study, it is clear that by the end of the siege, when a third of the defenders were in hospital and much of the rest seriously debilitated by constant front line duty, the "surgeon's battle" was one that the Confederates could not have hoped to match.

The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War represents a noteworthy addition to the medical services history of the Civil War. Keeping in mind the environmental extremes within which the Vicksburg Campaign was fought as well as period limitations in the scientific knowledge of disease processes and transmission, Privette's study nevertheless successfully argues that Grant's Army of the Tennessee incorporated improvements in medical department organization and practices that were numerous and significant enough to mitigate the effects those unavoidable factors had on soldier health and fighting efficiency. While the subtitle's lofty claim that medicine "won" the campaign is certainly attention-grabbing, it is actually more representative of the book's content and interpretation to maintain that advancements in Union Army medicine "helped win" the contest for Vicksburg. That more measured conceptualization, as developed by Privette, is persuasive.

Booknotes: They Fought Like Veterans

New Arrival:

• They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory by Michael J. Manning (Prairie Star Music & Pub, 2025).

From the description: "The Civil War within the Indian Territory represented a peripheral aspect of the broader conflict, situated in a less prominent region of the Trans-Mississippi West. The area did not witness significant battles or the emergence of notable military leaders; indeed, many senior officers from both Union and Confederate armies were assigned to this region following unsuccessful campaigns further east. However, the intensity of animosity and violence in the Indian Territory was unparalleled compared to other Civil War regions."

Currently, the most comprehensive, up-to-date scholarly history of the Civil War in Indian Territory is Mary Jane Warde's impressive 2013 study When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory. That is a huge subject to try to cram into a single volume, and, while Warde was very successful in taking on that tall task, it was only possible to provide very limited overviews of the many campaigns and battles fought inside and directly adjacent to the territory. Those topics, many of which continue to be neglected in the literature at large, are the primary focus of Michael Manning's They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory.

According to Manning's introduction, the book can be divided into three parts. The first three chapters "describe the origins of the Five Civilized Tribes, their "Trails of Tears" to their new homes in today's Oklahoma, and the effects of the Southern secession movement upon these Indian nations" (pg. 5). More from the description: "Most of the Five Civilized Tribes-Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole-had resided in the territory for less than a quarter-century. While initial support among these nations leaned toward the Southern Confederacy, consensus was lacking, leading to internal divisions. These splits closely mirrored earlier fractures between pro-treaty members (predominantly of mixed ancestry) and anti-removal members (primarily full-blooded), divisions that originated during the 1820s and 1830s after implementation of the Indian Removal Acts. Relocation moved these nations into what became known as Indian Territory, now largely comprising the State of Oklahoma. Many tribal members, having assimilated aspects of Southern culture prior to removal, had become slaveholders."

The second part, comprising the bulk of the nearly 600-page study, "describes the military actions that occurred in an around the Indian Territory, the troops involved, and the battles they fought" (pg. 5). The text, formatted in a double-column narrative that extensively incorporates quoted passages from primary sources, is supplemented by a multitude of photographic images and supported by numerous maps of all scales.

The final, and shortest, part of the book addresses the Reconstruction period and the negotiations of new treaties between the various tribes and the US government.

Booknotes: Moses Jacob Ezekiel

New Arrival:

• Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor by Samantha Baskind (Penn St UP, 2025)

At least in American popular memory, the names of much-heralded native sculptors of the past are far less commonly remembered today than are other fine artists such as painters, performers, and literary figures. This is the case even though their works were routinely placed in prominent public spaces free for all to visit. Richmond-born Moses Ezekiel (1844-1917), whose active life straddled the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, certainly fits this bill.

From the description: "How is it that the prolific nineteenth-century sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel is largely forgotten today? Ezekiel was the first renowned Jewish American artist and one of the most popular artist-celebrities of his day. In terms of drama, his life story rivals Alexander Hamilton’s. Ezekiel fought for the Confederacy at the Battle of New Market as a teenager and was friends with Robert E. Lee."

I wonder to what degree Ezekiel being an expatriate (1868-1917) for nearly his entire artist career, more than four decades of which was spent in Rome, impacted how little he is remembered in his home country. Regardless, Ezekiel was clearly very well received abroad. More from the description: "After the war, he established himself as an artist in Rome, where he was honored by European royalty and enjoyed friendships with the likes of Franz Liszt, Queen Margherita, and Kaiser Wilhelm II." According to the artist's latest biographer, Samantha Baskind, Ezekiel's Confederate past, however, has tended to overshadow his work, which included over one hundred sculptures.

Baskind's Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor "resurrects this complicated artist’s life and work and presents the fascinating details of how his sculptures were commissioned and made." Utilizing "a wealth of primary sources," her study "shows how Ezekiel’s sculptures shed light on a range of issues, including the modernization of American Jewry, radical changes in the art world concerning style and patronage, and Civil War commemoration. The conflicting allegiances that motivated Ezekiel’s statues―his conservative Confederate leanings alongside his liberal views on peace, Judaism, and religious liberty―make him an intriguing lens through which to understand nineteenth-century transatlantic culture and history."

It is a beautifully presented book, with thick, glossy paper stock and 100 B&W illustrations (some full-page in size), most of which feature high-res images of Ezekiel's sculpture art. Chapters are organized by theme, with the final one addressing Ezekiel's Confederate soldier experience, perspective, and art legacy.

As "historians are tasked to tell the entire story" (pg. xii), Baskind's book "provides a complete picture of Ezekiel’s oeuvre and his renowned home studio, which drew international visitors. It will appeal to readers interested in art history, Jewish studies, Civil War studies, American studies, and public monuments."

Coming Soon (November '25 Edition)

Scheduled for NOV 2025¹:
• The Day They Hanged Old Brown: The Making of Celebrity and Martyrdom in the Civil War Era by John Van Atta.
• Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital by Larry Daniel.
• The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert Gudmestad.
• The Greatest Calamity: Tennessee in the Civil War Era by John Fowler.
• The The Old Alcalde: Life and Times of a Texas Fire-Eater, Oran Milo Roberts by John Adams.
• Tar Heel Civil War Flags: The Collection of the North Carolina Museum of History by Tom Belton.
• War Fought and Felt: The Emotional Motivations of Confederate Soldiers by Joshua Shiver.
• From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War by Patrick Garrow.
• Every Revolution Was First a Thought: The Civil War and Transcendentalism in Transatlantic Context by Aren Craig.
• Three Roads to Gettysburg: Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation by Tim McGrath.
• Little Round Top at Gettysburg: A Reassessment of July 2, 1863 by Joseph Boslet.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's books, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Booknotes: Fighting with the Past

New Arrival:

• Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean (UNC Press, 2025).

A work of "comparative intellectual history," Aaron Sheehan-Dean's Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War explores the ways in which Civil War-period Americans "used the past to understand and traverse their turbulent present." In this case, the reference is to Britain's bloody internal conflicts that played out concurrently with the expansion of English settlement of North America.

From the description: "(N)ineteenth-century Americans were especially conversant with narratives of the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. Northerners and Southerners alike drew from histories of the English past to make sense of their own conflict, interpreting the events of the past in drastically different ways." According to Sheehan-Dean, factions that emerged during America's Civil War came to identify with those of their clashing forebears. "Confederates, for example, likened themselves to England’s Royalists (also known as Cavaliers), hoping to preserve a social order built on hierarchy and claiming the right to resist what they perceived as radicals' assaults on tradition. Meanwhile, conservative Northerners painted President Lincoln as a tyrant in the mold of English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, while radical abolitionists drew inspiration from Cromwell and sought to rebuild the South as Cromwell had attempted with Ireland."

The field of Civil War memory centers itself upon interpreting the ways in which the postwar populations of both sections, from Reconstruction through to today, came to reckon with the national past. In contrast, Sheehan-Dean takes a novel tack by shifting the posts two hundred years in the other direction. More: "Surveying two centuries of history-making and everyday engagement with historical thought, Sheehan-Dean convincingly argues that history itself was a battlefront of the American Civil War, with narratives of the past exercising surprising agency in interpretations of the nineteenth-century present. Sheehan-Dean’s discoveries provide an entirely fresh perspective on the role of historical memory in the Civil War era and offer a broader meditation on the construction and uses of history itself."

Review - "John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri" by Gregory Wolk

[John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk (Missouri Historical Society Press, 2025). Paperback, 3 maps, photos, illustrations, chapter notes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:190/216. ISBN:979-8-9855716-5-3. $22]

Students of nineteenth-century European history are well versed in the details of Napoleon's famous Hundred Days. It was a wildly tumultuous time that witnessed the former emperor's dramatic escape from exile, his return to power as the leader of France, abject defeat at Waterloo, final abdication, and restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Less than fifty years later during the American Civil War, William Dorsheimer, a former major on the staff of Major General John C. Fremont, referenced that earlier period when searching for a catchy title for his own history of his chief's brief time at the head of the Union Army's Department of the West. Published in three parts by the Atlantic Monthly in early 1862, Dorsheimer's "Fremont's Hundred Days in Missouri" presented readers with a favorable defense of Fremont's actions between July 25, 1861, when the famed Pathfinder of the West personally assumed departmental command in St. Louis, and his relief from that lofty position on November 2, 1861. Over the many decades that have passed since the wartime publication of Dorsheimer's influential account, important bits and pieces of Fremont's reign in Missouri have been reexamined within the pages of numerous popular and scholarly articles and book chapters. However, no full-length study, least of all an exhaustive treatment, has yet attempted to fully describe and contextualize all of its military, political, and legal aspects inside a single volume. Touching upon all of those topics, yet directing the lion's share of its attention toward military matters, is Gregory Wolk's new book John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri.

Of course, the most controversial as well as most widely discussed aspect of Fremont's Hundred Days is the emancipation feature of the general's August 30, 1861 martial law proclamation, which ignited a political firestorm pitting radical supporters of the measure against its more moderate and conservative detractors. Recognizing that broad-scale emancipation was politically premature and bound to antagonize a large segment of the pro-Union base in the Border States and elsewhere, Lincoln, who also believed that such expansive executive powers were reserved for him alone, was unable to persuade Fremont to rescind the order. Instead, Fremont's recalcitrance forced the President to publicly do it himself. At that point, Fremont's days in Missouri were numbered. The most recent, and arguably one of the very best, treatments of the political aspects of Fremont's Missouri tenure is John Bicknell's The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation (2025). Although Wolk dutifully devotes space and attention to this important and far-reaching topic, it is not his study's main point of emphasis.

Every Civil War departmental command was heavily politicized, but the one in 1861 Missouri was clearly among the most highly charged. Wolk's narrative follows many of the personalities involved both at the forefront and behind the scenes, among them members of the powerful Blair family and Fremont's deeply supportive wife, Jessie. Along with other noteworthy figures, some interesting individuals from Fremont's staff, including the aforementioned Dorsheimer, are brought into the discussion. The contentious role of General Justus McKinstry, as both departmental quartermaster and later division commander, is revisited. Judging from what Wolk, Bicknell, and others before them have uncovered, a truly accurate and fair appraisal of the allegations of graft and fraud within Fremont's department, a major part of which centered on McKinstry, seems nearly impossible at this late date given how much political interference was present and how slanted the investigation was conducted at the time.

As mentioned above, the main focal point and strength of Wolk's narrative is its coverage of military affairs. By the time Fremont arrived in St. Louis, hyper-aggressive Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon had already split enemy resistance in the state along the line of the Missouri River, and his and other forces had hounded the largely pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard into the southwest and southeast corners of the state. Wolk recounts Fremont's oversight from afar of Lyon's continued operation that culminated in his battlefield defeat and death at Wilson's Creek as well as other ensuing action in the western part of the state, namely the failed attempt to effectively thwart Missouri State Guard commander Sterling Price's Lexington campaign. Closer to his St. Louis headquarters, Fremont oversaw operations in the Missouri Bootheel between his own forces (which include those of U.S. Grant) and the Missouri State Guard division of M. Jeff Thompson. Covered events there include the October 21 Battle of Fredericktown and the earlier Blackwell Raid. The largest scale operation (involving a Union army totaling upwards of 38,000 men) was led by Fremont in person and is still largely neglected in the literature. Over the last two weeks of October, Fremont marched at the head of his army, which never managed to fully concentrate, from Tipton to Springfield. Price's withdrawing forces, which rapidly diminished in number after Lexington, were never brought to battle, and Wolk persuasively rates the campaign's culminating moment, the famed "Zagonyi's Charge" at Springfield, as more of a wasteful public relations stunt intended to save Fremont's failing reputation than it was militarily sound action. A week later, Fremont was relieved, and he was formally replaced by General David Hunter on November 4.

Fremont's Civil War career has always sparked strong opinions, mostly negative, and one cannot classify Wolk's treatment of Fremont's performance during the Hundred Days as broadly revisionist. It is sympathetic in places, though, and one wishes Wolk had reserved a section at the end of the book for a summary of Fremont's accomplishments and failures. It would also have been interesting to read about what the author deems to have been Fremont's most prominent strengths (if any) and weaknesses as field and department commander. Like most of the recent literature, this study does not characterize the lead-up to the Battle of Wilson's Creek as Fremont hanging Lyon and his gallant little army out to dry. Wolk also counters criticisms of Fremont's actions during Price's Lexington operation by stating that the general did all he could to help Colonel James Mulligan's besieged defenders, but he doesn't elaborate on what those actions were or why those critics who claim that Fremont could and should have done much more to prevent the surrender are mistaken. Like Bicknell, Wolk does credit Fremont for being the first high-ranking officer to utilize U.S. Grant to effective purposes. While Fremont may not have had any great personal regard for Grant or envisioned any special abilities in the Illinois general that others overlooked at the time, both authors argue that he certainly did play a major part in fostering the launching and early development of Grant's Civil War military career.

While Gregory Wolk's John Frémont’s 100 Days may not be the type of comprehensive, exhaustively detailed account desired by some readers, it is well worthy of recommendation as a solid overview of the period. Until such a day arrives when we do get that definitive-level study, a pairing of Wolk's military coverage with John Bicknell's political discussion can provide readers of all stripes with a suitable background in John C. Fremont's brief but eventful 1861 reign in Missouri.

Booknotes: Thoughts That Burned

New Arrival:

• Thoughts That Burned: William Goodell, Human Rights, and the Abolition of American Slavery by Steve Gowler (Cornell UP, 2025).

Steve Gowler's Thoughts That Burned: William Goodell, Human Rights, and the Abolition of American Slavery details the life, impact, and legacy of "one of the most significant leaders of the antebellum antislavery movement. Between 1826 and 1864, Goodell edited more than a dozen reform newspapers and played a leading role in the formation of several organizations, including the American Anti-slavery Society, the Liberty Party, the American Missionary Association, and the Radical Abolition Party. His 1852 book Slavery and Anti-slavery was the first comprehensive history of the antislavery movement written by an American."

Goodell's crusading approach went far beyond contemporary attempts at moral suasion. More from the description: "Convinced that the logic of slavery needed to be investigated and laid bare, Goodell explored the institution's deep structures. Whereas many abolitionists based their arguments on the inhumane consequences of enslavement, Goodell analyzed the legal and psychological relations constituting the slave system. At the heart of this analysis was his close reading of Southern slave codes and of the United States Constitution. He argued that the Constitution, properly understood, is incompatible with slavery and should be used as an instrument of emancipation."

Among those strongly influenced by Goodell's interpretation of the Constitution "was Frederick Douglass, who described Goodell as the man "to whom the cause of liberty in America is as much indebted as to any other one American citizen."

Booknotes: Decisions at Chancellorsville

New Arrival:

• Decisions at Chancellorsville: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Sarah Kay Bierle (U Tenn Press, 2025).

Given how much the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series is talked about, and its many titles reviewed, on this site, regular readers won't need an introduction. For new visitors: Decisions at Chancellorsville "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the campaign and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the operation, Sarah Bierle hones in on a sequence of decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of the 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."

The time period addressed in the volume is January 1863 to May 6, 1863, and the sixteen critical decisions under consideration are organized into six chapters. There are 17 maps, a 12-stop driving tour, an appendix exploring Chancellorsville Campaign memory (that might be a series first), and orders of battle for both sides.

Booknotes: Torn Asunder

New Arrival:

• Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867 by Erika Pani (UNC Press, 2025).

From the description: "In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and dramatically reshaped North American geopolitics by ceding half of Mexico’s territory to the United States. In the following decades, as conflicts over slavery in the United States and over the nature of nation, state, and religion in Mexico overwhelmed politics, both republics collapsed into civil war."

The politics, societies, and historical tracks of both nations are so different that identifying and exploring a series of unifying elements, even for a very specific period of history, seems like a tall task, but that is just what Erika Pani undertakes in her study Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867.

More from the description: Pani’s narrative "weaves these two tales of crisis, war, and political experimentation into a single story. Pani argues that by consecrating these episodes as epic and exceptionalist chapters in both nations' histories, scholars have overlooked the coincidences and connections between the United States and Mexico. She chronicles the ways in which, between 1848 and 1867, politicians from the two nations tested different formulas, reacted to virulent opposition, sedition, and war, and ultimately attempted to unite deeply divided countries."

In the end, Torn Asunder "highlights the fragile, contentious, and unpredictable nature of politics in the Americas, rooted in the inherent instability of popular sovereignty."

Booknotes: Opening Manassas

New Arrival:

• Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862 by Lance J. Herdegen and Bill Backus (Savas Beatie, 2025).

From the description: In August of 1862, Confederate offensive movements that resulted in Union defeat at Cedar Mountain and the destruction of the massive Union supply base at Manassas Junction finally prompted a strong response from John Pope's Army of Virginia. "Pope withdrew from his defensive line along the Rappahannock determined to find and eradicate the Confederates. First he had to find them. Unbeknownst to Pope, Jackson had deployed his men in a strong wooded defensive position along an abandoned railroad cut. All Old Jack needed was a reason to sally forth and strike an unsuspecting piece of Pope’s scattered army. That opportunity presented itself on the afternoon of August 28 when the Western men, soon to be known as the Iron Brigade, marched along the Warrenton Pike, unaware that danger lurked just yards away off their exposed left flank."

The resulting clash at Brawner's Farm, a very bloody affair considering the numbers involved, was a brutal slugging match. While the tactical performance of the Confederates was pretty uninspiring, the clash cemented the reputation of their Iron Brigade opponents. Brawner's Farm also contributed profoundly to Pope's serial misperception of the military situation on his front. The newest in-depth investigation of this fight, Lance Herdegen and Bill Backus's Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862, is "the first full-length balanced study of the affair ever published."

Of course, a great many Civil War studies are the result of research and writing collaboration between more than one author, but this study adopts a highly unconventional framework of co-authoring. More from the description: Opening Manassas "uses a fog-of-war approach to unfold the battle as the soldiers of both sides would have experienced it, and how the various officers reacted with only the information they had at the time. Award-winning author Lance J. Herdegen handles the Union side of the equation, while preservation historian and veteran of the National Park Service, Bill Backus, chronicles the Confederate perspective. Together, chapter by chapter, they march their respective forces to the point of destiny and discover unexpected insights into the engagement and the leadership decisions of both sides." Sounds interesting.

Snapshots from the Collection: "The Siege of Suffolk: The Forgotten Campaign April 11-May 4, 1863"

Steven A. Cormier's The Siege of Suffolk: The Forgotten Campaign April 11-May 4, 1863 was first published in 1989 by H.E. Howard in a numbered edition that was part of The Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders series. I missed the boat on that one, but I was able to secure a Second Edition some time ago. It sat on my bookshelf for many years, always passed over by new releases. However, during this most recent lull, I was determined to finally get around to reading it, and I'm very glad I did as it is one of the very best volumes in a series widely known for being uneven in depth and quality.

Though it had a major impact on the 1863 Chancellorsville Campaign, Lieutenant General James Longstreet's Southside Virginia operation directed toward Major General John Peck's substantial Union garrison of Suffolk has received no detailed treatment outside Cormier's decades-old study. That isn't terribly surprising, given that casualties were low on both sides and there was no culminating battle to spark wider interest in the campaign.

Cormier outlines the four "missions" behind sending Longstreet and a large detachment from his corps (two divisions) south of the James River and into the Union-occupied eastern counties. The protection of Richmond was easily enough secured by their mere presence in the area and seizing enemy garrisons in the region (including the one at Suffolk) was a non-essential, although hoped for, goal given the problems (and probable heavy losses) involved in attempting to storm heavily fortified positions backed by naval support. As the author astutely observes, the dilemma came when two of the missions were incompatible with each other. Longstreet was enjoined by his army commander, General Robert E. Lee, to keep his divisions close to the Richmond-Petersburg railheads in case Union general Joseph Hooker's massive Army of the Potomac unexpectedly stirred. At the same time, Confederate War Secretary James Seddon ordered Longstreet to press deep into the coastal counties to gather supplies and relieve the Army of Northern Virginia's subsistence concerns, which were pressing due to the previous year's poor harvest. Longstreet could not fulfill both missions at the same, and it nearly resulted in disaster as Hooker struck while Longstreet, still engaged in securing food and fodder in the eastern counties, could not reach Lee's army in time for Chancellorsville.

Backed by a diverse collection of source materials (including manuscript research), Cormier explores the campaign's strategic origins and meticulously traces its conduct at both operational and micro-tactical levels. Though, as mentioned above, no major battles occurred, there were regular artillery duels, sharp fighting along the skirmish line, and guerrilla warfare to contend with as the Confederates sought to bottle up the Union garrison, freeing the countryside for extensive food and fodder collection. Longstreet also explored opportunities to seize the town, all of which Peck and his naval support effectively thwarted. Incorporating extensive quotes from reports, letters, and diaries, the text also conveys a rich portrait of the personal experiences of rank and file soldiers and civilians alike in their own words.

Cormier praises Peck's successful efforts in fortifying and defending Suffolk, which were rewarded by consistent support from above (including heavy reinforcement). Higher level dysfunction in army-navy cooperation is duly criticized, but the officers closest to the scene were able to produce some notable achievements. The Union naval war on the Nansemond River during this period, which consisted of numerous ship versus shore engagements and amphibious landings, is explored at great depth and is one of the volume's most original and noteworthy aspects. The author seems of two minds when it comes to assessing Longstreet's aggressiveness, on the one hand being critical of his failure to force a crossing of the upper Nansemond and on the other clearly recognizing the risks involved in forcing the issue by leaping into the Union rear. It is clear that Longstreet, closely engaged as he was before Suffolk, could never have reached Lee's army in time for the Chancellorsville battle without much more prior notice than was given. Accusations of tardiness during the withdrawal are effectively refuted by noting the necessity of covering the command's heavily laden subsistence trains. In attempting to gauge just how much food and fodder the Confederates were able to extract from the region during the operation, the late-war destruction of Subsistence Department records is lamented. However, estimates from other sources reveal a haul that did much to meet the needs of Lee's army as it prepared for its next campaign.

The only large complaint I have with the book is the state of its cartography, which is frankly dreadful. There are just a few bare-bones, hand-drawn area maps included, none of which show the movements and positions of either side, the Suffolk defenses, or the upper Nansemond front that yielded so much action. It is a testament to Cormier's organization and writing skills that the narrative is still comprehensible and highly readable. This map coverage deficiency, which definitely holds the book back from greatness, makes the volume a strong candidate for a fresh update from Savas Beatie, who has published a number of revised and expanded editions of H.E. Howard series titles with new and improved maps. I have my doubts that they would be interested, given the aforementioned issues that make the operation so obscure to begin with, but we can still hope!

Booknotes: Honey Springs, Oklahoma

New Arrival:

• Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield by William B. Lees (TAMU Pr, 2025)

The field of conflict archaeology has proven itself highly useful in both affirming and challenging the findings of more traditional document-based history. More than an adjunct, it can also raise important questions of its own. Though the interval between book-length publications has widened, it is good to see that the genre hasn't been completely overtaken by evolving trends.

William Lees's Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield takes us across the Mississippi and into what is today's Oklahoma to offer a fresh perspective on a major battle fought in the region. "Historians have long recognized the Battle of Honey Springs on July 17, 1863, for its unusual makeup of Black, Indian, and White combatants and as the most significant battle of the Civil War in Indian Territory."

More from the description: Lees's study "is the first book to focus solely on this event. It is unique in that its discourse and conclusions flow from the convergence of three lines of evidence: written history (memory), scientific archaeological findings, and military terrain analysis of the landscape." Like most books of this type, Lees's volume is filled with methodological description and analysis along with numerous artifact photos and distribution maps.

More: "One of the synthesizing questions addressed by author William B. Lees is how to explain rebel loss." Honey Springs, Oklahoma "makes clear the location of skirmishing, the lopsided attack of Union troops on the right of the Confederate line, and precise locations of fighting during the rebel retreat. This analysis is the fulcrum in the re-envisioning of the agency of Native American participants."

Booknotes: Haunted by the Civil War

New Arrival:

• Haunted by the Civil War: Cultural Testimony in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Shirley Samuels (Princeton UP, 2025).

Shirley Samuels's Haunted by the Civil War "explores the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others to investigate the long cultural shadow of America’s cataclysmic sundering. Juxtaposing these texts with images—ranging from paintings by Winslow Homer to newspaper and magazine illustrations of political controversies—Samuels argues that the Civil War still haunts our attitudes toward democracy."

More from the description: "Examining the fraught deliberations about an ideal American democracy in the early republic, Samuels turns to the language of sensation in the poetry of Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman alongside Lincoln’s relation to the poetic and visual culture of his time. She considers the haunted afterlives of war in the work of Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as in popular nineteenth-century inspirational fiction. And she investigates the literature of men at sea (and on rivers, enabling both connection and escape), as seen in Melville and Mark Twain, while examining women’s wartime work and experience, in writings by Gilman and Frances Harper." As one can see, Samuels's investigation of the Civil War period's impact on American literature, culture, and politics incorporates a diverse array of writers, writings, and themes.

Booknotes: Rockets, Tanks and Submarines

New Arrival:

• Rockets, Tanks and Submarines: The Ingenuity of Civil War Texans by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. (State House Pr, 2025).

Texans fought in some of the most hard-charging and hardest fighting regiments on either side. While those units and their actions, along with the leaders involved, have been well documented, less generally known and appreciated are the innovative technological contributions of Texas citizens to the Confederate war effort.

Interested readers might recall Mark Ragan's Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War (TAMU Press, 2015), which explored the activities of the Singer Secret Service Corps. Founded in Port Lavaca, Texas in 1863 and led by Edgar Collins Singer, the group was responsible for developing and producing a range of torpedo technologies for both land and waterborne mine warfare. Torpedo boat and submarine development also became a part of their mission to help the Confederacy win the war. That history and more is visited, or revisited, in Edward Cotham's Rockets, Tanks and Submarines: The Ingenuity of Civil War Texans.

When it comes to assessing wartime enterprise and innovation in the area of military technology, the works of both Ragan and Cotham clearly demonstrate that Texas was not a mere frontier backwater. Instead, "Texans were among the most creative in their designs, and added their talents to the mix, creating a variety of war machines and devices that are remarkable for their ingenuity." Cotham's study "takes the reader through a remarkable ride complete with all sorts of schemers, spies, tinkerers, and dreamers, trying to harness technology to help them win the war."

Book News in the Halloween Spirit: Haunted by Memory

When scholars discuss the haunting legacy of the Civil War they very rarely, if ever, are referring to anything supernatural in nature. That will change with editors Amy Laurel Fluker and John Neff's Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War (Univ of Tenn Press), which bills itself as "the first scholarly analysis of the significance of ghosts to the history and memory of the Civil War." We won't get it in time for this upcoming Halloween, but having it in our hands for next year's spooky season seems possible.

Haunted by Memory is an "annotated anthology of Civil War ghost stories" that "includes hundreds of examples of ghostly tales that appeared in newspapers, periodicals, and books between 1861 and 1932." "These tales both satisfied and fed popular demand for news, entertainment, and ghostlore, and became powerful tools of cultural memory."

Fluker and Neff's efforts blend disciplines under the larger umbrella of cultural history. "By bridging the study of the Civil War, folklore, and memory, this collection expands the parameters of cultural history and reveals how the supernatural became a lasting part of the commemorative landscape of the American Civil War."

Booknotes: The Surgeon's Battle

New Arrival:

• The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War by Lindsay Rae Smith Privette (UNC Press, 2025).

One of the most striking parts of Eric Michael Burke's award-winning study of the Union Army's Fifteenth Corps [reviewed here] was its illuminating tracing of the immense non-combat cost of operating for an extended period among the swamps and bayous of the Mississippi River's Louisiana bank. During that interval of the Vicksburg Campaign (the months leading up to Grant's epic crossing of the great river), Burke estimated that as many as 3,500 men were lost to the corps through illness, death, and permanent discharge.

Clearly, there was still much to learn as the war entered its middle period. Indeed, managing soldier health was a major factor in every campaign, but the mosquito-infested Mississippi River Valley presented challenges that exceeded those found in most parts of the country where Civil War armies camped, marched, and fought. Beginning with the Vicksburg Campaign's origins in 1862 and following it through the end of the siege operation in July 1863, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette's The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War explores the ways in which Union forces managed their medical services on the way toward achieving victory at Vicksburg and beyond.

From the description: "Between May 1 and May 22, 1863, Union soldiers marched nearly 200 miles through the hot, humid countryside to assault and capture the fortified city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Upon its arrival, the army laid siege to the city for a grueling forty-seven days. Disease and combat casualties threatened to undermine the army’s fighting strength, leaving medical officers to grapple with the battlefield conditions necessary to sustain soldiers' bodies. Medical innovations were vital to the Union victory. When Vicksburg fell on July 4, triumph would have been fleeting if not for the US Army Medical Department and its personnel."

In common with much of the recent literature, Privette applies a multi-disciplinary approach to her own study, which "seeks to integrate the scholarship on Civil War medicine with environmental history, soldier studies, and traditional military history." The result is a complex portrait that strongly challenges older claims that Civil War medicine was an "abject failure" when it came to addressing the conflict's stunning death toll from disease (pg. 7).

More from the description: "By centering soldiers' health and medical care in the Union army’s fight to take Vicksburg, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette offers a fresh perspective on the environmental threats, logistical challenges, and interpersonal conflicts that shaped the campaign and siege. In doing so, Privette shines new light on the development of the army’s medical systems as officers learned to adapt to their circumstances and prove themselves responsible stewards of soldiers' bodies."

Twenty years of CWBA!

It looks like I missed my own 20-year anniversary. Way back on September 7, 2005, Civil War Books and Authors debuted to a thundering twenty-five or so page views. It was a time when the average blog was maintained for only two months before the writer lost interest, so I've lasted a bit longer than that. It is gratifying to know that so many people still find the website interesting enough to visit.

Special thanks goes to those publishers and individuals that continue to supply review copies of their new releases, and I would also like to express my deep appreciation for the sponsors, the small group of dedicated patrons (you know who you are) who generously donate to the book fund, and those readers who take the time and effort to support the site through their affiliate link purchases.

I can't guarantee twenty more years of doing this, but I will say that I have no plans to cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees anytime soon.

Booknotes: Fremont's 100 Days

New Arrival:

• John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk (MoHS Press, 2025).

Major General John C. Fremont's command of the Union Army's Department of the West was brief (July 25, 1861-November 2, 1861) but eventful, encompassing a number of military campaigns in Missouri as well as igniting a political firestorm over the general's emancipation order that was issued without consultation with his civilian superiors in Washington. Bits and pieces of "Fremont's 100 Days" have been explored at length among a number of modern works, but no single volume has been dedicated to the subject in its entirety. Gregory Wolk's newly released John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri is the "first book-length study of John Frémont’s time in Missouri written since the Civil War."

Politics and personal relationships dominate the Fremont literature, but Wolk pays special attention to Fremont's role in military affairs in Missouri. From the description: "At the heart of Gregory Wolk’s John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri are the military campaigns and battles that took place in the state while Frémont was in command, including at Wilson’s Creek, as well as the campaigns that resulted in the battles of Lexington and Fredericktown. The book culminates in the stunning cavalry charge made by Major Charles Zagonyi in Springfield in October 1861, an ultimately tragic and unnecessary affair brought on by a combination of hubris and political backstabbing."

John and wife Jessie Fremont were headstrong people thoroughly caught up in the whirlwind of Civil War-era power politics that transformed erstwhile allies into foes, and Wolk's book also delves into those matters. More from the description: "Also central to John Frémont’s 100 Days are members of the Blair family, influential men who had the ear of President Abraham Lincoln. Although they were responsible for Fremont’s rise to power, their allegiance quickly turned. John Frémont’s wife, Jessie Benton Blair—an intelligent, passionate defender of her husband and of equal rights for enslaved persons—was another driving force behind many of Frémont’s most consequential actions. The theme running through it all is the battle for emancipation."

Book News: Desert Empire

I was doing some online browsing of titles with tentative release dates for next year and discovered a new slate of Emerging Civil War offerings. I like the ECW series for what it is and what it aims to do, but for a while I did have a bone to pick with its narrow geographical focus on the East. Happily (for me anyway), the always growing writing crew there has added a significant amount of western flavor in recent times. Though they still haven't ventured off into the depths of my beloved trans-Mississippi West, that gap will be initially addressed with the release of Patrick Kelly-Fischer and Phillip S. Greenwalt's Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign.

The 1862 New Mexico Campaign is relatively rare among T-M military campaigns in that it has been the rich subject of both numerous single-volume overviews and highly detailed battle studies (Donald Frazier and later authors have also delved deeply into the "empire" angle), but I will still be very interested to read what Kelly-Fischer and Greenwalt's interpretation has to offer. The modest scale of the vast majority of operations conducted west of the Mississippi River arguably make them a perfect fit for exploration within the confines of the ECW series, so here's to wishing that Desert Empire sells well enough to encourage expanded T-M coverage.

Book News: Civil War Camps and Soldier Health

Military Historian Earl Hess's astonishingly prolific capacity for authoring detailed scholarly works on a wide range of topics without sacrificing depth of research and overall quality seems neverending. Before I'd even finished reading and reviewing his current book (Civil War Cavalry), news of his next publishing project, Shattered Courage (Kansas, March '26), already arrived. But that's not all that's on the immediate horizon.

In May of 2026, Kent State University Press will publish Hess's Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army. CWBA's tracking of publishing trends over the past two and a half decades has revealed a plethora of modern works exploring Civil War medicine and what factors affected the health and well-being of Civil War soldiers in camp and in the field. There is little doubt that Hess's upcoming study will produce some interesting, important, and perhaps contrarian contributions to that literature. Content details are absent at this early date, but, just going from the title alone, I'm particularly looking forward to reading Hess's assessment of the interplay between sanitation measures and Union Army effectiveness. While the focus is on the boys in blue, presumably the book will raise at least some targeted points of comparison between the two sides.

Booknotes: Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana

New Arrival:

• Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana: The WPA Narratives edited, with an introduction, by Andrea Livesey (LSU Press, 2025).

The Depression-era's coordinated recovery of slave memory in the words of those who experienced it left an important documentary legacy, but Louisiana somehow got left out of the dissemination part of it. From the description: "In the 1930s, thousands of formerly enslaved Americans were interviewed across the United States as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project. While most of those interviews were subsequently published, Louisiana’s were not." Collected in Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana: The WPA Narratives "for the first time in complete and contextualized form are the full interviews with the formerly enslaved in Louisiana, the transcripts of which had been separated, fragmented, and distributed throughout archives in the state."

More from the description: "Reassembled and analyzed by historian Andrea Livesey, the interviews are critical for understanding how Black Louisianans experienced enslavement but also resisted and built distinctive cultures, communities, and families in spite of it. Equally important is the testimony of how they negotiated emancipation and built relationships after freedom."

Undoubtedly, there are many commonalities with other southern states, however numerous other aspects emerge that were distinctive to the Louisiana experience. More: Livesey's work "discusses the impact of Lyle Saxon, a well-known writer who headed the Louisiana branch of the Writers’ Project, and Louisiana poet Marcus B. Christian, who led the segregated Black unit. Other unique aspects of the collection are interviews in Kouri Vini and Louisiana French and descriptions of Voodoo, Marie Laveau, and medicine practiced in Black communities of the era."

Of course, users of the WPA narratives have long been cautioned to approach the interview material with due care, and Livesey duly "invites readers to pay critical attention to how the interviewers may have influenced the narrative preserved in the archive through interpersonal dynamics or editing as they transcribed the interview. Alongside the extended introduction to the volume, this analysis sheds light on the administrative structures and racialized dynamics that initially shaped the interviews."

There is a lot of content in the volume, well over 500 pages. The book is organized into sections by interviewer. Some personal background information for each interviewer is provided along with brief additional notes on the interviewer's style, focus, and "positionality" factors involved. There are also a number of unattributed interviews included, with additional fragmentary interviews gathered in an appendix.

Booknotes: Unreconstructed

New Arrival:

• Unreconstructed: Slavery and Emancipation on Louisiana's Red River, 1820–1880 by Carin Peller-Semmens (LSU Press, 2025).

With a geographical focus on Louisiana's Red River Valley before, during, and after the Civil War, Unreconstructed centers its attention upon "the constancy of racial subjugation in one of the most violent areas of the South."

The first two chapters of historian Carin Peller-Semmens's study explore the region's high suitability for cotton growing and subsequent antebellum period expansion of plantation agriculture and slavery.

Though the volume is more strongly categorized as Southern History, a pair of chapters address the events of secession and the Civil War years. The impact of emancipation and the heavy presence of Union forces in the region from the mid-war period onward (in particular during the 1864 Red River Campaign) are explored.

The creation and decades-long maintenance of a "durable ideology of mastery" is the binding theme of the book. Peller-Semmens describes post-war political and vigilante violence in the Red River region as "slaveholding recloaked," and those actions, examined in the final chapters, "became effective, calibrated tools of political, social, and economic control during Reconstruction." In the author's view, the white population's "ideology of mastery transcended class, creating a shared ethos steeped in racist behavior that remained crucial to postwar conceptions of white selfhood." The result was a "campaign of persistent violence that chipped away at freedpeople’s experience of freedom" and produced "seismic incidents of racial violence" at Colfax in 1873 (Chapter Six) and Coushatta in 1874 (Chapter Seven).

Coming Soon (October '25 Edition)

Scheduled for OCT 2025¹:
• Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan Jones.
• Haunted by the Civil War: Cultural Testimony in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Shirley Samuels.
• The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family by Thomas Slaughter.
• Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862 by Herdegen & Backus.
• A Forest of Granite: Union Monuments at Gettysburg 1863-1913 by Brendan Harris.


¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's books, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Review - "Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America" by Earl Hess

[Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl J. Hess (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, diagrams, tables. Pages main/total:ix,357/440. ISBN:978-0-8071-8444-8. $49.95]

With the publication of Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America, military historian Earl Hess has now completed a trilogy of works that comprehensively examine the recruitment, organization, training, arming, support, and administration of all three principal combat arms of the Union and Confederate armies. With cavalry's use on the Civil War stage being the most versatile of the trio, Hess's study also broadly delves into the branch's significant impact on the strategic planning, operations, and battlefield tactics of both sides.

As was the case with Civil War Infantry Tactics (2015) and Civil War Field Artillery (2022), Hess begins Civil War Cavalry with a background summary of cavalry's place in the American military experience beginning with the Colonial period. Hess notes that, while both infantry and artillery were deployed in a manner and scale at least somewhat comparable to their European power forebears (and with accompanying doctrinal development), American cavalry, which typically operated in dribs and drabs, was the odd man out.

Hess goes on from there to summarize Civil War cavalry recruitment, organization, and training. In a fashion similar to corresponding sections of his infantry and artillery books, Civil War cavalry's tactical formations and maneuvers are illustrated through contemporary diagrams and explained through fairly detailed descriptions and numerous battlefield examples. That cavalry units and formations were typically deployed in mixed fashion, line and column, is an important part of the discussion. Lines, both mounted and dismounted, were commonly supported by columns of mounted troops to flank and rear, those columns used to quickly counter enemy thrusts, support faltering front lines, and exploit offensive opportunities. One interesting internal debate during the Civil War surrounded the deployment of cavalry lines in single or double rank. Both had their proponents, and, while the former generally won out, the conflict over rank structure was never entirely resolved.

The theme of cavalry being the most versatile of the three combat arms is represented through the myriad of tasks and operations that were assigned to it. These are all described in the book, and include providing couriers for infantry leaders, outpost duties, establishing picket lines, skirmishing, intelligence gathering, screening front and flank, direct combined arms cooperation, raiding, and covering retreats. Another major element of that versatility was the capability of maneuvering and fighting adeptly in both mounted and dismounted fashion, that being a general quality of Civil War cavalry and not a specialized unit-type focus. Of course, the unique defining feature of cavalry on the battlefield was the mounted charge, and Hess outlines the mechanics (and uniquely gruesome aspects) of that brand of face-to-face Civil War combat. Irregular mounted warfare is not given much attention in the book, if at all.

Raiding was a salient part of cavalry's contributions to Civil War military operations, providing a number of its most dramatic moments. However, Hess, though he offers case studies of both successful and unsuccessful raids, joins many critics in holding a generally dim view of the practice's overall effectiveness, explaining that the vast majority of raids had little effect beyond the "local, regional, or tactical level" (pg. 184), with not enough gains to justify often crippling losses in horseflesh that took a long time (many months) to recover. Readers can count the author among those who believe that Civil War cavalry would have, in most cases, been far more usefully deployed in close cooperation with the field armies. However, Hess also raises a good point that the American military had so little institutional experience in the sphere of direct infantry-cavalry cooperation that widespread neglect and missed opportunity in that area is understandable. In the face of that, the allure of the raid was powerful.

Hess also surveys the range of personal weaponry wielded by Civil War cavalrymen. At the risk of overgeneralization, he determines that, for a variety of reasons, Confederate cavalrymen emphasized the pistol in close combat and Union cavalrymen the saber. To some degree, procurement factors were at play (with good sabers always being in very low supply for the Confederate Army) in creating that disparity, but frequent readers of Civil War cavalry battles might also recognize a narrowing in that gap the further east one progresses. In terms of assessing the impact of support weapons, Hess does not believe that horse artillery had much impact on the course and outcome of mounted engagements, suggesting that the guns, even though they were more maneuverable than normal field artillery, could not keep pace with the swirling, up-tempo nature of the cavalry versus cavalry battlefield.

In addition to conveying a strong reminder of the enormous financial expense and logistical backing required to raise, equip, and maintain large mounted forces, Hess's study emphasizes the war's vast rate of horse wastage, which was far greater than that of European army contemporaries. Both sides wrestled with managing it, and Union and Confederate authorities alike are properly chastised in the book for badly overlooking specialized veterinary care. As expected, the author joins every other historian in criticizing the Confederate Army's shortsighted policy of having cavalrymen supply their own mounts and remounts. Interestingly, Hess explains that the Union Army had a similar self-supply program that extended well into the conflict, but it operated in parallel with the government supply and rehabilitation system that quickly proved superior. In his discussion of mounts and their welfare, Hess also directs exceptional attention toward the sentient lives of cavalry horses. Explorations of the emotional bonds forged being horse and rider are common enough in the literature, but the author also raises awareness of the ways in which horses both complied with and pushed back against the rigorous and dangerous demands of the service.

Hess believes that the traditional view that skilled horsemanship was more widespread among southern recruits probably has some merit, but he critically argues that the impact of individual riding skill was minimal within the conventional cavalry service's regimented system of training and battlefield deployment. In his view, the 4+ months of training obtained from competent officers and drillmasters produced troopers well able to perform the tasks that cavalry service demanded of them, individual horsemanship being only of marginal additional benefit in those circumstances. One suspects that individual horsemanship played a much more significant part in irregular mounted warfare, especially among dispersed groups of guerrilla-style fighters.

In comparing the overall effectiveness of Union and Confederate cavalry, Hess is justly hesitant when it comes to elevating any single factor over the great many that are identified and assessed in the text. Nevertheless, his study does form a persuasive argument that "management and administration were the keys" (pg. 333) when it came to explaining the divergent paths of effectiveness taken by Union and Confederate cavalry formations overall as the war progressed. One can be tempted to attribute contrasting arcs of Union ascendancy and Confederate decline primarily to resource differences that widened sharply from the war's midpoint onward, but Hess strongly maintains that leadership and management factors were just as, and arguably even more, significant.

Throughout the war, both sides grappled with how to use infantry, artillery, and cavalry together to best effect. As Hess explains, infantry and artillery developed robust combined arms capability, but fully integrating cavalry, which was far more mobile than either of those, was a constant battle. Hess reduces that struggle to a "dispersion versus concentration" debate that Union forces were much more successful at resolving as the war progressed. It was not a matter of one way being entirely better than the other but, as the author maintains, which side was capable of striking the best balance. In Hess's view, that was clearly the Union side. With its vastly inferior degree of support infrastructure, field logistics, and remount capabilities, Confederate ability to maintain and utilize large concentrations of cavalry effectively waned as the war progressed while that of their foes expanded. Hess sees generals Philip Sheridan in the eastern theater (1864-65) and James Wilson in the western theater (1865) as being the clear standout leadership forces behind the late-war apogee of Civil War cavalry effectiveness through concentration.

With U.S. Army cavalry deployment never again approaching the scale of those large forces that operated during the Civil War, the arm's North American legacy was limited. Hess finds that professional military observers from the European powers collectively condemned the excessive wastage of horses that was prevalent in the American conflict, but there was some appreciation for effective development of dismounted fighting and common interest in strategic raiding. Accompanying that superficial enamorment with deep raids, though, came a belief that such operations had little place in their own European conflicts. One wishes that Hess could have explained what was primarily behind that calculation. Perhaps it was felt that western and central Europe's conflict environment, which was far more populous, urbanized, and developed than North America's, could not offer the scale of open space that Civil War deep raiders thrived upon, especially in the western theater.

As a comprehensive portrait of Civil War cavalry, from origins to postwar legacy, Earl Hess's Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America is an impressive study full of descriptive detail, nuance, reasoned challenges to traditional views, and interesting arguments. Highly recommended.

Book News: "They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory"

When it comes to titles covering Civil War in Indian Territory topics, it is rare enough to get one fresh release in any given month, but getting two puts us in a Halley's Comet realm of frequency. We've already mentioned William Lees's Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield on the site, but another intriguing September '25 study just turned up in Michael J. Manning's They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory.

A pair of survey histories of the Civil War in Indian Territory have been published fairly recently, Mary Jane Warde's When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (2013) and Clint Crowe's Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (2019), but neither of those fine books goes into much depth in their coverages of the various campaigns and battles fought within the borders of today's Oklahoma. It's too bad we can't get a good sample of the main text, but a look at Manning's table of contents (which can be found by clicking the "Read sample" box at the page linked above in bold) looks promising.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of what we do get with Civil War in Indian Territory book publishing has been, to put it kindly, amateurish in nature, but there are good reasons to place our trust in Manning. He spent over three decades with the National Park Service, retiring as chief ranger at Fort Donelson NB. Sharp readers might also recall that he's the author of the Blue & Gray magazine two-part series featuring the Civil War years in Indian Territory. Indeed, portions of this book were previously published in those 2011 and 2015 issues. The main narrative of this book is over 550 8.5"x11" pages, so it's pretty clear that this is not a rehash of the B&G material but something much more detailed in nature.