Review - "More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee" by Jonathan Engel

[More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee by Jonathan Engel (Kent State University Press, 2025). Paperback, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,224/303. ISBN:978-1-60635-489-6. $39.95]

The title of this study is derived from a well-known quote from William T. Sherman, a general never at a loss for words, who commented the following about his Army of the Tennessee: "We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals." Though the rank and file of the Confederate Army of Tennessee might beg to differ, and the sentiment is easier to swallow when your own army was consistently blessed with good to great leadership at the army, corps, division, and brigade levels, but it's a point well taken. If one agrees that the regiment formed the foundation of the Civil War army, then it certainly follows that regimental officers—captains and lieutenants that led companies and the colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors who commanded the regiment—formed the bedrock of an army's leadership and administration. As Jonathan Engel, author of More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee, points out in his introductory remarks, his examination of the duties, motivations, and experiences of junior officers in the North's most consistently successful army addresses a neglected middle ground in Civil War personnel studies, a research space that remains far less developed than the vast scholarship devoted to both the general officers at the top levels of army organization (mostly through the avenue of biography) and the common soldiers at the bottom.

In addition to providing a useful synopsis of the current state of the Civil War officer and soldier literature (and where his own study resides within it), Engel's introduction also explains the challenges involved in his sampling process. First, he had to decide which units to include (as many batteries and regiments were attached to the Army of the Tennessee for only a brief interval) and take into account when and for what amount of time the unit actually served with the army. Simply who might count as an officer was its own source of difficulty, particularly in the context of how long an individual would have needed to serve in that capacity before his perspective could be considered relevant to the study. The impracticalities involved in formulating strict rules on these matters are core reasons behind the author abandoning the quest for producing a truly scientific sample. Nevertheless, while this choice precludes much in the way of quantitative analysis, the sheer size of the officer sample obtained in the end (481 individuals) leaves little reason to doubt the possibility of drawing meaningful interpretation from it. A particularly harrowing stat is that one in five of the sampled officers died during his service (with uncounted others suffering wounds of varying severity). That only 12% of those deaths were due to disease speaks to the great perils involved in leading from the front as well as the presumed advantages that officers possessed for maintaining overall well-being (although some in the sample complained about the quality of medical services in the same way that private soldiers commonly did).

The study explores the full gamut of day-to-day regimental officer duties that were distinguished from those carried out by general officers above them and the non-commissioned officers and private soldiers below them. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion looks at the breadth and scale of administrative matters that fell under the responsibilities of these officers. The anxiety that these duties could produce was clearly apparent in one officer telling his wife to make sure the new house they were purchasing was put in her name as he was going to scared of owning anything of great value for years after the war ended for fear the government would seize it to hold him accountable for monies held against him through some old service audit or lost paperwork.

In evaluating the writings of these officers, Engel joins leading historians Gary Gallagher, James McPherson, and others in finding strong evidence to support that notion that ideology was a strong motivational force. The junior officers of the Army of the Tennessee regularly cited the sacred cause of Union and defense of the American political process that both sections abided by before 1860 as primary reasons behind joining the army. He also finds that, far from being disillusioned by the war's constant parade of death and destruction, these officers only strengthened in resolve as the war progressed and, in the author's words, emerged from the conflict "with their moral and political worldview intact" (pg. 4). As it was with common soldiers, faith and family were consistent sustaining forces for junior officers. The letters that form the basis of Engel's study also express strong political engagement from the start, and that characteristic was maintained throughout the war. A clear majority were in accord with federal laws drafted in support of conscription, confiscation, and hard war.

The only period of time when Engel could detect a noticeable breach in the army's aura of self-confidence and certainty in achieving ultimate victory was during the latter part of 1862 and early months of 1863 (the time that corresponded with the joint failures of the 1862 Chickasaw Bayou and Mississippi Central operations and the stalemate months of the Vicksburg Campaign that extended into the following year). At this time, officer writings frequently questioned the Army of the Tennessee's leadership, peaked in their anger and frustration directed toward home front opposition (in particular, the Midwest Copperhead movement), and believed the nation's political elites were truly bungling the war effort. In Engel's estimation, this was a "uniquely despondent period" for these officers.

Of course, with the Army of the Tennessee operating across vast swaths of the middle and deep South, its officers and men were regularly exposed to southern slavery. It's clear that very few of the army's junior officers could be considered abolitionists by the prewar definition, but, as the war progressed, opposition to slavery was more frequently and more explicitly expressed in their letters. Reinforcing the findings of other researchers of Union soldiers, the correspondence of these officers reveal that both emancipation and black enlistment became widely accepted as practical means toward strengthening the Union war effort and weakening Confederate resistance. Following sample letter writers over time, as the author does, also communicates noteworthy patterns of both softened attitudes among those previously ambivalent to, or even hostile toward, the black population and expressions of increased solicitude toward their welfare.

In the area of random stats and trivia that readers might be interested in, Engel found only three references in his sample of officers overseeing target practice. Much more surprising is that the author found no evidence of officer examination boards being set up on an official basis in the Army of the Tennessee. According to Engel, that is a unique omission.

How junior officers viewed the proper relationship between themselves and their men is also a topic of some discussion. Western Civil War armies such as the Army of the Tennessee are often portrayed as being less disciplined than their eastern theater counterparts when it comes to regulating soldier behavior, and the officers of Engel's sample indeed expressed widely differing views on the need for, and propriety of, tightly restraining their men's conduct in the field. A corollary to that attitude is that a number of officers in the sample actively strove to maintain an informal relationship between themselves and the rank and file soldiers that served under them.

One major section of the study that will undoubtedly appeal to a great many readers explores what these officers thought about their superiors. Unsurprisingly, their letters contained many comments about Grant and Sherman. Interestingly, positive approval of Grant's abilities did not begin to coalesce among the junior officer corps until the Vicksburg Campaign was in full swing in Spring 1863, and the same did not happen for Sherman until the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. These men saw that their top leaders shared earnestness and tenacity from early on, but it was a long process before conviction settled in that actual ability and performance matched those generally recognized qualities in both generals. Curiously, respect for later army commanders, James McPherson and O.O. Howard, arrived much faster, with the former's long association with the army (and close relationship with Grant and Sherman) undoubtedly aiding that process. The army's consistent record of victory, which continued under both generals, also undoubtedly meant that neither had to start from square one in the eyes of their men. Readers will also find numerous other insights and opinions on a number of brigade, division, and corps commanders. Generally speaking, as revealed in their writings, Army of the Tennessee junior officers valued bold aggression and dogged determination of purpose. In writing about their fellow regimental officers, the personal traits "they most associated with being a worthy leader included battlefield courage, good character, and respectful relationships with their subordinates" (pg. 112).

In addition to being a highly unique contribution to our knowledge and appreciation of those who fought in the armies of the Civil War, Jonathan Engel's officer study anticipates a number of fruitful avenues for further research. Readers of this book are reminded on more than one occasion that the content and analysis of this study applies to only one army, and an exceptional one at that, with the Army of the Tennessee being the Union's most consistent winner in the field. It would be wonderful to see this type of study applied to the other principal Union armies. A contrast between the western Army of the Tennessee and the eastern Army of the Potomac alone seems almost surely to be productive. It is easy to imagine a great many facets of Engel's study as applied to the much more star-crossed, politically interfered-with, and New England/Mid-Atlantic-flavored Army of the Potomac drawing very different conclusions. More Important Than Good Generals is a fresh and original study that all Civil War students should read.

Booknotes: Decisions of the Red River Campaign

New Arrival:

• Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Michael S. Lang (U Tenn Press, 2025).

This is only the second Trans-Mississippi theater entry in UT Press's highly prolific Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series, which is fast approaching two-dozen volumes. The first, Ed Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns (2024), was one of the best in the series.

On the face of it, the 1864 Red River Campaign is a fascinating topic for critical decision analysis. Personality clashes within the Confederate high command in the theater hover heavily over the campaign, but its strategic and operational aspects ooze contingency in ways that still divide opinion. One chronicler of the Red River Campaign and its associated Camden Expedition, Michael Forsyth, even goes so far as to say that the Confederates bungled a golden opportunity to alter the course of the war. Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation tackles a campaign that resulted in a clear Confederate victory that nevertheless left both sides dissatisfied with the result.

From the description: "By the time of the Red River Campaign, which occurred between March 10 and May 22, 1864, Federal victory in the American Civil War was nearly assured. This final Union offensive in the trans-Mississippi theater was launched to capture Shreveport, a strategic river port and Confederate military complex. The fall of Shreveport would split Confederate forces, allowing the Federals to encircle and destroy the Confederate Army in western Louisiana and southern Arkansas as well as open a gateway to an invasion of Texas. But the dense piney woods and swamps of Louisiana made for difficult maneuvering, and both sides made severe tactical mistakes, leading General William Tecumseh Sherman to declare the Red River Campaign “one damn blunder from beginning to end.”"

In support of the decision analysis are sixteen maps, an 11-stop driving tour, orders of battle, and strength tables. I've already started reading this so the review should appear sometime in the coming weeks.

Booknotes: The Confederate Resurgence of 1864

New Arrival:

• The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 by William Marvel (LSU Press, 2024).

From the description: William Marvel’s The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 "examines a dozen understudied Confederate and Union military operations carried out during the winter and spring of 1864 that, taken cumulatively, greatly revived white southerners’ hopes for independence. Among the pivotal moments during this period were the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the CSS Hunley; Nathan Bedford Forrest’s defeat of William Sooy Smith’s cavalry raid; and the Confederate army’s victory at Olustee, Florida. The repulse of Union advances on Dalton, Georgia; botched Union raids on Richmond; and the capture of the Union garrison in Plymouth, North Carolina, likewise suggested that the tide of fighting had turned toward the Confederate cause."

While the land and sea actions and battles mentioned above are commonly known to readers and are well documented in the literature, Marvel states that Gary Gallagher was the first to recognize them as a collective series of events that held strategic significance. In Marvel's estimation, that close together string of Confederate successes "boosted the morale of southern troops and citizens, and caused grave concerns about the war effort in the North and in the mind of Abraham Lincoln."

Preceding the roughly ten-week period examined in the book, war news was generally miserable for the Confederacy's supporters. More from the description: "In late 1863 and early 1864, dejection and despair prevailed in the South: Union soldiers had vanquished Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, the Confederate nation had been cut in two, Tennessee was lost, and Braxton Bragg’s army had been utterly routed at Chattanooga. Defeatism loomed in the South during the first weeks of 1864, and the ease with which William T. Sherman rampaged across Mississippi illustrated the dominance of Union forces, while Confederates’ ineffectual assault on New Bern accentuated their weakness."

In late-February, however, hope emerged from the gloom. "(B)etween February 20 and April 30, southern troops enjoyed an unbroken string of successes that included turning back a concerted Union offensive during the Red River campaign as well as Forrest’s incursions into Union City, Paducah, and Fort Pillow. Aided by flawed strategy implemented by Union army officers, the achievements of Confederate forces restored hope and confidence in camp and on the southern home front."

With the exception of the Red River Campaign and perhaps Olustee, the Confederate victories referenced above, when considered on their own, are principally localized in nature and lack strategic significance, so it will be interesting to see how well the book supports the notion that their collective effect (which, according to Marvel, has never been studied until now) produced a strategic-level boost to national morale. If you think of national morale as a reservoir from which the war freely draws, Marvel sees the events of Feb 20-April 30 has an early-spring freshet that raised the water level enough to ensure that it wouldn't run dry during the brutal summer months that followed. "The victories invigorated southern combatants, demonstrating how abruptly the most dismal military prospects could be reversed. Without that experience, Marvel argues, the Confederates who faced Sherman and Grant in the spring of that year would certainly have displayed less ferocity and likely would have succumbed more quickly to the demoralization that ultimately led to the collapse of Confederate resistance."

Coming Soon (March '25 Edition)

Scheduled for MAR 2025¹:
• Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War by Fialka & Carman.
• Our Onward March: The Grand Army of the Republic in the Progressive Era by Jonathan Neu.
• Antebellum America, 1787-1861: A Sourcebook on States' Rights, Limited Government, Slavery, Political Violence and the Road to Civil War compiled & edited by Ebert & Carden.
• Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg.
• Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia by Michael Hardy.
• The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864 by Eric Wittenberg.
• The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland by Sean Chick.
• The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 by James Hessler.


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: Lincoln's Peace

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg (Knopf, 2025).

In the broadest sense, Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War represents author Michael Vorenberg's "journey to find the end of the Civil War." Big, lengthy, and destructive wars like the American Civil War tend to not conclude in a neat and tidy manner, and even the end date is frequently a source of debate among historians. From the description: "Was it April 9, at Appomattox, as conventional wisdom holds, where Lee surrendered to Grant in Wilmer McLean’s parlor? Or was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared “the insurrection is at an end”?"

But that's not the only major theme or objective involved. The book also seeks "to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace." As the title suggests, Lincoln himself, acting in the capacity of the nation's chief executive, strove to be the leading force in shaping the societal and political reconstruction that followed the guns going silent. Lincoln's Peace thus explores "the peace Lincoln hoped for but could not make before his assassination. A peace that required not one but many endings, as Vorenberg reveals in these pages, the most important of which came well more than a year after Lincoln’s untimely death."

It also appears that Vorenberg's analysis engages with debates surrounding the modern conceptualization of the "long war." More: "To say how a war ends is to suggest how it should be remembered, and Vorenberg’s search is not just for the Civil War’s endpoint but for its true nature and legacy, so essential to the American identity. It’s also a quest, in our age of “forever wars,” to understand whether the United States's interminable conflicts of the current era have a precedent in the Civil War—and whether, in a sense, wars ever end at all, or merely wax and wane."

Upcoming study of Fremont's 100 Days in Missouri

On this site, I've more than once expressed earnest hope that someone would publish a standalone modern study of John C. Fremont's brief but event-filled and controversial time in charge of the Union Army's Western Department. This period is commonly referred to as "Fremont's Hundred Days in Missouri." Thus, after years of anticipation, I was happy to discover that there is indeed such a project in the works. Gregory Wolk's John Fremont's 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri will be published this coming September through Missouri Historical Society Press. My only prior exposure to Wolk's work is this Missouri Civil War tour guide, which I considered rather well put together.

On a related note, author John Bicknell also let me know that his upcoming book The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation (Stackpole, April '25) will devote around four chapters to this topic.

Review - "The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863" by Erik Nelson

[The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 by Erik F. Nelson (Kent State University Press, 2024). Softcover, 21 maps, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiii,280/407. ISBN:978-1-60635-480-3. $39.95]

Of the single-volume Chancellorsville histories produced over the more than eleven decades that have passed since the 1910 publication of John Bigelow's groundbreaking study, those from Edward Stackpole, Ernest Furgurson, and Stephen Sears have contributed most to the popular understanding of the campaign and battle, the last being the most detailed in addition to being the most recent. Generally speaking, the fighting between the main bodies of each army, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Joseph Hooker's far more numerous Army of the Potomac, within the tangled forests and clearings surrounding Chancellorsville has garnered the lion's share of popular and scholarly attention. Presenting the battle primarily through that lens is not unexpected given that the intense combat in that sector produced the great bulk of the campaign's very heavy casualties and witnessed Stonewall Jackson's famous flanking attack and subsequent mortal wounding.

Even so, just over a quarter of the total losses to both armies during the campaign were suffered on the eastern half of the battlefield, an area that comprised an expansive military chessboard in its own right. Within that sector—bounded on its northern side by the Rappahannock River, its southern edge the unfinished railroad running roughly parallel to the Orange Plank Road, and, from west to east, the ridge atop which sat Salem Church all the way to the city of Fredericksburg itself—the possibility to alter the entire character and result of the battle loomed large. In 2013, Savas Beatie published a book-length study of the fighting that occurred at Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and during the Union Sixth's Corps's fighting withdrawal toward its pontoon bridge communications near Banks's Ford. That excellent study, Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White's Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church, May 3, 1863, provided readers with the first comprehensive narrative history of those events. Now, more than a decade later, Erik Nelson's The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 revisits the same ground with noteworthy coverage of a complementary nature as well as new interpretation¹.

Nelson's book possesses all the highlights and components that the most demanding readers of modern Civil War battle studies expect to find. Nelson's research, heavily weighted toward primary source materials of all kinds, feeds a sequence of battle narratives that are noteworthy for their small-unit detail and seamless incorporation of first-hand accounts left behind by the officers and men of both armies. Terrain analysis is exceptionally fine. The author's intimate knowledge of the sector's urban and rural fighting landscapes, from the streets of Fredericksburg to the surrounding hills, ridges, ravines, canals, river crossings, fields, forests, and streams, is used to convey a highly nuanced understanding of the ways in which the environment shaped how each of the engagements examined in the text was fought. The volume's twenty-one maps, all produced by noted cartographer Steven Stanley, thoroughly enhance reader comprehension of events through their tracing of troop movements described in the text atop a finely detailed rendering of underlying elevation contours and terrain features.

The better books of this type never fail to express proper regard for the artillery support arm, but Nelson's narrative is exceptional in the amount and depth of attention directed toward the batteries employed by both sides. Few battle studies, even the very good ones, offer the amount of information that Nelson provides when it comes to denoting the composition of individual batteries and describing their tactical deployment, the type and weight of the gun tubes being critical factors in determining where they were deployed and what effect they had on enemy units at various ranges². While much of the tale of the use of the long arm during the Chancellorsville Campaign is focused on the opposing concentrations of firepower at Fairview and Hazel Grove, it could be argued that artillery produced its most outsized contributions to the campaign on the eastern half of the battlefield. There, the artillery of both sides materially impacted events through effective firing at ranges both close and extreme, the Confederates frequently employing ad-hoc concentrations of rifled sections (though their efforts were often hindered by faulty shell fuzes). Additionally, for front coverage Confederate artillery batteries often had to substitute for infantry, which was stretched thin on the eastern sector before reinforcements from the main body arrived at Salem Church following the Union breakthrough at Fredericksburg.

Specialist troops were another support arm whose efforts came to the fore on the eastern half of the Chancellorsville battleground. Nelson's study offers fresh details about the challenges and struggles involved in getting the Army of the Potomac's pontoon trains to the river and getting set up once they arrived. While inevitable friction spawned by the need to strike a balance between secrecy and speed put the bridging operations hours behind schedule, they were successful. Engineer officer Henry Benham, a Civil War figure often ridiculed for his heavy drinking as well as the disastrous offensive action he directed outside Charleston in 1862, is credited by Nelson for creating well-trained engineer troops for the Army of the Potomac and praised for his efforts in coordinating their use on the Rappahannock in May 1863. US Signal Corps and Military Telegraph Corps specialists also went to work to establish communications between the Union army's widely separated wings. As Nelson explains, ill-timed interruptions caused by certain orders to the Signal Corps detachments and problems with deteriorated wire contributed mightily to the creation of lengthy lapses in communication between Hooker and Sixth Corps commander John Sedgwick at critical moments.

Nelson also highlights how staff work problems affected each side. Lee staff officer Robert Chilton nearly caused disaster by prematurely ordering Jubal Early to withdraw his division from Fredericksburg, that potential catastrophe only narrowly averted by a timely reversal that put Early's command back in the trenches before Sedgwick's main attacks. Though Hooker's own muddled orders to Sedgwick and indecisive leadership at the top led to cascading problems, Nelson is unrelentingly critical of the manner in which Hooker's chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, handled communications between army headquarters and Sixth Corps headquarters.

After the campaign ended, Hooker attempted to attach blame for the disaster to three high-ranking subordinates: Thirteenth Corps commander O.O. Howard, Cavalry Corps commander George Stoneman, and the man he assigned to lead the eastern sector of the battlefield, John Sedgwick. That self-serving assessment of what went wrong at Chancellorsville is largely dismissed in the text for what it was, a disgraced commander seeking to scapegoat others for his own profound leadership failures. Though the overall result of the Chancellorsville Campaign, which got off to a tremendous start, was a fiasco for Union forces, Nelson sees the performance of Sedgwick's Sixth Corps as the one shining light. "Success" at Fredericksburg was arguably not terribly impressive given how thinly the defenders were distributed in comparison to the previous December, but the breakthrough forced Lee to detach a total of seven brigades (in two stages) to contain Sedgwick's advance and keep it away from the rear of Lee's main forces facing Hooker. In Nelson's view, this was the moment for Hooker's forces to resume the offensive against an even more diminished foe, but instead Hooker refused to risk leaving his fortified bridgehead north of Chancellorsville. Curiously, Nelson is not critical of Sedgwick's failure to adequately cover his southern flank and rear as Sixth Corps pressed westward toward Salem Church, an oversight that allowed Early's Division to return to the scene, reclaim the high ground above Fredericksburg, and threaten the Sixth Corps spearhead's sole remaining line of retreat and communications (the floating bridges below Banks' Ford). Also, to be more convincing, Nelson's claim that Sedgwick's attacking success at Fredericksburg created a larger sense of confidence that carried over to Gettysburg could have used more development.

In addition to providing arguably the literature's best tactical-level discussion of events east of Chancellorsville, Erik Nelson's study of Second Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks' Ford strongly argues for greater recognition and appreciation of a sector of the battlefield that produced a significant proportion of the combined casualties suffered during the first week of May 1863 and gifted the Union army commander with a golden opportunity to reclaim squandered initiative in a campaign he had no business losing after such a promising start. Highly recommended.

Additional Notes:
1 - The site review of that earlier title can be found here. Both books cover the same series of topics in very fine fashion overall and preferring one or the other might best be judged a matter of taste. If you have a deep interest in the topic there's no reason not to read both. Generally speaking, both works devote a great deal of space to the initial river crossings, both offer excellent tactical discussion of the various engagements, and both emphasize human and technological communication breakdowns and confusion as substantially hindering coordination between Hooker and Sedgwick. Mackowski and White focus more than Nelson does on praising Cadmus Wilcox's noteworthy efforts in organizing and situating a blocking force to stop Sedgwick's advance toward Salem Church, and they are much more critical of Sedgwick's post-breakthrough leadership (which they deemed overcautious in both allowing Early to escape relatively intact and employing an unnecessary delay in organizing the Sixth Corps order of march for its westward advance). Nelson's analysis of the former is not of a reproving nature, and the latter point does not enter into his own discussion as a matter of pointed criticism. Nelson's map coverage is the more thorough of the two.
2 - For future reference purposes, the artillery data presented throughout the main text is also compiled into a helpful appendix. The appendix section also contains orders of battle as well as analytical discussion of the Fredericksburg flag of truce controversy that dogged those involved with it and complicated future historical interpretation of the battle.

Third Beall biography in two years!

In 2023, McFarland published Ralph Lindeman's Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes and LSU Press released William Harris's Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall. Sometime this year, we'll get yet another Beall biography in Ken Lizzio's John Yates Beall, Son of the South: The Life and Death of a Confederate Privateer.

It's not terribly unusual to have two books on the very same subject pop up at roughly the same time (such instances are frequently brought up on this site), but it is pretty remarkable for three biographies of a comparatively obscure Civil War figure to emerge in such close succession. Getting two from the same publisher (Lizzio's upcoming book will also be published by McFarland) is surprising, too.

Booknotes: War Underground

New Arrival:

• War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare by Earl J. Hess (UP of Kansas, 2025).

Until this point in his extensive military history writing career, the vast bulk of Earl Hess's studies of the technical aspects of warfare has been focused on the American Civil War. That concentrated lens shifted into a broader outlook in his 2023 book Civil War Torpedoes and the Global Development of Landmine Warfare and has widened even more in his latest study, War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare.

From the description: "From as early as ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese warfare to the battles of World War I, military mining was an essential component of siege warfare. Armies have tunneled underneath castle walls, dug trenches across no-man’s-land, and engineered confusing defensive countermines. These tactics for assaulting enemy fortifications and positions by creating underground access have adapted to changes in warfare, technology, geography, and culture. While its use diminished after 1918, when speed and movement took precedence over capturing strongpoints, military mining remains a viable strategy still deployed to this day. Although military historians have given mining marginal treatment in virtually every study of siege warfare, it has not yet been treated with depth or comprehensiveness as a subject in its own right. In this first book-length study of the subject, renowned military historian Earl Hess now fully addresses the topic of military mining from its earliest origins to the twenty-first century."

As referenced above, the 1914-18 Great War featured the pinnacle of military mining, its conduct on the Western Front being its most refined state in both technology and scale. Thus, Hess devotes five full chapters on World War I mining operations. Other chapters explore military mining during the Classical and Medieval periods as well as during the early to late black powder eras. Among the last is the American Civil War, which is explored in a single chapter almost thirty pages in length. Of course, the 1863 Vicksburg and 1864-65 Petersburg campaigns provide the focus for that examination. Fitting its diminished global significance in warfare, military mining after the Great War is summarized in a single chapter at the end of the volume. Supporting the text are numerous photographs and schematic drawings of mining activities.

In sum, Earl Hess's War Underground "offers a sweeping study of the use of offensive and defensive military mining in more than 300 sieges from around the world and across almost three millennia. The result is an impressively broad and comprehensive treatment of the grand history of military mining, which offers novel insights to the evolution and trajectory of the strategy since its ancient origins."

Booknotes: "The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender"

New Arrival:

• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender by Chris Mackowski (Casemate, 2025).

This is Mackowski's second installment of his two-volume Vicksburg Campaign entry in the Casemate Illustrated series, the first one (see here) taking the reader through the campaign's inception through the gunboat fleet's downriver passing of the Vicksburg river batteries.

The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender "examines the movements of the Union and Confederate armies from March 1863 through July 1863, the joint-operational cooperation between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, the delayed and indecisive Confederate operations to stop the Federal initiative, and how the individual soldiers conducted the one of the greatest campaigns in American military history: to control the “The Father of Waters”—the Mississippi River."

The book begins with the bombardment of Grand Gulf and the massive amphibious landing to the south at Bruinsburg. From there, summaries of the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River advance the narrative to the ramparts of Vicksburg. The failed assaults of May 19 and May 22 are then recounted, as is the siege operation that ultimately forced the surrender of the city on July 4, 1863.

In addition to the volume's five original maps, there are a number of archival maps interspersed throughout. Nearly every page includes at least one illustration of some kind, be it new or old photography, color artwork, or contemporary newspaper drawings. Frequent sidebars, which are mostly personality or biographically focused, are another series constant.

Review - "The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals" edited by Timothy Johnson

[The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 3 maps, chapter notes, index. Pages main/total:xvii,233/267. ISBN:978-0-8071-8238-3.]

Over the decades following the conclusion of the War of 1812, elements of the United States Army operated primarily as coastal defense garrisons and frontier constabulary, thus the outbreak of war with Mexico offered a unique opportunity for West Point graduates to test themselves against a foe organized on roughly similar European-style lines. Historians have most commonly examined those experiences, and what roles they might have played in professional development, within the process of writing general officer biographies. The result, in terms of providing both descriptive detail and analysis, has always been a mixed bag. While some coverages point toward useful insights and possible connections between Mexican-American War service and Civil War generalship, the rest come across as being mostly box-checking exercises completed along the way toward toward presenting the main event of their subject's military career, the American Civil War. What sets apart the 2024 anthology The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals is its laser focus on drawing out those connections. Timothy Johnson, Winfield Scott biographer and author of a number of scholarly Mexican-American War titles, serves as this volume's editor, and he successfully presses his essay contributors to both recount the military participation in Mexico of West Point-trained officers who would later become high-ranking Civil War generals and cite specific examples of how those experiences might have shaped later command performances under vastly increased levels of responsibility.

Johnson's assemblage of writers is noteworthy for having a number of major biographers in it as well as others who have authored important works on topics directly related to their essay subject's Civil War military career. The essays, twelve in total, are evenly divided between Union and Confederate generals, ten of whom rose to army command (the other two were high-profile corps commanders entrusted with major independent operations). For the Union side, the author-subject pairings are Timothy Smith on U.S. Grant, Stephen Engle on Don Carlos Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Joseph Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on George McClellan, Jennifer Murray on George Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on George Thomas. On the Confederate side, we get Joseph Glatthaar on Robert E. Lee, Sean Michael Chick on P.G.T. Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Braxton Bragg, Christian Keller on Stonewall Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on James Longstreet.

Drawing connections between Mexican-American War and Civil War experiences is most often framed around positive and negative "lessons" learned from youthful experiences in the former which were then later applied to leadership in the latter. As several contributors to this volume prominently note, these links must in the main be inferred. Many of their subjects wrote little to nothing about their experiences in Mexico, while those that did only rarely linked (at least in direct fashion) their own Civil War decision-making and conduct of military affairs to what they either did or observed during the Taylor and Scott campaigns in north and central Mexico. Johnson's contributors collectively navigate that tricky path with caution and judiciousness.

In Mexico, junior officers, particularly staff officers, keenly observed a wide range of matters related to civil-military affairs. According to Glatthaar, Lee, through direct awareness of the troubling military-political divide that developed between his mentor General Scott and the Polk administration, likely learned important lessons about personal and professional relationships between superiors and principal subordinates that helped him later foster a cordial and effective military partnership with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Closely working with the highly touchy Scott in Mexico also taught Lee the value of showing proper (even strategic) deference to superiors and knowing when to gracefully quit pressing when it came to losing disagreements (ex. Lee's strong disapproval of, but quiet acquiescence with, the Davis administration's decision to reorganize brigades with regiments from the same state). On the less productive side was how Joseph Hooker responded to what he witnessed during the conflict. Unlike many of his fellow West Point graduates who observed with disdain naked political interference in military matters in Mexico, Hooker, as insightfully examined by Rafuse, embraced "playing games" with that system. That relish for games of intrigue pervaded Hooker's entire Civil War career, contributing mightily to his downfall. At any rate, with the war in Mexico came more direct reinforcement of the reality that politics and war were inextricably linked and cooperating with politician-officers was an inescapable part of the professional war fighting experience.

While the scale and distances involved in the war with Mexico helped quartermaster officers like Grant to refine their logistical managements skills, the experiences of living off the land through foraging and occupation without at the same time inciting a general uprising also proved instructive. Many West Point-trained professionals freely expressed their disdain for volunteer soldiers, and highlights from Murray's Meade chapter draw correlations between the Pennsylvanian's Mexican War experiences, where he witnessed widespread pillaging and other abuses of the local population, and his clear support for a conciliatory manner of conducting warfare during the early years of the American Civil War. Everyone recognized that volunteers needed strong subordination and discipline in order to be transformed into effective soldiers.

The importance of awarding credit where credit was due in official writings, regardless of personal animosities, was also realized by most as being in the best interest of the service. When it was not done as expected, officers such as Beauregard became embittered by the experience. A part of that self-aggrandizement at the expense of others stemmed from officers forging cynical alliances with the press corps. For Meade, who is known by all Civil War students for the special hell he wanted to reserve for newspaper reporters, the origins of that attitude developed during the Mexican War. There he traced through the press the making of undeserved reputations as well as the silent treatment given to distinguished officers who opposed, on principle, cultivating self-promotional relationships with ambitious reporters. Meade also carefully noted the internal dissension, jealousy, and unseemly competition for attention that playing those games engendered in the officer corps. 

On a tactical basis, the war taught the value of combined arms, and many young officers appreciated the battle-winning outcomes that resulted from closely coordinated infantry and artillery attacks both in the open and against fortified positions. The Thomas and Beauregard chapters from Wills and Chick are particularly strong on detail in regard to tracing artillery exploits in Mexico. Both chapters demonstrate how that war raised the prestige and reputation of the field artillery service in the U.S. Army. When it came to the process of neutralizing Mexican strongpoints, many staff and line officers also witnessed the value of using turning movements in conjunction with frontal masking demonstrations and artillery fire. The actions of engineer officers such as Lee and Beauregard also clearly revealed the value to be derived from, and the dangers attended with, personal reconnaissance. Just in general ways, junior officers acting on the staffs of general officers in Mexico gained professional knowledge about how armies (or at least higher formations) actually worked in the field, an eye-opening experience for those accustomed to company-level frontier service or static fort postings.

In the area of personal relationships, the shared experiences of the war with Mexico forged lifelong bonds among many fellow officers (a close attachment exemplified by the formation and endurance of the Aztec Club). Knowing that true measurements of character and military ability emerge from the testing ground of war, Mexico also allowed those officers who served together to take stock of colleagues who would later become either comrade or foe during the Civil War.

When the Mexican-American War experiences of Civil War generals are discussed in the literature, it is primarily through the themes of the war with Mexico either being a proving ground for what was learned at West Point or the conflict being an education in and of itself. On a collective basis, there are certainly noteworthy elements of both of those themes inside this strong set of essays. While there is a degree of repetition entailed with compiling twelve independent essays involving basically only two major campaigns, and a few chapters lean most strongly into the descriptive realm of presentation, there is certainly more than enough analytical heft across the volume to make this anthology a heartily recommended read for even the most broadly informed students of both wars.

Booknotes: "The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: Grant’s Failed Offensives"

New Arrival:

• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: Grant’s Failed Offensives by Chris Mackowski (Casemate, 2025).

This is the first of the Casemate Illustrated series April pairing of Vicksburg Campaign titles from Chris Mackowski. From the description: "Ulysses S. Grant, who had risen to fame as one of the North’s prominent heroes early in the war, boldly concluded that Vicksburg would be the next nut to crack in the Federal policy for control of the Mississippi River. Understanding that only a strong relationship with US Navy could ensure the success of Vicksburg’s surrender, Grant found a man as bold and daring as himself in David Dixon Porter and his Mississippi Squadron of ironclad gunboats and fleet of vessels. These two commanders and their trusted subordinates would frustrate John C. Pemberton’s attempts to defend Mississippi and eastern Louisiana for the Confederacy. A lack of experience in commanding such an important assignment, limited resources, poor staffing, and a Confederate government consumed with the war in the east ensured Pemberton’s position would be insurmountable as the Confederacy’s tenuous hold on the Mississippi River began to fall apart."

The volume begins with the initial Farragut-Williams attempt to capture Vicksburg during the seemingly vulnerable window of opportunity that followed the fall of New Orleans. The volume goes on from there to cover the inland Mississippi Central campaign, the Chickasaw Bayou operation, and Arkansas Post. From there, the book addresses a series of "experiments" (Grant's canal and the Lake Providence bypass, Yazoo Pass, and Steele's Bayou), the collective failure of which sparked a major change in strategy. It ends with the dramatic running of the Vicksburg batteries and Grierson's Raid.

The book's five original maps are mostly operational-level sketches (fitting the scale of the text presented), but there are also a number of contemporary maps included along with the usual series complement of old and new photography, biographical and event sidebars, and other illustrations.

Booknotes: The Shiloh Campaign, 1862

New Arrival:

• The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland by Sean M. Chick (Casemate, 2025).

This is the second of the March '25 Civil War releases from the Casemate Illustrated series. It is quite evident that author Sean Chick is currently deeply immersed in Shiloh research and writing. In addition to the impending release of this volume, The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland, the contributor bio blurb from a recently published book revealed that Chick is working on a multi-volume history of Shiloh. We'll have to keep our eyes and ears out for that project's progress! But back to the matter at hand.

The Shiloh Campaign, 1862's narrative runs a brisk 125 pages, covering events leading directly into the battle, both days of intense fighting, the retreat, and the campaign's aftermath. As with the other volumes in the series, there is a timeline and the text is heavily supplemented with informative sidebars along with modern and contemporary images of all kinds. For this particular series entry, the multi-color maps are created by Bradley Gottfried (and undoubtedly borrowed from Gottfried's work on an upcoming Shiloh Campaign atlas). They are five in number, and the four tactical maps covering the battle depict the fighting at brigade-scale. A "Further Reading" section and index round out the volume.

Review: "A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864" by Sean Michael Chick

[A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick (Savas Beatie, 2025). Softcover, 7 maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, orders of battle, reading list. Pages:xxiii,167. ISBN:978-1-61121-721-6. $16.95]

Much has been made of the Army of the Potomac's skillfully staged and practically unopposed mid-June 1864 crossing of the James River, a smoothly run operational movement that constituted a stolen march on an opponent (Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee) who had up to that point proved consistently adept at meeting marches around his eastern flank. In truth, however, that newly seized freedom of movement and the advantages it conferred mattered little if its immediate goal, the rapid capture of Petersburg, proved unattainable. Indeed, the inability of Union forces to sweep aside the Cockade City's small garrison and capture the town represents one of the war's most momentous lost opportunities. Instead of isolating Richmond and forcing its evacuation in June 1864, Union failure before Petersburg consigned the war in the East to a quasi-siege that stretched over ten months. That key four-day interval that altered the course of the war in the theater is explored in Sean Michael Chick's A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864.

Prior to the crossing of the James by the Union army led by U.S. Grant and George Gordon Meade, Petersburg's stark vulnerability was exposed on June 9 during an operation best described in William Glenn Robertson's The First Battle for Petersburg: The Attack and Defense of the Cockade City, June 9, 1864 (2015)¹. Even though that smaller-scale action drew needed attention on the part of Confederate authorities to the perilous state of Petersburg's defenses, the protective works surrounding the vital logistics hub were still sparsely defended when the main Union forces arrived six days later.

Four chapters, one for each day of the June 15-18 stretch of fighting, finely summarize the action². Supported by an abundance of visual aids (including maps, contemporary artwork, and photographs), those chapters describe both the mad scramble by the Confederates to defend their undermanned positions and the Union high command's struggle to effectively harness its massive numerical superiority into a coordinated offensive. Unable to convince General Lee of the enormity of the danger imposed by the attacking Union host, which captured the eastern end of the Dimmock Line but could not progress from there to fatally pierce the defenders' improvised inner line of earthwork fortifications, commanding general P.G.T. Beauregard was primarily left to his own devices prior to the 18th. In the end, the city was held by the slimmest of margins. Of course, the amount of tactical-scale detail made available in a concise work such as this one (the main narrative runs just under 100 pages in length) cannot match that found in the author's own full-length history of the same subject, but the text nevertheless offers a suitably detailed and insightful higher-level description of the fighting. The text also offers convincing conclusions in regard to what factors contributed most to Confederate success and federal failure.

Much like Thomas Howe maintained decades earlier in The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864, Chick finds that Union high command bungling proved comprehensively self-defeating (none of the top actors on the Union side—Grant, Meade, Butler, Hancock, and Smith—come across well in this volume). Chick, however, also stresses that the extremely run-down condition of many Union formations deployed against Petersburg, those forces having been horrifically reduced in numbers and leadership over the continuous stretch of fighting between the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, also bears a great deal of responsibility for the failed offensive. That being said, as the saying goes, the other side also had something to do with it. In the author's estimation, Beauregard was the man of the hour, doing all that could have been done against the long odds he faced. At this point Chick has become a leading voice among those rating Beauregard as the Confederacy's second-best general capable of leading armies, a lofty ranking that Beauregard himself (if he were alive today) would almost surely dispute as being off by one.³

Like those at the top of the Union high command, the Confederacy's top general also does not escape censure. With his army backed up to the Richmond suburbs, Lee could not easily risk the safety of the Confederacy's capital by prematurely reinforcing Petersburg with the bulk of his forces, but Chick joins many others in determining that the general, considering the information available to him at the time, was still dangerously tardy in bolstering the Petersburg defenses. Heavy detachments from the Army of Northern Virginia did not make their presence felt until the fighting on the 18th. Their contributions meant than the final Union attacks had little chance of success, but the previous three days were close-run affairs, with Beauregard having the benefit of only scant reinforcement.

A 13-stop driving tour is included in the volume as an appendix, that section also including a number of other interesting side topic discussions. The final appendix delves into some worthwhile debates and arguments related to campaign remembrance and some of its most consequential leadership accomplishments and failures. Though not available at the time of this writing, it is intended that the volume's footnotes can be downloaded from the ECW archive here³.

Sean Chick's A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 represents a promising start to a planned series of ECW volumes covering the entire length of the 1864-65 Petersburg Campaign.

Additional Notes:
1 - Robertson's study commemorating the fight's 130th anniversary is a revised and expanded version of the author's 1989 contribution to the H.E. Howard Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders series titled The Petersburg Campaign: The Battle of Old Men and Young Boys, June 9, 1864.
2 - Published the same year as Robertson's expanded anniversary edition, Chick's The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 (2015) was the first major study of this part of the Petersburg Campaign since Thomas Howe's The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864 (1988), another Howard series volume. This ECW series title fixes some errors from the earlier text, improves upon map coverage, and, in the author's own words, allowed him to "reassess things after more thought and research" (pg. 166).
3 - If you're interested in reading more about the author's thoughts and opinions in regard to Beauregard's place in the pantheon of Confederate generals, see his 2022 biography Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War.
4 - It is not made explicit in the text which views were those that had evolved most between the author's 2015 study and this one, and I was hoping that perhaps the notes would provide some guidance.

Booknotes: The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863

New Arrival:

• The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 by James A. Hessler (Casemate, 2025).

The Casemate Illustrated series already has dozens of titles available. While the series is heavily weighted toward World War II topics, there are a number of volumes covering the American Civil War, American Revolution, and War of 1812 that are either out already or in production. Last year, I reviewed David Powell's two-volume series contribution, The Atlanta Campaign, 1864 (2024). Just yesterday, the March and April '25 Civil War releases (4 volumes in total) arrived on my doorstep. First up from the March pairing is James Hessler's The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863.

Hessler's volume revisits a number of the major issues of contested history and interpretation from that day. From the description: "The first day of the Battle of Gettysburg is often overshadowed by fighting on the following days, but July 1 was one of the bloodiest single engagements of the entire Civil War. Many of the decisions leading to and through Gettysburg’s first day remain steeped in controversy. Did Meade intend to fight on the Pipe Creek line in Maryland until subordinates such as Major General John Reynolds forced the engagement at Gettysburg? Did the absence of J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry really leave Lee “blind” to his opponent’s movements? Was Lee’s desire to avoid a general engagement ignored by his own officers? With neither commanding general on the battlefield for much of the day, crucial decisions remained in the hands of subordinates such as John Buford, John Reynolds, A. P. Hill, Richard Ewell, and Oliver Howard."

Like the earlier Civil War volumes that I've had the chance to go through, this one blends text with maps (by my count, 8 in total), leader sidebars, an event timeline, period B&W photography, modern color images, and orders of battle. You could describe content and presentation as an enhanced version of what you might see in the popular Osprey books. Since this Civil War volume covers part of a single battle rather than an entire campaign, many of the maps are able to show more small-unit detail (the positions of regiments and batteries). The text is not annotated nor is there a bibliography, but you're in good hands with a Gettysburg expert like Hessler at the helm. There is a "Further Reading" section near the end of the book.

More from the description: The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 "sets the stage for the Civil War’s greatest battle and covers the heroism, decisions, and mistakes made on the first day at Gettysburg." You can't very well do Day 1 and not go on from there to devote separate volumes to the other two days of the battle, so I would strongly expect to see those sometime in the future.

Booknotes: Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars 1754–1865

New Arrival:

• Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars, 1754–1865 by Don Troiani & John U. Rees, with James L. Kochan (Stackpole Bks, 2025).

I never personally knew anyone who was a collector, but it seemed to me at the time that the 1990s must have been the peak decade for producing and selling Civil War art. The original oils went for a pretty penny, and in addition to providing the cover art for so many of the popular magazines the ads inside each issue were filled with newly available prints and regular introductions of new artists and their work. A prolific contributor who was one of my personal favorites, Don Troiani painted active scenes but was perhaps best known for his highly detailed uniform and accoutrement portraits. That specialization is on full display in his newest book, Don Troiani's Black Soldiers in America's Wars, 1754–1865.

From the description: "Using a masterful combination of artistry and accuracy, Don Troiani has dedicated his career to transforming our understanding of the military soldier. Don now turns his talents to capturing the under-recognized African-American soldiers as they fought in the French and Indian War, the War of Independence, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War. Don’s battle paintings, figure studies, and artifact collection are teamed with historian John Rees’s insightful text."

Presentation is very attractive. The 8.5" x 11" format allows for large image size, and the high quality paper and high resolution image reproduction renders Troiani's uniforms, equipment, and weapons in vivid color and fine detail. Also included are close-up photos of items such as identification discs, medals, cartridge pouches, paper documents, etc. related to these men's military service. It looks like Troiani is still active in painting as many of the featured artworks have very recent dates.

In addition to an introduction, there are four longer chapters covering black soldier contributions to the four wars referenced above. Rees's text contains a great deal of information about the fighting and especially the units in which these men were involved. "Using primary sources, Rees gives a true picture of the contributions of the many Black soldiers over the 100-year history." Those sources appear at the bottom of the page, and there are additional chapter notes collected at the back of the book.

2024 - The CIVIL WAR BOOKS and AUTHORS Top Ten Year in Review

BOOK OF THE YEAR

1. The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 by Robert D. Jenkins, Sr. (Mercer).

This book offers the most meticulously detailed and most thoroughly convincing interpretation of arguably the greatest enduring controversy that emerged during the event-filled interval between the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's onset and the dismissal of Johnston. What put it over the top for me was the profoundly enlightening manner in which author Robert Jenkins combined conventional battle narrative with forensic historical map analysis unlike anything I've ever encountered before in the Civil War literature [for more on this title, see the Site Review (5/8/24)].

The Rest of the Year's TOP TEN (in no particular order)

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

Rutan's study represents a groundbreaking reassessment of our understanding of the Union Army's late-war regiments and their contributions to final victory [see the full 10/22/24 site Review].

3. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel Masters (Savas Beatie).

One of the finest single-volume campaign studies of recent memory, this book deserves recognition as the new standard history of Stones River [12/23/24 Review].

4. Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America's Mineral Wealth by Neil P. Chatelain (McFarland).

An excellent multi-themed transnational history of the land and sea route utilized by the United States to securely transport the Far West's vital mineral wealth to where it could be integrated into the country's war economy [5/24/24 Review].

5. New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865 edited by M. Jane Johansson (Tennessee).

Combining coverage of uncommonly explored wartime topics, occupations, and settings with unusually descriptive prose, Bennett's writings are a dream resource for historians, the entire package enhanced through Johansson's expert editing [8/15/24 Review].

6. The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie).

Powell's latest multi-volume campaign history project is off to a rousing start. This book certainly exhibits the same exacting standards established through the author's previous works [9/18/24 Review].

7. Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North by Jack Furniss (LSU).

A fresh and convincing way of reconsidering the dynamics of party politics and political strategy in the United States during the Civil War [1/22/25 Review].

8. Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War by Kenneth E. Burchett (McFarland).

The most comprehensive treatment to date of a chaos-filled seminal event from the early-Civil War period in Missouri [10/3/24 Review].

9. Union General Daniel Butterfield: A Civil War Biography by James S. Pula (Savas Beatie).

In addition to painting a compellingly favorable picture of Butterfield's Civil War legacy, this study possesses that rare quality of fully meeting expectations in terms of depth while as the same time remaining relatively concise in page length [7/24/24 Review].

10. North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (NC Office Archives & Hist).

This is a great example of the supporting text in a roster history being both expansive enough and qualitatively strong enough to be worthy of publication on its own [7/17/24 Review].

Coming Soon (February '25 Edition)

Scheduled for FEB 2025¹:
• Gettysburg: The Tide Turns - An Oral History by Bruce Chadwick.
• Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War by Darin Wipperman.
• Fractured Freedoms: Reconstructing Central Louisiana by David Ballantine.
• Trouble, Trials, and Vexations: The Journal and Correspondence of Rachel Perry Moores, Texas Plantation Mistress ed. by Thomas Cutrer.
• Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina by D. Michael Thomas.
• Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War ed. by Schieffler & Stith.
• Cape May County and the Civil War by Ray Rebmann.
• The Civil War and the Rise of the American Petroleum Industry by Allen Mesch.
• Lincoln's Last Card: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Case of Command by Richard Ellis.
• New York City in the Civil War by White & Orr.

Comments: A couple of these, the books from Wipperman and Thomas, arrived early. See their Booknotes entries here and here.

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 - "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" by Lesley Gordon

[Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Softcover, 3 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,284/327. ISBN:978-1-108-72919-2. $29.99]

Organized in 1861 when volunteerism across the country was at fever pitch, the Union's 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" and the Confederacy's 2nd Texas, both infantry regiments led by officers of promise and boasting their section's best soldier material, went to war with full anticipation of producing bravery in action and battlefield success. Instead, both regiments were routed in their first battle, the New Yorkers on July 21, 1861 at Manassas and the Texans on April 7, 1862 at Shiloh. The substance of their controversial first performances in the field and fallout from sustained recriminations that followed are the subject of Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.

At first blush, it appeared that the Fire Zouaves were destined for Civil War battlefield laurels that would fully justify the public acclaim granted them before they even fired a shot in anger. The regiment was led by the most celebrated militia officer in the country, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, who was master of the "Zouave drill" that swept popular culture across the nation during the years leading up to the conflict. The regiment's rank and file consisted of New York City firemen, renowned for their physical prowess and willingness to rush headlong into danger, and the junior officers were largely Ellsworth acolytes. Additionally, the regiment was backed by the country's largest city, its most powerful state, and the greatest newspaper circulation on the continent. Instead of glory, though, tragedy and disaster was the fate of both commander and unit. Ellsworth exposed himself recklessly and was killed by an angry civilian, and the regiment crumbled during its very first battle. After the defeat, months of relentless public censure finished off the unit that began its service with such high hopes and expectations.

The reasons behind the regiment's ultimate fragility are many, and Gordon explores them all convincingly. Like other 90-Day regiments, the 11th was rushed into service without the benefit of extensive training and drill time that later waves of volunteers would be accorded. At the top, Ellsworth himself could be resistant to subordination and was very impulsive in nature, undisciplined personal characteristics that would get him killed in the infamous off-the-battlefield incident in Alexandria. His demise sparked a top-down leadership shakeup that undoubtedly weakened cohesion within a regiment already possessing a reputation for unruliness. Ellsworth's successor was well respected by the men, but he immediately set out to abandon the Zouave drill and distinctive uniform in favor of army standardization, and many junior officers associated with Ellsworth left the regiment in the wake of their idol's death. Though the true proportion of regimental troublemakers is impossible to estimate (the claims varied wildly among critics and supporters), it seems clear that enough resisted their officers' attempts to instill military discipline for the regiment as a whole to gain an unenviable reputation for misbehavior, which included various forms of mistreatment against civilians. Compounding discipline-related unrest in the ranks were widespread complaints about absent pay, lack of supplies, and deficiencies in clothing and weapons.

Gordon's narrative, which unfolds in two parts (one for each regiment), is less about reconsidering the available evidence in order to comprehensively reconstruct the most accurate and detailed picture possible of the battlefield experience (indeed that type of coverage for both regiments is rather brief) and more concerned with the contemporary perceptions of expectation and reality that shaped each unit's fate. For the Zouaves, initial post-battle newspaper reports were positive, and the unit's high casualties were deemed by many to have been sufficient demonstration of their bravery, but those favorable views were quickly challenged by subsequent editorials alleging battlefield misbehavior and cowardice. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, many Zouaves deserted and hundreds more took French leave, that widespread abandonment of duty only adding fuel to the fire. Then came the scathing official after-action reports from superior officers and nearby unit commanders that singled out the 11th for not properly supporting their comrades on the battlefield and breaking without rallying. Joint Committee interviews conducted later further fanned the flames of public anger and dismay. The regiment did have defenders in the press, but the relentless newspaper and letter campaigns attacking the character of the officers and men of the 11th certainly contributed to the demoralization that hindered restoration efforts. Unfortunately, all too many common soldiers (more disillusioned by the experience than motivated to prove their critics wrong) continued to resist adaptation to military life, and many officers lost faith and resigned. Several attempts (which stretched into 1862 and even beyond) to reorganize the broken regiment for redemptive service were launched, but all failed in the end. Ultimately, Gordon is in accord with contemporary military and civilian critics in suggesting that the 11th had plenty of individuals capable of bravery but was undone by the general incapability of channeling that ardor through discipline. Of course, many Civil War regiments faltered early on in their careers before going on to forge distinguished records, but it seems clear from Gordon's presentation that the relentlessly public nature of the critical lens through which the 11th, as perhaps the early war's most famous Union regiment, was scrutinized and journalistically flogged for months on end after Manassas greatly (perhaps decisively) hindered the unit's recovery, reorganization, and quest for redemption.

In marked contrast to the 11th New York, the 2nd Texas was afforded plenty of time to organize and drill in its home state before the onset of active field service. Nevertheless, the regiment suffered from the Confederate Army's logistical limitations and was additionally affected by further privations imposed by the long journey from Texas to Corinth, Mississippi, where the unit finally joined up with General Albert Sidney Johnston's concentrating army. Gordon stresses officer corps turmoil as a troubling omen for the 2nd Texas, but it is perhaps useful to recall that officer infighting and politicking for higher rank was practically part and parcel to the organization of Civil War volunteer regiments. Seeing its first major action of the war at Shiloh, the rookie 2nd performed well during the offensive operations of April 6. The following day, however, the Texans crumbled under heavy enfilade fire from an unexpected direction and were apparently unable to rally as a cohesive unit.

Rumors of cowardly misbehavior under fire on the part of the Texans were subsequently traced to General William J. Hardee and one of his trusted staff officers who claimed that the 2nd also resisted all efforts (including that officer's own) to rally. Unlike the 11th New York, however, the 2nd Texas did have the opportunity to wipe away the stain of failure by replacing it with fresh laurels, which they did earn at Farmington east of Corinth. In defense of themselves, the officers and men of the regiment reminded critics that they had received express authorization from the army high command to add "Shiloh" to the collection of battlefield honors stitched onto their regimental flag. This was cited by their supporters as powerful evidence that the unit's superiors were satisfied with the 2nd's overall performance during the battle.

It was after Second Corinth that the negative Shiloh rumors were solidified in print. While the officers and men of the 2nd Texas believed, at the very minimum, that their costly assault against Battery Robinett at Corinth on October 4, 1862 should have left no doubt as to their bravery and fighting qualities, General Hardee, in a sharp letter to Richmond authorities, doubled down on his earlier claims against the Texans. Gordon offers some possible scenarios behind why Hardee was so determined to single out the Texans over what happened on the second day of Shiloh, but none of those possibilities seems entirely convincing on it own. An unmentioned alternative relates to the common enough (though disreputable) motivation of a high-ranking officer to protect his own reputation at the expense of others. One could argue that Hardee, having been personally involved in placing the regiment in a poor situation and having misrepresented the friendly fire dangers ahead of it, consciously or unconsciously saw highlighting the collapse and pell mell retreat of the Texans as a convenient way of escaping his own culpability for how things turned out on that sector of the battlefield.

After providing further proof of their bravery during the attack at Corinth, the regiment excelled on the defensive during the Vicksburg Campaign, most prominently while holding the 2nd Texas Lunette against heavy assault. After the city's surrender, the 2nd Texas, along with at least three other Trans-Mississippi regiments, refused to reassemble at the Demopolis parole camp, instead returning to their home state. In addition to citing disillusionment with the army as a source of that discontent, the author might also have added long-standing issues Trans-Mississippi Confederates had with Richmond over the central government's neglect of their home region. After some months in limbo over official parole status, the regiment reformed for coastal defense, never again fighting in pitched battle.

Several common themes emerge from the pages of this study. As Gordon outlines in her examination, the clearest lesson to be drawn from the first-battle failures of the 11th New York and 2nd Texas was that bravery, either individually or as collective fighting stock, matters little on the battlefield unless it can be managed by way of thorough military discipline and training and enhanced through strong leadership and experience. On the face of it, that's rather obvious, but it wasn't necessarily a uniform belief or expectation at the time. The book also strongly argues that attempting to draw a line of demarcation between bravery and cowardice creates a false dichotomy, with the truth of the matter nearly always lying somewhere in between those indefinite extremes. It was certainly true of the New Yorkers and the Texans during each regiment's first battle, where a host of different factors (major and minor) combined to make, in one terrible moment during the chaos of combat, "cowards" of both units. That's a common enough Civil War story, the difference being that a great many regiments tainted by initial failure were able to overcome lasting damage to their reputations and fully redeem themselves during subsequent fighting. As Gordon shows, that was not at all the case with the 11th New York and only partially the case with the 2nd Texas, the latter of which continued to struggle with the old charges even after demonstrating incredible bravery during later action. Using two high-profile regiments as examples, Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War offers a fresh and interesting new look into the more unheroic aspects of Civil War service and the dark shadows, sometimes permanent, they often cast.