Joe Johnston, "Preeminent Strategist"?

For a long time, many military history students of the Civil War bought into the notion that Joseph E. Johnston was a master of Fabian-style strategy and operations who offered a winning alternative to the kind of aggressive, high-intensity (and high casualty) style of warfare favored by other generals such as Robert E. Lee and that the Confederacy could ill afford. Over the past several decades, though, I've gotten the impression that fewer and fewer people retain such faith in Johnston's abilities and his capacity for greatness. One of those who quite clearly does is F. Gregory Toretta. The author of one of two recent studies claiming that James Longstreet possessed visionary strategic and tactical acumen, Toretta's Preeminent Strategist: General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, The Confederacy’s Most Agile General (Casemate, NOV '25) takes on the case of another major Confederate high command figure that the author believes misunderstood and underappreciated. When it comes to providing a convincing argument in support of the grand claims outlined in the description, the author has a steep climb ahead of him (at least in my opinion), but I am always open to different approaches to disputed topics.

Coming Soon (August '25 Edition)

Scheduled for AUG 2025¹:
• Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War by Fields & Mackowski.
• Rediscovering the USS Alligator: The U.S. Navy's "Lost" First Submarine by Daniel Basta.
• Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl Hess.
• The 1st Michigan Colored Regiment: Free Men Who Fought Slavery by Maurice Imhoff.
• Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Kleintop.
• Decisions at Chancellorsville: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Sarah Bierle.

Comments: Things are still gearing up for the fall, so, in terms of numbers, August will be another pretty light month. The Grant book is SB's August title, but it got a bit of an early release and is out already. For me, the most highly anticipated release of the month is the Hess book on CW cavalry.

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: Unconditional Surrender

New Arrival:

• Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War by Curt Fields & Chris Mackowski (Savas Beatie, 2025).

With previous titles addressing the Civil War careers of well-known figures such as W.T. Sherman, G.A. Custer, P.G.T. Beauregard, J.L. Chamberlain, and John Pelham, military biography has become a fairly steadily produced category of books within the Emerging Civil War series' prodigious body of output. The latest is Curt Fields and Chris Mackowski's Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War.

Of course, U.S. Grant, being the Union Army's premier military leader, needs no introduction, but, for the uninitiated, the description provides a nice summary of the book's content flow: "Born in a modest clapboard house at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River, he first made his military mark near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His successes at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and eventually Vicksburg earned him the steadfast support of President Abraham Lincoln: “Grant,” he declared, “is my man and I am his the rest of the war!” After saving a Federal army in Chattanooga, he was promoted to lieutenant general and put in command of all Union forces. He made his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac and oversaw the campaigns against Robert E. Lee, from the Wilderness through the prolonged siege of Petersburg and, finally, Appomattox Court House. His ultimate victory paved the way for two terms in the White House."

After a prologue and brief introduction from co-author Fields in which he answers some of the most common questions he gets as a Grant living historian, the volume jumps right into the Civil War years. Supplemented by seven maps and scores of captioned photographs and period drawings, the narrative covers Grant's Civil War military career from his appointment as colonel of the 21st Illinois in 1861 to his leadership during the climactic 1865 Appomattox Campaign. The epilogue that reviews Grant's legacy, including the development of his famous memoir, also addresses his faults.

An eclectic appendix section is a highlight of many ECW titles. In this case, however, given the sheer breadth of Grant's Civil War accomplishments, it's no surprise that there is little room left for an extensive one, and the single appendix attached to this title revisits the relationship between Grant and wife Julia. A 'Suggested Reading' list rounds out the volume.

Review - "The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign" by Nese & Harding

[The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign by John M. Nese & Jeffrey J. Harding (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2025). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, tables, charts, appendix. 238 Pp. ISBN:978-1-4671-5846-6. $24.99]

Every Gettysburg student is familiar with the gist of the campaign's weather story. In summary, the combatants had to endure early-summer high heat and humidity during forced marches and fighting, and the post-battle retreat and pursuit offered the survivors different miseries to deal with in the form of rain and mud. However, one might reasonably ask how much deeper we can take this broad-stroke weather assessment of the campaign. Is a daily, perhaps even more granular, description and analysis of weather's impact on men and operations before, during, and after the July 1-3 Battle of Gettysburg possible? According to John Nese and Jeffrey Harding, the answer to that question is a resounding 'yes,' and all is revealed in their fascinating book The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign.

Nese, an academic at Penn State's Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, and Harding, a licensed GNMP battlefield guide, draw upon their respective areas of expertise (in weather science and Gettysburg military history) for a fresh examination of this underexplored topic. The book begins with a meteorological science primer that, among other things, provides background information necessary for readers to understand the practical meaning and significance of a variety of weather-related measurements that the authors utilize in their analysis, from simple thermometer and dewpoint readings to more complex heat index and wet-bulb globe temperature calculations.

Very significant to the study is its employment of a relatively new computer model developed by the NOAA that allows its users to recreate weather maps of the past, keeping in mind that its reliability is more macro than micro. This "reanalysis system" represents one among many research tools that Nese and Harding have at their disposal, the integration of which offers keen insights into the weather encountered by Union and Confederate soldiers in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania during June and July 1863.

Underpinning Nese and Harding's research is a critical body of recorded observations from contemporary weather watchers such as the government staff of the Naval Observatory, the network of daily weather reports from military installations across the country, and dedicated civilian recorders such as those who submitted their data to the Smithsonian Meteorological Project. Many of the individuals involved are profiled in the text. This data recorded from both near and afar, combined with Nese's expert knowledge of local and regional atmospheric and weather patterns, allows the study to trace reliable meteorological readings at any point in time across the campaign's multi-state path. 

It is often said that if you want to know the weather just look out your window, and the historical equivalent of that window view is represented by the approximately 1,500 soldier and civilian journal and letter accounts of the weather that the authors have recovered and organized for their research. This collection of subjective firsthand perspectives critically augments Nese and Harding's quantitative analysis, and the most salient portions of select passages are interspersed throughout the text. In an ingenious manner, Nese and Harding combine this historical documentation with the aforementioned modern weather modeling techniques to provide us with a remarkably detailed reconstruction of weather effects during the entire run of the campaign. Additionally, findings and descriptions revealed in the narrative are supplemented by a plethora of historical and modern weather maps, charts, and tables. For easy reference, a record of daily weather data and notes for the period June 3 to July 14 is also compiled in tabular format in the appendix.

As explained in the book, the June 10-18 heatwave experienced by the armies in the field was exceptional for late spring. Unfortunately for the health of those involved, it also coincided with a period requiring hard marches that resulted in widely reported physical debility and heatstroke death (although those numbers are not quantified). Data suggests that the severity of the conditions was historically rare for June, marking that heat wave as one among several of the campaign's exceptional weather-related events. Without the ability to forecast weather, generals lacked the information needed for weather-adjusted planning (where possible). Examples cited in the book of forced marching during heat wave conditions and operational pauses during fine marching weather are signal reminders of one of many chance elements that contribute to the overall friction involved with conducting war. In an interesting side note, the authors mention that the mixed-material jean cloth of Confederate uniforms breathed better than the wool jackets issued to Union troops. That, combined with the lighter color, made the southern shell jackets more comfortable in hot summer months for those wearing them. Indeed, while today's writers often emphasize the presumed general discomfort of Civil War uniforms, the soldiers themselves complained vastly more about their feet and footwear problems during long, hot marches.

For the three-day battle itself, thermometer temperatures weren't considered extreme on the first day, with much of the discomfort coming from the humidity. July 2 was much hotter, and the book effectively uses the very lengthy approaches to the battlefield of Law's Brigade on the Confederate side and the Union Sixth Corps as case studies of the day's weather effects on marching and fighting. Even though the recorded shade temperature still may not have been extreme, the heat index likely pushed 90 degrees and the effects of direct sunlight made the forced marching even less bearable. In contrast to Sixth Corps, whose march was marked by periodic rest and hydration breaks, Law's Brigade had little of either. The weather, lack of recovery time, and rugged terrain at Little Round Top all hindered the brigade's chances for sustained success as it spearheaded the attack during one of the three-day battle's key moments. The enervated condition of Law's men upon arrival at the front likely contributed mightily to the large prisoner haul that the formation lost during the celebrated Union counterattack involving the 20th Maine. The data and NOAA modeling employed by Nese and Harding confirms contemporary observations that July 3 was the worst of the three in terms of physical discomfort. With the heat index almost certainly over 100 degrees (with some likelihood of even reaching 105), and keeping in mind that the index relies on shade measurements, such brutal body-stressing conditions undoubtedly impaired fighting endurance and performance during Pickett's Charge, especially for the attacking troops.

As detailed in the literature, from July 4 onward the principal weather challenge switched over from head and humidity to rain, with thick mud and rising streams hampering both Confederate retreat and Union pursuit. The volume's data gathering and analysis adds a great deal in the way of finer detail when it comes to the likely timing and quantification of the rainfall episodes. Nese's applied expertise shines through the entire book, but one of the finest examples of it is shown in the attempt to understand the deluge that preceded the Potomac River recrossing of Lee's army back to Virginia. Gaps in the instrument readings and lack of expected results from the NOAA reanalysis model hinder explanation of the massive river rise, but Nese is able to provide a solid meteorological basis for the event through a more complex interpretation of regional weather patterns utilizing contemporary data gathered from afar. On a final note, findings confirm that the steep rise of the Potomac behind Lee's army at Williamsport was a truly extraordinary weather event for any July in recorded history. Lee's army could count itself fortunate to have escaped.

John Nese and Jeffrey Harding's The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign is a truly remarkable, highly useful, and completely original contribution to the ongoing study of the Gettysburg campaign and battle. As the authors maintain, weather and its extremes affected how the campaign unfolded at every stage of its development, and it was a testament to the human endurance and ingenuity displayed by the armies that weather-induced disaster was avoided. Accessible to general reader and specialist alike, this masterfully conceived and executed study is an essential addition to the Gettysburg library, a key reference for every future chronicler of the campaign.

Booknotes: Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command

New Arrival:

• Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Dennis B. Conklin, Jr. (Savas Beatie, 2025).

When Gary Ecelbarger's The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta was published back in 2010, it was a major event in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's military historiography, but no one could have predicted that the following fifteen years would produce an extended run of titles that, taken altogether, amply compensated us for decades of absolute neglect. During that span, numerous books have featured detailed analyses of the Confederate high command divisions that rendered the already tall task of opposing General Sherman's massive Union army group even more challenging. Throwing a new hat into the ring is Dennis Conklin's Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.

The volume's introduction reveals that it is Conklin's contention that Jefferson Davis's "poor performance as commander-in-chief" was the factor that "played the primary role in Confederate defeat in the campaign for Atlanta." Thus, his reexamination of the campaign is largely presented "through a lens of Davis's failings" (pg. xiii).

From the description: Conklin's command study "highlights critical flaws in Jefferson Davis’s leadership and the deep mutual distrust between the Confederate president and Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Tennessee, which led them to work at cross purposes. As the campaign slowly unfolded and William T. Sherman’s advancing armies claimed vast swaths of territory, tensions escalated among Davis, Johnston, corps commander John Bell Hood, and Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, further compounding the Confederacy’s strategic woes."

More from the description: "Davis’s initial unease with Johnston’s leadership partly explains why he promoted Hood to command an infantry corps in the principal Western army before the campaign began. Hood, who had honed his skills as a tactical commander under the aggressive Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia, grew increasingly exasperated by Johnston’s repeated withdrawals. This tension, Conklin argues, culminated in their inevitable clash at Cassville—a pivotal dispute driven by inconsistent maps and divergent battlefield philosophies. The ensuing correspondence among key figures in Richmond further eroded Davis’s confidence in Johnston, paving the way for Hood’s eventual rise to command the Army of Tennessee."

The reader who has eagerly consumed all of the recent literature pertaining to this topic might ask what it is that Conklin adds to an already pretty comprehensive body of work. Fortunately, the introduction to Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command provides a good summary of what interpretive differences, or shades of differences, one might expect to find inside. According to the author, this book "will provide a new assessment of Joseph E. Johnston as a commander." It also provides fresh emphasis on "the role of Governor Joseph E. Brown on the outcome of the Atlanta campaign." Additionally featured is "a complete reinterpretation of the affair at Cassville on May 19, 1864." Robert Jenkins's 2024 book The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 is listed in the bibliography, so it appears that Conklin was able to squeeze in consideration of that exhaustive and highly persuasive study into this post-dissertation version of his manuscript. Lastly, Conklin's "characterization of Hood's tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee in and around Atlanta provides a final point of departure from much of the present historiography" (pp. xiii-xviii). A new voice in all this is always welcome, and I'd say that the above represents a pretty good list for drawing in readers who might be skeptical about investing their time in returning to a topic that has already been heavily revisited in recent years.

Civil War-related titles from the Fall-Winter '25 catalogs

UNC:
• Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Laury Kleintop.
• Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan Jones.
• Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867 by Erika Pani.
• The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War By Lindsay Rae Smith Privette.
• Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean.
• A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era By Sarah Jones Weicksel.

LSU:
• Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl Hess.
• The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert Gudmestad.
• War Fought and Felt: The Emotional Motivations of Confederate Soldiers by Joshua Shiver.

Tennessee:
• The Greatest Calamity: Tennessee in the Civil War Era by John Fowler.
• Decisions on Western Waters: The Twenty-Seven Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations by Michael Becker.
• Missouri and the Secession Crisis: A Documentary History by Dwight Pitcaithley.

South Carolina:
• Soldier of the South: Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace by Edward Hagerty.
• Winning Our Wonder: Rhetorical Re/Constructions of American Civil War Women on the Web by Patty Wilde.

Kansas:
• Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital by Larry Daniel.

Nebraska:
• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander (Potomac).

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

Georgia:
• Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy by Beau Cleland.

Booknotes: American Civil War Amphibious Tactics

New Arrival:

• American Civil War Amphibious Tactics (Elite, 262) by Ron Field, illustrated by Steve Noon (Osprey Pub, 2025).

Ron Field's American Civil War Amphibious Tactics is number 262 in Osprey's "Elite" series of illustrated histories. According to one description of the series, each installment "focuses on a single army or elite unit, military tactics or a group of famous commanders." There's a bit of all of that in this one. With Union combined operations as a whole developing into an elite capability that did much to the win the Civil War, its broad inclusion in this particular series is well appropriate.

Field's text, accompanied by Steve Noon's original artwork, examines significant leaders, tactics, military technologies, and specialized units involved in both coastal and inland Union amphibious operations. In the book, Field "explains how the growing effectiveness of the Union Navy, the willingness of the Union Army to countenance combined operations, and the efforts of officers such as Ambrose Burnside, David Farragut, and John Dahlgren, ensured that amphibious warfare played a key part in the defeat of the South."

A number of operations, all representative of Union combined arms capabilities, are covered in the book. From the description: "In May 1862, foreshadowed by the capture of Roanoke Island and New Bern in North Carolina and Island Number Ten on the Mississippi River, the Union forces' use of combined operations to seize New Orleans dealt a major blow to the Confederacy. The potential of amphibious warfare was revealed by the Union efforts to capture Fort Fisher in North Carolina. While the initial attempt failed in December 1864, a renewed effort in January 1865 resulted in a Union victory."

Units featured in the book that were specifically raised and/or detailed for amphibious operations include the First New York Marine Artillery, the Naval Battalion (4 companies, 13th NY Heavy Artillery), the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron's Fleet Brigade, and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. The last, a controversial formation, shifts attention from the coast to the Mississippi River Valley interior.

As is the case with all Osprey titles, there is some kind of illustration on nearly every page. This volume includes numerous period maps, newspaper illustrations, and photographs. Noon's color artwork depicts dramatic action scenes, specialized equipment, and vessels involved in the combined operations described in the text.

Booknotes: The Invincible Twelfth

New Arrival:

• The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia by Benjamin L. Cwayna (Savas Beatie, 2025).

July has been a desert month for new releases so far, with only one arrival over the past three weeks. Happily, though, three new titles landed in the mail box yesterday.

First up is a fresh South Carolina regimental history. To the best of my knowledge, when Tom Broadfoot retired and sold off all of his remaining stock to a third party, that spelled the end of the South Carolina Regimental-Roster Set series or any other new titles under the Broadfoot Publishing Company name. The website is still up, though, and what appears to be the final list of series titles indicates that they never did get to the 12th South Carolina before folding. Fortunately for those interested in that particular regiment, Benjamin Cwayna has come through with a fine-looking regimental history titled The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia.

Some green regiments, such as the famous Fire Zouaves of New York, were unable to recover from a disastrous introduction to Civil War combat. Others used that experience for future motivation, while perhaps also benefiting from new leadership. The 12th was a shining example of a regiment that recovered from catastrophic beginnings and went on to forge an enviable combat record. From the description: "The regiment’s career commenced with an ignominious defeat in its initial engagement on the South Carolina coast at Port Royal Sound in 1861. This demoralizing event could have set the regiment on a trajectory of self-fulfilling failure and catastrophe. A change in leadership from a perpetually absent political appointee to a tenacious legislator born and bred in the upcountry, however, altered its course. Dixon Barnes instilled discipline and robust leadership in the unit, initiating a transformational process that molded the raw recruits into some of the Confederacy’s most dependable soldiers."

As was the case with many other newly organized regiments from the two Carolinas, the 12th began its field service in the coastal defense role. However, it quickly blossomed into one of the Confederacy's best fighting regiments upon attachment to the Army of Northern Virginia. More from the description: "The 12th was transferred to what would become Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was brigaded with four other regiments from the Palmetto State. Together, they participated in nearly every major engagement of the war in the Eastern Theater. The 12th earned a sterling reputation within the army for its drill and discipline and was renowned for its impetuous, devastating, and occasionally reckless attacks and counterattacks." Such headstrong valor came at an immense cost, though, and "(b)y war’s end, only about 150 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the regiment’s ranks surrendered at Appomattox Court House."

The author self-describes his writing on the 12th as "strictly military history in its purest form," emphasis being on "the tactical minutiae of the regiment's actions in camp, in battles, and on the march" (pg. xii). In support of Cwayna's narrative, which is based on "years of research, exhaustively mining primary sources to reconstruct the 12th South Carolina’s history from its formation in 1861 until its final official reunion in the 1880s and beyond," are 14 original maps.

Review - "Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865" by Damian Shiels

[Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 by Damian Shiels (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, illustrations, graphs, tables, biography appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,176/314. ISBN:978-0-8071-8370-0. $50]

Typically, scholarly studies of Irish American contributions to the Union armed forces during the Civil War possess a very selective geographical (ex. the urban Irish of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) and unit focus (most prominently the famed Irish Brigade). Thus, it is high time for revisiting the big picture with a proper investigation of Irish volunteer demographics, motivations, beliefs, and attitudes that are more representative of the whole. A powerhouse study housed in a compact and highly accessible package, Damian Shiels's Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 succeeds in doing just that.

In researching this project, Shiels consulted an abundance of primary sources while also thoughtfully engaging with the secondary literature (including influential recent works from Catherine Bateson, Ryan Keating, Christian Samito, and Susannah Ural), but the gamechanger was his access to the recently digitized widow's pension files housed at the National Archives. The author's extensive review of those records (first used in creating his 2016 book The Forgotten Irish) unearthed a treasure trove of letters written by or for Irish soldiers during the Civil War, all being supporting documentation to bolster widow or dependent claims. Kept by the government in the files were 1,135 letters (singly or in bunches) from or for 395 soldiers along with almost three hundred additional supporting letters from other sources. That body of wartime letters provides invaluable information on 568 Irish American soldiers, an unprecedented gathering for investigation of this sort. Additionally, in bringing together individuals from 260 units raised from 22 states and districts, this large sample represents by far the widest breadth of Irish volunteer service yet studied. An appendix also compiles brief biographical profiles of those individuals featured in the main text. 

The volume begins with an informative summary of eighteenth-century immigration and settlement patterns from Ireland to the United States, noteworthy for the concentration of Irish immigrants into northern urban centers east and west. There is also some brief background on pre-Civil War Irish contributions to the armed forces, which included disproportionate enlistment in the antebellum Regular Army and a heavy presence in the U.S. Navy.

Early-war enlistment dominates the pension records, with almost three-fourths of the correspondents volunteering before the end of 1862. The overwhelming majority were drawn from the working class (92% were either farm laborers, unemployed, or worked in blue-collar occupations). As expected, the eastern states dominate, with just over 40% of the sample coming from New York alone. Just over a third were born outside the Emerald Isle to Irish parents in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K, and the average age of the Irish American enlistee was over a year and half younger than the average age of the Union volunteer overall. As the author explains, his finding that nearly two-thirds of these volunteers were single was expected given that Irish men tended to marry later than other ethnic groups.

In terms of what Irish American soldiers wrote about their soldier experience, Shiels finds that they expressed themselves in the straightforward, non-sentimental descriptive manner that was much the same across the lower classes of all white ethnic groups. Their written reactions to combat, marching, and camp life also closely matched others. One noteworthy difference among Irish volunteers was a higher than average desertion rate, which the author primarily attributes to the exceptionally precarious financial position of Irish families (a distinction from other ethnicities that's well explained in the book).

The commonly accepted total of Irish who served in the Union Army is, in round numbers, 150,000 men, but Shiels reveals why that figure should be considered much too low. The traditional number excludes certain geographical regions as well as the U.S. Navy and Regular Army. Including those numbers raises the total to over 180,000, and, if you add the children of Irish immigrants to the total, the author believes the best conservative estimate to be at least 250,000. Shiels feels that the implications of this are critically important, as, in addition to simply being more accurate, the amended total upends the long-held conclusion that ethnic Irish were underrepresented (which Shiels questions even when using the old numbers) in the Union volunteer forces. Instead, the revised numbers suggest that the Irish were truly overrepresented. The impact of this on assessing Irish loyalty and duty toward their new country, both of which were sullied by the Irish's heavy role in opposing conscription (especially during the infamous New York City Draft Riot of July 1863), is important to consider.

The great many acts of deadly violence perpetrated during the aforementioned civil unrest in New York City, in which a predominantly Irish mob specifically targeted black residents, has been commonly used as a reference point to gauge Irish American attitudes toward blacks in general. In addition to reminding readers that only a small proportion of New York's Irish participated in the bloody riots, Shiels's research into how Irish soldiers described their interactions with free and enslaved blacks encountered during their service reveals a complicated range of attitudes. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the vast majority of Irish soldiers deeply opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and the war's new direction, their attitude grounded in both racism and economic fears. Interestingly, Shiels's research directly challenges the viewpoint of those contemporary abolitionists (among them Frederick Douglass) who maintained that it was immersion into American society that produced Irish beliefs in black racial inferiority. Instead, Shiels's work strongly suggests that most Irish already held such opinions before they arrived on American soil.

In the arena of Irish American political identity, it is noteworthy that not a single letter in Shiels's sample expressed support for the Republican party. As the author explains, this is understandable given that party's evolution from nativist and anti-Catholic roots, and the Irish's position as the white ethnic group most vulnerable to the economic implications of emancipation and possible mass migration of freedpeople into heavily Irish urban centers. Also pointed out by the author is the Irish's generally conservative interpretation of the Constitution. Shiels does not dismiss the likelihood that many soldiers, in particular the early volunteers most personally invested in finishing the war, voted Republican in 1864 or declined to vote at all in protest of the Peace Party wing of the Democratic Party, but in his opinion it remains highly likely that the Irish cast the largest block of Democratic votes in the Union Army. Given that opposition to emancipation and Democratic affiliation in general both came to be widely viewed as evidence of disloyalty during the mid to late-war period, Shiels acknowledges that the ethnic group's voting patterns contributed mightily, and unfairly, to broad anti-Irish feeling.

Interwoven with nativist doubts about Irish loyalty were issues and perceptions related to chosen identity. From the letters Shiels examined emerged a dual Irish American identity that few among them were uncomfortable with by the 1860s, it being clear that these men were proud of their ethnic heritage but also strongly identified with being an American. Of course, those 1830s and 1840s immigrants and their children were more tightly bound to their American identity than those who arrived during the 1850s wave of new immigration. It is noteworthy that the soldier correspondents of Shiels's sample routinely elevated the Fourth of July holiday above St. Patrick's Day. Additionally, most of these soldiers did not pine for the old country in their letters home but rather expressed deep attachment to their local communities. They also more often than not preferred to get their news from non-ethnic newspapers.

Shiels challenges enduring negatives stereotypes of Irish soldiers as uninhibited rowdies and street toughs who were just as hard drinking as they were hard fighting. There were certainly large numbers of individuals in the Union Army (Irish or otherwise) who were just like that, but Shiels counters that his research reveals that the majority of Irish American soldiers, like their comrades of other ethnicities, valued duty and restraint within a generally more moderate form of what recent scholars term "martial manhood." On the matter of alcohol, the author acknowledges the significance of Irish drinking culture, but notes that all societal classes and ethnicities in the Union service struggled with alcohol abuse, and the nativist stereotyping of the Irish as exceptional offenders often led to harsher punishments than might otherwise have been imposed by officers.

Of course, any investigation into the religious identity of Irish Americans is readily confronted with the cultural dominance of the Catholic Church and its sacramental teachings. However, Shiels's research path also meaningfully encounters the much smaller Protestant Irish identity and outlook that many prior investigators tended to ignore as materially insignificant to the Irish American experience. Perhaps remarkable is that the letters he examined evinced very little in the way of sectarian division between the two groups when they served together.

In examining the crossover between identity and ideology when it comes to enlistment motivation, Shiels finds no evidence to support the popular contention that many Irish joined the Union Army primarily to gain military experience needed to free Ireland from British rule. Among the soldier correspondents, there was widespread sympathy for the Fenian Movement (the individual expression of which Shiels describes as often being "performative" in nature), but the primary focus of their attention was on the practical matter of doing their part to achieve Union victory and secure their own future in their adopted homeland. Rather than dream of returning to the "Old Sod" to free it from British imperial oppression (an aspiration that some individuals certainly did articulate), the far more common cross-Atlantic intention expressed by the sample correspondents was a determination to entice more family members and friends to join them in a reunited post-Civil War America full of promise and opportunity.

If Fenianism wasn't a major enlistment motivator, economic considerations and patriotism certainly were. The role economics played in early-war volunteerism in general has been examined at greater depth in recent years (William Marvel's detailed work being among the most pointed in tone and analysis), and it is clear from Shiels's sample group that the prospect of regular pay and other financial incentives were important considerations for the working-class individuals who formed the vast majority of Irish American volunteers. They, especially the urban workers, were especially vulnerable during the national economy's sharp late-antebellum and secession-period downturn. Whether expressed overtly or with more subtlety, patriotism was also widely expressed in the Irish soldier letters, especially from those who had spent their youth into adulthood years in the United States. Their words and sentiments related to duty and commitment to the preservation of the Union were similar to those of Union volunteers in general, and that evidence collectively reinforces the author's views in regard to the preeminence of local and national American identity over ethnic insularity.

In addition to being the first of its kind in terms of providing a comprehensive profile and analysis of Irish volunteers, Damian Shiels's deeply impressive Green and Blue ranks as one of the most important of all Civil War ethnic soldier studies. One might hope it could be used as a model for studying other large groups of ethnic volunteers such as German American soldiers, both for intrinsic value and for comparative purposes. This book is very highly recommended.

Booknotes: Hero of Fort Sumter

New Arrival:

• Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody (OU Press, 2025).

Kentuckian Robert Anderson's Civil War arc is well known to readers. Handling the situation in Charleston Harbor during the secession crisis as well as anyone could have expected under the circumstances, Anderson's conduct during the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter transformed the relatively obscure U.S. Army major into the Union's first war hero. He was rewarded with a major command in the western heartland, which poor health forced him to relinquish after only a short period in charge. He returned to Charleston in 1865 in an emotional flag raising ceremony at Fort Sumter, his Civil War career ending at the very place it began. Now readers will get the full story of Anderson's life and military service in Wesley Moody's Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson.

From the description: Moody "charts Robert Anderson’s path from an upbringing on the Kentucky frontier to a West Point education and a military career that saw him fighting in nearly every American conflict from the Black Hawk War to the Civil War—catching malaria fighting the Seminoles, taking several bullets while serving in Mexico, writing the textbook for field artillery used by both Union and Confederate forces, mentoring William Tecumseh Sherman."

Anderson had family and personal connections to a number of figures central to American history. More: "(His) family, harking back to the nation’s founding, included William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) and Chief Justice John Marshall. His father crossed the Delaware with George Washington. And among his acquaintances were presidents ranging from the aged John Adams to seven-year-old Theodore Roosevelt."

As fully expected, the centerpiece of Moody's biography is its coverage of the leadership Anderson displayed in Charleston Harbor between South Carolina's secession and the surrender of Fort Sumter. More from the description: "Central to Anderson’s story was his deft and decisive handling of the Fort Sumter crisis. Had Major Anderson been the aggressor, as many of his command urged, President Abraham Lincoln would have been unable to rally the Northern states to war. Had Anderson handed his command over to the Confederate troops, a demoralized North would have offered little resistance to secession." I don't know about that last point, but in upholding national honor Anderson surely did have to walk a fine line between provocation and showing strength.

If you are wondering about how much of the study addresses the remaining balance of Anderson's Civil War experience, around fifteen pages are devoted to his return to duty, promotion to brigadier general, his brief departmental command in 1861, and triumphal 1865 return to Fort Sumter. It will be interesting to get Moody's take on which factor, deteriorating personal health or lost favor with the Lincoln administration, was the principal driving force behind Anderson's replacement by William T. Sherman as Department of Kentucky commander. A handful of pages cover the final years of Anderson's life, from the end of the war to his death in 1871.

Another dormant series revived: Great Campaigns of the Civil War

Last month, I posted [here] some news regarding the impending return of the This Hallowed Ground and Civil War Campaigns in the West series from University of Nebraska Press and SIU Press, respectively. Now there's even more good news. Ten years after the publication of Perry Jamieson's Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War (2015) comes word that the long-awaited next installment of the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series will be released in July of 2026. I've long known that an 1862 Peninsula Campaign addition to the series was in the works and was pleased to learn that it will finally be coming to fruition next year. Like the new This Hallowed Ground guidebook title from the same publisher, Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 is authored by Brian Burton. I don't know anything more about it than what's found at the link provided, but having Burton, best known for his Seven Days work, behind it is a plus in my book.

Review - "Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War" by Albert Nofi, ed.

[Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War edited and annotated by Albert A. Nofi (Savas Beatie, 2025). Softcover, 2 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages:x,146. ISBN:978-1-61121-741-4. $16.95]

Perhaps hearkening back to the melancholy he experienced during his Old Army postings on the frontier (those feelings contributing to his decision to resign his commission in 1854), U.S. Grant arranged for the headquarters presence of close family members on numerous occasions during his celebrated Civil War service. Son Frederick Dent Grant was the frequent beneficiary of this chance of a lifetime opportunity for being present at the making of history, and, with the fulsome consent of mother Julia Dent Grant, the boy spent extensive periods of time with his father in the field. Perhaps the most event-filled of those interludes was when young Fred (12 years old at the time) joined the Grant headquarters family for the most active and decisive months of the 1863 Vicksburg Campaign. His most lengthy and detailed remembrance of that adventurous time is reproduced in editor Albert Nofi's Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War.

According to Nofi, more than a dozen versions of Fred Grant's speeches and interviews pertaining to his time in Mississippi can be viewed in print. The most comprehensive version of his wartime remembrance, and the one that forms the basis of this book, is the 18,000-word memoir account serialized by the National Tribune in 1887. In addition to organizing and transcribing that Tribune account in full, Nofi annotates the material. His footnotes identify or clarify persons, places, and events mentioned in Fred's memoir while dutifully pointing out errors in the account as well as noteworthy differences with, or omissions from, other versions. A selection of important people and places mentioned in the text are addressed at greater length in a pair of appendices as well.

It's easy to see why Fred Grant was a prize get for the Gilded Age speaking circuit. Beyond the obvious appeal of being the son of the Union Army's greatest war hero, Fred, a West Point graduate himself (Class of 1871) who eventually reached the rank of major general, was well informed on military matters in his own right. His Tribune account is a mixture of serious observation balanced by more lighthearted remembrances of boyish antics and adventures near the enemy (sometimes too close for comfort). Though obviously pro-Union in sentiment, the memoir treats friend (even comrades with whom his father sharply conflicted, such as John C. McClernand) and foe alike with an even keel.

Fred's Vicksburg account was developed well after the war ended and apparently without the fact-checking benefit of any additional source material or personal notes. As Nofi mentions, that led to a lot of mistakes in identifying persons, places, and especially dates. Events were also occasionally conflated or mistaken altogether. So what value is there to be had? The memoir definitely provides Civil War readers with a unique perspective in terms of its author being the son of the commanding general, a position that afforded him ready access and opportunity for observing and interacting with the army's high command in the middle of a critically important campaign. The boyish adventures that young Grant engaged in on multiple occasions might also interest many readers. Some anecdotes are uniquely Fred's. For instance, his account of General Grant and Admiral David Porter personally involving themselves with a shipboard test firing of a coffee mill gun, the unfortunate result of which was a fairly severe (by Fred's estimate) accidental injury to the general's hand that took some time to heal. According to Nofi, that incident, though very specific and vividly described by Fred, is mentioned nowhere in Grant's own writings nor could the editor find the incident described in any other books about Grant.

By his own account (which spans the period, with some interruption, from the end of March 1863 to just after the fall of Vicksburg), Fred seemed to have had the ability to freely attach himself to any of Grant's subordinate generals, and he apparently shared company with all the army's corps and division commanders at one time or another, witnessing most in action. He claims to have been adopted as a special "pet" by some of the Grant's officers (ex. James McPherson) and befriended an orderly that joined him on many escapades.

Fred's high command access allowed him to gain the measure of Grant's lieutenants, at least in retrospect, and he freely shares his perceptions of them in the memoir. His impressions of the personalities and abilities of important generals such as Sherman, McClernand, and McPherson closely align with the most common descriptions of those qualities passed down through history all the way to today. Of the division commanders in the Army of the Tennessee, John Logan inspired exceptional curiosity and admiration from Fred. It's interesting that he repeatedly refers to the general as "Fighting Jack," with no mention of the "Black Jack" nickname that today's students are much more familiar with in their own reading.

The absence of extensive discussion related to the Vicksburg operation's siege phase is explained by the fact that the writer was sent away during that time to recover from a festering flesh wound received earlier in the campaign. Given that camp diseases and stray bullets had no regard for rank or youth (ask Sherman about the deadly risks involved in exposing one's own child to that), it is somewhat startling to learn just how enthusiastic Julia was about continually sending Fred to be with her husband at the front, even after the boy was shot and also caught a life-threatening case of dysentery. She even amusingly justifies Grant having Fred around on campaign as being akin to Philip of Macedon mentoring a young Alexander.

This is a fine memoir of the Vicksburg Campaign written from a wholly distinctive perspective, made even more valuable through the prodigious enhancements and supplements provided by the editor.

Booknotes: From Ironclads to Admiral

New Arrival:

• From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership by John V. Quarstein & Robert L. Worden (Naval Inst Press, 2025).

Most Civil War readers remember John L. Worden as the first commander of the U.S.S. Monitor, which he led during the most famous naval duel of the Civil War—the ironclad clash between his ship and C.S.S. Virginia at Hampton Roads in March 1862. During that engagement, Worden was badly wounded, and he largely fades from more general treatments of the naval conflict. However, it was the case that Worden had many more contributions to make, and his entire life and career are examined in John Quarstein and collateral descendant Robert Worden's From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership. According to Craig Symonds's jacket blurb, this the first full biography of Worden.

From the description: "Throughout his 52-year career, Rear Adm. John Lorimer Worden was always the right officer for the job. The epitome of an innovative commander who helped move the U.S. Navy out of the age of sail and into the era of ironclad technology, Worden’s contributions extended beyond the Battle of Hampton Roads and shaped the future of the Navy. He demonstrated exceptional leadership in both combat and peacetime."

In April 1861, Worden, employed as a secret messenger for the government, was arrested on his way back to Washington and held captive by Confederate authorities for more than half a year. Upon release, Worden's antebellum sea experiences and scientific background [he led "a successful rescue mission" and captured "a prize ship during the Mexican-American War," and later served "(t)hree tours at the U.S. Naval Observatory"] placed him in good stead when a commander was sought for the U.S. Navy's Monitor, a new and untried technological wonder.

Upon recovery from his Hampton Roads battle wounds, Worden played a major role in the U.S. Navy's further refinements in ironclad design, use, and technology. More from the description: Worden "returned to command the USS Montauk, where his unparalleled expertise in ironclad design and combat tactics continued to set him apart. From testing ships in battle to overseeing the innovative production of ironclads at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he consistently refined his craft. Confronted with multiple ship design failures, he relentlessly drove improvements, pushing the boundaries of naval technology and securing lasting progress in the development of modern warships."

When the Civil War ended, Worden's professional career was far from over. He "became superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he trained the next generation of naval officers and co-founded the U.S. Naval Institute." He "capped his career by ably serving as commander-in-chief of the European Squadron during a time of upheaval on that continent. Displaying courage, commitment, and diplomacy, Worden skillfully led U.S. European naval forces from 1875 to 1877."

Coming Soon (July '25 Edition)

Scheduled for JULY 2025¹:
• Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle by Barbara Franco.
• Encyclopedia of Union Generals: The Definitive Guide to the 588 Leaders of the North's War Effort by Samuel Mitcham.
• The Lower Battlefield of Antietam: The Forgotten Front of America's Bloodiest Day by Robert Dunkerly.
• Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Dennis Conklin.
• Landscapes of Freedom: Restoring the History of Emancipation and Citizenship in Yorktown, Virginia, 1861–1940 by Rebecca Toy.
• David Davis: Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Judge by Raymond McKoskie.
• Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America by Scott Ellsworth.
• The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia by Benjamin Cwayna.

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: The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign

New Arrival:

• The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches, and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves edited by Stephen Davis (Savas Beatie, 2025).

During its decades-long run, the National Tribune periodical evolved into one of the most significant archives of Civil War veteran writings. From the description: "From 1877 to 1943, the National Tribune served as a compendium for Union veteran reminiscences, war yarns, and postbellum reflections. The firsthand treasure-trove began as an eight-page monthly newspaper in 1881 and within a few years it became a weekly. The Washington-based paper was founded by George E. Lemon, a veteran of the 125th New York. Initially an advocate for Union veteran pensions, the National Tribune hit its stride when it began publishing articles about the war penned by the Northern soldiers themselves." The man primarily behind the Tribune hitting that stride was John McElroy.

More from the description:"Within three years, John McElroy, a Union veteran with editing experience and the author of a dramatic memoir about his confinement at Andersonville (1879), assumed the reins as managing editor. His keen eye for detail and deep connections elevated the quality and quantity of the content and resulted in the publication of thousands of exclusive firsthand accounts. The National Tribune’s final issue was on December 30, 1943. By that date, the Union veterans who had fought the war were nearly all gone."

Given its stature as one of the Civil War's largest and most significant campaigns, it's no surprise that the 1864 Atlanta Campaign was a popular topic of discussion among veteran writers. Indeed, "(m)ore than 1,000 items were published on the Atlanta Campaign alone: articles, memoirs, and letters on every topic imaginable sent in by Union soldiers who had followed General Sherman into Georgia in 1864. The first appeared in June 1879 on the battle of Kennesaw Mountain." A selection of these, seventy in number, are compiled by Atlanta Campaign historian Stephen Davis in The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches, and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves. 

Davis's introduction briefly summarizes the Tribune's history and explains the rationale behind how the volume was created (including the article selection process). Outside of the introduction, the text is not annotated in the traditional manner of numbered footnotes or endnotes. Instead, the editorial material is presented in a more informal style, a contextual conversation of sorts (set apart by italics) placed at either or both ends of each piece. In many cases, bracketed comments are also inserted within the transcribed passages. The notes provide additional background information and critically engage the veteran text through commentary of various types and author error discussion (all referenced).

Review- "A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill" by A. Wilson Greene

[A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill by A. Wilson Greene (University of North Carolina Press, 2025). Hardcover, 34 maps, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,495/706. ISBN:978-1-4696-8481-9. $45]

Generations of avid followers of the Civil War campaigns fought in the eastern theater between the Union Army of the Potomac and Confederate Army of Northern Virginia have been enthralled by streams of books detailing the sweeping maneuvers, crushing flank attacks, and grand assaults that generated signature moments of enduring distinction among so many of the great field contests of 1862-63. However, when considering the campaigns fought in the theater from the spring of 1864 onward, a different popular impression of the style of warfare fought between those mighty foes emerged. For a long time, reader perception of the 1864 Overland Campaign was primarily that of a continuous series of brutal frontal slugging matches remarkable mostly for the unprecedented attritional bloodletting they produced amid extensive tactical reliance on fieldworks, and the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign was widely seen as a static "siege" operation. Over recent decades, though, those simplistic characterizations have been significantly overthrown by way of fresh scholarship and reassessment. Starting with Gordon Rhea's classic series of books, the Overland Campaign has come to be seen and appreciated with far more operational and tactical nuance than ever before. For the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, a flood of new books has revealed that that long campaign, far from being anything truly siege-like, rather consisted of a series of mobile offensives that produced numerous battles with a great many features of interest to inquisitive military history students. A major contributor to that profound altering of perception is A. Wilson Greene, his latest project being a monumental three-volume history that began in 2018 with the release of A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 1: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater. Published earlier this year, the middle tome, A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill, is the subject of this review. It comprehensively addresses events on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts from the beginning of August 1864 through the end of October, months that encompassed the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth of the campaign's nine distinct offensives.

The Fourth Offensive (August 12-25) marked further development of Union Army general in chief U.S. Grant's overall theater strategy of launching coordinated offensive movements against either end of the Richmond-Petersburg line. With the Confederates not knowing which of the two was the main effort, the hope was that good timing and local superiority in numbers would combine to score a major breakthrough. If outright capture of those cities could not be achieved, at the very least gains would be made in isolating them further. While the Battle of Second Deep Bottom, on the face of it, was poorly conducted and failed to either threaten Richmond or cut the Virginia Central Railroad, it did practically ensure that the Confederates couldn't provide further aid to Jubal Early's Shenandoah Valley operation. Regardless of how much that affected Lee's real plans, the resources that went into stopping the Union attack north of the James weakened Confederate forces south of the river and eased Union Fifth Corps' task of seizing the Weldon Railroad (a major lifeline into Petersburg). During the fighting on August 18-19, G.K. Warren's Fifth Corps successfully cut across the railroad, but the gap between its advance and the rest of the army was negligently spanned (the blame for which could be spread around). That hole in the front was exploited in devastating fashion by William Mahone's Confederate division, which launched a breakthrough attack that hauled in a massive load of prisoners before being halted by arriving Union Ninth Corps elements. The Confederates didn't have the numbers to fully exploit their initial breakthrough and were rather easily turned back with heavy losses of their own during the subsequent August 21 fighting against Fifth Corps's firmly entrenched position across the railroad. In the author's view, Mahone, as he had earlier in the campaign, "played the starring role" in the Fourth Offensive. Warren's grade, on the other hand, was decidedly mixed. The controversial Fifth Corps commander displayed little in the way of offensive-minded drive and initiative, and he shared responsibility for the open space in the front line that Mahone exploited. On a more positive note, Warren partially redeemed himself on the 21st (although, as Greene maintains, achieving that defensive victory did not require any great display of generalship, and Warren made no effort to take advantage of the enemy's newly vulnerable condition). The action did not end there, though, as Grant and Meade sought to expand their gains. By any measure, the resulting Battle of Second Reams Station (August 25) was poorly fought affair on the Union side. As Greene outlines, Second Corps lines were badly placed, cavalry reconnaissance completely missed the Confederate build-up nearby, and Meade inadequately supported Hancock. In addition to severely damaging Second Corps, adding 2,000 prisoners to the larger haul accumulated only days earlier, Lee's men halted further destruction of the Weldon Railroad, which kept at a manageable distance the logistical bypass that Warren's continued presence astride the railroad still forced upon them.

Upon concluding his meticulous description and analysis of the Fourth Offensive, Greene detours into an informative look into the ongoing development of federal siegecraft, especially in the context of how it was applied to consolidating the gains produced by the latest offensive. The author also explores side topics such as fraternization between the armies and the reactions of both sides to the fall of Atlanta. During this operational pause, Union forces also grasped the opportunity to reorganize their order of battle. The main military event of the period bridging the Fourth and Fifth offensives was the "Beefsteak Raid." While Greene's fine account of that celebrated Confederate cavalry operation concludes that success was primarily due to neglect and complacency among the Union leadership, it also offers strong accolades for the man who conceived and conducted it, Wade Hampton. Throughout Greene's narrative it is revealed that Hampton was a more than capable replacement for the late Jeb Stuart, the tactical skill displayed during his command's close cooperation with the infantry on multiple occasions playing an important part in limiting Union gains below Petersburg. Indeed, while the story of the final breakthrough at Petersburg and complete success of the Appomattox Campaign in 1865 is commonly attributed to the advanced development of Union combined arms deployment of infantry and cavalry, a strong argument could be made that the Confederates held the upper hand in that regard (though theirs was more defensive in nature) on the Petersburg front in 1864. A major theme developed early on and throughout the rest of the book is the profound effects Shenandoah Valley-related events and strategic considerations had on operational planning for both sides on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts. Involved with all of that was a mixture of opportunity and fear of enemy intentions (real and imagined).

In his assessment of Grant's Fifth Offensive (September 29-October 2), Greene gives Army of the James commander Benjamin Butler mixed marks. Though Butler's command seized New Market Heights and captured Fort Harrison, further attacks ultimately fell short against the Intermediate Line of Richmond's three-ringed system of defensive fortifications. The initial plan of operations was well-received and Grant approved it without revision, but the author feels that Butler accorded more weight than was needed against the thinly held heights, not leaving enough strength to push beyond Fort Harrison, breach the Intermediate Line, and push into Richmond. Greene is certainly persuasive in arguing that leadership failures (and inopportune high command casualties), played a major part in stalling what was, even by early morning, a very promising offensive. On the Confederate side, Lee balanced his forces on both sides of the James in judicious fashion yet again, and the Richmond front's collection of front-line, second-line, and reserve troops held on better than could reasonably be expected against long odds and did not widely panic after initial disaster. Forced to wait until the next day to respond, Lee, determined to recover the lost ground, launched a counterattack against Fort Harrison that failed in the face of poor coordination from his subordinates and a consolidated defense. Meanwhile, on the other end of the line below Petersburg, four divisions of Warren's Fifth and John Parke's Ninth Corps set out west to test the sector held by A.P. Hill's Confederates and make sure no more enemy reinforcements left for the Richmond or Shenandoah fronts. Their limited action was authorized to shift over into a major offensive if circumstances permitted. While Warren and Parke seized the lightly held Squirrel Level Line on September 30, only cautious advances followed, and Hill seized the initiative, smashing the federal advance at Pegram's Farm (taking in another large haul of prisoners). The following day, the Confederates, eager to reprise their devastating counterattack of August 19, instead bungled the assault against a better prepared enemy, leading to hundreds of ill-afforded casualties. Resumption of offensive action was urged by Grant and Meade, but Warren and Parke only inched forward with their innate caution, and the Fifth Offensive ended up petering out on both sides of the James after some ineffectual probing attacks.

As Greene convincingly demonstrates, both sides had reason to be alternatively pleased and disappointed with aspects of the Fifth Offensive. The Confederates lost Fort Harrison on the Richmond front and their Squirrel Level Line buffer southwest of Petersburg, but they inflicted better than two to one losses on their foes and maintained every critical point, sealing off the breakthrough at Fort Harrison and maintaining possession of the primary positions covering the Boydton Plank Road and South Side Railroad. Union forces, by seizing the Squirrel Level Line were able to use that new position to anchor yet another westward push across Petersburg's southern front. Butler's command captured Fort Harrison (though the long-term significance of that achievement proved minimal), and his USCT forces were able to earn valuable combat prestige and experience at New Market Heights. Throughout Greene's Fifth Offensive coverage, one gains an appreciation for how adeptly the Confederate defenders employed interior lines and tactical flexibility to counter Meade and Butler's more plodding subordinates and superior numbers.

The significance of the Confederate attack down Darbytown Road on October 7, which brushed aside Butler's right flank cavalry before being stopped cold by the refused line of fortifications held by David Birney's Tenth Corps, is recognized as marking the final attempt by Lee to eliminate the Union threat to Richmond north of the James (or at least limit it to a small bridgehead at Deep Bottom). Greene also conjectures that the failure led Lee to finally accept that his army could no longer risk heavy casualties through large-scale counterattacks. But that realization did not mean the end of activity on the Richmond front. The period between the end of the Fifth Offensive and the beginning of the Sixth Offensive witnessed both a major extension of Confederate entrenchments east of Richmond (the "Alexander Line") and a major testing of those new positions by Butler's command, which was repulsed with significant loss in the Second Battle of Darbytown Road. On the other end of the line, near Squirrel Level Road, more clashes erupted across no man's land.

For his Sixth Offensive (October 27-28), Grant continued to hit upon his promising strategy of employing simultaneous attacks on both ends of the long Richmond-Petersburg line. North of the James, Butler's two corps (Tenth and Eighteenth) sought to outflank the newly extended Confederate front before Richmond but instead engaged the Confederate defenders, who used lateral flexibility to meet them head on, through a series of poorly conducted attacks that produced no results noteworthy enough to justify the casualties incurred. Meanwhile, strong elements of Second, Fifth, and Ninth corps plus Gregg's cavalry swung around the far Confederate right below Petersburg and attempted to seize the grail objectives of Boydton Plank Road and the South Side Railroad. Neither of those lofty goals would be met, as Parke and Warren became immediately bogged down, leaving Hancock to fight off a fierce counterattack at Burgess Mill. Their rebuff left the Confederate spearheads, especially Mahone's men, isolated and vulnerable, and it was with great difficulty that they were able to disengage and withdraw without disaster. In the end, both sides suffered roughly equal casualties overall and Second Corps fell back rather than risk staying in an isolated position. With that fizzle went any hope of achieving a signal success on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts that might have helped clinch Lincoln's prospects for reelection. For the eastern theater at least, that honor would go to Philip Sheridan's series of victories in the Shenandoah Valley.

In conveying to readers an understanding as to why this series of Union offensives, like those that preceded them, failed to achieve greater results, Greene focuses mostly closely on controllable factors. At a number of places in the narrative, Grant's frustration is felt deeply, as his innate aggressiveness could not be fully transmitted to the tip of the spear on either side of the James. If Grant was a jolt of electricity from the top, and Meade duly carried out his superior's wishes while also offering sage advisement, the charge steadily diminished as it moved down the Union order of battle, which acted like a poorly insulated conducting wire. Even the usually reliable cavalry division commander David Gregg significantly underperformed during this period. In ways that attempted to cover up their own shortcomings, Union leaders frequently blamed their own men for defeats. At numerous points in the book, the author reveals damning quotes, originating from high-ranking Union generals and lesser lights alike, that routinely blamed the new men in the army for the most lopsided mishaps suffered at the hands of Lee's veterans. Directly confronting those claims might be beyond the scope of Greene's investigation, but one hopes that the third volume can reserve some space for addressing the most recent scholarship on the topic. Completed around the same time as Greene's Volume 2 are major works from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot that strongly challenge the most persistently hidebound negative assessments of the fighting capabilities of the Army of the Potomac's late-war enlistees and regiments.

As revealed in the book, the Confederates were not without their own accumulation of operational misjudgments and tactical mistakes. Lee is reasonably second-guessed on occasion, one example being his determination to go forward with a delayed counterattack to try to recover Fort Harrison, but the record remains clear that the Confederate leadership overall performed commendably in limiting federal gains to manageable losses in the near term. Of Lee's subordinates, hard-hitting William Mahone emerges as his commander's chief fireman on many battlefields described in both volumes, and Greene's narrative also offers renewed appreciation for Henry Heth, who is typically regarded as a fairly middling major general. With the ailing A.P. Hill leaving a bit of a higher leadership void along his overstretched and highly vulnerable Third Corps front, Heth stepped up effectively in some key moments.

Though Greene prominently pays homage to those who have covered this material before, singling out for special recognition Hampton Newsome, John Horn, and the late Richard Sommers, and refers his readers to the relevant works from that trio to find even more micro-level detail, his own narrative offers impressive levels of tactical depth and sage analysis. Indeed, Greene ranks high in his ability to transform a vast amount of primary and secondary source research into a complex yet readily comprehensible campaign and battlefield narrative. Supplementing Green's text is a set of very fine operational and tactical-scale maps (34 in total) from Edward Alexander that cover the action without leaving any notable gaps.

Judging from the content and tone of this review, one might correctly surmise that this volume receives the site's highest possible recommendation. If V3 meets the same standards set by V1-2, and there is no reason to suppose otherwise, then the finished trilogy will unquestionably become a lasting standard on the same order as other top-flight book series such as David Powell's Chickamauga, Timothy Smith's Vicksburg, and Gordon Rhea's aforementioned Overland Campaign work.

Booknotes: Lee Besieged

New Arrival:

• Lee Besieged: Grant’s Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18–July 1, 1864 by John Horn (Savas Beatie, 2025).

It's easy to see why John Horn is one of the authors that A. Wilson Greene singles out for special acknowledgment in his epic multi-volume history of the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign. After all, Horn was putting out Petersburg titles long before the topic's recent upsurge in interest and coverage. His volume addressing the events of August 1864 ranks among the better entries in H.E. Howard's classic Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders series, and his Petersburg Campaign contribution to Combined Books's Great Campaigns series of overviews was a staple of used bookstores way back when. A big part of Horn's more recent return to prominence is his partnership with Savas Beatie, which reissued in 2015 a newly revised and expanded version of Horn's Howard series book on Grant's Fourth Offensive and published Horn's regimental history of the 12th Virginia (the "Petersburg Regiment") in 2019. Their latest collaboration is Lee Besieged: Grant’s Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18–July 1, 1864, another impressive-looking effort.

Grant's Second Offensive, which came on the heels of the mid-June attacks that failed to achieve their goal of capturing Petersburg and forcing the evacuation of Richmond, was arguably "one of the most dramatic operations of the entire war." From the description: "To pave the way for success, Grant brought the city’s bridges under the fire of his siege guns to slow the transfer of enemy trips in and out of Petersburg. He also seized a bridgehead at Deep Bottom on James River’s north bank to draw Confederate forces out of Petersburg by menacing Richmond. Next, he took more ambitious measures by sending infantry to hem in Petersburg from the Appomattox River below the city to the Appomattox above. The move was designed to cut the critical Weldon and South Side railroads and force the Rebels to abandon Petersburg and Richmond. As his infantry went to work, his cavalry set out to sever the Confederate railroads below Petersburg to cut off supplies and reinforcements from the south and west."

By seizing the bridgehead on the north bank of the James River while also sweeping below Petersburg, this offensive marked the initiation of what would develop into a months-long series of concurrent large-scale attacks against the defenses and lines of communication into and between both Richmond and Petersburg, the object being to stretch Confederate lines to the breaking point and force a decisive breakthrough on either end of the line. While progress would be made, the ultimate prize eluded the federals until the following spring.

Among a number of factors, fierce Confederate opposition played a major part in keeping the federals out of both cities. Lee's army, though heavily depleted over the course of the Overland Campaign, remained a highly potent opponent. More from the description: During the Second Offensive detailed in Horn's study, "Lee and his infantry division commander William Mahone marched to meet the enemy, and in a stunning turn of events, routed Grant’s foot soldiers at Jerusalem Plank Road. Together, Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton and Mahone’s infantry smashed Grant’s troopers at the battles of Sappony Church and First Reams Station. Thousands of Federal prisoners flooded into Confederate camps." The grind would go on.

The Second Offensive was covered very well in the first volume of Greene's A Campaign of Giants trilogy (which just completed its second part), but, as far as I know, this book is the first major standalone treatment of those events. In support of Horn's detailed narrative is a whopping set of forty maps. Contained in the appendix section are strength and casualty tables along with orders of battle.

Booknotes: Gettysburg Surgeons

New Arrival:

• Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle by Barbara Franco (Stackpole Bks, 2025).

The plight of the Gettysburg Campaign's wounded has been examined, to some degree or another, in innumerable books and articles. Barbara Franco's Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle contributes to that expansive literature by focusing most closely on the physicians from both sides who were charged with the care of a veritable flood of torn bodies. From the description: "In the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, a thousand surgeons faced an unprecedented medical catastrophe: 25,000 wounded soldiers needing immediate care with only primitive tools and their own determination to save lives."

In field hospitals established all around the Gettysburg landscape, these surgeons struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of wounded. From dealing with all that human tragedy (at Gettysburg and elsewhere during the Civil War years), however, emerged invaluable experience and knowledge that facilitated a leap forward in developing improved treatments for physical trauma and in post-operative care. More: "At Gettysburg's makeshift hospitals—set up in barns, churches, and blood-soaked fields—military and civilian surgeons from both North and South worked around the clock performing life-saving operations under fire. Drawing from a decade of meticulous research, historian Barbara Franco reveals how these courageous medical professionals revolutionized battlefield medicine and established principles still saving lives today."

Expressed "(t)hrough vivid accounts and previously untold stories," major themes in Franco's study address: "(h)ow surgeons improvised new techniques that became standard trauma procedures," "(t)he harrowing reality of Civil War field hospitals during the three days of battle," "(h)ow lessons learned at Gettysburg transformed American military medicine," and "(t)he lasting impact on modern emergency and disaster response."

Franco's study is delivered in three parts. Part I delves at some length into background matters associated with Civil War surgeons, including their education, army recruitment, defined duties, and experiences in the field. The heart of the book is found in Part II's discussion of the many duties and responsibilities involved with caring for the wounded both during and after the three-day battle. Finally, Part III focuses on one of the least investigated aspects of a Civil War surgeon's career arc—the strain involved with returning to the civilian world after the war ended—those challenges relating to both finding success in professional practice postwar and maintaining personal health that was in many cases chronically impaired by their hospital service. Some abandoned medicine altogether, redirecting their primary energies toward business or political pursuits. For added reference value, a number of Union and Confederate surgeons are individually profiled in the appendix section.