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.

Booknotes: Thunderbolt to the Rebels

New Arrival:

• Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War by Darin Wipperman (Stackpole Bks, 2025).

A number of units of varying size that served in the Army of the Potomac had the word "sharpshooters" in their name, but the two raised by Hiram Berdan, the 1st United States Sharpshooters regiment and the 2nd United States Sharpshooters almost regiment (it had eight companies), clearly have garnered the highest level of popular recognition and attention in the Civil War literature. A new study of the 2nd USSS at Gettysburg was published just a few months ago. Acknowledging the hefty nature of existing coverage, Thunderbolt to the Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War author Darin Wipperman nevertheless aims to offer readers a fresh slant on the topic, his research revealing that "much new could be told about their field service" (pg. xii).

From the description: "Sharpshooters were the elite of the Union army. Clad in green uniforms and equipped with the era’s latest rifles and scopes, they took up positions out in front of the infantry, where they targeted Confederate officers or skirmished with enemy soldiers. However they were used, sharpshooters formed an important presence on battlefields throughout the Civil War, and yet most accounts have tended to focus on their distinctive uniforms and cutting-edge equipment rather than on their combat performance. Thunderbolt to the Rebels tells the story of these Civil War deadeyes on battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg and beyond."

Per the author, his book, based on primary sources, "focuses on the two regiments' very difficult thirty-four months of combat operations starting with the 1st USSS at Yorktown in April 1862" (pg. xii). Supported by eight maps, the text explores USSS participation in the Peninsula, Second Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Overland, and Petersburg campaigns. The main narrative ends with final disbandment of the 2nd USSS in February 1865, an act that frustrated many members who understandably wanted to the witness the conclusion of the war with their unit intact.

As it was with cavalry service, fighting as a USSS was harder and more dangerous than many suppose. More from the description: "During the first year of the Civil War, Hiram Berdan proposed the creation of a unit of marksmen armed with Sharps rifles, and thus were born the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters. Drawn heavily from the Upper Midwest and New England, as well as Pennsylvania, the soldiers had to pass a marksmanship test to join: 10 shots in a 10-inch-diameter circle from 200 yards. They were issued green uniforms for better camouflage, which also helped Confederate riflemen target them. The job of a sharpshooter was dangerous and demanding – much of it out in front of the army, much of it alone – but they made a difference on the battlefield." Even though Wipperman's own accounting of total sharpshooter deaths is a bit lower than Fox's, it remains that "one in five Sharpshooters would not survive their war experience" (pg. xiii).

In the end Wipperman finds that, while the units played a noteworthy part in the Army of the Potomac's campaigns, it was also the case that the "Sharpshooters' war experience failed to fulfill the expectations created for the marksmen" (pg. 267). As recapitulated in the conclusion, reasons behind that included unrealistic expectations, devastating disease, fickle or absent bureaucratic support, common misplacement on the battlefield, and less than stellar leadership. Brief sketches of the post-war lives of a representative group of Sharpshooters, presumably drawn for those who contributed firsthand source material to the project, are also included, as is an appendix exploring names and numbers of those members who died during the war.

Booknotes: Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind

New Arrival:

• Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery by Todd Mildfelt & David D. Schafer (OU Press, 2023).

This volume represents yet another example of that recurring publishing phenomenon in which a long-neglected topic is suddenly addressed by two full-length treatments released close together. Back in 2022, I reviewed that year's release of Robert Conner's James Montgomery: Abolitionist Warrior. Published the very next year was this study, Todd Mildfelt and David Schafer's Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery (2023). Mildfelt and Schafer's book is nearly twice the length of Conner's (and includes an even more detailed history of Montgomery's remarkable Civil War career), and its bibliography reveals a source range and depth much more in line with what we'd typically expect from a scholarly examination of the topic. Conner's book also lacked maps, which this one certainly does not.

From the description: "A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery (1814–71) waged a far more personal and radical war against slavery than popular history suggests. It is the true story of this militant abolitionist that Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer tell in Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind, summoning a life fiercely lived in struggle against the expansion of slavery into the West and during the Civil War."

Montgomery negotiated the "the turbulent world of the 1850s and 1860s" with "the fervor of an Old Testament prophet," launching a campaign of "destructive retribution on Southern slaveholders." More from the description: "Montgomery helped enslaved men and women escape via one of the least-explored underground railways in the nation, from Arkansas and Missouri through Kansas and Nebraska. With support of abolitionists in Massachusetts, he spearheaded resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in Kansas."

During the early period of the Civil War, Montgomery was one of the most notorious leaders of Kansas Jayhawkers, but he also undertook a rare transformation from freebooter to successful (but still no stranger to controversy) conventional officer. As a Union Army colonel, he led both black and white troops into battle, beginning with a regiment in James Lane's Kansas Brigade. More: "Drawing on regimental records in the National Archives, the authors provide new insights into the experiences of African American men who served in Montgomery’s next regiment, the Thirty-Fourth United States Colored Troops (formerly Second South Carolina Infantry)." At the head of that unit, Montgomery conducted coastal raids in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the most widely known event from that phase of his career being the infamous burning of the town of Darien. He led a brigade at the 1864 Battle of Olustee, earning just praise for his handling of the rearguard during that Union defeat. Later that year, he returned to uniform as the leader of a Kansas militia regiment and went into action against Sterling Price's Confederate expedition as it transited the Kansas-Missouri borderland.

Obviously, the rendering of any kind of final judgment has to come after actually reading this thing (it arrived only last week), but even a superficial glance through it suggests strong addressing of shortcomings found in the 2022 biography.

Booknotes: More Important Than Good Generals

New Arrival:

• More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee by Jonathan Engel (Kent St UP, 2025).

Jonathan Engel's More Important Than Good Generals "is an in-depth study of the Army of the Tennessee’s junior officers." For the purposes of this study, the "junior officer" umbrella consists of company officers (captains and lieutenants) and field grade officers (majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels). Both general officer studies (in particular, biographies) and common soldier studies can be found in abundance in the Civil War literature, and Engel's study take a fresher path by looking closely at the men who bridged that gap by providing essential leadership at the regimental and company levels.

More from the description: These "(o)fficers had a substantially different array of duties than the soldiers they commanded and the generals above them, resulting in a drastically different wartime experience. Moreover, it is not only Civil War officers who have been overlooked but also the army Grant and Sherman commanded––the Army of the Tennessee––despite the fact that it was one of the most victorious armies of the war."

When the junior officers of Union Civil War armies are scrutinized by historians it is often in the context of their motivations to fight, their political expressions, and attitudes toward essential war aims as those shifted and evolved. More: "Pushing back against the commonly accepted narrative of disillusionment among officers, Engel concludes that the Army of the Tennessee’s company and field grade officers endured the war’s trials with their moral and political ideology intact. Further, rather than becoming indifferent to the Union cause, Engel argues that the reverse was often true: officers who started off racist or disinterested in the issue of enslavement became advocates of emancipation."

Review - "Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North" by Jack Furniss

[Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North by Jack Furniss (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,260/334. ISBN:978-0-8071-8218-5. $50]

It's useful to keep in mind that the Republican Party, which followed the seismic collapse of the national Whig Party as well as a collection of short-lived transitory political parties, was still in its infancy during the 1860 presidential election cycle when it triumphed over the fatally fractured Democratic Party. As Russell McClintock perhaps explained best in his 2008 book Lincoln and the Decision for War, the incoming president, mindful of his party's youthful fragility, prioritized party unity over countenancing any compromise measures that might threaten promises enshrined in the party's electoral platform. Upon southern secession, the northern (or Douglas) Democrats assumed the role of the national Democracy in the United States, seemingly restoring the two-party system broken during the previous electoral cycle.

Contesting that interpretation, Jack Furniss's Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North critically argues that stressing restoration of a stable, oppositional two-party system during the Civil War period creates a false impression of an overall political structure better described as a fluid system in which inter-party coalitions on state and national levels were instrumental in propelling the United States to victory. As Furniss powerfully contends, it was the fusion of Republicans, Douglas Democrats, and independent old-line Whigs into state-level Union party arrangements, the persistence of which no one could predict, that harnessed and maintained the pro-war support of the country's vast conservative middle. On the most fundamental level, the members of that majority shared the same veneration for the Union and the popular government it represented, and with that came unqualified respect for the outcomes of free and fair elections.

The wartime Democratic Party as principled and loyal opposition (versus an unprincipled obstructionist, even treasonous, fifth column dangerous to the survival of the republic during its gravest existential crisis) is something that historians have struggled with for a very long time. Published viewpoints, and the influence they have had on scholarly contemporaries, have been all over the map. The most recent trend, exemplified through Jennifer Weber's Copperheads (arguably the most widely read and referenced study on the topic), returns the emphasis toward presenting a portrait of Democrats much in common with how their partisan Republican foes painted them during and after the war. What Furniss offers is much more nuanced, an acknowledgement of the party's strategic missteps and racist appeals balanced by a more respectful appreciation of the spectrum of views contained in party leaders and voters as well as their high-minded stands (ex. for freedom of speech and the press and against arbitrary arrest and other aspects of martial law) that rose well above mere partisan convenience.

It's probably not far from the mark to say that the popular understanding of Civil War period fusion parties generally begins with the National Union Party's success in the 1864 election that propelled its presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to a second term in office and decisively rejected the minority peace movement in the North. Between Extremes, however, properly frames that late-war triumph as a culmination of years of build up. In eye-opening fashion, Furniss freshly traces the origins of the National Union Party to its state-level forebears, which were created as early as 1861. Important elections occurred on a yearly basis during the Civil War, so the author's outlining of the evolution of political trends, primarily in gubernatorial politics, in six states (Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and California) offers an informative picture of popular will at regular intervals. Each state's unique geographical situation and political representation shines through, as do the personalities, ideological disposition, and strategic political acumen of the governors themselves.

As referenced earlier, Furniss's study clearly demonstrates that the two-party system was already in flux by the time 1861 elections came around. Even at that early stage, with the war only months old, candidates were already identifying themselves with formally organized Union parties. Those early-war coalitions between Republicans, Democrats, and independent Whigs fostered centrist pro-war cooperation that would be maintained through war's end. Indeed, by the elections of 1863 and 1864, over 80% of congressional contests matched Union (not Republican) Party candidates against Democratic opponents. As Furniss clearly shows, in particular for California, the emergence of Union parties could be immediately and powerfully transformative on the state level.

In analyzing Democratic Party gains achieved during the 1862 midterm elections, Furniss challenges those who base their understanding of that shift just on popular backlash against seemingly stalled progress toward victory and widespread anger against expanding war aims to include emancipation. He adds that Democratic success should also be seen as their convincing the political center that the war could and should still be fought vigorously but on conservative principles using conventional means different from the radical-sponsored war measures passed through Congress. In Furniss's view, the two Confiscation Acts, among other things championed by the radicals, upset the centrist consensus without producing any dramatic corresponding progress toward victory. Again using state-level election results as an indication of shifts in national direction, that midterm disaffection propelled a Democrat into the governor's seat in New York and a coalition Union party of conservative Republicans and Democrats greatly reduced the radical Republican gubernatorial vote majority in Massachusetts.

1862 Democratic gains proved only transitory, however, as the party disastrously stubbed its toe in 1863. A common theme in Furniss's analysis is that electoral success predictably went to the party that  most persuasively appealed to the centrist majority but also was able to strategically contain the most electorally threatening ambitions of their own most extreme political faction (the immediatist abolitionists of the Republican Party and the peace wing of the Democrats). In 1863, mainstream northern Democrats failed to adequately check their vocal peace movement minority, irreparably harming their party's hard-worn position as loyal opposition. On the other side, Union parties, which were always majority Republican, consistently outmaneuvered their most radical allies while still keeping them within the fold. Union parties won by repeatedly messaging military restoration of the Union at the expense of all other concerns while at the same time publicly downplaying (or even omitting mention altogether) slavery and emancipation. Even in Kentucky, where many of Lincoln's war policies were condemned by the majority of the population, Union Party gubernatorial candidate Thomas Bramlette won through single-minded campaign focus on restoration of the Union. Factors most obnoxious to Kentuckians were referred by Bramlette to the future ballot box once victory in the war was secured. In his discussion of this period, the author also cites the troubling beginnings of a "militarization of politics" in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, though he does minimize the scale and significance of army interference in free elections. While he deems such events "rare occurrences," Furniss does appropriately call for more in-depth study of the topic. Ever since the publication of Jonathan White's extensive analysis of the soldier vote in 1864, this reviewer has hoped someone would take up that baton.

Implementation of emancipation and other controversial wartime measures such as black enlistment is often presented as a triumph of radical influence and persuasion, but Furniss sees the war itself as the primary instigator. Through the war's unforeseen length and level of destructiveness, revolutionary measures such as emancipation organically shifted into the centrist sphere as being among those means deemed necessary for reaching the common overarching goal of restoring the Union. While fully acknowledging Democratic blunders leading into the 1864 election, Furniss persuasively interprets Lincoln's smashing electoral victory at the head of the National Union Party as being significantly based on winning political strategies that were initially developed by state Union parties and effectively honed by their gubernatorial leaders over the previous three years of war. The study also addresses the question of how long the coalition of Republicans and Democrats would outlast the achievement of its central goal, that of restoring the Union. The answer was not long, as the debates and clashing views over the character and goals of Reconstruction that started to fester in 1864 renewed the forces of political change and realignment during the postwar period.

In exploring the indispensable nature of centrist political strategy in sustaining a war effort with the non-partisan aim of defeating the Confederacy and restoring the federal union (much of which can be explained through the success of Union parties designed to broaden that base of support as much as possible), Jack Furniss's Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North offers its readers a fresh and highly insightful new way of characterizing and understanding the political alignment and party system of the United States during the Civil War years. The volume also profoundly reinforces recent scholarship detailing the critical importance of the political partnership, fraught as it may have been in many instances, between state governors and the Lincoln administration. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign

New Arrival:

• The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 by Erik F. Nelson (Kent St UP, 2024).

It's not surprising that Chancellorsville campaign histories devote the bulk of their attention to the western end of the battlefield. After all, it was there in the Wilderness sector where Stonewall Jackson's famous flank attack (and mortal wounding) took place, and the slugging matches around Hazel Grove and the Chancellorsville crossroads produced the battle's heaviest casualties. It's also where preservation efforts have been concentrated.

More recent publishing efforts have addressed this coverage imbalance, however, and there are now two full-length studies of the fighting east of Zoan Church. Both works, which are similar in scale, emphasize the "forgotten" theme in their respective titles. An excellent study published just over a decade ago, Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White's Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church, May 3, 1863 (2013) set the standard. Now we have Erik Nelson's The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 (2024), which revisits the same ground, to consider.

From the description: "To demonstrate how a Union force overpowered Confederate troops in and around Fredericksburg, Erik F. Nelson emphasizes the role of terrain and reexamines contemporary documentation. Previous studies have relied on misleading primary sources that have left the campaign―and the Union’s eventual larger victory―misunderstood. Moreover, the former battlegrounds near Fredericksburg have been physically altered by new roads and neighborhoods, further complicating study and understanding." The claim regarding "misleading" contemporary sources shaping previous understanding of these events and beyond intrigues me.

The book has 21 maps, fine-looking affairs from top-shelf cartographer Steven Stanley. The appendix section contains orders of battle, detailed battery composition tables, and a reconsideration of the May 3 Second Fredericksburg flag of truce controversy.

Even though the Chancellorsville Campaign proved to be a shocking defeat for the Army of the Potomac, which possessed seemingly overwhelming numerical superiority over an Army of Northern Virginia heavily depleted through pre-battle detachments, Nelson nevertheless contends that tactical success achieved on the Fredericksburg sector by Sedgwick's command was part of a positive omen. More from the description: "Nelson’s thorough consideration of the physical settings at Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford helps readers better understand how the Army of the Potomac had developed the capability to prevail against Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia long before they emerged victorious at Gettysburg."

Booknotes: A Grand Opening Squandered

New Arrival:

• A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Originally published in 1988, Thomas Howe's The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864 is the classic account of the bungled attempt by Union forces to seize the Cockade City during the opening stage of what would become the extended 1864-65 Petersburg Campaign. If Sean Michael Chick's new book, A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, sounds familiar, your memory is not deceiving you. Potomac Books published the author's full-length study of the very same topic, titled The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, back in 2015. So why a new version with a different publisher? As Chick writes, the new version represents "a chance for me to return to the topic, correct a few errors, provide better maps, and reassess things after more thought and research" (pg. 166). If things go right, a second edition of the earlier work might also be in the cards.

Even though it remains unquestionably the case that federal blundering played a principle role in their failure to carry the Petersburg defenses, recent scholarship gives the Confederates more credit for successfully defending the city during this period. In the judgment of some, the early stages of the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign were General P.G.T. Beauregard's finest hour as a Confederate commander.

From the description: "Petersburg’s small garrison was determined to hold the city. Its department commander, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, realized the danger and shifted as many men as he could spare into the defenses and took the field himself. North of the river, meanwhile, Lee remained unconvinced that Grant had stolen a march on him. The four days of fighting that followed (June 15–18) would determine if the war would end or drag on." "Somehow, the Confederates managed to hold on against the bungled Federal effort and fight them to a standstill. Lee’s army finally began arriving on June 18. Petersburg would hold—for now. Beauregard’s impressive achievement was one of the South’s last strategic victories."

Chick's updated work "provides fresh and renewed attention to one of the most important, fascinating, and yet oddly overlooked battles of the war. Inside are original maps, new research, and dozens of images—many published here for the first time." The book is part of the ECW series, so, of course, it contains a hefty appendix section addressing diverse topics worthy of further conversation. In addition to a driving tour of June 6-18 events, the section offers short pieces on the Battle of Piedmont (and how it affected the war in other parts of the state), the First Michigan Sharpshooters (who participated in the final attack against Petersburg on June 17), a biographical sketch of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and Civil War service, a short history of Petersburg National Battlefield, and a summary of Civil War memory narratives associated with the campaign.

It is also worthy of note that A Grand Opening Squandered "is the first in a series on the Petersburg operation, which will provide readers with a strong introduction to the war’s longest and most complex campaign."

Booknotes: Holding the Political Center in Illinois

New Arrival:

• Holding the Political Center in Illinois: Conservatism and Union on the Brink of the Civil War by Ian T. Iverson (Kent St UP, 2024).

In order to bring the Civil War to a successful conclusion, it was vital that the Lincoln administration retain the support of the country's conservative leaders and voters. Much of the recent literature concentrates on Lincoln's frequently fraught relationships with Border State conservatives who were unconditional in their support for restoring the Union even though most disagreed with the president on numerous matters of military and social policy.

Even more recently, scholars have redirected their efforts toward examining the role and impact of northern conservatives. Published in 2024, Jack Furniss's Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North surveyed gubernatorial politics across five northern states and Kentucky, demonstrating how a cross-party conservative consensus, unwavering in it support for the war, was critical to Union victory. Ian Iverson's Holding the Political Center in Illinois: Conservatism and Union on the Brink of the Civil War uses Lincoln's home state as a laboratory for highlighting the ways in which northern moderates confronted the increasingly extremist politics of the half-decade leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War.

From the description: Holding the Political Center in Illinois "charts the political trajectory of Illinois from the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 through the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Throughout, Iverson focuses on the significance of political moderation in this era of partisan extremes, one in which the very label of “conservative” was contested. Most often framed through the biography of Abraham Lincoln, the turbulence of antebellum-era and political realignment in Illinois has been widely misunderstood, yet the Prairie State’s geographic, economic, and demographic diversity makes it an especially fascinating microcosm through which to examine the politics of self-identified conservatives leading up to the Civil War."

Iverson's study seeks to reshape our understanding of the meaning of conservatism and its core appeal during the late-antebellum years. More from the description: "Most politicians and voters in this period claimed to be conservative and stood opposed to radical secessionists and abolitionists. By positioning “conservatism” as a disposition rather than an ideology, Ian. T. Iverson explores how mainstream politicians in the Democratic, Republican, and Know-Nothing Parties employed a shared interpretation of American liberty, history, and institutions to court voters throughout the sectional crisis."

In Illinois, "this united reaction against secession, which propelled Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas to rally together behind the Union’s banner in April 1861, rose from an unconditional centrist commitment to the Union―the core value defining conservatism." In that way, both Furniss and Iverson agree that upholding the Union over all other considerations was the single-most important unifying factor in defining conservatism.

Booknotes: The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals

New Arrival:

• The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (LSU Press, 2024).

In terms of professional skills honed, lessons learned, friendships (and feuds) fostered, martial reputations burnished (or tainted), and professional careers advanced, the 1846-48 war between the United States and Mexico undoubtedly served as an important developmental stage for many future Civil War generals. Their modern biographies typically include at least one chapter covering the Mexican War years, though it is often the case that the content is primarily descriptive in nature and pretty light on analysis. Expectations are higher for this new academic press-published volume of essays, which is edited by leading Mexican War historian Timothy Johnson (BTW, I heartily recommend his 2007 Mexico City campaign study A Gallant Little Army as well as his earlier Winfield Scott bio). Indeed, one strongly suspects that elements of analysis will be at the forefront of each contribution to The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals.

From the description: "Rather than treat the conflict with a form of historical amnesia, the contributors to this volume argue that the Mexican-American War was a formative experience for the more than three hundred future Civil War generals who served in it as lower-grade officers. The Mexican War was the first combat experience for many of them, a laboratory that equipped a generation of young officers with practical lessons in strategy, tactics, logistics, and interpersonal relationships that they would use later to command forces during the Civil War."

Johnson has assembled a distinguished set of familiar contributors, including a number of major biographers, and the subjects they cover are an assortment of high-ranking generals who all played major roles in the Civil War. At six Union generals [Timothy Smith on Grant, Stephen Engle on Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on McClellan, Jennifer Murray on Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on Thomas] and six Confederate generals [Joseph Glatthaar on Lee, Sean Michael Chick on Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Bragg, Christian Keller on Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on Longstreet], the opposing sides are accorded equal weight. Looking forward to getting into it.

Earl Hess and a Civil War hiatus well earned

Prolific historian Earl Hess informed me long ago that he was always working on multiple book-length publishing projects at the same time. So it was no big surprise, though still no less remarkable a feat of skill and endurance, that for quite a stretch we were getting 1-2 Civil War titles per year from him. That furious pace had to come to an end at some point. My records indicate that it has been nearly two years since his July 22 Battle of Atlanta and Civil War mine warfare books were published. I wish I could find the old master list of projects he had planned. The only unfulfilled one from it that immediately comes to mind is the Jonesboro battle history.

Hess's "break" from Civil War publishing, which would be unremarkable in length for anyone else, does not mean that he hasn't still been hard at work on other things. While I was combing through all the latest university press catalogs, I discovered that Kansas will be publishing Hess's War Underground: A History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare (Feb 2025) next month. Going back to the February 2023 book about Civil War mine warfare, and now this new one, it appears that Hess has developed a heavy interest in the global evolution and context of military technologies and their uses. Indeed, 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." There seems little doubt that there will be at least some coverage of the Civil War in there.

Booknotes: Building a House Divided

New Arrival:

• Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War by Stephen G. Hyslop (OU Press, 2023).

Everyone recognizes that increased sectional tensions over slavery during the 1840s and 1850s went hand in hand with the nation's westward expansion. The Civil War literature typically picks up the matter with the the sudden acquisition of vast territories in the American Southwest upon conclusion of the war with Mexico, but the goal of Stephen Hyslop's Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War is to take readers much further back in time to the very beginning. His main thesis is that "(t)he origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic," and his resulting study consists of "an exploration of how the incipient fissure between the Union’s initial slave states and free states—or those where slaves were gradually being emancipated—lengthened and deepened as the nation advanced westward."

Hyslop frames his narrative around the words and actions of a subset of the period's most important political giants. Both "collectively and individually," the book "focuses on four prominent slaveholding expansionists who were intent on preserving the Union but nonetheless helped build what Lincoln called a house divided: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois..." Others with supporting roles enter into the discussion. "Along with these major figures, in all their conflicts and contradictions, he considers other American expansionists who engaged in and helped extend slavery—among them William Clark, Stephen Austin, and President John Tyler..." The other side of the expansionist equation also comes into play, as the book also examines "examples of principled opposition to the extension of slavery by northerners such as John Quincy Adams and southerners like Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton, who held slaves but placed preserving the Union above extending slavery across the continent."

By taking readers on a long ride "through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras," Hyslop's Building a House Divided adopts a "long view of the path to the Civil War," one that begins with "the critical fault in the nation’s foundation."

2024 Pate Award winner

Congratulations to Neil Chatelain, winner of the 2024 A.M. Pate Award for the "best book providing original research on the Trans-Mississippi sector of the Civil War." His Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America's Mineral Wealth (McFarland, 2024) is well worthy of the recognition.

Named in honor of the late A.M. Pate, Jr., a Fort Worth businessman, museum founder, and philanthropist, the award is handed out yearly by the fine folks of the Fort Worth Civil War Roundtable (of which Pate was a founding member). Go here for the award press release.

As you might guess after reading the linked review in the first paragraph above, I also hold Chatelain's book in high regard. It will very likely make my own Top Ten list for last year, which should be posted on the site sometime this month.

Review - "Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates" by Mark Neels

[Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates by Mark A. Neels (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024). Softcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,194/266. ISBN:978-0-8093-3949-5. $27.95]

Born and raised in Virginia, Edward Bates (1793-1869) moved to Missouri as a young man and quickly became intimately associated with the political establishment and early growth of that western state. Bates's older brother, Frederick, was a prominent figure in St. Louis, and the younger Bates parlayed that advantageous association, along with a thriving legal practice, to gain social and political prominence in the city. His public offices included one term in the U.S. House of Representatives and election to both houses of the state legislature. When Missouri became a state in 1820, Bates was involved in creating its constitution. He was also the state's first attorney general.

Edward Bates was, like Lincoln, a Whig and strong admirer of Henry Clay, and he established himself as a leading figure of the party in Missouri. Bates consistently supported federal funding for internal improvements, was deeply skeptical of national territorial expansionism, and he positioned himself in opposition to Democratic Party giants such as President Andrew Jackson and, closer to home, Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Of course, he's best known as Lincoln's choice for the cabinet post of attorney general of the United States. Largely overshadowed by other Civil War-period cabinet figures such as William Seward, Edwin Stanton, Salmon Chase, and Gideon Welles, six decades have passed since the publication of the most recent full biography, Marvin R. Cain's Lincoln's Attorney General: Edward Bates of Missouri (1965). Providing a much-needed updated perspective on Bates's life and public career is Mark Neels's Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates.

As a leading citizen of St. Louis, one present to witness (and even help shape) that place's growth from frontier post to great city, Bates was a strong believer in the idea that the emerging West, symbolized by St. Louis, would act as a mediating force in resolving the increasingly troubling sectional conflict between North and South. However, the local unity he deemed necessary to that grand project's success did not emerge as anticipated, with the massive mid-century influx of immigrants (primarily Germans) into the city and state commonly resisting cultural assimilation and widely espousing political views more radical than those held by the majority of native-born Missourians.

During the nationwide search for a Republican presidential candidate capable of winning in 1860, Bates's position as an antislavery conservative who had defended slaves in freedom courts on multiple occasions and fully supported congressional oversight over territorial slave policy made him an attractive alternative to divisive frontrunner William Seward. An interesting historical question surrounding Bates's political career is why his 1860 candidacy, which was deemed strong before the convention, foundered so quickly (he ranked last among serious contenders during the first balloting and his support level plunged even further with each one that followed). In seeking to answer why Bates failed to gain traction, Neels offers two suggestions. First, German-American Republicans, strong in Bates's Missouri and a powerful bloc in other places, denounced him as a nativist, citing his support of American Party candidate Millard Fillmore in 1856. To German leaders, that dalliance with nativist figures, however brief, made Bates persona non grata regardless of his own expressed views opposed to nativism. The second factor was strategic in nature. Bates, although he had several influential supporters at the Chicago convention, failed to employ a dedicated campaign manager (someone who could, like David Davis did for Lincoln, creatively promote his boss and hustle votes). It is up to the reader to decide whether those factors offer sufficient explanation, but the analysis is sound.

Throughout his public life, Bates's conservative disposition left him deeply skeptical of the breadth and strength of executive power. As the author reminds us, both Bates and Lincoln condemned what they saw as President Polk conducting the Mexican War without proper congressional approval and oversight, but Bates, though troubled by the prospect, seemed to generally agree with Lincoln that the Civil War was an extraordinary event that required extraordinary measures. The reader gets the impression that that reluctant philosophical concession, combined with Bates's ironclad loyalty to the administration, led the attorney general to support executive action in imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus during the opening months of the war (at least until Congress could convene). Congress later approved Lincoln's course of action, but the matter was not settled until passage of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863. Still, Bates, who witnessed widespread reliance upon military tribunals from the more radical factions of the government along with Lincoln's own willingness to exceed the powers granted him by the act, remained disturbed for the rest of the war by the federal government's continued application of what he saw as arbitrary powers

Unfortunately for historians, Bates's capitol hill entanglements with early-war habeas corpus legal matters left him little opportunity to document his own private thoughts and official views on what was going on in St. Louis and the rest of Missouri in 1861, a critical time that saw the initiation of general hostilities and the state's governor deposed and replaced with Bates's own son-in-law, Hamilton Gamble. Bates was predictably pleased with Gamble's appointment, and both conservatives, according to Neels, envisioned a strong state-led partnership with the federal government.

Although Bates as attorney general was uniquely positioned to offer Lincoln legal advice, it remains unclear the degree to which Lincoln was influenced by the Missourian's opinions, especially where they differed with the president's own. Indeed, many readers of the book will likely find themselves hungering for more details about the personal interactions between the two and the nature/extent of their friendship. Perhaps the source material on the topic is scarce. On matters related to the Confiscation Acts and other controversial war policies and legislation, Lincoln bypassed Bates's concerns (for example, his desire to have civilian courts adjudicate property seizures) and aligned himself fully with the more amenable legal philosophy of respected international law expert Francis Lieber. In regard to the Emancipation Proclamation, the cabinet conservatives—Bates, who had freed his own slaves a decade before, Blair, and Welles—each held doubts about some aspect of it on matters of expediency or practicality. For his part, Bates, who did not believe whites and blacks could peacefully coexist as equal citizens, urged that mandatory colonization be attached to it and treaties forged with foreign countries that agreed to accept freedpeople and respect their fundamental freedoms. Regardless of his personal views, Bates accepted the inevitable but, like he did earlier when opposing certain parts of the Confiscation Acts, still urged Lincoln to task civilian courts, not military officers acting on War Department orders, with oversight over ground-level emancipation. He failed in that after Lincoln repeatedly refused to force the issue with Stanton. According to Neels, what bothered Bates most was that Lincoln's proclamation went forward while still leaving completely unresolved matters of compensation, colonization, and citizenship. Regardless of the lack of wider resolution, the author maintains that Bates made an important incremental contribution to defining citizenship during the postwar period. As outlined in his opinion on the 1862 David Selsey case, Bates's official position was that people of color who were born free in the U.S. were citizens, though he did not believe that that designation should be automatically extended to recently emancipated slaves.

According to Neels, Bates considered his role as attorney general to be distinctly advisory rather than proactive, and, to his credit, he studiously avoided taking part in the types of personal schemes and intrigues that other cabinet secretaries engaged in during Lincoln's presidency. The one departure that Neels cites was Bates's direct correspondence with a newly appointed department commander in Missouri (Major General Edwin Sumner). Bypassing proper channels, Bates offered the general, who gratefully accepted it, personal advice in regard to navigating military-civilian cooperation in the strife-torn state. As those things go, that was a pretty benign intervention.

In the book, Neels frequently mentions how physically and mentally exhausted Bates was by his post's work requirements, and interested readers might wish that the author provided a bit more detailed information about the day to day duties and activities of the attorney general that led to such overwork. For example, Bates's involvement and legal opinion in regard to the Prize Cases (a momentous early-1863 Supreme Court decision assessing the constitutionality of Lincoln's blockade declaration and the blockade's compliance with international law) is summarized in only a few short paragraphs. On the other hand, there are a number of weighty occasions upon which Bates himself provides only limited assistance to future historians. As the author notes, Bates's diary is silent on several events of key historical importance, including the day of the Emancipation Proclamation's signing, leaving posterity to largely speculate on his personal views and motivations.

In early 1864, Bates suffered a stroke and his family urged him to resign and devote himself to recovery, but Bates, loyal to Lincoln to the end, was determined to hang on until the president's reelection. After that was achieved, Bates resigned and returned to Missouri, where, instead of enjoying quiet retirement, he felt compelled by his conservative principles to oppose the increasingly radical late-war political movement in the state. In a series of public letters, Bates earnestly campaigned against the radical legislative convention that, instead of amending the existing state constitution (which Bates played a major part in drafting), sought, in extralegal (even, as critics contended, revolutionary) fashion to discard the document completely and replace it with their own ideologically aligned one. Bates vehemently opposed the proposed constitution's most extreme and punitive articles, especially those related to voting rights and wholesale unseating of public and private offices. The moderate campaign failed and the radical constitution narrowly passed, but Bates, though he would not live to see its full fruits, would have been happy to see the most obnoxious parts of the constitution successfully challenged in the 1870s by a fresh conservative reform alliance (the Liberal Republicans).

In Lincoln's Conservative Advisor, Mark Neels submits a convincing examination of the conservative Whig political beliefs and standards that consistently guided the public career of Edward Bates. Indeed, Neels's study of Bates's Civil War-era public life serves as an excellent lens through which to gain insights into ideological tensions within the nascent Republican Party between its radical and more conservative elements. As outlined in the book, Bates's relationship with slavery was complicated and life-long, and Neels handles his subject's personal and political evolution from slaveholder to antislavery advocate with judicious humanity. Though Bates, when acting as attorney general, did not envision a near future with black equality, he is credited with defining citizenship in a way that smoothed the path toward it. Though it will likely not raise the public profile of Bates to rank alongside the more popular giants of Lincoln's war cabinet, Neels's study nevertheless restores Bates's historical stature as a founding father of sorts for both the state of Missouri itself and its branch of the Whig party. In the end, what emerges as Edward Bates's most enduring public legacy was his relentless championing of due process, one of American society's most cherished civil rights. While the relatively concise nature of Neels's full biography does not offer the kind of monumental reappraisal found in other recent tome-length biographies of Lincoln's cabinet secretaries, it is more than thorough enough to convincingly convey a renewed appreciation of Edward Bates and his own just due as a major nineteenth-century historical and political figure.

2025 Spring/Summer university press catalog offerings

Following up on my earlier comments, I perused the recently released Spring/Summer '25 university press catalogs to see if things are on the upswing since the nadir of sorts that was last fall.

As expected, the top-tier giants (in terms of matching quantity with quality) do not disappoint.

LSU:
• Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War ed. by Schieffler & Stith.
• Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South by Jennifer Gross.
• The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family ed. by Henry McKiven.
• Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 by Damien Shiels.
• Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg by Alexandre Caillot.

UNC:
• The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment by James Marten.
• The Second Manassas Campaign ed. by Janney & Shively.
• 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.
• Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination during the Civil War Era by Alys Beverton.

Seven former regulars still come up empty. Among most of those, that trend has gone on for so many years that I despair of ever hearing from them again. You never know, though.

For the rest, in the onesies category we have:

Georgia:
• Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War by Fialka & Carman. With this and an earlier one from UNC, I wonder if publishing "graphic history" will become an emerging trend among some UPs.

Kansas:
• Lincoln's Last Card: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Case of Command by Richard Ellis.

Kent State:
• More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee by Jonathan Engel. As mentioned before, this one is already out.

Mercer:
• Joshua Hill of Madison: Civil War Unionist and Georgia's First Republican Senator, 1812-1891 by Bradley Rice.

Nebraska:
• Waging War for Freedom with the 54th Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of John W. M. Appleton edited by Jewell & Van Sickle (Potomac Books).

Oklahoma:
• It looks like it's been five years since the last CW title from OU Press's Campaigns and Commanders series (which has a lot of great entries), so the announcement of Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody is exciting. I'm looking forward to learning more about Anderson's life and military career.

TAMU Consortium:
• Still nothing from A&M itself, but consortium member State House Press is putting out the following: Rockets, Tanks and Submarines by Edward Cotham.

Tennessee:
• Decisions at Chancellorsville: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Sarah Bierle.

Overall, I would say that the output numbers situation from 2024 going into 2025 remains pretty much the same. Alabama, Mercer, and Tennessee haven't released their spring catalogs yet, but I've scanned through the preorders listed on the two biggest online book retailers. The Tide have only published one CW title in recent memory so I'm not too sanguine about something popping up later, but we may get more news from the other two.

Booknotes: Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina

New Arrival:

• Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina by D. Michael Thomas (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2025).

The Hidden History series published by The History Press has numerous Civil War-related titles under its belt, the collection of short essays in each volume covering either cities or states. The newest one is Hidden History of Civil War South Carolina. In it, author D. Michael Thomas "has uncovered fifty accounts of lost history pertaining to the state and its men during the war."

From the description: A sampling includes the story of when a "single South Carolinian captured nearly six hundred Union soldiers. See also Lieutenant Alexander Chisolm, who had an extraordinary career [as General Beauregard's ADC]. See the connection between South Carolina College and its Confederate generals. Learn little-known tales about naval operations from the Union and the Confederacy and witness the recovery of the state’s “Gettysburg Dead.”"

The fifty accounts follow a chapter-length overview of the Civil War in South Carolina. The anthology is organized into six sections: "The Early Days," "Leadership," "Blockade of South Carolina's Coast," "Naval Operations 1861-1865," "Soldiers' Stories," and finally "Postwar Years and Remembrance." The text is annotated and supplemented by a scattering photographs and illustrations.

I received a copy early for review consideration. Official release will be in the first week of February.