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.