Coming Soon (November '25 Edition)

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

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

Booknotes: Fighting with the Past

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Thoughts That Burned

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Decisions at Chancellorsville

New Arrival:

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

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

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

Booknotes: Torn Asunder

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Opening Manassas

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Honey Springs, Oklahoma

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Haunted by the Civil War

New Arrival:

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

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

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

Booknotes: Rockets, Tanks and Submarines

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

Book News in the Halloween Spirit: Haunted by Memory

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

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

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

Booknotes: The Surgeon's Battle

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twenty years of CWBA!

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

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

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

Booknotes: Fremont's 100 Days

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

Book News: Desert Empire

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

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

Book News: Civil War Camps and Soldier Health

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

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

Booknotes: Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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

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

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