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.

Booknotes: Unreconstructed

New Arrival:

• Unreconstructed: Slavery and Emancipation on Louisiana's Red River, 1820–1880 by Carin Peller-Semmens (LSU Press, 2025).

With a geographical focus on Louisiana's Red River Valley before, during, and after the Civil War, Unreconstructed centers its attention upon "the constancy of racial subjugation in one of the most violent areas of the South."

The first two chapters of historian Carin Peller-Semmens's study explore the region's high suitability for cotton growing and subsequent antebellum period expansion of plantation agriculture and slavery.

Though the volume is more strongly categorized as Southern History, a pair of chapters address the events of secession and the Civil War years. The impact of emancipation and the heavy presence of Union forces in the region from the mid-war period onward (in particular during the 1864 Red River Campaign) are explored.

The creation and decades-long maintenance of a "durable ideology of mastery" is the binding theme of the book. Peller-Semmens describes post-war political and vigilante violence in the Red River region as "slaveholding recloaked," and those actions, examined in the final chapters, "became effective, calibrated tools of political, social, and economic control during Reconstruction." In the author's view, the white population's "ideology of mastery transcended class, creating a shared ethos steeped in racist behavior that remained crucial to postwar conceptions of white selfhood." The result was a "campaign of persistent violence that chipped away at freedpeople’s experience of freedom" and produced "seismic incidents of racial violence" at Colfax in 1873 (Chapter Six) and Coushatta in 1874 (Chapter Seven).

Coming Soon (October '25 Edition)

Scheduled for OCT 2025¹:
• Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan Jones.
• Haunted by the Civil War: Cultural Testimony in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Shirley Samuels.
• The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family by Thomas Slaughter.
• Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862 by Herdegen & Backus.
• A Forest of Granite: Union Monuments at Gettysburg 1863-1913 by Brendan Harris.


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 - "Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America" by Earl Hess

[Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl J. Hess (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, diagrams, tables. Pages main/total:ix,357/440. ISBN:978-0-8071-8444-8. $49.95]

With the publication of Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America, military historian Earl Hess has now completed a trilogy of works that comprehensively examine the recruitment, organization, training, arming, support, and administration of all three principal combat arms of the Union and Confederate armies. With cavalry's use on the Civil War stage being the most versatile of the trio, Hess's study also broadly delves into the branch's significant impact on the strategic planning, operations, and battlefield tactics of both sides.

As was the case with Civil War Infantry Tactics (2015) and Civil War Field Artillery (2022), Hess begins Civil War Cavalry with a background summary of cavalry's place in the American military experience beginning with the Colonial period. Hess notes that, while both infantry and artillery were deployed in a manner and scale at least somewhat comparable to their European power forebears (and with accompanying doctrinal development), American cavalry, which typically operated in dribs and drabs, was the odd man out.

Hess goes on from there to summarize Civil War cavalry recruitment, organization, and training. In a fashion similar to corresponding sections of his infantry and artillery books, Civil War cavalry's tactical formations and maneuvers are illustrated through contemporary diagrams and explained through fairly detailed descriptions and numerous battlefield examples. That cavalry units and formations were typically deployed in mixed fashion, line and column, is an important part of the discussion. Lines, both mounted and dismounted, were commonly supported by columns of mounted troops to flank and rear, those columns used to quickly counter enemy thrusts, support faltering front lines, and exploit offensive opportunities. One interesting internal debate during the Civil War surrounded the deployment of cavalry lines in single or double rank. Both had their proponents, and, while the former generally won out, the conflict over rank structure was never entirely resolved.

The theme of cavalry being the most versatile of the three combat arms is represented through the myriad of tasks and operations that were assigned to it. These are all described in the book, and include providing couriers for infantry leaders, outpost duties, establishing picket lines, skirmishing, intelligence gathering, screening front and flank, direct combined arms cooperation, raiding, and covering retreats. Another major element of that versatility was the capability of maneuvering and fighting adeptly in both mounted and dismounted fashion, that being a general quality of Civil War cavalry and not a specialized unit-type focus. Of course, the unique defining feature of cavalry on the battlefield was the mounted charge, and Hess outlines the mechanics (and uniquely gruesome aspects) of that brand of face-to-face Civil War combat. Irregular mounted warfare is not given much attention in the book, if at all.

Raiding was a salient part of cavalry's contributions to Civil War military operations, providing a number of its most dramatic moments. However, Hess, though he offers case studies of both successful and unsuccessful raids, joins many critics in holding a generally dim view of the practice's overall effectiveness, explaining that the vast majority of raids had little effect beyond the "local, regional, or tactical level" (pg. 184), with not enough gains to justify often crippling losses in horseflesh that took a long time (many months) to recover. Readers can count the author among those who believe that Civil War cavalry would have, in most cases, been far more usefully deployed in close cooperation with the field armies. However, Hess also raises a good point that the American military had so little institutional experience in the sphere of direct infantry-cavalry cooperation that widespread neglect and missed opportunity in that area is understandable. In the face of that, the allure of the raid was powerful.

Hess also surveys the range of personal weaponry wielded by Civil War cavalrymen. At the risk of overgeneralization, he determines that, for a variety of reasons, Confederate cavalrymen emphasized the pistol in close combat and Union cavalrymen the saber. To some degree, procurement factors were at play (with good sabers always being in very low supply for the Confederate Army) in creating that disparity, but frequent readers of Civil War cavalry battles might also recognize a narrowing in that gap the further east one progresses. In terms of assessing the impact of support weapons, Hess does not believe that horse artillery had much impact on the course and outcome of mounted engagements, suggesting that the guns, even though they were more maneuverable than normal field artillery, could not keep pace with the swirling, up-tempo nature of the cavalry versus cavalry battlefield.

In addition to conveying a strong reminder of the enormous financial expense and logistical backing required to raise, equip, and maintain large mounted forces, Hess's study emphasizes the war's vast rate of horse wastage, which was far greater than that of European army contemporaries. Both sides wrestled with managing it, and Union and Confederate authorities alike are properly chastised in the book for badly overlooking specialized veterinary care. As expected, the author joins every other historian in criticizing the Confederate Army's shortsighted policy of having cavalrymen supply their own mounts and remounts. Interestingly, Hess explains that the Union Army had a similar self-supply program that extended well into the conflict, but it operated in parallel with the government supply and rehabilitation system that quickly proved superior. In his discussion of mounts and their welfare, Hess also directs exceptional attention toward the sentient lives of cavalry horses. Explorations of the emotional bonds forged being horse and rider are common enough in the literature, but the author also raises awareness of the ways in which horses both complied with and pushed back against the rigorous and dangerous demands of the service.

Hess believes that the traditional view that skilled horsemanship was more widespread among southern recruits probably has some merit, but he critically argues that the impact of individual riding skill was minimal within the conventional cavalry service's regimented system of training and battlefield deployment. In his view, the 4+ months of training obtained from competent officers and drillmasters produced troopers well able to perform the tasks that cavalry service demanded of them, individual horsemanship being only of marginal additional benefit in those circumstances. One suspects that individual horsemanship played a much more significant part in irregular mounted warfare, especially among dispersed groups of guerrilla-style fighters.

In comparing the overall effectiveness of Union and Confederate cavalry, Hess is justly hesitant when it comes to elevating any single factor over the great many that are identified and assessed in the text. Nevertheless, his study does form a persuasive argument that "management and administration were the keys" (pg. 333) when it came to explaining the divergent paths of effectiveness taken by Union and Confederate cavalry formations overall as the war progressed. One can be tempted to attribute contrasting arcs of Union ascendancy and Confederate decline primarily to resource differences that widened sharply from the war's midpoint onward, but Hess strongly maintains that leadership and management factors were just as, and arguably even more, significant.

Throughout the war, both sides grappled with how to use infantry, artillery, and cavalry together to best effect. As Hess explains, infantry and artillery developed robust combined arms capability, but fully integrating cavalry, which was far more mobile than either of those, was a constant battle. Hess reduces that struggle to a "dispersion versus concentration" debate that Union forces were much more successful at resolving as the war progressed. It was not a matter of one way being entirely better than the other but, as the author maintains, which side was capable of striking the best balance. In Hess's view, that was clearly the Union side. With its vastly inferior degree of support infrastructure, field logistics, and remount capabilities, Confederate ability to maintain and utilize large concentrations of cavalry effectively waned as the war progressed while that of their foes expanded. Hess sees generals Philip Sheridan in the eastern theater (1864-65) and James Wilson in the western theater (1865) as being the clear standout leadership forces behind the late-war apogee of Civil War cavalry effectiveness through concentration.

With U.S. Army cavalry deployment never again approaching the scale of those large forces that operated during the Civil War, the arm's North American legacy was limited. Hess finds that professional military observers from the European powers collectively condemned the excessive wastage of horses that was prevalent in the American conflict, but there was some appreciation for effective development of dismounted fighting and common interest in strategic raiding. Accompanying that superficial enamorment with deep raids, though, came a belief that such operations had little place in their own European conflicts. One wishes that Hess could have explained what was primarily behind that calculation. Perhaps it was felt that western and central Europe's conflict environment, which was far more populous, urbanized, and developed than North America's, could not offer the scale of open space that Civil War deep raiders thrived upon, especially in the western theater.

As a comprehensive portrait of Civil War cavalry, from origins to postwar legacy, Earl Hess's Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America is an impressive study full of descriptive detail, nuance, reasoned challenges to traditional views, and interesting arguments. Highly recommended.

Book News: "They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory"

When it comes to titles covering Civil War in Indian Territory topics, it is rare enough to get one fresh release in any given month, but getting two puts us in a Halley's Comet realm of frequency. We've already mentioned William Lees's Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield on the site, but another intriguing September '25 study just turned up in Michael J. Manning's They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory.

A pair of survey histories of the Civil War in Indian Territory have been published fairly recently, Mary Jane Warde's When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (2013) and Clint Crowe's Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (2019), but neither of those fine books goes into much depth in their coverages of the various campaigns and battles fought within the borders of today's Oklahoma. It's too bad we can't get a good sample of the main text, but a look at Manning's table of contents (which can be found by clicking the "Read sample" box at the page linked above in bold) looks promising.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of what we do get with Civil War in Indian Territory book publishing has been, to put it kindly, amateurish in nature, but there are good reasons to place our trust in Manning. He spent over three decades with the National Park Service, retiring as chief ranger at Fort Donelson NB. Sharp readers might also recall that he's the author of the Blue & Gray magazine two-part series featuring the Civil War years in Indian Territory. Indeed, portions of this book were previously published in those 2011 and 2015 issues. The main narrative of this book is over 550 8.5"x11" pages, so it's pretty clear that this is not a rehash of the B&G material but something much more detailed in nature.

Booknotes: Counting the Cost of Freedom

New Arrival:

• Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Laury Kleintop (UNC Press, 2025).

With the destruction of slavery during the Civil War, which occurred on a timetable far more instant than gradual in nature and was without compensation to slaveowners, it has been estimated by some that half the American South's wealth disappeared. The attempts to recover that wealth in the form of monetary compensation from the government is the subject of Amanda Laury Kleintop's Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War.

I've often thought that the Lincoln administration's various wartime overtures to the loyal slaveholders of the Border States, offering the prospect of compensation in exchange for voluntary emancipation, would make for an interesting book someday. This is not that. As Kleintop (who refers to loyalist claims as being distinctly different in regard to compensated emancipation) explains in her introduction, her focus is on the Confederate South, though she does necessarily incorporate some Border State politicians and politics into the mix. Between 1864 and the 1870s, Southern compensation advocates cited international precedent and the takings clause of the Constitution's Fifth Amendment to make their case for economic redress.

From the description: "After the Confederacy’s defeat, white Southerners demanded federal compensation for the financial value of formerly enslaved people and fought for other policies that would recognize abolition’s costs during Reconstruction. As Amanda Laury Kleintop shows, their persistence eventually led to the creation of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which abolished the right to profit from property in people."

Kleintop's narrative, which involves periods before, during, and after the Civil War, unfolds in chronological order. The first chapter "surveys the antebellum arguments and precedents for compensated emancipation in US law and the larger Atlantic world." Centering on the representative roles of Frederick Douglas, Kentucky senator Garrett Davis, President Lincoln, and slaveholding Louisiana loyalists, legalities surrounding wartime emancipation are addressed in Chapter 2. The following chapter explains the objections raised by former Confederates over the constitutional legality of uncompensated emancipation, while the congressional response (specifically the Fourteenth Amendment's Section 4) is detailed in Chapter 5. Former slaveowners continued to press for compensation well into the postwar period, and the final two chapters of Kleintop's study trace their ultimately fruitless campaign. By the author's interpretation of events, those efforts only stopped after a major strategic political shift occurred, the new attitude (expressed in parallel with southern claims that matters associated with slavery were not the leading cause for secession) being that compensation was "neither wanted nor needed" (pp. 9-10).

Review - "Reckless in Their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War" by Leigh Goggin

[Reckless in their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War by Leigh S. Goggin (Fontaine Press, 2025). Softcover, 12 maps, bibliography, endnotes, index. Pages main/total:vi,367/447. ISBN:978-0-9924658-7-2 $27.99]

Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston was tasked with handling arguably the most difficult situation faced by any major Civil War department commander. Appointed to head the Confederate Army's Department No. 2 on September 10, 1861, just after the Kentucky buffer zone was erased (instantly altering the strategic situation in the West), Johnston had to protect a vast front stretching from the Arkansas border with Indian Territory all the way to the wilderness invasion routes through eastern Kentucky. Worse, he had to do it without the benefit of having anything like the resources in munitions, manpower, and quality subordinate leaders needed in order to reasonably secure such a vast forward line of defense. Over the second half of Johnston's nearly seven-month tenure in that posting, which ended with the general's demise at Shiloh on April 6, 1862, the Confederate position in the West spiraled into unmitigated disaster. From then to today, many have principally blamed Johnston's own shortcomings for the catastrophic defeats of early 1862 and the permanent loss of key parts of Tennessee, including the state's two largest and most important cities, Memphis and Nashville. Others have suggested that Johnston, while he certainly made his share of mistakes just like every other early-war commander rushed into unprecedented realms of responsibility, did his best in the face of an already enormous task subsequently rendered impossible by grossly insufficient government support. Contributing to the former opinion group are the authors of many classic works underpinning the western theater historiography. Assessing the merits of their most damning assessments of Johnston's leadership is the primary focus of Leigh Goggin's Reckless in their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War.

A helpful refresher, Goggin's introductory review of the divided historiography related to Johnston's generalship reveals a great many critics whose views are subsequently contested in the book. Negative portrayals of Johnston's leadership and decision-making emerged during the early-modern period of Civil War scholarship through major works from influential writers such as Stanley Horn [The Army of Tennessee (1941)], Beauregard biographer T. Harry Williams, and Thomas Connelly (Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862 (1967)]. Though somewhat counterbalanced by a sympathetic biography from Johnston's own son as well as Charles Roland's classic Soldier of Three Republics, the latter originally published in 1964, works strongly critical of Johnston continued to emerge throughout the twentieth century and through to the present. While Connelly's collection of "reckless statements" is by far the most frequent target of Goggin's determined challenge, the views of many others, among them B.F. Cooling, Larry Daniel, Kendall Gott, Larry Daniel, and Timothy Smith, are also scrutinized in the text.

The volume's structure discards a more traditional narrative format in favor of presenting the material as a series of chapters addressing questions (23 in total) directly associated with common criticisms of Johnston's generalship found in the literature. Going into them all is beyond the scope of a review, but a selection from the list will be discussed below. Generally speaking, each chapter begins with an introductory section that provides relevant historical background and shares critical statements and arguments from the published historiography that have shaped both popular and scholarly views of how well, or how badly, Johnston performed. That is followed by the author's hard-charging, often multi-layered, defense of Johnston's judgment and actions. The research behind them primarily based on the O.R., newspapers, and key works from the secondary literature, Goggin's arguments acknowledge some of Johnston's missteps, but their primary aim is, as the book's subtitle suggests, to convince readers that most traditional criticisms of Johnston's generalship are either greatly exaggerated or outright false (with Connelly's views and opinions forming the great preponderance of the latter).

Lest one think Goggin's approach is largely an attempt at making hay against heavily dated interpretation that has already been significantly revised, it also takes on more recent analysis, including that of one of the most respected scholars of Johnston's campaigns, Timothy Smith. Goggin's alternative to Smith's depiction of Johnston's military management style as being too meek and passive has merit, but his criticism of Smith's theory describing how Johnston's behavioral traits informed his Civil War military judgment produces some awkward moments. It is reasonable to be skeptical of historians, no matter how well informed, formulating psychological profiles of long-dead figures, but Goggin introduces some unnecessary confusion into his analysis of the shortcomings of Smith's approach. Early on, Goggin acknowledges the full extent of Smith's theory as developed in that author's 2023 study The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West. Smith's thesis posits that Johnston processed his most significant life choices through in-depth reflection that frequently failed to pay off due to misfortune or misjudgment. In response to personal or financial disaster, Johnston then attempted to remedy the impact of those losses through acts of desperate risk-taking. Throughout the body of the book, and strikingly in the epilogue chapter (see pages 364-65), the important second part of Smith's theoretical construct of Johnston's personality and behavior patterns is seemingly passed over in favor of focusing only on the first part (how Johnston's overly contemplative "chess player" approach caused him to lose control of fluid military situations during critical times when the "poker-style game of war" needed to be played). While Goggin thoughtfully counters Smith's characterization by outlining some of the arguably bold moves that Johnston made earlier on in his tenure, the author inexplicably fails to credit Smith's behavioral theory for encompassing the boldest card-playing move of them all, the winner-take-all counterstrike at Pittsburg Landing. This inconsistent characterization of Smith's psychological profile of Johnston muddies the stronger elements of the author's case against what he terms Smith's "unusual metaphor" for explaining Johnston's mindset and actions.

In Chapter 6 ["Why did Johnston assume command of the Central Kentucky Army?"], a major defense of Johnston is Goggin's insistence that the Bowling Green high command (generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and William J. Hardee) did not possess the willingness and self-confidence necessary for independent command, which required Johnston's personal presence there whether he preferred it or not. The author's case has its strong points, but one might counterargue that part of the job of a good theater or army commander is to use his leadership and motivational skills to instill belief and confidence into wavering subordinates. In that scenario, allowing supposed weakness from Hardee and Buckner, rather than strategic/operational considerations, to determine where the theater commander placed his headquarters does not reflect well on Johnston. Goggin's overall case, reinforced at a number of places in the book, for Johnston assuming personal command at Bowling Green and remaining there throughout the twin rivers crisis is probably the best supported one in print. Some, even perhaps most, will still find it ultimately unconvincing, but the author does make it very difficult for critics of Johnston to maintain their blanket condemnation.

Aside from assailing Johnston's alleged obsession with Bowling Green and the hovering Union threat there leading him to improperly neglect the Tennessee and Cumberland river defenses, critics have also alleged that Johnston, once Union army and naval forces descended in force upon Fort Henry, erred badly in not rushing to the twin rivers front to lead his forces in person against Grant. In Chapter 12 ["Why did Johnston delegate the defense of the Cumberland River to Floyd?"], Goggin strongly argues that Johnston had valid, if not entirely compelling, reasons to remain at Bowling Green, trusting Donelson affairs to generals John Floyd (whose incompetence was not fully apparent at the time), Gideon Pillow, and newly arrived Buckner. The author offers a vigorous defense of what led Johnston to believe that Union general Don Carlos Buell's army in Kentucky was the theater's principal threat, but the fact remains that it was the twin rivers front where Union forces were actively advancing and engaging with his defensive line. What Johnston might have been able to achieve beyond saving the forces there from disgraceful surrender is open to debate, but it still seems reasonable to suggest that Johnston's proper place was to go where the actual, as opposed to threatened, fighting was located.

Johnston has also been criticized for not developing an adequate fallback plan for handling departmental defense once the outer cordon was breached. In Chapter 16 ["Was Johnston aware of the lack of fortifications at Nashville?"], Goggin does effectively defend Johnston against claims that he was caught entirely off guard by Nashville's relatively defenseless condition. As Goggin explains, the lack of fortification progress at Nashville, and the slow pace of fort development earlier on the twin rivers, was a product of dangerous regional apathy that led to insufficient resources, labor, and urgency for those projects. While all of that is true, it is also the case that it is not enough for a commander to order that those places be fortified but to ensure that such directives were followed. Sure, there were a great many obstacles in his way, but one doesn't get the impression that Johnston, from his static headquarters at Bowling Green, always did his utmost to use his departmental powers to inject impetus into necessary defense work projects located at other points under his command.

Of course, every reader of this book will eagerly anticipate questions about Shiloh. Three chapters ["Did Johnston approve the Battle Plan?,"Was Johnston or Beauregard in command of the Army of the Mississippi?," and "Did Johnston or Beauregard direct the battle of Shiloh?"] address neverending planning and leadership debates related to that great western battle. Documentation is sparse, but the author builds a strong circumstantial case that Johnston was well aware of, and satisfied with (he did nothing to alter it), P.G.T. Beauregard's battle plan. On the latter two questions, command authority was clear cut (Johnston was in charge, and Beauregard was his second in command), and Goggin cites enough critical mid-battle decisions on Johnston's part to counter assertions that he left general direction of the battle to Beauregard, who, in Goggin's view, while still ill "performed well at the rear of the army, collecting reports from the front lines, reforming stragglers, and dispatching inactive units back to the front" (pg. 350). How well the author defends the wisdom behind the Confederate attack plan, one of the most reviled battle line arrangements of any major Civil War battle, is less convincing, though still interesting. Goggin contends that the Army of the Mississippi's deployment, with each corps stacked one behind the other rather than side by side (left, center, and right) with a reserve, was not only reasonable given terrain considerations (and incorrect assumptions conveyed through poor maps) but was also deemed best for masking the army's strength (making it appear larger than it was to the enemy) and providing the means of rapid movement necessary for maintaining surprise. The contention that any formation would have immediately broken up raw troops deployed in the heavily wooded terrain, making the stacked corps formation materially no worse than any other, is plausible to a degree. Weaker is the idea that the stacked formation was advantageous in that each line would have the benefit of known units on either side of it all along the line. This supposed advantage disappears, though, when the need arises to extend the flanks of the army's front line or bring up support directly from the rear, all of which would involve close cooperation with unfamiliar leaders and units (tactical challenges that the other corps deployment plan would have mitigated). At the very least, Goggin's analysis of the army deployment plan invites readers to meaningfully reconsider what was known and unknown, from the Confederate leadership's perspective, about the battlefield terrain, the location of the enemy's camps, and the facing of the enemy's defensive front.

The level of persuasiveness spread among the great many positions that Leigh Goggin assumes in defense of Albert Sidney Johnston's brief but event-filled Civil War record, sampled in the above paragraphs, runs the gamut. However, the preponderance of answers to the questions raised by each chapter heading exhibit a degree of thoughtfulness and evidential rigor that make them formidable counterpoints to a great many firmly established views and interpretations. Even if you don't agree with the author's ultimate conclusion that Johnston "was a competent, resourceful, and responsive commander, simply thwarted by the intractable complexities of the military environment be found himself in" (pg. 366), his arguments, individually and collectively, are a force to be reckoned with. A key takeaway message might be that even though Johnston may not have made the best decisions, especially in hindsight, most are justifiable enough to at the very least effectively defend Johnston against charges of gross incompetence.

In the end, Reckless in Their Statements adds fuel to the understanding, popular among many, that no one could have succeeded in Johnston's position, and Goggin certainly supports the idea that the "multitude of geographic, meteorologic, military, political, logistic, and personnel factors beyond his control" made Johnston's task impossible (pg. 365). With that many roadblocks to any foreseeable path to success, one might reasonably conclude that only the most profound luck could have avoided the collapse of the Confederacy's western defense cordon. At the same time, though, one also cannot help but ponder how many another generals placed in the very same position might have still failed but failed less spectacularly on the battlefield and less disastrously to Confederate fortunes in the West than Johnston did.

Booknotes: The Sewards of New York

New Arrival:

• The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family by Thomas P. Slaughter (Cornell UP, 2025).

This work represents yet another example of a recently uncovered cache of letters affording us the ability to shed new light on already well-documented figures from our Civil War-era past. In this case, it is roughly 4,000 letters that were previously "buried" within William Henry Seward's massive surviving collection of public correspondence (estimated at 350,000 pages!). These recent discoveries, the product of a decade of effort from University of Rochester students and library staff, helped Thomas Slaughter recover "the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War."

Of course, a major part of Slaughter's The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family is devoted to William Henry Seward. From the description: "William Henry Seward, the family's most prominent member, was a state senator, governor, US senator, and secretary of state. Henry, as his family knew him, was often absent from their Auburn, NY, home, in Albany or Washington, DC, and so remained connected to the family through the long letters numbering in the thousands that they exchanged. These writings reveal Henry as a son, brother, husband, and father, as much as they show him as a politician and statesman."

That said, Slaughter positions another member of the family at the forefront of his narrative. Henry Seward's wife, Frances, "is the hub around which this family story revolves." In a wider sense, the author "explores the extended Auburn family during a half century of profound change in American homes, marriage, and childrearing."

In sum, this study "paints a rich portrait of an extraordinary family that played a key role in nineteenth-century New York and national politics." In getting there, the volume examines four generations of Millers and Sewards from 1817 to 1860. Slaughter presents their story in a way that "takes us behind the curtain of the early Victorian era's private sphere. He, and the Sewards in their own words, portray life as it was lived by the influential and powerful, but also by many who lived more private lives that are now lost to us."

Booknotes: Cassius Marcellus Clay

New Arrival:

• Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform by Anne E. Marshall (UNC Press, 2025).

From the description: "The nineteenth-century Kentucky antislavery reformer Cassius Marcellus Clay is generally remembered as a knife-wielding rabble-rouser who both inspired and enraged his contemporaries. Clay brawled with opponents while stumping for state constitutional changes to curtail the slave trade. He famously deployed cannons to protect the office of the antislavery newspaper [the True American] he founded in Lexington. Despite attempts on his life, he helped found the national Republican party and positioned himself as a staunch border state ally of Abraham Lincoln."

Clay's political support for Lincoln was rewarded with an appointment as US ambassador to Russia, a major part of that role being "to ensure that European allies would not recognize the Confederacy." Sandwiched between his important diplomatic work in St. Petersburg was a relatively brief interlude as a Union general that was, at least by my recollection, pretty unremarkable.

Of course, Cassius M. Clay is also widely remembered for being the birth name of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (who famously rejected the family name his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., passed down to him).

According to Clay's new biographer, historian Anne Marshall, the reformer's abolitionist reputation is largely misplaced. More from the description: "Though often misremembered as an abolitionist, Clay was like many Americans of his time: interested in a gradual end to slavery but largely on grounds that the institution limited whites' ability to profit from free labor and the South’s opportunity for economic advancement. In the end, Clay’s political positions were far more about protecting members of his own class than advancing the cause of Black freedom."

In Marshall's view, Clay was "emblematic rather than exceptional," and her study Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform "reveals Cassius Clay as he was: colorful, yes, but in many ways typical of white Americans who disliked slavery in principle but remained comfortable accommodating it."

Booknotes: If I Can Get Home This Fall

New Arrival:

• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander (Potomac Bks, 2025).

Tyler Anderson's If I Can Get Home This Fall traces the Civil War experiences of Dan Mason, an enlisted man of Company D in the 6th Vermont (with their comrades of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th regiments, part of the celebrated First Vermont Brigade) who later served as a commissioned officer (a captain) with the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. Composed primarily of former slaves from Maryland, the 19th USCI began active service with the Ninth Corps in the spring of 1864, participating in the Overland and Richmond-Petersburg campaigns before transfer to the Fifteenth Corps and subsequent postwar duties in Texas.

From the description: "Drawing on Mason’s letters home to his fiancé, Harriet Clark, and on other historical records, Tyler Alexander provides a compelling account of the human cost of war and offers insight about the experiences and attitudes of those who witnessed war firsthand, including enlisted troops and officers, men and women, Democrats and Republicans, and white and Black Americans."

In Alexander's words, Mason's letters are "elegant, candid, uncensored, graphic, humorous, full of romantic longing and relationship strife, and offer a good deal of insight into the factors that compelled so many off to war and sustained them throughout" (pg. xiv). Much of the original text for Mason's correspondence along with other materials are incorporated into the narrative in large blocks.

According to Alexander, Mason's letters reveal a soldier motivated by both preservation of the Union and "antislavery convictions." More: If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War "examines how the most controversial issues of the war—emancipation, the draft, military strategy, the arming of Black troops, and Reconstruction policy—were viewed in real time by the participants who found themselves engulfed in the maelstrom of war, particularly those from a strongly anti-slavery farming community in the hills of northeast Vermont." Mason "believed in making soldiers of Black Americans," and took pride in the role he played in fostering that transformation.

Book News: Shattered Courage

How Civil War soldiers reacted to battlefield combat has always been a part of prolific military historian Earl Hess's wide range of scholarly interests. His 1997 study The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat heavily influenced our modern understanding of the ways in which Civil War soldiers experienced fighting and learned to cope with its many physical and psychological horrors and trials.

Next year's Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War (UP of Kansas, March 2026) marks a return to that area of study with a major examination of "those men who tried but failed to meet the test of battle in the Civil War." Soldier behaviors and reactions ranging from courage and cowardice to complete surrender have received noteworthy attention in a number of recent works, among them those from Lesley Gordon, David Silkenat, and the late Peter Carmichael, but Hess's upcoming volume aims to provide "the first comprehensive account of soldiers who refused to fight in the midst of combat."

Employing groundbreaking statistical analysis and "decades of research," Hess "charts the limits on combat morale" and is "the first historian to identify combat defaulters from personal accounts and official reports and to then examine their service records to discover what happened to them in the military system." The author's work also traces how both comrades and the army system in general reacted to and dealt with the phenomenon. I have to admit that I've never come across the term "combat defaulter" before (perhaps Hess coined it himself). Such men are described as being "(f)ar from heroes but not deserters," with most willing to try again the test of combat.

Review - "American Civil War Amphibious Tactics" by Ron Field

[American Civil War Amphibious Tactics (Elite, 262) by Ron Field, illustrated by Steve Noon (Osprey Publishing, 2025). Softcover, photos, illustrations, original color art, notes, select bibliography, index. Pp. 64. ISBN:978-1-4728-6316-4. $21]

Everyone can agree with the proposition that U.S. Army-Navy combined operations conducted along both the southern coastline and the continent's strategic inland waterways contributed mightily to Union victory during the Civil War. That significance makes the topic highly appropriate for inclusion in Osprey Publishing's Elite series, which traces "(t)he history of military forces, artifacts, personalities and techniques of warfare." All of those elements are prominently displayed in Ron Field's American Civil War Amphibious Tactics.

Of course, Civil War amphibious operations collectively constitute a very broad topic that can only be selectively addressed in a 64-page study. Field, a frequent Osprey contributor, nevertheless offers readers of all backgrounds a consistently interesting short narrative that touches upon a number of important campaigns and smaller operations. Along the way, Field's writing identifies a number of key military and civilian figures involved as well as specialized equipment and methodologies employed during troop landings on beaches and riverbanks. Given the vast disparity between the war's opposing sides when it came to their respective amphibious capabilities, it's understandable that the topic is addressed entirely from the Union perspective within this limited space, but it is nevertheless the case that Confederate-led combined operations efforts, which did achieve some noteworthy successes during the war, merit at least some recognition.

Amphibious operations summarized in the text include a selection of early-war events in eastern North Carolina between initial Union success at Hatteras Inlet in August 1861 and the fall of New Bern in March 1862. Smaller inland incursions that followed Union occupation of most of North Carolina's coastline are additionally described, those 1862-64 events serving as lenses through which to discuss the presence and actions of lesser-known specialized units such as the First New York Marine Artillery and the Naval Battalion of the 13th New York Heavy Artillery. Though most of the book focuses on coastal operations, the volume also touches upon the Mississippi Marine Brigade's raiding and counter-guerrilla activities in the Mississippi River Valley from 1862-64. Once it became clear that remaining heavily fortified cities and harbors in North and South Carolina could not be captured by direct naval attack alone (that recognition following the dismal failure of the grand ironclad assault on Charleston Harbor in April 1863), a Fleet Brigade of sailors and marines was formed to support shore attacks. Participation in the failed boat assault against Fort Sumter on September 8, 1863 and the campaign against Fort Fisher (December 1864-January 1865) are recounted in the book as examples of that formation's activities.

The above narrative takes pains to direct attention (within the main text as well as in photos and their captions) toward the experiences and signal achievements of numerous officers and men who might otherwise have received little exposure in the literature. It is also worthy of note that the text is accompanied by copious embedded source notes, that very welcome feature being a new, or at least relatively recent, development among Osprey titles (at least in this reviewer's admittedly limited sampling). Steve Noon's color artwork consists of vivid depictions of amphibious warfare action scenes and combat imagery as well as uniform and equipment details.

A selection of essential ships, weaponry, and equipment are featured in the book. The contributions of Norman Wiard designs, which include a multi-use 12-lb. boat howitzer that could be flexibly attached to a launch and a shallow-draft double-ender troop transport vessel (likely modeled after existing ferry boat designs) specially created for amphibious operations, are prominently displayed at many different places in the book. Methods for getting fighting men from their transports to the shore (obviously a key step in all amphibious warfare endeavors) are also described, one being the stringing together of a long line of troop-loaded surfboats behind a swift-moving steamship, the angular momentum created upon casting off the tow line helping carry the small boats to the target beach at speed.

This volume, a fine addition to Osprey Publishing's Elite series, provides readers of all backgrounds a strong introductory-level window into Union amphibious landing and support operations during the Civil War.

Coming Soon (September '25 Edition)

Scheduled for SEPT 2025¹:
• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander.
• The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War by Lindsay Privette.
• After the Fire: Richmond in Defeat by Nelson Lankford.
• Radical of Radicals: Austin Blair, Civil War Governor - In His Own Words ed. by Jack Dempsey.
• Unreconstructed: Slavery and Emancipation on Louisiana's Red River, 1820–1880 by Carin Peller-Semmens.
• Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield by William Lees.
• Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867 by Erika Pani.
• Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform by Anne Marshall.
• John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk.
• Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean.
• The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War by Tom Zoellner.
• General Philip H. Sheridan: Life, War, and Memory by Jonathan Noyalas.
• Recollections of the Civil War: The life of a soldier in the Ohio 2nd Volunteer Cavalry - 1861-1865 by Polhamus, ed. by Leickly.
• The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864 by David Powell.

Comments: August has been another one of those cobwebs in the mailbox months (thus the less than normal site activity), but September looks to be a pretty solid rebound. There are a number of titles in there that I've been very much looking forward to reading.

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.