Review - "Confederate General D.H. Hill: A Military Life" by Chris Hartley

[Confederate General D.H. Hill: A Military Life by Chris J. Hartley (Savas Beatie, 2026). Hardcover, 20 maps, photos, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xx,500/556. ISBN:978-1-61121-759-9. $39.95]

For a very well-known Civil War officer of his rank and breadth of service encompassing key campaigns fought in both the eastern and western theaters, Confederate general Daniel Harvey Hill has been curiously neglected in the biographical literature. The best-known published work, Hal Bridges's Centennial-era Lee's Maverick General (its 1991 reprint a staple of 1990s and early 2000s brick and mortar bookstore shelves), is less of a biography and more a focused military study of Hill's controversial Civil War career. Exhibiting deep research in primary sources (including manuscript holdings from depositories located all across the country), fully comprehensive coverage of its subject, and insightful critical analysis, Chris Hartley's Confederate General D.H. Hill: A Military Life is clearly the class of the slim pickings that have followed in Bridges's footsteps. Its publication fills a major gap in Civil War biography.

With Hill being most closely associated with the state of North Carolina, it is easy to forget that he was actually a native South Carolinian. Though it provides a cradle to grave account of Hill's life, Hartley's biography is structured most like the traditional Civil War military biography. Six chapters (together approaching nearly one-hundred pages) address Hill's early life, religious upbringing and practices, West Point and Mexican War experiences (the latter supplementing the excellent recent publication of Hill's Mexican War diary edited by historians Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes and Timothy Johnson), and his successful antebellum career in education and college administration. The book's final chapter summarizes Hill's postwar private life and public activities. In between those sections, and comprising the bulk of the volume, is a comprehensive and highly detailed description and analysis of Hill's eventful Civil War career.

Hill started the war at the head of the First North Carolina infantry regiment, and his defensive victory on June 10, 1861 at Big Bethel made him one of the Confederacy's first war heroes. Though his performance on the lower Peninsula at Williamsburg in 1862 was suspect, Hartley argues that Hill was the only Confederate division commander who truly distinguished himself at Seven Pines (though the bar was set pretty low during that battle!). While imperfect and laboring under difficult conditions, Hill's troop management skills there marked him as a leader perhaps destined for higher command responsibilities, though he still needed to earn the approval of new Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee.

In the author's opinion, Hill was one of the brighter stars of the Gaines's Mill bloodbath that turned the tide during the Seven Days, and he advanced aggressively at Malvern Hill (his division suffering the highest casualties in Lee's army) even though he opposed the assault. Lee subsequently tabbed Hill with interdicting the now cowering Army of the Potomac's James River supply line, but Lee was disappointed in the results. In Hartley's view, that was unfair given Union naval strength on the river and the limited resources placed at Hill's disposal. The author could find no concrete evidence explaining why Hill was given the responsibility for negotiating a POW exchange system with the U.S. (the result being the so-called Dix-Hill Cartel), but he does note that Lee was among those not satisfied with the final agreement. Hill was then sent to head the Department of North Carolina, where his defensive arrangements there met with general approval.

Circumstances and blame surrounding the loss of Special Orders No. 191 during the 1862 Maryland Campaign (and the intelligence coup it provided to approaching Union forces) have been debated at length in the literature (most recently by Alexander Rossino). Hartley sits firmly among those, including Rossino, who hold Hill personally blameless in the matter, the general's headquarters having never received the original copy of the order that was later found by Union soldiers wrapped around cigars. Nevertheless, claims by critics that he lost the order would dog Hill for the rest of his life. Hill's dispositions at South Mountain have also come under criticism then and now, but Hartley persuasively contends that Hill did reasonably well given the large area he was assigned to defend with the limited forces at hand and how badly he was let down by cavalry reconnaissance tasked with tracking McClellan's surprisingly rapid progress from the east. In defending his assigned sector of the Antietam battlefield, what would become known as the Bloody Lane, Hill was once again active everywhere along his line. Even after overwhelming Union pressure and a tragic misunderstanding on the flank led to the rout of Hill's command, the general personally organized ad-hoc groups of men and guns that restored enough of a battle line at the rear to prevent the complete collapse of the Confederate center.

His division's manpower and officer corps talent gutted during the Maryland Campaign, Hill was fortunate to get a bit of a break during the Battle of Fredericksburg, where his position as Stonewall Jackson's reserve division resulted in few casualties. Nevertheless, Hill's health problems (including a spine condition of unknown origin) progressed to such an extent that he was determined to resign from the army. He also was frustrated by what he deemed constant mistreatment from the army and the government (as he did throughout his Civil War career, he had taken up feuding with Richmond during this time).

As the author notes on more than one occasion in the book, Hill was never really a great admirer of Robert E. Lee, remaining a Joe Johnston man through to the end. For his part, Lee had misgivings about Hill but still valued his services. Citing Lee's efforts to keep the dispirited Hill with the Army of Northern Virginia, Hartley adamantly opposes those writers and historians who continue to assert that Lee, tired of his talented but troublesome subordinate, got rid of Hill. He also completely discounts alleged friction with brother-in-law Stonewall Jackson having anything to do with Hill's determination to leave the service.

Eventually, Hill was convinced to remain in uniform, and he was sent to North Carolina, an agreeable posting, to command troops in that state. There, Hill had enough manpower to threaten Union coastal enclaves but didn't possess the artillery weight and strength to overcome the heavily fortified defenders, who were also backed by dominating naval firepower. True to his carping nature, Hill also involved himself in unseemly bickering with Lee over troop transfers to Virginia, made worse by his departmental intelligence failures that misinterpreted enemy strength. As Lee's army prepared for its move north, Hill's departmental responsibilities were expanded, and the highlight from the period was his halting of a Union offensive up the Virginia Peninsula that coincided with the Gettysburg Campaign. That particular operation was buried in obscurity until the recent publication of Hampton Newsome's exhaustive study. Both Newsome and Hartley credit Hill with a strong performance.

Soon after, Hill was finally promoted to lieutenant general and was sent out West to replace William J. Hardee as a corps commander in Braxton Bragg's star-crossed Army of Tennessee, which had fallen back from Middle Tennessee to Chattanooga. Before the war, Hill and Bragg maintained a cordial relationship, but renewal of their acquaintance got off to a bad start. Moody and distressed after a long retreat and cognizant of how much opposition there was to his leadership, Bragg was not receptive to Hill's advice, while Hill also fell under the influence of the anti-Bragg clique within the army. Accelerating the crumbling of their relationship and mutual respect was the McLemore's Cove debacle (even though Thomas Hindman was the general principally blamed by Bragg for the missed opportunity there). Hill was accused of not following Bragg's orders even though they were discretionary and impractical. Hartley does not sugarcoat Hill's role at Chickamauga, deeming September 20, 1863 his worst day as a Civil War general. While not finding Hill as culpable as Bragg and wing commander Leonidas Polk when it came to the horrific high command miscommunication that negatively shaped the expected attack on the 20th, Hartley does argue that Hill did little in his power to improve the situation on his own end. Hill's midnight ride that resulted in his getting lost and absent from his headquarters was ill-advised and ill-timed (to say the least). Denied the opportunity and permission to deploy his corps as he wished, Hill, instead of focusing on developing the best plan that could be made under the circumstances and inspiring his subordinates, instead sulked and bickered with his fellow officers. The fighting on the Confederate right was heavily delayed, poorly planned, and badly coordinated, resulting in a great many unnecessary casualties and a lesser overall Confederate battlefield victory than perhaps could and should have been achieved. Though not chiefly responsible, Hill undeniably played a part in that.

In the Army of Tennessee high command imbroglio that erupted in the aftermath of the "barren" Confederate victory at Chickamauga, President Davis sustained Bragg, an act that necessitated a shake-up among the army's highest-ranking subordinate officers. Somewhat predictably, Bragg's vengeful axe fell on Hill's neck. Objectively speaking, no one can argue today that Hill was the ringleader of the anti-Bragg cabal, and the book convincingly shows that Bragg's claims that Hill failed to follow orders and was the main driving force behind the delayed attack on the 20th lack merit. Nevertheless, as Hartley suggests, the natural consequence of his well-earned reputation as a disruptive force within the army—combined with a lack of political allies powerful enough to protect him—made Hill highly vulnerable and an easy target for selection as the odd man out. During his brief stint with the Army of Tennessee, Hill was in many ways his own worst enemy, but he also was a victim of that army's seemingly irredeemable high command dysfunction.

Another victim of Hill's dismissal was confirmation of his promotion to lieutenant general, which ended up being permanently shelved. Contrary to his claims that he was willing to serve in whatever capacity was required, the reversion to his previous rank of major general rankled Hill to no end along with the Davis administration's refusal to issue an official document of support. Nevertheless, Hill still had friends within the army, and P.G.T. Beauregard utilized his services as a kind of eastern theater mobile fixer. Hartley documents several occasions where Hill provided important behind the scenes service (ex. in arranging the defenses of Lynchburg, Virginia before the city was attacked in 1864). By the spring of 1865, Hill's Civil War career had come full circle, and he ended the war leading major parts of the skeletal remains of Confederate forces in North Carolina at Wise's Forks and Bentonville.

After the war ended, Hill quickly requested a pardon and sought to reestablish a productive civilian life, his overall attitude a mixture of unreconstructed and reconciliationist. He did a lot of writing and launched a respected magazine. He also returned to the education field, serving as president of colleges in Arkansas and Georgia. His Battles and Leaders articles were his most prominent contributions to revisiting and refighting his Civil War career on the published page.

Hartley's study offers readers a well-balanced assessment of D.H. Hill's skills and weaknesses as a military commander, and the author's treatment of the major controversies surrounding Hill's Civil War service is evenhanded and convincing. As far as Hill's better qualities as battlefield commander, Hartley rates Hill a bold and aggressive fighter. He awards the general high marks for prioritizing reconnaissance (which was often conducted personally) and for being highly active and always visible to his men. Critiques include a tendency to feed his units into battle piecemeal (a common enough complaint about Civil War generals, the vast majority of whom were novices when it came to handling large numbers of men). Hill's legendarily abrasive and constantly complaining personality also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, creating enemies among important people. Though he could be effusive in his praise, Hill often used insultingly charged language in his frequent accusations leveled against fellow officers and units he felt underperformed in his presence.

Hill freely aired criticisms of army and civilian leadership as early in his military career as 1846, and most historians see that trait as one highly damaging to his career and professional relationships. Hartley accepts that, but he also sees Hill's critical broadsides as having an activist aspect to them, in drawing influence and attention toward what Hill saw as positive changes in how he and his men were supported or in being a source of inspiration against a hated and dangerous foe. There very well might be an element of truth in that, but, for Hill's communications to be truly effective one might argue that more measured language has to be employed or those who disagree with you with only retrench in their opposition and those you seek to inspire will dismiss you as a blowhard. Citing Hill's success as a college-level leader and administrator, Hartley contests Lee's assertion that Hill lacked necessary administrative skills needed by those occupying high command positions. That is persuasive on some level, but one might also argue that there's a strong apples and oranges component in weighing educational institution and military logistics/command management skills against each other.

In the end, after reading Chris Hartley's magnificent biography, long-time Civil War reader impressions of D.H. Hill remain little altered (maybe not in many of the details, but in the big picture sense). Off the battlefield, Hill was a devoted family man, devout Presbyterian, sectional partisan, successful writer, and significant figure in nineteenth-century higher education. On the battlefield, he was a conscientious, aggressive, and talented general. Not serving his military relationships and career well were his caustically unfiltered criticisms of superiors, rank equals, and subordinates alike, all delivered with biting sarcasm. Puzzlement and mystery will always accompany honest attempts at interpreting a unique and difficult historical personality like D.H. Hill's, but Chris Hartley's Confederate General D. H. Hill: A Military Life more than any other source fleshes out Hill's private and public lives in full, presenting him as a multi-dimensional figure and, in the end, less of an enigma. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: In a Land of Strangers

New Arrival:

• In a Land of Strangers: Northern Teachers in the Slave South by Michael T. Bernath (UNC Press, 2026).

By the time of the Civil War, Northern-born teachers had occupied teaching positions across the South for generations. In a Land of Strangers argues that their recorded experiences played a major role in shaping how cultural differences between North and South came to be perceived nationally.

In this study, author Michael Bernath "contends that the idea of a “distinctive” South did not crystallize out of the Civil War or politics alone; instead, it took shape decades earlier through the everyday observations of thousands of Northern teachers who lived and worked there from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War. Young, white, educated, and marked as outsiders, these men and women occupied an unusual position of trust within Southern households, classrooms, and plantations, granting them rare, intimate access to the inner workings of slaveholding society."

More from the description: Bernath's book "offers the first full-length study of this vast group of teachers—the most sustained point of contact between North and South in the antebellum era. Bewildered, curious, and constantly translating the South for themselves and audiences back home, these educators described a strange and profoundly different place in their diaries and letters. Collectively, they fixed a shared image of the South in the national imagination."

Review - "The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862" by Woodworth & Grear, eds.

[The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (Southern Illinois University Press, 2026). Paperback, 4 maps, table, photos, illustrations, chapter notes, index. Pages:xi,146. ISBN:978-0-8093-3997-6. $24.95]

The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 is the eighth installment of SIU Press's Civil War Campaigns in the West (formerly Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland) series edited by Steven Woodworth and Charles Grear. In addition to adding their own chapters to the volume, the editors have assembled five other contributors. Together, these seven essays examine various aspects of the campaign and its dramatic impact on the course of the war in the West.

Woodworth sets the stage with a general introduction, and Michael Burns begins the anthology with a reminder of the important ways in which extreme environmental conditions shaped the land and naval fighting at both forts. In some cases, such as the heavy flooding at Fort Henry, the unpredictable power of nature overwhelmed man's attempts at military planning, preparation, and conduct. Similarly, a sudden winter cold snap and flooding to potential escape routes directly affected the results of the contest at Fort Donelson. In each case, Union forces were the great beneficiaries of this powerful natural intervention into human affairs.

Blakeney Hill's following essay revisits the army-navy command relationship that bore such bountiful fruit for Union forces during the campaign. Simon Cameron remains widely reviled for his wasteful and corruption-filled tenure as Lincoln's first Secretary of War, but Hill interestingly credits his insistence that the Brown Water Navy remain under the auspices of the army as a key decision. While the inland navy's command and administrative structure would change as the war progressed, the critical first months of army-controlled joint operations on the western rivers (the actions at forts Henry and Donelson being primary examples) established an efficiency and manner of close cooperation between the services that jump-started Union offensives in the heartland West. The result was a pace of combined operations that the more disorganized and resource-poor Confederates proved incapable of countering, and Union forces essentially wrested control of the vast Mississippi River Valley by mid-1863. This was a stupendous achievement that many would not have thought possible at the war's beginning.

Next, Nathan Bedford Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills revisits Forrest's role in the campaign, which ended with his command's daring escape from the trap at Fort Donelson just before the Confederate garrison surrendered to Union forces. In Wills's view, and that of others he cites, Fort Donelson was a watershed moment in Forrest's image and development as a cavalry commander, his iron drive and leadership traits demonstrated there catapulting him along the path to becoming the western Confederacy's most feared mounted warrior. It also exposed a fiercely independent streak that would impact his later career both positively and negatively.

The Confederate breakout attempt is examined most closely in Jonathan Steplyk's chapter. While this critical episode in the campaign has already been exhaustively examined in the literature, Steplyk's adds a fresh element to the discussion by following the day's battle in the context of a clash between competing military principles, matching Confederate surprise against Union security. Perhaps more than most, Steplyk credits Union picket placement and skirmish lines, in both developing and impeding the Confederate attack, for becoming major obstacles to Confederate success on that day. At the same time, he doesn't simplistically reduce the clash to Union security beating Confederate surprise. It is a much more nuanced analysis than that.

Another shining light in terms of fresh material is Sheilah Elwardani's deeper look at a single Confederate brigade and its commanding officer, Gabriel C. Wharton. Her essay reveals what Wharton's recently published letters and his still unpublished memoir tells us about the attempted breakout from Fort Donelson. Wharton was one of the officers that infamously escaped the doomed fort by steamboat with General John B. Floyd, but, unlike Floyd, Wharton managed to get out of it with career and reputation intact. Elwardani informs us that the memoir's primary focus is on Fort Donelson, and it attempts to explain/rationalize the reasons and justifications behind Floyd's controversial decision-making in the matter (although she also notes that over time Wharton attempted to distance himself from Floyd's defense).

The February 15 attack by Union division commander Charles F. Smith's forces against thinly stretched Confederate defenders opposite the Union left, which seriously endangered the Confederate hold on Fort Donelson itself on that day, is often credited with having a major impact on the Confederate decision to surrender. Steven Woodworth's contribution detailing this assault focuses on the tactics involved, which in some ways presaged more celebrated uses of columnar attacking formations on the Civil War battlefield (notably those employed by Emory Upton at Spotsylvania)

Finally, Civil War Texas expert Charles Grear contextualizes the impact that Fort Donelson had on that state. While Fort Donelson shouldn't be thought of as a Texas battle, the Seventh infantry regiment being its largest and most noteworthy contribution, the battle (combined with Pea Ridge, where a great number of Texan formations fought) nevertheless was a major turning point in Texas's war. As was the case across the Confederacy, the responses of Texas soldiers and civilians to the string of military disasters suffered in the western heartland in early 1862 was a mixture of both demoralization and renewed determination. Prior to that time, most Texas fighting men remained in the Trans-Mississippi theater guarding the state's lengthy land borders and coastline. But, as Grear explains, the twin defeats at Henry-Donelson and Pea Ridge, especially the former, helped propel the passage of national conscription and prompted a new surge in Texas volunteering (part of which was to avoid the stigma of becoming a draftee). Those battlefield defeats, and the massive territorial losses that accompanied them, also prompted the transfer of a great many Texas units eastward across the Mississippi and, in the other direction, civilian and slave refugees to presumed safety in Texas. In those ways, Donelson was a defining moment in the course of Texas's Civil War.

With three major campaign histories (the most recent and best of those being Timothy Smith's) along with a host of other related book-length publications addressing various themes and topics, the Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign of 1862 has been treated quite well in the modern literature. Woodworth and Grear's edited anthology is both a useful new addition to that body of scholarship and a fine new installment in the Civil War Campaigns in the West series. Even the most well-read student of the campaign should find fresh points of interest numerous enough to make The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 a worthy addition to the home library. Highly recommended.

Coming Soon (August '26 Edition)

Scheduled for AUG 2026¹:
• He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860 by Jonathan Earle.
• The Old Soldiers Show: Stories from the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion by Lee Vetter.
• The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863 by Brett Isenberg.
• Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 by Neil Chatelain.
• Winchester and the Civil War: A Walk through History by Jonathan Noyalas.
• Cornelia Hancock’s Civil War: A Heart Touched By Fire - From Gettysburg to the Grand Review by Carolyn Ivanoff.
• Researching Your Civil War Ancestor: A Guide to Understanding Civil War Pension Files and Legislation by J.L.D. Woodruff.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They routinely do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, publisher exclusives, 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: Civil War Camps and Soldier Health

New Arrival:

• Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army by Earl J. Hess (Kent St UP, 2026).

One of the first things new students of the Civil War learn is that disease killed more soldiers from both sides than did bullets on the battlefield. With the unprecedented mobilization of vast volunteer armies, adherence to army regulations in regard to camp sanitation varied greatly, with mass suffering being the result. Indeed, as Earl Hess explains in his new book Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army, the Civil War represented "a watershed in public awareness of the many challenges to soldier health posed by camp life."

Recognizing the scale of the problem and seeking ways to address it, government authorities sought outside expertise and assistance. They found it in the efforts of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. From the description: "The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a non-governmental agency sanctioned by the Federal government, created a massive campaign to study conditions in semi-permanent camps and advise unit commanders how to avoid unnecessary illness and curb soldier deaths by disease. Commission inspectors, mostly civilian physicians, examined camps from 1861 to early 1864 and filed more than 1400 reports of their findings."

In gathering insights on Union Army camp conditions, Hess's study "delves deeply into 280 of those reports, shedding new and startling light on camp conditions. Addressing camp situation, shelter, clothing, personal cleanliness, garbage disposal, latrines, food, cooking, water, alcohol, morale, recruit examination, smallpox vaccination, regimental hospitals, and officer supervision, the camp inspection returns are unique snapshots of what it was like to live in a Union army camp."

Hess's research confirms much of what Civil War readers have been told in the literature. More from the description: "The evidence shows that sanitation varied widely from unit to unit and across time periods. The ability of volunteer regimental officers and surgeons to take sanitary principles seriously often was low. But alcoholic consumption was much lower than we think, while disposing of garbage and human waste often non-existent." Obviously, management of soldier health in camp and in the field was good enough to achieve complete victory in the end against a strong and determined foe, but it is nevertheless the case that Union armies "did not achieve high marks for military effectiveness when it came to preventive health care."

Review - "Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide" by Brian K. Burton

[Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide by Brian K. Burton (University of Nebraska Press, 2026). Softcover, maps, appendix section, source list. Pages:xii,150. ISBN:978-1-4962-3620-3. $29.95]

Brian Burton's Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide is the eighth volume in University of Nebraska Press's This Hallowed Ground: Guides to Civil War Battlefields series. The installment preceding this one was published twelve years ago, so getting a new series title after such a long hiatus is a welcome development.

Having already contributed a Peninsula and Seven Days guide, Burton is no stranger to the series. Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville are obviously big enough battles to warrant standalone treatment, but, given the amount of shared geography, it makes sense to combine them into a single volume (the Luvaas and Nelson War College series guide did the same). There are eleven tour stops for Fredericksburg and thirteen for Chancellorsville, and the author estimates that getting the most out of each would require a full day. However, especially if one is well prepared and willing to pare down the tour to a sub-set of author-recommended stops, the dual tour can be completed in one busy day.

The guide follows the standardized format adopted by the series, which unfolds in five parts: Directions, Orientation, What Happened, Analysis, and Vignette. Directions are easy to follow and precise to the nearest tenth of a mile, ending with instructions as to where the visitor should initially face. Orientation takes that initial facing further. Rather than sticking to compass directions that might cause confusion (although those are sometimes added), these guidebooks instead employ an eight-point 360° system of directional orientation (straight ahead, right front, right, right rear, etc) that points the visitor toward key battlefield landmarks and terrain involved with the more in-depth discussion that's to follow.

Within each stop's self-explanatory What Happened section, Burton masters the challenging task of providing streamlined big picture descriptions of events as well as, where appropriate, small-unit tactical-level details, all without the reader feeling the treatment oversimplified. A strong assist to all that comes from the book's excellent set of maps, which pinpoint each stop (and lettered sub-stop) and depict both unit movements and key terrain features. The Analysis section that follows it judiciously weighs leadership decision-making and its results, often introducing plausible elements of contingency. Both of these sections benefit from insights gleaned from engagement with the best of the relevant secondary literature, those military history works identified and/or discussed in the Further Reading and source list parts of the book. Optional to each stop is a Vignette tie-in that adds a very brief human interest story based on a firsthand account.

In the appendix section, readers will find regimental-level orders of battle as well as a primer on Civil War army organization, tactics, and weapons for those newer to the subject.

The closest competitors (for lack of a better word) to the This Hallowed Ground books are the classic U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles. They are very different from each other when it comes to style and presentation, and prospective readers are certainly encouraged to try both. Everyone has their own preferences (for example, the War College guides are packed with extensive passages from official military reports and firsthand accounts), but an argument can be made that the Nebraska series is the superior option of the two when it comes to maximizing limited time on the battlefield. Useful for both active touring and armchair reading, this new installment is another shining example of what the series does so well.

Booknotes: The Boy Generals V3

New Arrival:

• The Boy Generals: George Custer, Wesley Merritt, and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, from the Shenandoah Valley to the Surrender at Appomattox by Adolfo Ovies (Savas Beatie, 2026).

This book marks the conclusion of a trilogy (Volume 1 and Volume 2) that began in 2021. In it, the "turbulent events of the closing months of the Civil War serve as a backdrop for the increasingly dysfunctional—and bitter—relationship between George Armstrong Custer and Wesley Merritt."

As one might have gathered from the subtitles of all three installments, description and analysis of the fraught relationship that developed between Custer and Merritt is the central theme of the series. According to author Adolfo Ovies, not only did their personalities clash but they differed in how they believed cavalry was best used on the battlefield. From the description: Ovies "scrutinizes their methods of discipline, their exercise of authority, and their “spirited rivalry.” It was an association that progressed from distaste to acrimony and finally to outright insubordination on Custer’s part. The boy cavalier was a firm believer in the shock value of the mounted charge. Merritt maintained that the horse was but a means of transporting the trooper to the battlefield, where he would fight on foot with his carbine."

Their differences came to the fore during "the bloody battles that ensued after Philip H. Sheridan’s ascension to command Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864," and this third volume examines in depth the Valley battles of Third Winchester, Tom’s Brook, Cedar Creek, and Waynesboro before closing with coverage of the Appomattox Campaign.

The volume also addresses the hard war aspects of the fighting in the Shenandoah Valley during this period. More from the description: The Boy Generals "is an uncompromising examination of the darker aspects of the way the war in the Valley unfolded. General Ulysses S. Grant’s orders to Sheridan to “eat out Virginia clear and clean” fell on the shoulders of these two “boy generals.” The brutality of the irregular warfare that lurked in the rear of the Army of the Shenandoah is addressed in a blow-by-blow accounting of depredations and retaliations."

This final volume in the trilogy "captures Merritt and Custer as they ride the crest of a wave of glory in one of the most dysfunctional yet influential relationships in the Army of the Potomac." The series as a whole argues that "(i)t is impossible to fully understand cavalry operations in the Eastern Theater without understanding the dynamic between these two commanders."

Booknotes: Crimewave

New Arrival:

• Crimewave: Murder and Mayhem in the Far West, 1850-1900 by Matthew Bernstein (UNT Press, 2026).

When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in California in 1848, a veritable tidal wave of domestic and foreign prospectors descended upon the U.S.'s newly acquired territory looking to strike it rich. The criminal activity that accompanied that mass influx in population and persisted over the next half-century is the subject of Matthew Bernstein's Crimewave: Murder and Mayhem in the Far West, 1850-1900. In it, Bernstein documents "twenty-four of the most audacious and chaotic incidents in the Far West, bringing to light stories from frontier California that have too long remained hidden."

From the description: "The gold in the streams and mountains attracted prospectors, but criminals found other ways to enrich themselves. Through crooked games of chance, highway robbery, outright assassination, and schemes so devious they almost defy the imagination, the men and women that rushed to California brought the best and worst elements to a land already inhabited by wolves, mountain lions, and grizzly bears."

The following are prominent examples from Bernstein's collection: "Benjamin Franklin Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington himself, fought in the Sacramento Riot of 1850 and participated in a duel against a rival newspaper editor in San Francisco. Lucius Fairchild, who would become a Civil War hero, witnessed the rise of a vigilance committee in San Andreas and its deadly aftermath. Charles Cora, a New Orleans gambler, helped spark the largest vigilance committee in American history when he gunned down a US marshal on a crowded San Francisco street." Events from the Civil War years include a mass prison break at San Quentin, the sinking of the Ada Hancock, and Confederate plans to capture U.S. steamships along the Pacific coast.

Crimewave details "a cultural phenomenon, the Wild West in California, a story rich with bloodshed, betrayal, and naked ambition."

Correction

Something brought up in Friday's book review needs to be corrected. On the matter of Jonesboro battle studies that are in the works, I've just heard direct from the most reliable source (Gary Ecelbarger himself) that he is not working on a Jonesboro book either independently or in partnership with anyone else. It's funny how the author rumor mill gets momentum. I don't know how many times I read in recent years about Gary being tied to such a project. One thing that is certain is that he would have done a great job. He did tell me about some other things he was working on, but I will leave that news for him to disseminate in his own good time!

Review - "A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta" by David Allison

[A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta by David Allison (Author, 2025). Paperback, 3 maps, photos, endnotes, appendix section, index. Pages main/total:vi,242/438. ISBN:9798273780811. $19]

David Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1 concluded with the outermost maneuver elements of William T. Sherman's sweeping "Grand Movement" establishing a strong bridgehead south of Atlanta on the east bank of the Flint River. There, advance units from the three corps of O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee were poised to launch a final lunge toward Jonesboro and the Macon & Western Railroad that passed through the depot town on its way north to Atlanta. Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta continues the narrative through the closing stages of the campaign. [Note: Before going further please visit (or revisit) the site review of Volume 1 [here], paying close attention to its general observations in regard to the book's research, writing, and presentation. Those also apply to this second volume, and not all parts of that discussion will be repeated].

From his Atlanta headquarters, Confederate Army of Tennessee commander John Bell Hood charged his ranking subordinate, William J. Hardee, with driving back the federal advance, and he placed two corps (Hardee's own, temporarily commanded by Patrick Cleburne, and that of S.D. Lee) at Hardee's disposal. Aimed at crushing the Union bridgehead before it could be strongly fortified, the launch time of Hardee's attack west of Jonesboro on August 31, 1864 ended up being considerably delayed until mid-afternoon, when the rearmost contingent of Lee's rushed reinforcements from Atlanta finally arrived on the battlefield. That critical breathing space allowed Howard's troops along the east bank of the Flint River to fully establish an entrenched line of defense backed by well-positioned artillery support. Those circumstances alone dimmed Confederate chances for success considerably, but Allison also convincingly finds poor command and control at the highest levels (a common failing in the Army of Tennessee's battles) to be a major factor behind the Confederate repulse on the 31st. Cleburne/Hardee's Corps, which scattered the Union cavalry in its front during its initial assault, ended up derailing its own attacking momentum. Instead of regrouping after initial success and wheeling into the southern flank of the Union line, the corps dispersed its effort by allowing one division to fruitlessly chase the defeated Union cavalry across the river. The division returned, but the opportunity to strike the Union flank with a concentrated blow had already passed. To the north, S.D. Lee's Corps attacked frontally in two strong lines. The veteran Union defenders on Lee's front were unlikely to be overrun by such a direct attack, but Allison also points out that the lack of coordination between Lee's two battle lines badly disorganized and disrupted the assaulting formations. Both Confederate corps were rather easily repulsed by the Union defenders across their respective fronts.

Declining Confederate fighting morale likely also played a role in the failure of their attacks. High-ranking officers on both sides claimed that the Confederates at Jonesboro lacked their usual attacking spirit, and those claims support the conclusion of Gary Ecelbarger that the lopsided results of the earlier battle at Ezra Church heavily impacted Confederate offensive morale at Jonesboro. In their respective Ezra Church battles studies, both Ecelbarger and Earl Hess convincingly mark that battle as the last point during the campaign in which the Confederates were still capable of endangering Union movements through offensive action, and Allison's account of Jonesboro provides no dissuading evidence.

Whatever kind of Confederate victory that was possible at Jonesboro on the 31st would surely have done little to prevent the evacuation of Atlanta. To the north, three Union corps were able to strike the Macon & Western Railroad between East Point and Jonesboro against little to no opposition, in the process establishing practically unassailable blocking positions and tearing up the tracks. In describing this dramatic turn of events, the author contrasts Sherman's hyperactive presence at the front, where he was able to quickly respond to events as they happened, to Hood's static and detached command direction from Atlanta, where he was cut off from accurate information about what was going on to the south.

After the first day of fighting ended at Jonesboro, Lee's Corps was ordered to return to Atlanta, leaving Hardee isolated with only his own corps to continue to hold Jonesboro and protect the army's supply and munitions trains. Now having to also cover the northern approaches to Jonesboro, Hardee deployed his corps in a single, thin L-shaped line, the shorter east-west leg of which extended as far as was possible across the Macon tracks. Allison recounts the fighting on September 1 in great micro-tactical detail. The attack and defense of key sectors of the battlefield, particularly at the 'angle' formed by the elbow in Hardee's L-shaped line and along the far right of the Confederate position astride the railroad, are explored at a depth not found elsewhere. A great multitude of insightful firsthand accounts from both sides pepper the text, and there is even an entire chapter devoted to the assault of a single regiment (the 17th New York). The Fourteenth Corps's attack at the angle, which placed the defenders there under a murderous crossfire, unhinged the Confederate line, although local counterattacks stemmed the breakthrough and restored enough stability until nighttime cover allowed Hardee to safely withdraw his men and trains. Alleged Fourth Corps tardiness in coming up on the Fourteenth Corps's left was blamed by some for Hardee's escape, but the Confederates are also credited for having the foresight to extend their far right flank just enough that it could not be effectively turned by arriving Fourth Corps units until after nightfall. Rough terrain east of the railroad also played a role in hindering rapid Union deployment along that section of the battlefield. In Allison's studied view, Sherman's ill-considered decision to not rush David Stanley's Fourth Corps and John Schofield's Twenty-Third Corps/Army of the Ohio forward at all possible speed earlier in the day, but rather have them continue to wreck rails as they progressed south (only belatedly ordering them to make haste in the afternoon), was primarily responsible for Hardee surviving the September 1 fighting with his corps largely intact.

Regardless of where the credit or blame lies surrounding Hardee's escape, the overall Confederate situation was still far from secure. The success of Sherman's Grand Movement forced the evacuation of Atlanta, which was then occupied by Henry Slocum's Twentieth Corps on September 2. The book follows the course of Slocum's reconnaissance probes that secured Atlanta's surrender, also addressing competing claims in regard to which unit could best lay claim to being the first to enter the city. The biggest remaining question was whether Sherman's army group could finish the job and destroy Hood's scattered forces before they could reunite and cause further mischief. One corps needed to be left at Jonesboro to guard the rear, but Sherman had five corps concentrated for further operations.

As Allison explains, Sherman did little more than test Hardee's fortified defenses north of Lovejoy's Station late on the 2nd. He also directed Schofield to pass around the Confederate right to block the road that Hood would presumably use to reunite his army. However, once he received certain confirmation late in the day that Slocum's men occupied Atlanta, Sherman seemingly lost all remaining desire for continuing the offensive. To Sherman, the big prize of the campaign (Atlanta itself) was already won and any further attacks against entrenched defenders would only result in needless casualties. A.P. Stewart's and Lee's strung out corps were allowed to join Hardee without interference, and the Army of the Tennessee was back together at Lovejoy's late on the 3rd. The merits of Sherman's decision to not go for the killing blow but instead withdraw his armies back to Atlanta for rest and recuperation would be hotly debated ever since.

Jonesboro casualties for both days of the battle are examined separately in the appendix section, which offers extensive breakdowns of losses as well as numerous individual stories of pain and suffering. The last, and most thought-provoking, appendix revisits contemporary finger-pointing and later ink and print warfare surrounding who should be assigned principal blame for Hardee escaping destruction at Jonesboro. The bulk of the text reviews the opinions and writings of the key generals involved in the controversy. In it, Sherman's point of view takes a bit of a battering, and Stanley (so often framed by his contemporaries, especially Sherman, as the battle's scapegoat) emerges from the fray with a strong defense of his conduct. Addressing Sherman's alleged missed opportunity after Jonesboro to defeat Hood's temporarily scattered army in detail, analysis is mostly limited to Army of the Ohio commander John Schofield's pointed critique. The author himself does not adopt a hardened stance toward any single target, nor does he involve commentary from modern historians in the examination of these issues, mostly leaving readers to weigh these matters for themselves.

The state of the book's map coverage is similar to what it was in the previous volume. There is a good situation map of the area between Atlanta and Jonesboro, and a pair of fine maps show the August 31 and September 1 fighting at Jonesboro. The Jonesboro battle maps depict the action at brigade scale. While that doesn't match the regimental-level tactical detail presented in the text, it does at least give the reader a general understanding of the battlefield terrain and relative positions of the formations involved.

In providing a fine, in-depth account of the long-neglected Battle of Jonesboro as well as the follow-on confrontation at Lovejoy's Station, this volume is the first of its kind. More coverage is on the way. Two highly anticipated standalone studies of Jonesboro (one from Earl Hess another from Scott Patchan) are presumably still in the works, and these closing events of the Atlanta Campaign will of course also be examined in due time by David Powell's ongoing series (the third volume of which will be published later this year), so it will be interesting to read and compare everyone's findings when the time comes. In the meantime, it is recommended that every serious student of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign pick up a copy of this groundbreaking two-volume set from David Allison, which is available in hardcover and paperback editions (both very attractively priced).

Booknotes: The Federal Signal Service at Antietam

New Arrival:

• The Federal Signal Service at Antietam: Stations, Officers and Battlefield Intelligence on America's Bloodiest Day by Cory M. Pfarr (McFarland, 2026).

If you are a dedicated reader of Civil War military history you pick up bits and pieces of information about the U.S. Army Signal Corps service on a fairly regular basis, but if I had to pick a single publication that impressed me most it would be Service with the Signal Corps: The Civil War Memoir of Captain Louis R. Fortescue, edited by Greg Acken for University of Tennessee Press's Voices of the Civil War series. Focusing on the men and activities of the Signal Corps throughout the 1862 Maryland Campaign, during which Fortescue served, is Cory Pfarr's new book The Federal Signal Service at Antietam: Stations, Officers and Battlefield Intelligence on America's Bloodiest Day.

From the description: "This book restores to view a forgotten but essential arm of the Union war effort. On September 17, 1862, while the bloodiest single day in American history raged at Antietam, a network of young officers with flags and telescopes linked staff headquarters, high-ground observation posts, and forward stations close to the fighting, furnishing Major General George B. McClellan with near real-time intelligence on Confederate movements."

Pfarr's study unfolds in two parts. Part I addresses the origins of the Signal Corps and its service during the opening phases of the Maryland Campaign. Part II, which examines the role and services of specific Signal Corps stations during the battle itself, forms the bulk of the book. In it, eight chapters follow at length the activities of eight signal stations and feature the officers that manned them. "Drawing on a wealth of primary sources," each chapter "combines operational analysis with vivid biographical portraits of the men who carried out this overlooked but crucial work." While the aforementioned Fortescue is not given his own section of the book, the index does indicate frequent mention of him in the text. The volume also contains numerous helpful photographs (including modern views from station locations) and maps.

In reexamining the Signal Corps service at Antietam and the part its stations played in providing McClellan with timely battlefield intelligence, Pfarr finds that "their constant signaling disproves the enduring "spectator general" myth and reveals how signal communications informed command decisions." In the end, the book "shows that the Federal Signal Service's role was far from that of an anonymous adjunct but rather was vital to command and control in the Maryland Campaign."

Booknotes: Unparalleled Horror

New Arrival:

• Unparalleled Horror: The Battles of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Crater, June 19-July 31, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick and John F. Schmutz (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Sean Chick's A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 (2025) marked the start of a five-volume ECW sub-series that will trace the entire 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign from beginning to end. Picking up right where that earlier installment left off is Unparalleled Horror: The Battles of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Crater, June 19-July 31, 1864. I don't know if co-authoring is going to be a pattern with this new Petersburg series, but this time Chick partnered up with Crater expert John Schmutz.

After the initial Union attacks on the Petersburg front failed miserably, a new plan was immediately put into operation. From the description: "On June 20, Grant ordered George Meade to swing out to the west and cut off the railroads leading to Petersburg, while he unleashed his cavalry on Robert E. Lee’s communications. The Federals suffered a stunning defeat at Jerusalem Plank Road, and Confederate horsemen ravaged Grant’s cavalry. Grant settled for a siege while still searching for a chance to strike." A chapter is also devoted to the July 21-27 fighting at Deep Bottom. Schmutz then takes over, addressing the Crater battle over several chapters. Nine fine-looking maps cover all of these battles in detail.

The appendix section includes a driving tour of the Petersburg Campaign (with an accompanying map) and an account of the U.S. congressional investigation that followed the Crater disaster. In another pair of appendices, contributor Scott Patchan offers a review of military events that occurred in the Shenandoah Valley during the time interval examined in the book, and Charles Knight adds a short biography of Confederate Crater hero William Mahone. The final appendix provides a very brief history of Petersburg up through the Civil War years. Orders of battle, and a suggested reading list round out the volume.

Booknotes: Forward to Richmond

New Arrival:

• Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 by Brian K. Burton (Univ of Neb Press, 2026).

University of Nebraska Press and imprint Bison Books started the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series back in 1999 with Steven Woodworth's Six Armies in Tennessee: The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns. These are not detailed microhistories, the focus being more on broader context, themes, and analysis. As described by the publisher, the series "offers readers concise syntheses of the major campaigns of the war, reflecting the findings of recent scholarship. The series points to new ways of viewing military campaigns by looking beyond the battlefield and the headquarters tent to the wider political and social context within which these campaigns unfolded; it also shows how campaigns and battles left their imprint on many Americans, from presidents and generals down to privates and civilians."

I was informed several years ago that a Peninsula Campaign installment was in the works, so the release of Brian Burton's Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 did not come as a surprise. I am certainly glad to have it in my hands as the topic ranks very high among my areas of interest. Preceding it was Perry Jamieson's 2015 contribution Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War and before that B.F. Cooling's Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam (2007), so the gaps between the most recent series titles has been pretty substantial. I haven't read them all (there are now ten volumes in total), but so far Cooling's book is my personal favorite of the bunch.

In line with the most recent military history scholarship's coverage of the fighting in Virginia over the first half of 1862, Burton's Forward to Richmond "treats the military actions in the Shenandoah Valley, the Piedmont, and the Peninsula as part of a theatre-wide campaign." Indeed, of the book's seventeen maps, seven specifically depict events from the Shenandoah.

Fully aligned with the series mission statement quoted above, Burton's narrative "goes beyond military events to also examine the political, social, and diplomatic interactions with military events, including the meetings of Union soldiers with Southern civilians and African Americans, ultimately leading to a turn away from conciliation and a beginning of a move toward support of emancipation."

Review - "This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans" by Neil Chatelain

[This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans by Neil P. Chatelain (Savas Beatie, 2026). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, reading list. Pages main/total:xxv,147/192. ISBN:978-1-61121-777-3. $16.95]

Adequately summarizing the Civil War naval component's enormous impact on Union victory and Confederate defeat requires not only the ability to skillfully condense a highly multifarious area of study but also the mastering of a vast and constantly expanding literature. In producing his latest book This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans, it is readily apparent that Neil Chatelain, himself a major recent contributor to Civil War naval history studies, was able to meet those steep challenges. The pleasing result far surpasses what one might consider to be merely adequate.

Given that the clashes between opposing field armies were the Civil War's primary driving force, the land-oriented convention of dividing the conflict into three major theaters of operation remains valid. Complicating this traditional arrangement of lines on a map is the complex geography and nature of the naval war, and Chatelain convincingly conceptualizes that aspect of the war as unfolding along four naval theaters: the blockade, the littoral zone ("beaches, estuaries, deltas, bays, and harbors"), the rivers, and the oceans. Within the volume's discussion of each, chapters unfold in phases consisting of one or more years. In this way, each theater, with its men, machines, strategies, tactics, and clashes both large and small, gets its proper due. Where these four naval theaters were interconnected is also discussed.

Of course, a grand overview narrative of this kind limits the amount of operational detail that can be conveyed, but Chatelain still manages to present a remarkably comprehensive account of naval actions ranging from individual ship engagements to squadron-level battles. Beyond that, on both the domestic and international stages, the naval war is explored in its economic and diplomatic contexts. While a chapter specifically devoted to the common sailors of both sides would have been welcome (and it is understood that not every sub-topic can be covered), brief excerpts from firsthand accounts are sprinkled about, and the impact of individual officers, both well-known and obscure, are highlighted throughout.

Progressive Union domination of southern rivers and coastlines as well as the inexorable tightening of the blockade are well outlined, with due emphasis placed on the importance of army-navy combined operations, and all phases of Confederate naval resistance, along with countermeasures such as mine warfare, are discussed in turn. While the Confederates achieved noteworthy successes in evading the blockade over almost the entire duration of the war, continually expanding Union naval enforcement combined with the loss of major ports and their rail connections to the Confederate interior were strong limiting factors. In only one of the four theaters were the Confederates able to seize real momentum. In the oceanic theater the Confederates employed commerce raiding, an asymmetrical military and economic strategy that damaged the United States global merchant fleet (the second largest in the world at the time) to such an extent that much of the shipping was driven into foreign flagging and the merchant marine industry itself forced into a course of long-term decline.

Chatelain's text is not just a reorganized regurgitation of oft-repeated history. It also references fresh work and suggests future paths of study. For example, in addition to incorporating key points from his own specialized research in Confederate naval mismanagement of their early-war Mississippi River Valley defenses as well as the economic war centered on safeguarding or intercepting U.S. gold shipments passing through the Panamanian isthmus, Chatelain calls attention to other recent work such as Michael Bonner and Peter McCord's reexamination of the blockade's overall effectiveness. As was the case with prior series installments, readers have to go to the main Emerging Civil War website to find the volume's footnotes and bibliography (available in pdf format here).

Strong synergy between main text and supporting visual aids (among the latter abundant photographs, period drawings, and original maps) has been a major force behind the appeal and popularity of the ECW series of books, and this one excels in that category. Another common series feature is an appendix section populated with an eclectic mix of supplemental topics and discussion. In this volume's collection, Chatelain surveys the Civil War contributions of black sailors and offers some top-down organizational notes as well as commentary on sites associated with the naval war that are worth visiting today.

A compact yet comprehensive survey study encompassing both big picture strategy and naval activities of all scales and types, Neil Chatelain's This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans is a great option for those seeking an updated introductory-level Civil War naval history.

Booknotes: An Officer of Six Navies

New Arrival:

• An Officer of Six Navies: The Life of Confederate Commander Hunter Davidson by John M. Coski & Charles T. Jacobs (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Born at Georgetown in the District of Columbia but possessing Virginia family roots, Hunter Davidson (1826-1913) lived a long life that included a long and eventful naval career. Even though Confederate naval officers and their Civil War activities have received increased attention of late, Davidson remains an obscure figure. Awareness should increase with the publication of his biography An Officer of Six Navies: The Life of Confederate Commander Hunter Davidson by John Coski and Charles Jacobs.

Three of nine chapters discuss Davidson's Confederate naval assignments. From the description: "Davidson earned his fifteen minutes of fame in May 1864 when he and his Confederate Submarine Battery Service became the first force to destroy an enemy warship using an electrically detonated torpedo. Davidson also makes the history books as the commander of two gun sections on CSS Virginia in her epic battle against USS Monitor."

Coski and Jacobs cover their subject's two decade-long antebellum U.S. Navy career in the two preceding chapters. More from the description: "Before he fought against the U.S. Navy, he served in that navy for nearly two decades, spending time in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the coast of Lower California during the Mexican War, the new Naval School, the Coast Survey, the Africa Squadron, and aboard the exploring vessel HMS Resolute. Considered an intelligent and promising, albeit contentious, young officer, Davidson was an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1861 when he resigned to join the Virginia State Navy."

Like so many other career military officers who fought with the Confederacy, Davidson, barred from returning to the U.S. Navy, had difficulty finding fitting postwar employment. While suitable domestic opportunities did not come Davidson's way, his experience in conducting torpedo warfare caught the attention of foreign navies. More: "The Chilean Navy recruited him and his torpedo expertise to help repel a threatened Spanish invasion. He went on to spend four years as the first commander of the Maryland State Oyster Police before finding a new home in Argentina as commander of that nation’s Torpedo and Hydrographic departments. An “unreconstructed” Confederate, Davidson did not return to his family in Maryland but retired to Paraguay, where he started a second family and endeavored to defend from afar his place in Civil War history." Part of what would be a forty-year exile from his homeland, these activities are explored in four chapters.

Coski and Jacobs insist that Davidson's military life "was virtually unique." Indeed, "(h)is Confederate career alone made him an important and fascinating figure, but his service in or with six different navies gives his life an epic quality." Confederate mine warfare and its key role in countering Union naval superiority has been heavily explored in the recent literature, and this biography of a major figure involved with it should strongly contribute to that ongoing reappraisal.

Review - "Civil War Photo Forensics: Investigating Battlefield Photographs Through a Critical Lens" by Scott Hippensteel

[Civil War Photo Forensics: Investigating Battlefield Photographs Through a Critical Lens by Scott Hippensteel (University of Tennessee Press, 2026). Hardcover, 128 photos, tables, appendix section, endnotes, index. Pages main/total:xi,179/211. ISBN:979-8-89527-087-5. $39.95]

Thousands of Civil War battlefield photographs have survived the ravages of time, gifting researchers and enthusiasts alike with a vast wealth of imagery that mere words cannot replicate. However, it has been clearly proven that a number of the most popular photos that continue to thickly populate the pages of Civil War books, magazines, and websites are products of artistic license the likes of which would make any professional photojournalist blush. Indeed, the historical value of these images is greatly dependent on properly assessing the degree of manipulation involved. A number of dedicated individuals, foremost among them William Frassanito, have furthered that complicated and often frustrating area of study, developing reproducible methodologies of arriving at the truth that others have adopted. A more recent contributor to the field is Scott Hippensteel, whose approaches and findings are revealed in his new book Civil War Photo Forensics: Investigating Battlefield Photographs Through a Critical Lens.

Hippensteel begins his study with capsule biographies of a large number of Civil War photographers ranging from the most famous among them to the largely forgotten. He also employs charts and tables to trace where and when they worked during the war. Together these individuals produced thousands of priceless images, and Hippensteel initiates the investigative part of his study with a fun exercise aimed at finding the single most popular Civil War photograph. In getting there, the author consulted a randomized selection of Civil War general audience books, magazines, websites, and videos, poring through every page and registering every photograph. The top twenty-five images are ranked by number of appearances in the sample group, and the full quantitative breakdown is presented in the appendix section. The top five are featured in the main text with full-page reproductions of the image, and Hippensteel adds some interesting background and image analysis as well (the latter often supplemented by magnified close-ups, the amazing details of which were made possible by the good condition and very high resolution of the original glass negatives).

In placing these images under fresh scrutiny, Hippensteel properly credits the pioneering photo forensic contributions of those that came before him, particularly the aforementioned Frassanito. In addition to expanding upon earlier efforts at identifying image fraud and manipulation, Hippensteel delves into methodologies that help find the answers to those who (from the perspective of photographer and subject), where, when, and why questions that drive the discovery of critical context. For example, geology, the author's own professional area of expertise, has proven useful in helping answer "where" questions while the light and shadow cast by the sun has been an invaluable forensic tool for estimating the "when." One of the biggest "where" mysteries of Civil War photography involves the proposed location of the famous O'Sullivan-Gardner photo A Harvest of Death (incidentally the war's second most popular image). Hippensteel casts a critical eye toward earlier interpretations and tests his own probability-based GIS approach to arrive at a probable location that lacks disqualifying features. The author is careful to point out that the most probable site determined by his analysis cannot be regarded as definitive. He also maintains that it is entirely possible that the weathering and erosion that has occurred since the battle was fought, combined with landscape modification due to modern development, might make conclusive identification of the site impossible.

An overarching theme of Civil War Photo Forensics is that the "value of a photograph from a historical, rather than an aesthetic, perspective is directly tied to context" (pg. 73). Diminishing that value was rampant manipulation, which ranged from simple, and presumably unintentional in most cases, caption errors to the cynical staging of post-battle scenes. Given that even the most prominent Civil War photographers were guilty of committing at least some degree of serious manipulation, their status as photojournalists is a source of great debate. An interesting aspect of Hippensteel's revisitation of this question is his comparison of photographers and sketch artists. Among the latter group, the works of Alfred Waud and Edwin Forbes provide the most food for thought. The author investigates the ways in which the sketch artist's ability to capture non-static scenes held special historical value that photographers could not match, even though the process between initial sketch and final publication was even more open to bias and manipulation. At the very least, Hippensteel's close comparisons of photographs with artist drawings of the same subject matter (and from a similar angle and perspective) should give readers a renewed appreciation of the detail and accuracy that artists such as Waud were capable of rapidly producing under less than ideal working conditions.

One of the most eye-opening features of the book is Hippensteel's close study of photographic exposure times. Most readers likely operate under the assumption that the lengthy exposure times of Civil War-era studio photography extended to field work, but the author's research finds that exposure times of less than a second were possible in bright sunlight. Hippensteel performed his own tests replicating period images of flag movements with comparable modern photography utilizing varying shutter speeds and determined that some of the Civil War photos had estimated exposure times of between one-half and two seconds. If that's accurate, it raises the question of why we didn't get more combat images. The author offers a reasonable suggestion that most photographers would not have relished the risks involved with arranging their bulky and expensive equipment in plain view on the battlefield, an act that would have exposed them to enemy fire at considerable intervals between shot and setup.

The volume is full of fascinating case studies that illustrate the value of photo forensics in establishing historical context. Among these, one of the most insightful was the author's use of photo forensic techniques to both interpret and sequence the images of Ben Butler's Dutch Gap Canal project and uncover crucial details surrounding its excavation. The author's expert examination of the canal photos in their geological context finds that the path through which the canal was carved contained sediments and strata (clearly seen in the photo series) that directly contributed to the project's ultimate impracticability. The contention by some that the Dutch Gap Canal photos also offer a rare depiction of the smoking remnants of a shell burst is convincingly debunked in the text as steam escaping from the digging equipment. In other matters, much more grim are the graphic wound details examined in the study's collection of dead soldier images. The grisly truth that consumers paid more for these types of photos undoubtedly inspired both the gory angles purposefully employed as well as the manipulative practice of posing the dead or placing fake dead bodies and other props into the frame to enhance viewer interest.

The vast body of work produced by Civil War photographers has been of incalculable value to the study of the conflict. It has also been a profoundly inspiring force, sparking the interest and imagination of legions of budding avocational and professional historians. However, as outlined above, it is also true that Civil War battlefield photography has been tainted with fraud and manipulation, and establishing the proper historical context of many other images has proved immensely challenging. Scott Hippensteel's Civil War Photo Forensics is not only the latest but one of the best works that employs analytical tools and methodologies based on science, technology, and critical thinking skills in order to help us navigate contested issues of image genuineness and other vital elements such as their location and timing. 

Coming Soon (July '26 Edition)

Scheduled for JULY 2026¹:
• Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 by Brian Burton.
• Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah by Lori Duran.
• An Officer of Six Navies: The Life of Confederate Commander Hunter Davidson by Coski & Jacobs.
• Unparalleled Horror: The Battles of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Crater, June 19-July 31, 1864 by Chick & Schmutz.
• The Boy Generals: George Custer, Wesley Merritt, and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, from the Shenandoah Valley to the Surrender at Appomattox by Adolfo Ovies.
• The Civil War in Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks by Matthew Ericson.

Comments: Light Julys are a routine thing now (although SB took the opportunity to put out a full slate), but it does give me a chance to catch up. At least it's an interesting lineup.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They routinely do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, publisher exclusives, 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 - "Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief" by Kenneth Noe

[Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief by Kenneth W. Noe (Louisiana State University Press, 2026). Hardcover, 7 maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xix,278/420. ISBN:978-0-8071-8521-6. $49.95]

Civil War readers raised on the vast body of post-Centennial publications can be forgiven for assuming that profound admiration for Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief has been an unbroken popular and scholarly phenomenon ever since the martyred president's April 1865 assassination. While this "heroic legend," as historian Kenneth Noe puts it, of Lincolnian strategic brilliance formed through a winning combination of exceptional natural intellect, close study of contemporary military science, and bitter early-war experience still predominates to this day, a closer following of the historiography reveals a winding road rather than a straight, well-worn pathway. Delving deeply into a near century-long stretch of Lincoln publishing produced after the end of the Civil War, Noe's Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief reinvestigates this widely cherished component of the set of core beliefs that still surround our assessment of Lincoln's war presidency.

So how does Noe define the Lincoln "heroic legend?" Intertwined with it are key elements of Lincoln's statesmanship, character/personality,  legendary eloquence, and mastery of the political game, but it is centrally about war leadership. Noe's conceptualization of the heroic legend is identified, developed, and scrutinized at great length in the book, but, for our purposes here, it can be summarized (in the author's own words) as "the now-canonical assertion that Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief was a military genius both strategically and tactically, not to mention a naturally intuitive and self-taught military thinker so modern in his views that he became a superior commander to his generals" (pg. 1). Though the biographical and military history literature published over the past few decades has exposed (or, in many cases, revived from earlier writings) the evident flaws in that edifice, the concept of Commander in Chief Lincoln as natural military genius still holds broad sway, especially in the popular mind.

As referenced above, the heroic legend and its principal assumptions, as deeply ingrained as they are, nevertheless continue to be reevaluated. Over the first four chapters of this book comprising Part I, Noe offers readers a well-structured critical survey of Lincoln as commander in chief, one that explores broad themes as well as very specific strategic decisions and tactical interventions. It was over this 1861-65 period, obviously, that the heroic legend was spawned, and Noe's text highlights both key elements of the developing legend and those objections that strongly challenge its central tenets.

Naturally, every discussion of Lincoln as commander in chief devotes a great deal of attention to the president's fraught relationship with George McClellan, and Noe's does as well. That troubled relationship dominated how Union forces conducted themselves over much of the war's first half, and, with the top leadership duo during that period frequently at loggerheads, the heroic legend practically demands that Lincoln be right and McClellan be wrong. Nevertheless, a common strain of Lincoln criticism is heavily grounded in a corresponding defense of McClellan (and the reverse is also the case, with Lincoln hagiography routinely pairing profound admiration of Lincoln with deep disdain for all things McClellan). Noe assiduously avoids both camps. An important theme that emerged from the messy final break-up between the two in late-1862 was Lincoln's development of an almost knee-jerk negative response to his top generals proposing to conduct their campaigns through "strategy." After McClellan left the scene, a frustrated Lincoln tended to equate any favoring of the indirect approach with McClellan-like (as he saw it) combat hesitation and avoidance. As Brooks Simpson has maintained in his persuasive rebuttal to the notion that Lincoln finally found his man in U.S. Grant and consequently gave the new General in Chief a free hand in planning the end of the war, this stubborn mistrust even extended to Grant's proposals for the eastern theater in 1864, committing the Army of the Potomac to a grinding overland campaign.

In addition to critiques related to specific campaign decisions, significant among them Lincoln's personal management of the final stages of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign (a meddling that failed spectacularly), more general themes that contest the Lincoln heroic legend emerge in Noe's retelling. All of these issues have been raised before in some way or another, but Noe's fresh synthesis is well-organized and engagingly presented. Among these challenges to the heroic legend are Lincoln's untimely interventions in military affairs, his curtailment of civil liberty protections, his flawed appreciation of weather and logistical limitations, his impairment of army discipline and efficiency through allowing scheming officers to bypass the proper chain of command, his arguably imbalanced prioritization of political considerations when it came to important command appointments and strategic goals, and his inability until late in the process to find top generals who could fulfill his expectations. The weight assigned to these and other objections to the heroic legend might lead some readers to accuse the author of being too harsh toward Lincoln's wartime leadership (which achieved total victory in the end after all), but one might argue that it is a necessary precondition for comprehending the depth and pervasiveness of the skepticism Lincoln contemporaries and successive generations alike felt toward the president's military management skills before the tide of interpretation shifted decisively during the period between the two world wars (all of that addressed in Part II).

Part II brilliantly traces the development and evolution of the Lincoln heroic legend. Wading through both well-known and obscure Lincoln biography and commentary (both domestic and foreign) that emerged between roughly 1865 and 1959 must have involved an incredible effort of new reading and fresh revisitation. As Noe explains, the legend really originated with Lincoln himself. In matters of military strategy, Lincoln quickly transformed from hesitant amateur conscious of his inexperience to self-confident interventionist entirely willing to question and overrule his professional military advisers and commanders in the field. Indeed, as the war progressed, Lincoln damned his top generals again and again for not recognizing what he himself claimed to recognize as the proper course for employing a national strategy that would crush Confederate resistance. After the war, the most notable early proponents of the heroic legend were former Lincoln secretaries Hay and Nicolay, whose ten-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History sanctified the Lincoln memory and was the leading early image maker of the slain president as masterful strategist. Full enshrinement would arrive much later.

Noe's Part II chapters offer readers a wonderfully comprehensive and incisively written crash course in the extended historiography of Lincoln as commander in chief. Readers unfamiliar with that literature will likely be surprised to discover that Lincoln's wartime role as commander in chief was little discussed by contemporary biographers and for decades after the beloved president's death, and when it was it was a mixed commentary at best, often negative in nature. Nevertheless, it is often the case that current events trigger intense reappraisal, sometimes seismic in nature, of historical figures. In Lincoln's case it was the civilizational trauma of the Great War and the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe that spawned a new positive outlook on Lincoln as commander in chief. Even though American writers and historians of the time continued to focus on other parts of Lincoln's life and presidency, British military authors spawned a new appreciation of Lincoln's alleged military genius. While some writers such as Viscount Wolseley, G.F.R. Henderson, and B.H. Liddell Hart found little in Lincoln's military mind to admire, others such as Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, disgusted with his own country's civilian leadership, looked to Lincoln as a modern role model. Much more positive in his attempt to reboot the entire debate over Lincoln's abilities as a strategist was the enthusiastic championing of Lincoln from General Colin Robert Ballard. Ballard and Maurice both lauded Lincoln as the benevolent dictator made necessary by the times. Finally, J.F.C. Fuller further idealized Lincoln and especially his relationship with Grant. Though sincere, Fuller's appreciation of Lincoln's superior statesmanship and the president's development into a gifted strategist was, in Noe's view, also wielded as a "tool to pillory the generals of the Great War and shape the future" (pg. 230). In the end, Noe concludes that these writer-generals "completed the British reconstruction of the heroic legend," and, in the process, "canonized it." (pg. 234). The opinions of those disillusioned British generals possessed considerable trans-Atlantic influence, but a pair of American scholars, late to the game, eventually set things in stone.

Just like the Great War and interwar years influenced Lincoln's broader meaning to British writers, World War II and the ensuing Cold War deeply impacted how American writers revisited the Lincoln war presidency. Prior to WW2, Revisionist leading light James Randall spurred a renewed positivity when it came to Lincoln, his leadership, and his controversial exercise of presidential war powers. Still though, Randall did not rate Lincoln a military genius, his assessment of Lincoln as commander in chief far from bolstering the heroic legend (and he defended McClellan more than most). Lincoln was not a military despot (enlightened or otherwise) in Randall's view either. Noe does not equate Randall's views on avoiding war to isolationism, but he sees Randall's impact as fading alongside the spirit of the times, as U.S. involvement in WW2 took on the popular spirit of a moral crusade and, under the influence of the Roosevelt war presidency, "Lincoln metamorphosed into a symbol of democracy, freedom, just war, and military preparedness" (pg. 237). Out were Randall's strident antiwar stance and doubts about ending domestic slavery being worth the destructive costs of war, and in was a New Nationalist revival of "an interpretation of the Civil War that revolved around slavery, irrepressible conflict, and a good war" (pg. 242). This new intellectual climate primed a massive expansion of the heroic legend, and the two men leading that charge were Kenneth P. Williams and T. Harry Williams. In Lincoln Finds a General, Kenneth Williams, with both world wars in the back of his mind, lauded Lincoln's genius in both military and political affairs and praised Grant from on high while at the same time heaping scorn upon McClellan. Both books remain major forces in the field, but T. Harry Williams's Lincoln and His Generals, with its more sophisticated approach to Lincoln, McClellan, Grant, and the rest, ultimately proved the most influential of the two groundbreaking works. Though it is understandable that Part II ends with T. Harry Williams's grand triumph and the enshrinement of his contribution to the Lincoln heroic legend, it still would have been interesting to read the author's evaluation of more recent popular proponents such as James McPherson.

Even today, the heroic legend that still shapes our modern understanding of Lincoln as commander in chief is so ironclad that attempts to challenge it have only scratched the armor. It is not for want of trying, however. Casting aside the cranks, Noe's conclusion outlines the game efforts of four writers, Brooks Simpson, Geoffrey Perret, William Marvel, and Elizabeth Brown Pryor, whose sound criticisms on a variety of fronts tried but failed to substantially dent, let alone shatter, the legend. Noe ends the discussion on a bit of a down note by linking the uses and misuses of the Lincoln heroic legend to a buttressing of the modern "Imperial Presidency," with its ever further expansions of presidential war powers.

Of all the enduring components of the Lincoln canonization, his performance as commander in chief provides some of the most fertile ground for critical reevaluation. Kenneth Noe's impressive Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend provides both new thrust to that movement as well as an essential historical framework for understanding exactly how and why Lincoln came to be celebrated as one of the finest, if not the finest, presidential war leaders in our nation's history.