Booknotes: John Yates Beall, Son of the South

New Arrival:

• John Yates Beall, Son of the South: The Life and Death of a Confederate Privateer by Ken Lizzio (McFarland, 2026).

At least in the realm of Civil War biography, I don't believe that I've ever encountered a situation quite like this one. Within a period of just over two years, we have in our hands not one but three biographies of a Confederate waterborne irregular soldier and clandestine operator that few Civil War readers of today could readily identify by photo. Pretty amazing. The third release is Ken Lizzio's John Yates Beall, Son of the South: The Life and Death of a Confederate Privateer.

From the description: "John Beall, a Confederate soldier whose execution President Lincoln upheld despite appeals for clemency from his staff, was a scion of a prominent Virginia family. Wounded while fighting with Stonewall Jackson's legendary brigade, he fled to Canada intending to sit out the war. Beall found a way back into the war that did not involve the killing he came to abhor, engaging in privateering on the Chesapeake Bay."

Of the previous two biographies, Ralph Lindeman's Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes (McFarland, 2023) covers Beall's Civil War activities with the most depth while the military trial and widespread campaign to commute Beall's death sentence are examined at greater length in William Harris's Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall (LSU, 2023). Of the three biographers, it appears that Lizzio is most convinced that Beall was a victim of gross injustice.

More from the description: "Captured and released in a prisoner exchange, he [Beall] made a daring attempt to free Confederate prisoners on Lake Erie's Johnson's Island. He was arrested while passing through Niagara Falls. This time there would be no reprieve--he was falsely charged with espionage and sentenced to be hanged. Lincoln anguished over his decision to uphold Beall's sentence, knowing full well he was sending an innocent man to his death."

In terms of significant content found in Lizzio's book that is either absent from the other two or lies outside their main focus, the author's preface advances the claim that, of the three, his own study "offers a more comprehensive examination of Beall's life and the environment in which he grew up" (pg. 3).