Review - "Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War" by Earl Hess

[Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War by Earl J. Hess (University Press of Kansas, 2026). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:ix,202/265. ISBN:978-0-7006-4095-9. $39.99]

With a vast body of firsthand accounts and other primary sources readily available for writers to consider, exploring Civil War battlefield heroics as well as the actions of those who simply performed their expected duties as fighting men can be a fairly straightforward process. On the other hand, investigating those Union and Confederate enlisted men, officers, and units who failed the moral and physical test of combat is much more challenging. Those combat "defaulters" were certainly recognized as a problem and their failures called out in writing by their more stalwart comrades in arms, but their particular brand of dereliction of duty has received far less attention from the publishing world at large. Naturally enough, the defaulters themselves were almost uniformly reluctant to share that aspect of their military lives. Nevertheless, historian Earl Hess has managed to compile enough primary source material to meaningfully address the many questions surrounding those Civil War officers and men of both sides who defaulted on their battlefield responsibilities. Description and analysis of that subject matter is the central aim of Hess's newest book, Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War.

Hess himself has already devoted a good chunk of his writing career to examining the nature of Civil War combat, his greatest single contribution to that body of literature being his 1997 study The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat. In contrast to that book's one-sided perspective, Shattered Courage takes into account both Union and Confederate fighting men. The opening chapter summarizes our current general understanding of this topic, establishing baseline context by recounting the ways in which soldiers of both sides responded to the multitude of mental and physical tests presented by the Civil War battlefield.

A unique aspect of Hess's investigation of this subject matter is his pairing of anecdotal evidence (through an accumulation of brief individual and unit-based case histories) with informative quantitative analysis. Historical evidence of battlefield defaulting is limited, but Hess believes he has compiled more than enough examples from both sides (and across all three major theaters of operation) to provide a sample roughly representative of the variety of ways in which officers, men, and entire units defaulted on their combat responsibilities. Sources that might assist with numbers data related to actual bolting from the battleline are few and far between, but a handful of spot studies from the historical record (the most useful being Confederate general Bushrod Johnson's exceptionally thorough reporting of those men from his Tennessee brigade who fled under fire at Stones River) allow the author to reference at least some groupings of reliable figures. Nevertheless, the degree to which this limited data is representative of the armies at large is worthy of further research.

In the era of tight, linear formations and crowded battlefields, those who suddenly bolted to the rear were the most obvious combat defaulters. However, a more subtle form of defaulting that Hess terms "combat reluctance" was far more common but, until recently, has eluded wider study and understanding. These men were generally able to preserve the appearances of performing the regular duties of the good soldier, but, at the same time, they minimized their exposure to battlefield danger in ways elusive enough to avoid the dreaded accusation of cowardice. On the individual level, this reluctance was expressed in a variety of ways (including behaviors such as faking or exaggerating illness, helping wounded comrades get medical attention, and, most cynically, self-mutilation), but Hess focuses most heavily on straggling, its effects, and how both sides tried (but largely failed) to positively address its widespread deleterious impact on army discipline and efficiency. One of the most interesting subsets of the combat reluctant soldier involved those individuals who seemed to sincerely want to to their duty but were betrayed by their minds and bodies at the moment of crisis. Those men, labeled "constitutional cowards," were in many cases surprisingly viewed with compassion by their more reliable comrades. Recognized by others for at least trying, such men, especially if otherwise well liked, were often kept within the unit but assigned useful non-combat tasks and duties, that being preferable to losing their services entirely through dishonorable discharge. As Hess and others have also pointed out, combat reluctance also extended to entire units and formations. As the war slogged forward from its midpoint onward, veterans of both sides gained through hard-won and repeated experience an almost instinctual understanding of what was and wasn't possible when attacking enemy positions over certain types of terrain and against advanced field fortifications. In those cases, combat reluctance came with a quiet but determined refusal to attack (employing a variety of possible excuses) or a willingness to advance a certain distance toward the enemy line but no more.

In Hess's examination of combat defaulting among individual officers and enlisted men, two common themes emerge. The first is that defaulting could occur at any phase of an individual's length of service. A common perception among readers is that enduring combat became much easier as time went on, with the first experience being by far the most trying. According to Hess's evaluation of the available evidence, this was not the case, with grizzled veterans and green officers and soldiers experiencing combat for the first time being more similar than different when it came to vulnerability to combat failure. The second common theme is that actual punishment, official and unofficial, was, given the gravity of the offense, relatively infrequent. One might presume that officer failure was taken very seriously, and it was, but Hess's examination of 98 examples of documented Union and Confederate officer failures and their personal fates, a good number of which are sampled in the text, reveals that a bolting officer had a better than one-third chance of escaping any career-damaging consequences. In Hess's view, this speaks to a military system heavily weighted toward compassion and desire to offer second chances. One suspects that the mass volunteer nature of Civil War armies and their highly political makeup had something to do with that tendency toward leniency. As was the case with most large bureaucracies, inertia played a major role in determining how accused officer defaulters were treated. Higher-ups often lacked the motivation and time necessary to put the accused through the military justice system, and, as Hess explains, it proved much easier to all involved to just allow, or firmly suggest, shaky officers quietly resign (which occurred in nearly one-fourth of the cases in Hess's sample).

When it comes to the enlisted men of both sides, Hess's research roughly estimates that during any given engagement around 10% of a regiment's rank and file defaulted in a noticeable manner. As was the case with officers, disdain directed toward these men from their comrades was in many cases tempered by compassion rooted in shared experience and the accompanying desire to give bolters and shirkers the benefit of the doubt and the chance to redeem themselves during the next battle. This combat failure among individuals was very often clear cut in nature. However, as Hess keenly observes, unit-level defaulting, while just as visible as when it occurred in driblets, tended to be considered a more opaque matter. When entire units failed, it was commonly recognized that mitigating circumstances beyond their control were involved. Even so, the manner in which units exited the battlefield directly influenced perception, although units who fled in wild disorder could still be forgiven if they quickly rallied and returned to the fight. A benefit of group failure was that individual combat failure was frequently shielded from special attention.

Given that combat defaulting seriously impaired army discipline and effectiveness, one might expect that attempts to curb it involved widespread, swift, and severe punishment. Hess's research shows that the opposite was the case, with wide-ranging reluctance to impose the heaviest punishments, execution (which was not applicable to officers, who were instead cashiered from the service) being especially rare. Hess finds that the strongest advocates for capital punishment were those at the highest levels of command (divisional commanders and above), with mercy and prosecutorial laxity most prevalent at the lowest command levels (those most closely involved in carrying out such punishment). Civil War officers, public officials, and enlisted men alike seemed to recognize that combat failure could not be cured through harsh punishment. Instead, it was determined by these men that "(c)ombat failure was a fact of military life that had to be accepted and dealt with in reasonable rather than extraordinary ways" (pg. 154). Open to interpretation is how effectively each side managed that balance.

While punishments for combat failure might have been sporadic and generally limited in severity, efforts aimed toward improving combat performance through positive means of raising fighting spirit were legion by comparison. In Hess's own words, both armies relied more on the carrot than the stick. In addition to encouragement through pre-battle motivational speeches and post-battle congratulatory orders, armies issued individual and unit badges, medals, and honors. Both well-known rewards such as the Kearny Medal and obscure ones are reviewed in the text, the latter including those that never made it into actual practice (one being General Rosecrans's idea, ultimately disapproved, for rewarding his bravest men in the Army of the Cumberland by gathering them into honor battalions supplied with the best arms the government could procure). Stitching battle honors on flags was a practice that both sides eventually adopted, and promotions for bravery were also dangled in front of soldiers to inspire them. In comparing the two sides, Hess finds distinct differences in the Union and Confederate approaches to fostering combat spirit, the former being more active, broad, and varied in its rewards programs and the latter more hesitant and disorganized in both creating and following through with national awards. Some of that difference might be attributed to priorities and resource limitations (for example, the Confederate Roll of Honor medals were never struck), but Hess's limited sample also suggests that the Confederate soldier might have been, on average, more skeptical of individual award honors and, given past experience, distrustful of the government to follow through on its promises. In the end, Hess believes that Union superiority in employing means of shaping morale and fighting spirit through rewards of all types actually had a material effect on their achieving victory, Confederate inattention to such matters having the opposite effect. Given its nebulous nature, the magnitude of that impact is debatable. Regardless, though, it certainly does appear that both sides generally preferred to primarily address fighting morale through encouraging good battlefield behavior, not by threatening them with dire punishment for failure.

International context has been a significant part of Hess's most recent scholarship. The final chapter of Shattered Courage draws clear parallels between combat defaulting in Civil War soldiers and the experiences of those who fought in other wars. Most distinctive among differences are the ways in which historians of different eras classify these men (often through continuously updated diagnostic systems) and study how soldiers respond to both the timeless aspects and the fresh challenges of the contemporary battlefield. One interesting observation is that during the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with its evolution into far more dispersed small-unit tactical arrangements and dramatically decreased percentage of troops on the firing line in any given unit, defaulting became less visible. Hess ends the discussion with the intriguing suggestion that the Civil War, with its high literacy rates among soldiers and no system of censoring their prolific writings, might very well represent American military history's most insightful documentary laboratory for examining the phenomenon of combat defaulting. This fine study of that important yet neglected topic, with its unique focus and first of its kind qualitative and quantitative analysis, advances a strong argument in support of that possibility.

Booknotes: Ulysses's Odyssey

New Arrival:

• Ulysses’s Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant’s World Tour at the Dawn of American Empire by Louis L. Picone (Savas Beatie, 2026).

From the description: "In May 1877, Ulysses S. Grant, newly departed from two terms in the White House, embarked on an extraordinary three-year journey that defined a pivotal moment in the Gilded Age. Driven by a lifelong passion for travel and unburdened by a fixed itinerary, Grant set out to explore the world, his wanderlust sustained by modest means." Louis Picone’s Ulysses’s Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant’s World Tour at the Dawn of American Empire "chronicles this unprecedented adventure, illuminating its historical significance and Grant’s enduring legacy."

More than a mere grand vacation, Grant's journey was an exceptional one involving both interactions with world leaders and wide-ranging engagement with local flavor. More from the description: "Grant’s odyssey spanned continents, from Europe’s capitals to uncharted terrain for an American president, including Egypt, the Holy Land, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, India, Siam, Saigon, China, and Japan where he was welcomed by throngs and honored by monarchs, kings, queens, emperors, and heads of state. Grant immersed himself in local cultures: He scaled Mount Vesuvius, sailed the Nile, rode elephants in India, and strolled the streets of Sicily, where he was cautioned about the mafia."

Grant wound down his world tour on more familiar ground. More: "In September 1879, thousands greeted Grant’s return at San Francisco heralding him as a national hero. His journey continued across the United States via the Transcontinental Railroad, culminating in Philadelphia’s grandest reception, where his global voyage was celebrated with unparalleled fervor. His travels were not yet over. Weeks later he ventured south to Cuba, Mexico, and the Southern states, where former Confederates and the formerly enslaved alike cheered his presence." The tour concluded, it was back to national politics. "Returning to Illinois just before the 1880 Republican convention, Grant entered the presidential race for a third time, his global perspective newly sharpened."

"(D)rawing upon Grant’s extensive papers, accounts of fellow travelers, letters, diaries, historic newspapers, and myriad other sources," Picone's narrative "reveals Grant’s personality, core decency, and sense of humor, and explores the trip’s significance at the time before it faded from public memory." Supplementing the text are a number of photographs, mostly of Grant sitting or standing with dignitaries. Restoring Grant's epic world tour "to its rightful place in history," the book's intended audience broadly includes "anyone interested in American presidents, the Gilded Age, or foreign policy."

Booknotes: From the Center of America

New Arrival:

• From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River by Robert H. Swenson (SIU Press, 2026).

From the description: "In the heart of America, four major rivers converge―the Cumberland and Tennessee with the Ohio; then the Ohio with the Mississippi. These three confluences, which author Robert Swenson christens the Four Rivers Reach, played a unique role in the development of the steamboats that dominated American continental transport for almost 100 years. Between 1825 and 1936, the river towns of Smithland, Paducah, Metropolis, Mound City, and Cairo launched 295 wood-hulled, steam-powered vessels.

"Drawing from a wealth of archival sources," Robert Swenson's From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River "presents detailed histories of these steamboats over a span of 110 years, accompanied by nearly one hundred illustrations and photographs." Swenson's study "focuses on distinct events in steamboat history, tracing the impact of these shipyards on the economies and communities of the river towns where they were built. It reveals how the availability of steamboats along this sixty-mile Reach affected migration, politics, and the US economy of the nineteenth century."

As mentioned above, vessels produced in this region heavily influenced major events of nineteenth-century western American history and beyond. More from the description: "Steamboats built at the Four Rivers Reach played pivotal roles in the forced relocation of Native Americans from southern Appalachia to Oklahoma, the outcome of the Civil War, and the Montana gold rush." Of course, the area that Swenson calls the Four Rivers Reach was action central during the early phases of the Civil War in the West. The region's shipyards were also where significant parts of Union inland naval power were constructed or modified from earlier builds. Such vessels included "tinclads, troopships, ironclad gunboats, a propeller tug, a fleet of fast Mississippi River packets, and several Missouri River "mountain boats"" (pg. 57). As they are in those parts of the book covering other decades, Chapter 3 recounts the construction of various types of vessels during the 1860s. In helpful fashion, those steamboats built at each river town are compiled in a descriptive register that's arranged in rough chronological order. Photographs and drawings of many of these mid-century steamboats are provided as well.

In "(c)harting the legacy of mid-America's shipyards and iconic steamboats," From the Center of America "demonstrates how steamboat building shaped the culture, people, and economy of this region―and how, in turn, the area and its steamships influenced the growth of the young United States."

Booknotes: Haunted by Memory (with excerpt)

New Arrival:

• Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War edited by John R. Neff and Amy Laurel Fluker (U Tenn Press, 2026).

Since this site's inception, a number of Civil War book series published by university presses have sadly either scaled back their offerings or disappeared entirely. On a happier note, though, others have broadened their horizons. One of those is the venerable Voices of the Civil War series from University of Tennessee Press, which has recently expanded beyond its traditional domain of edited letters, memoirs, and diaries into themed anthologies like this one. Roughly halfway to Halloween, we are treated to Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War, edited by John Neff and Amy Laurel Fluker.

Most Civil War readers possess at least a passing familiarity with the unique brand of supernatural and psychological horror writings of Ninth Indiana veteran and staff officer Ambrose Bierce, but apparently the postwar public's taste for such things was more widespread than many of us realize. From the description: "As America’s bloodiest conflict, it is no surprise that the Civil War gave rise to a golden age of ghost stories. Popular publications were filled with accounts of ghosts―ghosts that appeared in the heat of battle, in the fretful quiet of picket duty, and in the miserable confines of hospitals and prisons. Civil War ghosts continued to haunt the troubled peace that followed, revealing that even so deadly a conflict left unresolved issues in its wake."

The era's ghost stories were not just spooky entertainment for the reading masses. More from the description: "They provide powerful evidence of how a wounded country tried to put the trauma, grief, and anxieties inflicted by the Civil War to rest. By telling ghost stories, Americans created narratives that honored the dead, explained the unexplainable, and gave their experiences a broader sense of identity and purpose."

At over 400 pages, Neff and Fluker's Haunted by Memory addresses haunted tales in a great variety of formats. "(T)he first scholarly analysis of the significance of ghosts to the history and memory of the Civil War," this volume "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." In addition to compiling the material, the editors establish historical and cultural context through a lengthy introduction and provide extensive chapter notes. Those annotations "provide important historical context, explanatory detail, and biographical information." Though the task proved not to be entirely possible, the goal was to "provide an annotation for all individuals named in the stories" (pg. xxi).

In sum: "(b)y 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."

The publisher has also kindly provided an excerpt for CWBA readers to consider (press the 'read more' button to view it in its entirety):

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Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War

excerpted commentary from Chapter 1: An Age of Spooks

John R. Neff and Amy Laurel Fluker

Understanding how ghost stories became a popular form of cultural expression in the Civil War era requires an understanding of the war’s nearly incomprehensible death toll. Still the deadliest war in US history, it claimed the lives of at least 800,000 combatants. Taken as an equivalent proportion of the US population in the early twenty-first century, that amounts to 8,000,000 lives. But, as historian J. David Hacker reminds us, even that number is a best-guess estimate. It does not account for civilian deaths, particularly among the enslaved, and only roughly accounts for African American soldier dead.ⁱ In short, the Civil War was far deadlier than historians will ever be able to fully appreciate.

...

Read more

The extent of grief in the postbellum era was so overwhelming that it exerted a palpable force. No one described this atmosphere more eloquently than novelist Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. She reflected:

At that time, it will be remembered, our country was dark with sorrowing women. . . . Toward the nameless mounds of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest, the yearning of desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish which seem to choke the very air that the happier and more fortunate must breathe.

Is there not an actual, occult force in the existence of a general grief? . . . It is like a material miasma. The gayest man breathes it, if he breathe at all; and the most superficial cannot escape it.ⁱⁱ

No surprise, then, that the war’s survivors were haunted by it. As the Indiana Plymouth Tribune observed in 1907: “The war is still present, a vivid reality and yet a memory. And it is not strange that from its bloody happenings have grown some superstitions, some curious fireside tales that ill assort with our arrogant workaday disbelief in ghosts and the unusual.”ⁱⁱⁱ

What is perhaps most interesting about the ghost stories collected in Haunted by Memory, however, is that they reveal that hauntings were not only a postwar phenomena. Veterans testified that ghosts were a part of the experience of Civil War soldiers in combat. Take, for example, the story of Private Henry Moode, who was confronted by the apparition of a Confederate soldier he recognized—having accidentally stumbled over his dead body just moments before. Or, the tale of the “mounted ghost” that terrorized Union pickets on duty near Blaine’s Crossroads. In the chaos of combat and confronted on all sides by the inescapable realities of death, Civil War soldiers manifested ghosts. Or, perhaps, ghosts manifested themselves.

The daily lives of Civil War soldiers, however, were not constantly characterized by terror and death. There were idle moments, too. At such times, soldiers called upon the supernatural as a form of entertainment. The men of the 116th Pennsylvania, for example, filled time during the siege of Petersburg by trading accounts of comrades who returned from the grave to visit their families.

Even when recounted as pastimes, ghost stories offer insights into nineteenth-century American culture. The ghosts of the 116th, like many others described in the stories included in Haunted by Memory, embodied an age-old theme in the Anglo-American tradition of supernatural tales: that of the purposeful ghost. The purposeful ghost appears not merely to frighten the living, but with the intention of achieving some end.

Oftentimes, the ghost returns because it is bound to an unfulfilled promise. Many Civil War soldiers felt the bonds of camaraderie they formed in combat might transcend death. Faced by the suddenness of death in battle and the likelihood they would be denied the opportunity to say final farewells, soldiers sometimes vowed to return from beyond the grave to visit their brothers-in-arms. They believed such visitations might bring closure to grieving friends and provide proof of “the state of the soul after death.” At least, that was the hope of two unnamed comrades from the 2nd Iowa Cavalry, who reportedly made such a promise to one another while on picket duty before the Battle of Farmington. The ghost of “Copleston” appeared to his friend in the prison barracks at Camp Chase to fulfill a similar promise and to relate the details surrounding his death.

In yet another tradition associated with the purposeful ghost, spirits sometimes returned seeking justice or vengeance. Two stories relate to wartime homicides, but the most notable is the story of Private John Rowley. Rowley swore before a US military tribunal that he was being tormented by the spirit of his comrade, Jerome Dupoy, whom he confessed to murdering. The haunting of Rowley serves as a reminder that not all violent deaths came at the hands of the enemy.

The stories also reveal how quickly Civil War sites became associated with hauntings. At locations where specific incidents of the war occurred, the past intruded on the present and stirred memories of the horrors of the war. Battlefields, in particular, emerge from the stories as unsettling places. Take, for example, the specters of Savage’s Station who cried for water from beyond the grave. Or, the ghostly regiments that stalked the cliffs at Pittsburg Landing.

The belief that battlefields were haunted undoubtedly stemmed from the knowledge that not only were they sites of deaths, but of bad deaths. The Civil War shattered the cultural construction of the “Good Death.” That is, a manner of death that followed a specific set of rituals designed to reinforce family bonds, provide assurances of Christian salvation, and offer closure to the grieving.^iv The Civil War bestowed precious few “Good Deaths,” leaving survivors with little consolation. They had no formula to follow when it came to mourning the sudden, violent deaths of loved ones far from home. Their grief was compounded by fears that their loved one’s remains were unidentified, unattended—or worse—unburied.

The tale of the “Ghost at Post 1” powerfully illustrates not only the unsettling realities of death in the Civil War, but also the cultural significance of ghost stories. In this case, the ghost’s purpose is multi-faceted. In the text, the repeated appearance of a Confederate apparition led the men of the 6th Illinois Cavalry on an investigation that resulted in the recovery of his forgotten remains. After providing the unknown Confederate a decent burial, the ghost never returned.

Beyond the text, however, the “Ghost at Post 1” serves a larger symbolic purpose. It is important to note that this particular story appeared in the National Tribune. Founded in 1877, the National Tribune played a pivotal role in the construction of Civil War memory among Union veterans.^v It actively encouraged veterans to submit their recollections of the war to its regular column “Fighting Them Over”—where the tale of the “Ghost at Post 1” appeared. Collectively, the column constituted a history of the war that was shaped by and meaningful for veterans.^vi

The story of the “Ghost at Post 1” must therefore be understood in the context of Civil War memory. It reflects the popular turn towards reconciliation that dominated Civil War commemoration in the late nineteenth century. In this period, aging white veterans increasingly relished recollections of the war that emphasized the common bravery of volunteer soldiers on both sides and minimized the moral and political opposition over racial slavery that drove them into conflict.^vii The “Ghost at Post 1” concludes with a particularly meaningful act of reconciliation. By respectfully tending to the remains of the unknown Confederate soldier, the men of the 6th Illinois Cavalry quite literally put the spirit of sectional antagonism to rest. Death, in this case at least, symbolically restored the common humanity of erstwhile foes.

There is one final and compelling thread that can be traced through the selection of stories in Haunted by Memory: that is the importance of women’s experiences to understanding the impact, prosecution, and subsequent interpretation of the Civil War. When, for example, Sarah Whiteside showed a Boston newspaper correspondent the spot where fifty soldiers had once been buried in her garden, she offered chilling testimony of how the war blurred the line between the battlefield and the home front and, in particular, how it violated the domestic world of women. Her story reminds readers that women’s experiences were not ancillary to the war, but rather central parts of the story.^viii

The fortunes of armies in the field rose and fell with those of the “Nameless Heroines” of the war, as one unknown contributor to the Anaconda Standard termed them. Women both inspired and compelled men to enlist. At the same time, painful and worrisome separations from female friends, relatives, and loved ones drove some men to desertion. The anonymous soldier in “The Corporal’s Story” claimed to have been so distressed by news that his wife was seriously ill that he put a plan to desert into action. Before he was missed, however, a female apparition frightened and shamed him into returning to camp.

Perhaps most powerfully, however, these stories call us to reframe our understanding of the destruction inflicted by the war. Particularly, the psychological damage, devastation, and death wreaked on women.^ix Elizabeth Stuart Phelps observed keenly the omnipresence of “sorrowing women” across the nation—“whose misery crowded the land.”^x In keeping with the popular gothic tropes of the day, writers often romanticized women’s grief. See, for example, A. L. Soule’s account of the death of “Miss Blaine,” who he said succumbed to a broken heart following the death of her lover in the cavalry. Another correspondent claimed the ghost of a woman led him to the grave of Robert H. Lane, who was killed in the Battle of Chantilly. He later learned the ghostly woman was Lane’s fiancé, who also died of a broken heart.

As the most divisive and deadly event in US history, the Civil War forever altered the lives of its survivors and the cultural landscape of the nation. It encouraged Americans, who already embraced the supernatural as an important element of their culture, to popularize ghost stories as a means of examining the unsettling legacies of the war. Whether they brought readers any degree of closure is hard to say, but their prevalence indicates the extent of suffering the Civil War inflicted.

i J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History vol. 57, no. 4 (December 2011), 307–348.

ii Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Chapters From a Life (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896), 96–97.

iii Plymouth [In.] Tribune, February 7, 1907.

iv See John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005); Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2009).

v Crompton B. Burton, “‘Let Every Comrade Lend Us a Hand’: George E. Lemon and the National Tribune in James Marten and Caroline E. Janney, Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2021), 68, 69. See also Brian Matthew Jordan, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War (New York: Liveright, 2014), 75–79; Steven E. Sodergren, “‘Exposing False History’: The Voice of the Union Veteran in the Pages of the National Tribune” in Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera, eds. The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), 137, 139.

vi Steven E. Sodergren, “‘Exposing False History’: The Voice of the Union Veteran in the Pages of the National Tribune” in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, eds. Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), 143–144.

vii Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 5; Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 5–7; Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 162; Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 (New York: Vintage, 1927), 310, 318–319.

viii See Stephanie McCurry, Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).

ix Lisa Tendrich Frank, “The Union War on Women” in The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017), 174–175.

x Phelps, 97.

Booknotes: Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville

New Arrival:

• Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide by Brian K. Burton (Univ of Neb Press, 2026).

University of Nebraska Press's This Hallowed Ground series of Civil War campaign and battlefield guidebooks debuted in 1999. Over the next decade and a half, a total of seven volumes sampling battles from all three major theaters of operation were published. Time between releases widened significantly after 2008, with gaps of six and twelve years between the two most recent publications, but it is great to see that the series is still going. I've always found the books to be useful and interesting alternatives to those following the well-established U.S. Army War College guide format.

The newest installment, eighth in the series, is Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide. Its author, Brian Burton, is the contributor of another series volume, 2007's The Peninsula & Seven Days. Since both campaigns shared significant physical space, it is natural for a guide to combine Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville into a single volume. That way, visitors, especially those from afar who might have only one chance to drive the routes and walk the ground, can take in all or most of the sites during a one-day outing.

From the description: "Through the winter of 1862 and spring of 1863, the U.S. Army and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia clashed along the Rappahannock River in two major battles. Both demonstrated the height of power for the Confederacy in the Eastern Theater. The Battle of Fredericksburg was a tactically defensive triumph for Lee over the Army of the Potomac. The Battle of Chancellorsville, often described as Lee’s masterpiece, was a surprisingly aggressive response to Joseph Hooker’s operational flanking maneuver, as Lee sent Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson on a flanking maneuver of his own, dividing an army that already was substantially smaller than its Union counterpart to deliver a crushing blow at a decisive spot. It was in the latter stages of that blow that Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men. The battles, failed campaigns with high casualty rates for the Union, were a lead-up to the armies’ meeting at Gettysburg in July 1863."

One of the strongest features of the series as a whole is how well the reader/user is oriented to the key visual cues at each stop (with solid maps to assist in that). In this volume, there are eleven stops for the Fredericksburg tour and thirteen for Chancellorsville, and if users follow only the most basic elements (with minimal walking) perhaps only eight hours are required to complete them.

Review - "William Watson and the Rob Roy: The Adventures of a Civil War Blockade Runner" by Walter Wilson

[William Watson and the Rob Roy: The Adventures of a Civil War Blockade Runner by Walter E. Wilson (McFarland, 2026). Softcover, maps, tables, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vi,157/250. ISBN:978-1-4766-9903-5. $39.95]

A British citizen but long-term resident of Louisiana, Scotland's William Bryant Watson joined many other foreign nationals in being caught up in the whirlwind of America's Civil War. Volunteering with the Third Louisiana infantry regiment, Sergeant Watson fought at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge, and in October of 1862 he was wounded at Second Corinth. Returning home to recover, Watson eventually decided to switch gears and engage in the potentially lucrative pursuit of blockade running out of Texas. His vessel, the schooner Rob Roy, became perhaps the best remembered of that class to ply the trade, mostly due to Watson's event-filled 1892 memoir The Adventures Of A Blockade Runner; Or, Trade In Time Of War. A critical reexamination of that published account, Walter Wilson's William Watson and the Rob Roy: The Adventures of a Civil War Blockade Runner assigns itself the difficult task of correcting mistakes, filling in gaps and omissions, and addressing the various half-truths and embellishments that together seriously challenge the truthfulness of Watson's story. In the end, Wilson's research finds that much of Watson's memoir is backed by historical sources.

As Wilson confirms, Watson's blockade-running adventure had a rocky start. At first the Rob Roy was confiscated by Confederate authorities for government use. This caused a minor international incident due to Watson's foreign citizenship. After that matter was resolved and the Rob Roy was finally loaded with cotton bales to run the blockade, the schooner sank in its berth from gross negligence in cargo stowage. Eventually, the schooner was raised and completed its first voyage without incident. It speaks to the sheer vastness of the Gulf Coast and the difficulties involved with maintaining a tight blockade of even a limited number of ports, that a slow sailing vessel such as the Rob Roy was able to achieve a measure of success. This is especially notable given its relatively late start (near the end of 1863) in the high risk-high reward business of illicit trade, well after the U.S. Navy's blockade enforcement was in full swing. Watson increased his chances of avoiding capture by taking an indirect route to Havana, first stopping at Tampico, Mexico and then hugging the coast all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula's eastern extent before sailing directly to Cuba (the journey from the Tampico waypoint to Havana taking perhaps just over two weeks). For his second voyage to Havana, he changed the route to avoid predictability.

As Watson explains, feelings of considerable relief upon safely reaching a blockade-running harbor with a full cargo did not last long. Wilson confirms that such places were rife with unscrupulous speculators and corrupt brokers. In reading about Watson's two stopovers in Havana, one gets a sense of both the scale of profits involved as well as the complex behind-the-scenes activities attendant to finding crews, acquiring and financing return cargoes, and (related to the last point) negotiating new ownership shares. The number of shady characters swarming each arriving ship was legion, and it took considerable knowledge and interpersonal skills to determine who was worthy of trust. Politicking was also involved, with brokers, captains, and shipowners ingratiating themselves with local military commanders in ways that smoothed the permit process as well as hampered competitors or (in the case of Watson) those with whom they had business quarrels. Watson's encounters with other schooner owners, expanded upon by Wilson's research, also strongly suggests that the use of small, sail-powered vessels played a significant part in the international blockade running trade in the Gulf throughout the war.

In addition to shedding considerable light on a largely unsung and underappreciated aspect of Civil War blockade running, Watson's memoir also provides useful information about the tactics he employed to escape detection and capture. The most modern of contemporary steamships employed in blockade running relied on sleek hulls, long and low profiles, and sheer speed, but Watson developed effective strategies of his own that were tailored to both the strengths and limitations of schooners. In their case, it was best to move cautiously and methodically. Watson avoided unfurling sails during daylight hours, and moved at night as much as possible. When a blockader was sighted on the horizon during the day, it was best not to run. Instead, small boats were immediately launched to turn the schooner bow-on to the approaching steamer, making the runner's small profile difficult to discern among the waves. When approaching the destination, the shallow draft of the schooner was a strength, allowing it safe passage through channels that the much larger blockading steamships could not closely cover.

Among his wide-ranging efforts, Wilson performs yeoman work in attempting to uncover the full names of the litany of figures in Watson's account who were identified only by a single initial (ex. Mr. L). In the most difficult cases, Wilson provides readers with a number of possible candidates while offering his own opinion as to the most likely one. Wilson's research uncovers in-depth information on a great many of the historically obscure characters that figure large and small in Watson's story. The author's work also follows other individuals involved in captaining schooners, the most colorful of these being Capt. Dave McClusky. In addition to exploring the social and business networks and relationships that shaped Watson's experiences, those parts of the book collectively expand our understanding of the wider trade. One of the most important aspects of Wilson's analysis is his close reexamination of Watson's shaky, and occasionally non-existent, grasp of the where and when. Utilizing a variety of sources, Wilson imposes upon Watson's memoir an authoritative timeline of dates and events backed by solid evidence that serve to either confirm, question, or completely debunk Watson's claims. Much of the author's research in Gulf blockade runners, their cargoes, and the timing of their voyages is helpfully compiled in tabular format for current and future use.

Some of the volume's strongest historical detective work goes into investigating Watson's series of alleged voyages involving the Rob Roy, Phoenix/Pelican, and Jeanette that have no existing records or outside corroborating sources. The author calls these parts of Watson's story his "phantom voyages." As thoroughly documented and discussed among three chapters, there is no direct or even indirect evidence that Watson, as he claimed, completed a second return run into Galveston with Rob Roy, later sold his share in the schooner, and continued blockade running with steamships. By Wilson's best determination from the available sources, none of the steamship claims are supported by actual evidence. Instead of divesting himself of his ownership share in Rob Roy, the truth seems to be that Watson made a final voyage aboard it in early 1865, during which the schooner was forced onto a beach in Florida and burned to prevent its capture. After the war, Watson returned to his native land and, by all appearances, led a life of successful business pursuits.

In addition to constituting a significant addition to the Civil War blockade literature (in particular, the lesser-examined Texas, Mexico, and Cuba trading triangle in the Gulf), Walter Wilson's William Watson and the Rob Roy demonstrably affirms that Watson's celebrated yet controversial memoir does indeed possess considerable value as a historical document, if used with an abundance of caution. Indispensable to that necessity is pairing Watson's book with Wilson's impressive new critical evaluation.

Booknotes: Crisis At Antietam

New Arrival:

• Crisis at Antietam: The Cornfield and West Woods, September 17, 1862 by Steven Eden (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Steven Eden's Crisis at Antietam: The Cornfield and West Woods, September 17, 1862 "provides a meticulous tactical analysis of the opening brutal hours of the Civil War’s bloodiest single day."

As most Civil War readers already know, the sustained fighting on the northern end of the Antietam battlefield on September 17 was a horrifically bloody back and forth affair that could very easily have gone disastrously for the Confederates. That it didn't, and the Confederates narrowly but successfully held their positions at the end of the day, was the result of a combination of factors and decisions.

From the description: "Eden’s in-depth study of the fighting on the Confederate left uncovers critical missed opportunities, profound command failures, and the unpredictable hand of sheer chance. The fighting that raged through the Miller Cornfield and West Woods quickly spiraled beyond command control. Officers often failed to restore order amid the maelstrom; regiments and brigades acted independently, pushing forward without orders or full awareness of the battle’s unfolding horror. Union forces drove the Confederate front to the precipice of collapse on three occasions, only for the Rebels to miraculously rally each time, stabilizing their fragile lines against overwhelming odds."

Of course, much excellent work has already detailed the fighting in this sector of the battlefield as well as the battle on the whole, but there is always room for new angles. As Eden writes in his introduction, with both sides (at least in his view) poorly served by the generals at the top, his book differs most from previous accounts in its focus on "the decisions made by the colonels and captains" on the battlefield. Eden's text endeavors "to show what the men in the regiments saw, what they believed was happening, and why they acted the way they did" (pg. xi).

As was the case with very recent works from other Savas Beatie authors such as Joseph Boslet and Scott Fink, Eden's investigation of Civil War combat incorporates his own personal combat experiences on the modern battlefield. Eden "draws on extensive original sources, including memoirs, official reports, and soldier letters, together with his own invaluable combat experience as a retired Army officer and former West Point military history instructor. His insights are fresh and authoritative. Crisis at Antietam challenges even seasoned readers to fundamentally reconsider the traditional narrative of that pivotal bloody September day by exposing the raw, brutal reality of command and combat at Antietam."

Review - "Stonewall Jackson’s Winter Operations: The Raids Against the C&O Canal and the Bath-Romney Campaign, December 1861 to February 1862" by Timothy Snyder

[Stonewall Jackson’s Winter Operations: The Raids Against the C&O Canal and the Bath-Romney Campaign, December 1861 to February 1862 by Timothy R. Snyder (Savas Beatie, 2026). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxii,253/315. ISBN:978-1-61121-771-1. $32.95]

While he had justly earned his immortalizing nickname months earlier for his stalwart actions on Henry House Hill during the First Manassas battle, the Thomas J. Jackson of the winter of 1861-62 was not yet the "Stonewall" Jackson of legend. Though his lackluster performance during the Seven Days, a far more significant episode wedged between his Shenandoah Valley Campaign masterpiece and his daring drive into the Union rear that set up the smashing Confederate victory at Second Manassas, has inspired heaps of modern criticism, Jackson's operations along the Virginia-Maryland border from December 1861 to February 1862 clearly represent another Civil War career low point. Analysis of Jackson's flaws in personality, judgment, and command style that were exposed during that early phase of his Civil War career is central to the narrative presented in Timothy Snyder's Stonewall Jackson’s Winter Operations: The Raids Against the C&O Canal and the Bath-Romney Campaign, December 1861 to February 1862.

The reader will not progress very far into the book's introduction before realizing that the author does not rank among Jackson's modern devotees. While it is true that previous generations of writers too often downplayed the worst moments of Stonewall Jackson's Civil War career (of which this campaign was one), with some arguably blind to Jackson's faults, the more recent literature probably deserves more credit from the author for being reasonably well balanced in nature, with admirers, detractors, and those in between together presenting a suitably nuanced overall assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Jackson's Civil War generalship.

Detailed in the book are Jackson's December raids along the Upper Potomac and his follow-on military operations against the Union-occupied towns of Bath and Romney. The goal was to inflict lasting damage to two strategically significant regional transportation networks, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal linking Washington, D.C. and Cumberland, Maryland. In addition to supporting the movement of troops and supplies, much of the region's coal was transported along those routes for military and civilian purposes. By sweeping Union forces from those parts of Virginia that effectively shielded the railroad and canal (hopefully destroying them in the process), Jackson intended to establish long-term disruption to both routes. For Union forces, in addition to protecting those vital logistical arteries, occupation of Romney and Bath threatened Confederate-held Winchester and the rest of the Lower Shenandoah Valley, the defense of which were key parts of Jackson's Valley District command responsibilities.

The author of the 2011 study Trembling in the Balance: The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal during the Civil War, Snyder's established expertise on that subject serves him well in this volume. In addition to explaining why the C&O was such an important means of bulk transportation (especially for coal), the book details a series of Confederate winter raids—one against Dam Number 4 and three against Dam Number 5—none of which were able to inflict any lasting damage. As the author explains, the Confederate raids, which involved both infantry and cavalry forces, were ineffectual for a number of reasons. The Confederate raiders lacked blasting powder for breaching the dams and artillery fire was not used after it was determined that ammunition stockpiles were insufficient for that purpose. Instead, the dismantling process was to be achieved through hand-wielded tools, an iffy proposition under the best conditions let alone in icy winter waters against armed opposition. If that weren't bad enough, the well-positioned Union defenders across the water were both hypervigilant and highly mobile, able to quickly concentrate against as well as outrange their Confederate opponents with disruptive field artillery and rifle fire. Without the unrestricted freedom necessary to complete the laborious process of destroying the dams by hand, the Confederates were rather easily rebuffed at every turn. Description and analysis of these events, along with a properly framed appreciation of the canal's economic and military significance to the Union war effort, form one of the book's most important contributions.

Frustrated by the lack of success against the C&O but substantially reinforced by General W.W. Loring's small Army of the Northwest, Jackson was determined to clear Union forces from his district's western flank (hopefully eliminating the Union garrisons at Bath and Romney in the process) and destroy vital B&O infrastructure in the area. The problem was that achieving this would involve an arduous winter campaign in the Allegheny Mountains. As Snyder describes in the book, Jackson advanced on Bath from multiple directions, but the alert Union defenders were able to break contact and outrace his advance forces to the Potomac crossings. Finding further progress blocked at and around Hancock, Jackson bombarded the town, but the defenders there on the other side of river under fiery and aggressive Union commander Frederick Lander refused to surrender. Jackson next turned to Romney, but the defenders there retreated before his combined forces arrived, again denying the Confederates the possibility of capturing or destroying significant Union forces in the area. As was the case with the C&O, no long-term damage was inflicted upon B&O bridges and tracks during the brief Confederate occupation, and the campaign basically ended with Loring's men left behind to garrison Romney while Jackson's men returned to Winchester. The Confederates then fell into demoralizing internal squabbling that almost resulted in Jackson leaving the army altogether. In the end, Loring's isolated command was ordered to Winchester and Union forces rushed back into the ensuing void, reasserting control that would effectively last throughout the rest of the war.

At best, the benefits reaped from occupying Bath and Romney and in sweeping Union forces across the Potomac were minimal and temporary. Though it is difficult to fault Jackson too much for not being able to capture or destroy Union forces in the area given that they ran away at the Confederate approach, management of the campaign still left much to be desired. As the author explains, some of Jackson's missteps could be attributed to his high command inexperience, both in mountain operations during wintertime and in leading far more troops (approximately 8,500 officers and men, though fewer effectives) than he ever had before. Snyder also gives Jackson, who was without the services of his chief quartermaster John Harman, poor marks in logistical management of the campaign as evidenced by the extreme non-combat losses incurred during the campaign. By some estimates, these reductions in force numbered anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the army's total strength, filling the military hospitals with sick and otherwise temporarily incapacitated soldiers. In analyzing those claims, Snyder justifiably contends that Jackson pushed too many of the men under his command beyond their physical limits, though one might also argue that other Confederate leaders during this time, notably those in charge of the concurrent Fort Donelson campaign over in Tennessee, contributed to military disaster by not being willing enough to test the limits of their men's endurance. At this stage of the war, Jackson also tended to overestimate the offensive capabilities of militia forces under his command. In relation to his militia and regular officers alike, he then compounded the situation by equating a lack of success (regardless of the cause or causes) with willful failure to perform their military duties. He also demanded blind obedience to the letter of his orders, rarely condoning independent initiative in reaction to changing circumstances. What couldn't be chalked up to inexperience were Jackson's extreme level of operational planning secrecy and his willingness to bypass the chain of command, both of which frustrated and infuriated principal subordinates such as Loring. These would be common complaints from those who served under Jackson (even the general's own staff members) throughout his remaining Civil War career.

Arguably Jackson's biggest mistake after securing Romney was in widely dividing his forces while in such close proximity to the enemy, who could easily rush in forces by rail to position superior forces against Confederate communications. By leaving Loring's command isolated in Romney and marching the rest to Winchester, Jackson was seemingly repeating Confederate president Jefferson Davis's disastrous national cordon defense strategy at the district level. Though the administration held on to that strategy for too long, leading to major military disasters in the West, the danger was immediately recognized on the Virginia frontier, with Jackson being directed through War Secretary Benjamin to withdraw Loring. Jackson considered (very wrongly, in Snyder's view) those orders to be improper "interference" in his own sphere of responsibility, that clash with his superiors prompting the general to submit his resignation. Snyder provides a detailed account of General Lander's ensuing offensive operation, one that would take advantage of the enemy dispersal and attempt to trap the Romney garrison. The fortunes of war would intervene, however, as Loring was already on the move. That and another of Lander's bouts with chronic illness (on top of the festering leg wound that would eventually kill him with sepsis) together allowed Loring to escape unmolested. Nevertheless, Union forces could take pride in how they performed during the winter operations covered in the book. Success or lack of success in any military campaign results from a combination of controllable and uncontrollable factors. One might argue that Snyder's narrative, by focusing so closely on the former, primarily in the context of Jackson's alleged failures and missteps, deflects reader attention from a full appreciation of the remarkably well-managed Union response to the Confederate canal raids and the Bath-Romney Campaign that followed them.

Inadequate map coverage was a clear drawback of the winter campaign's only other book-length account, Thomas Rankin's Stonewall Jackson's Romney Campaign, January 1-February 20, 1862 (1994). There is improvement on that score with Snyder's commissioned set, with its finely detailed maps of the Upper Potomac region and mountainous area of operations west of the Shenandoah, but, save for the skirmishing at Bath and the Confederate pursuit toward Hancock, troop movements associated with the canal raids and Bath-Romney campaign are not superimposed on any of the pictured road networks. It is also the case that map coverage ends completely just beyond the volume's midpoint, before the Confederate expedition to Romney begins.

Overall, this volume is a very fine raid and campaign history that measures up strongly as the most comprehensive account of Jackson's winter operations of 1861-62. At the same time, while the author provides a noteworthy service in shining a spotlight on the earliest manifestations of the generalship flaws that would most significantly color the remainder of Jackson's Civil War career, there does come a point when the volume and tone of the criticisms pass the threshold into becoming immoderate. In interpreting matters great and small in relation to Jackson's personality, command style, and decision-making during this period of the war, Jackson's behavior and actions are at nearly every turn presented in the least favorable light. But, as they say, opinions vary, and other readers and reviewers might see it differently. It is really only near the end of the book, with the final chapter having the tonally fitting title of "Stonewall Jackson Rebuked," that the author references the likelihood of positive benefits from Jackson's highly demanding leadership and command style. Most notable is the possibility, as suggested by veteran accounts, that Jackson's insistence that subordinates strictly follow his orders to the letter (regardless of intervening circumstances) and his pushing his men to the limits of endurance had the combined effect of steeling discipline in both the officer and enlisted ranks in ways that strongly prepared those volunteers, many of whom were still relatively green citizen-soldiers, for the rigors of hard marching and hard fighting necessary to achieving victory in the upcoming Valley Campaign and beyond. In the end, though, regardless of one's feelings about where the author's analysis of Jackson himself registers on the balance meter, it is undeniable that the book is a major contribution to the history of early-war military operations along the hotly contested Virginia-Maryland border.

Booknotes: Reasons We Fight

New Arrival:

• Reasons We Fight: Tejanos and American Wars, 1836-1972 by Alex Mendoza (OU Press, 2026).

Starting with the Texas Revolution and ending with the exit of U.S. forces from Vietnam, Alex Mendoza's Reasons We Fight: Tejanos and American Wars, 1836-1972 examines what motivated Texans of Mexican descent to fight for the United States. In the process, Mendoza "discovers a complex landscape of shifting loyalties, motivations, and notions of nationalism reflecting Tejanos' conflicted relationship with America as it changed over time."

From the description: During much of the long period covered in the book, Tejano military service "often had less to do with nationalism or patriotism than with individual decisions. A soldier might be motivated by local allegiances, ethnic pride, a desire to defend his home, escape poverty, or seek adventure in a foreign war." However, "(b)y World War II, these notions had become stronger, and the Tejano community responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with the patriotic fervor of their Anglo-American neighbors."

More from the description: As referenced above, the twentieth century marked a significant transformation in Tejano patriotism and nationalism. Mendoza's study "traces a growing sense of nationalism through the mid-twentieth century, as Tejanos sought to refute their second-class status as "inferior" individuals—and to demonstrate their warrior tradition, thus confirming their rights to citizenship through battle. In essence, by the Second World War, Tejanos who joined the ranks of the military adopted the characteristics of American nationalism—sentiments that would only expand during the Cold War era conflicts in Korea and Vietnam."

Since this is an ACW site, it behooves us to look at how much Civil War-era content and analysis is present. The war with Mexico and the Civil War are covered in Chapter 2, while the following chapter pairs Reconstruction with the Spanish-American War. According to the summary in the introduction, Tejano participation in the Mexican War was minimal, with "less than two dozen Spanish-surnamed volunteers" among Texas forces. Tejano allegiances were split during the American Civil War, with around 2,500 joining the Confederate Army and 958 donning Union blue. During Reconstruction, Tejanos "served as a paramilitary force" until the U.S. Army fully took over frontier and border security (pp. 4-5).

In sum: "The first comprehensive record of Tejanos in war, Mendoza's account documents the forces and circumstances that shaped military attitudes among Mexican Texans, along with the challenges they faced navigating a complex of shifting ideas about identity, community, and nationalism—and America itself."