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.