Booknotes: "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten"

New Arrival:

• "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis edited by Jerry D. Thompson (UNM Press, 2026).

University of New Mexico Press doesn't publish Civil War-related books very often, but when they do the release is always worthy of close attention. The essential library of the Civil War in the Desert Southwest contains many of their titles, and the latest candidate for consideration is "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis.

Though an obscure figure to Civil War readers at large, Pettis is well known to those steeped in the study of the conflict in this particular region. His writings are an important resource for modern researchers and historians. From the description: "As the unofficial historian of the California Column, George Henry Pettis was a firsthand witness to a series of important historic events, including the march of Californians to New Mexico, the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, and the Indian Wars in the region."

A major part of the far-flung coordinated Union response to the 1861-62 Confederate invasion of New Mexico and Arizona was the organization of a large body of troops in southern California. While the Confederate incursion had already been defeated and expelled by the time these Union reinforcements arrived at their destination, the war was far from over for the men of the famed California Column.

More from the description: "By the time Pettis arrived on the Rio Grande, the Civil War in the Southwest had evolved into a radically different conflict from what he envisioned when he enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. Over the course of five years and fifteen days in the California and New Mexico infantry, Pettis marched an astonishing 4,245 miles across Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas while suffering through sweltering summer heat and frigid winter cold—likely a greater distance than any soldier in the entire Union Army. The climax of Pettis’s career came at the Battle of Adobe Walls when he found himself in command of two small artillery pieces in Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson’s vain, ill-advised, and far-reaching punitive expedition on the Texas plains against the Comanche and Kiowa." In between that action was the crushing boredom of garrison duty, and Pettis also "adeptly records the monotony of garrison life at remote military posts in the desert of West Texas as well as the army headquarters at Fort Marcy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Union fortresses of Fort Craig and Fort Union."

The preeminent historian of the Civil War in the Southwest, Jerry Thompson organizes Pettis's writings into three parts: memoirs (Pettis's recollections of the Confederate invasion, frontier duty, and the Battle of Adobe Walls), newspaper articles, and letters. Thompson's introduction, around two-dozen pages in length, serves as a background resource and mini-biography of Pettis. Extensive explanatory endnotes also accompany Thompson's editing of Pettis's prolific body of writings.

Booknotes: Ironclad Ambush

New Arrival:

• Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 by Neil P. Chatelain (Savas Beatie, 2026).

I was excited to read news of this title's upcoming release. I've always been interested in the CSS Manassas, from its ungainly appearance resembling a surfaced whale to its managing to achieve that rarest of Confederate ironclad feats, fighting an offensive battle on its own terms (at Head of Passes) and achieving some success with it. Readers can find decent accounts of the battle in the literature, but Neil Chatelain's Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 "is the first book-length treatment of this pivotal naval action."

From the description: "In early October 1861, United States warships entered the Head of Passes, where the Mississippi River’s multiple entrances converge into a single channel. The occupation simplified the blockade by enabling a handful of ships to seal off the “father of waters” and cut off supplies to New Orleans. Confederate Capt. George N. Hollins recognized the danger, assembled a makeshift flotilla, and launched a surprise attack on these enemy vessels."

Given the typical result of Civil War clashes between Union and Confederate squadrons, few of which were even-matched, the outcome was an embarrassment to the early-war U.S. Navy. More from the description: "The Battle of the Head of Passes marked the Civil War’s first major fleet engagement. The Southern privateer ironclad ram Manassas smashed into USS Richmond, and as the Federals retreated toward the Gulf of Mexico, two blockaders ran aground and crews abandoned ship as Confederate gunboats closed in. The clash represented the Confederacy’s first major naval victory, the first use of an ironclad in North American waters, and the first direct challenge to President Lincoln’s blockade."

Ironclad Ambush seeks to address persistent questions related to the battle at Head of Passes, among them: "Why did U.S. forces initially enter the Head of Passes? Why did Hollins seek to counter them? Which ships were involved? Why did two blockading crews abandon their vessels mid-battle? Why did the Confederates withdraw yet claim victory? Why does this seemingly minor and often overlooked engagement matter?" Moving beyond the battle, Chatelain's study also "unravels the complexities and contradictions of early Civil War coastal and riverine naval operations and places them within the context of the war."

Review - "Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General" by David Paul Smith

[Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General by David Paul Smith (Louisiana State University Press, 2026). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiv,216/297. ISBN:978-0-8071-8599-5. $49.95]

Brothers Henry E. McCulloch and Benjamin McCulloch inhabited closely connected frontier lives. Though both were born and raised in Tennessee, their most enduring association with place was with the Republic and later state of Texas. The pair made a living as land surveyors and were notable Indian fighters, legislators, lawmen, famed Texas Rangers, and Mexican War veterans. Enthusiastic Confederates, Ben and Henry served as brigadier generals in the Trans-Mississippi theater. Ben achieved greater heights, commanding the small army that was victorious at Wilson's Creek in August 1861 and leading the Confederate contingent of Earl Van Dorn's combined army the following March at Pea Ridge (where he was killed in action very early on in the battle), but Henry served much longer, mostly in district-level administrative posts. Far exceeding his brother in the realm of historical memory, the elder McCulloch received full biographical treatment in 1993 with the publication of Thomas Cutrer's well-received book Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition. It is only now, through David Paul Smith's excellent Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General, that Henry's life has been accorded the same level of comprehensive scholarly attention.

Perhaps due to source limitations, Henry's childhood and early life are summarized over only a handful of pages, and McCulloch is already well into his Texas period in the volume's opening chapter. Henry missed the pivotal Battle of San Jacinto but joined a Ranger company in 1838 to oppose Waco and Comanche raids. As Rangers, the McCulloch brothers distinguished themselves during the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, and Henry was wounded at the Battle of Plum Creek. Henry also opposed a major Mexican incursion into Texas in 1842. During the 1846-48 war with Mexico, Henry's volunteer Ranger service was with the U.S. Army. His unwanted diversion to Indian frontier patrol duty instead of riding into Mexico meant that he missed the glory and notoriety that other Texas Rangers achieved during the war's decisive campaigning. In Smith's view, this was the primary reason behind Henry not achieving the lasting fame that was attached to other Texas Rangers such as brother Ben.

During the 1850s, Henry McCulloch also swerved toward politics, serving in the legislature where he strongly advocated for state spending on frontier defense. The federal government was ostensibly responsible for protecting Texas settlements from Indian attacks, but the assignment of mostly infantry to the frontier produced an ineffective static defense that only improved when the new 2nd U.S. Cavalry regiment arrived. McCulloch also briefly flirted with the Know-Nothing Party before abandoning it in 1856 in favor of supporting James Buchanan in that year's presidential election.

A keen supporter of the new Confederacy, McCulloch played a major part in securing the surrender of U.S. troops and supplies in Texas during the 1860-61 secession crisis. He later was elected colonel of the twelve-month First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, which was tasked with protecting the sparsely populated western counties while other Texas troops headed to those parts of the state, the coastline and eastern border, where it was presumed they might encounter invading Union land and naval forces. One of the reasons why Smith is particularly well suited to be Henry McCulloch's biographer is that he literally wrote the book (1992's Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas' Rangers and Rebels) on the complicated military and political facets of Texas frontier defense during the 1861-65 period. Given logistical constraints, the vastness of the western frontier border, and the mobility and stealth of the raiders, it was impossible to stop all Indian incursions into Texas, but McCulloch, drawing upon past experience, developed a reasonably effective system of defense that achieved notable successes.

Upon conclusion of his regiment's term of enlistment, McCulloch was assigned a district command in NE Texas. The Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge sparked a major reorientation of Texas forces in the region. That flood of Texas regiments going to the aid of Arkansas and points beyond passed through McCulloch's district, where he diligently applied his headquarters and staff toward organizing and supplying the ragged arrivals for active service in the field. McCulloch himself briefly led a division before being superseded by John G. Walker. As a brigade commander in Walker's Texas Division, McCulloch directed the June 7, 1863 Battle of Milliken's Bend. Hamstrung by poor decision-making from those up the chain of command, McCulloch and his men nevertheless fought well against a determined foe, inflicting heavy casualties upon the Union defenders of the post (who were saved by the timely arrival of Union naval support). It would be the only major action against Union forces that Henry would lead in person during the entire war, a circumstance that undoubtedly contributed much to his remaining a relatively obscure Civil War general.

McCulloch would serve out the rest of the war occupying major administrative positions in his home state. His Northern Sub-District was the size of South Carolina, and in leading it he was tasked with strict enforcement of conscription law and suppression of armed bands of "brush men." This great abundance of army deserters, anti-Confederate draft dodgers, and general criminal types infesting the district outnumbered McCulloch's own forces (some unreliable themselves) by some margin. Determined to be fair-minded toward his fellow Texans, McCulloch tried both conciliatory measures and harsh approaches (though, in the latter case, Smith credits him for earnest attempts at stamping out the excesses perpetrated by subordinates such as James Bourland), but the task of reining in all of the anti-government violence in the region was an impossible one. In addition to that, McCulloch had to manage his district's significant supply, manufacturing, and munitions depots while at the same time dividing his attention among Indian raids from the west and the possibility of Union invasion from the north (via Indian Territory) and east (through occupied parts of Arkansas). Smith's overall assessment of McCulloch as a district commander from 1863-65 is one of an energetic and diligent military administrator who did the best he could under extreme hardships and circumstances.

As explained in the book's final chapter covering McCulloch's post-Civil War life, Henry worked to quickly restore his family's financial and social footing, building up extensive ranch properties and holding state postings such as superintendent of Texas's Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and employment with the State Land Board. He also returned to politics. In addition to being involved in the general brouhaha surrounding the Coke-Davis gubernatorial contest that ended Radical Republican leadership in the state, McCulloch became a leading figure in the new People's Party before declining health forced his retirement from public service.

David Paul Smith's fine biography firmly and persuasively reestablishes Henry E. McCulloch as a major figure in the nineteenth-century political and military history of Texas. Along with its groundbreaking biographical features, Smith's study contributes mightily to our knowledge and understanding of Texas's western frontier border defense before and during the Civil War. The book's detailed account of McCulloch's leadership of Confederate Texas district commands from the war's middle period onward also significantly illuminates the many challenges involved with sustaining the war effort along key parts of the state's northern frontier while also attempting to manage the growing dissent that erupted across the region. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: Researching Your Civil War Ancestor

New Arrival:

• Researching Your Civil War Ancestor: A Guide to Understanding Civil War Pension Files and Legislation by J.L.D. Woodruff (Savas Beatie, 2026).

"There is no better place to start researching the wartime experiences and postwar lives of your Civil War ancestors than the pension files held at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C.," and author J.L.D. (Laurie) Woodruff’s Researching Your Civil War Ancestor: A Guide to Understanding Civil War Pension Files and Legislation provides "a step-by-step guide to finding and unlocking this priceless information."

The same body of information that helped soldiers and their families file pension claims back then remains an invaluable tool for the inquisitive descendants and Civil War researchers of today to utilize. From the description: Pension files "reveal detailed information about the soldier, his wife, and his children: What happened to him during the war? How did it affect his health and life afterward? When and where was he born, and when did he die? What were his children’s names and dates of birth? When and where did the soldier and his wife marry? Where did they live? What did he do for a living?" Answers to many other questions emerge from the process, too. Of course, the amount of information available varies by individual and claim. As Damian Shiels recently highlighted in his celebrated recent study of Irish Americans in the Union armed forces during the war, pensions files can also contain supplemental letters and documentation (submitted at the time from a variety of sources to support claims by widows and dependents) that are a gold mine for modern research.

More from the description: Woodruff's guide "begins with a concise history of the pension system and a description—with examples—of the documents typically found in these files. Next, it explains how to locate your ancestor’s pension files and obtain copies of their complete contents through various methods." Because getting the most out of the pension records requires some knowledge and understanding of the legislation that created the system and modified it over time, the book also addresses those key elements. "Finally, it guides readers on accessing and interpreting Civil War pension legislation. Every public act passed by Congress from 1861 to 1958 that addressed Civil War pensions is summarized, with links provided to the original texts online." A sampling of high-quality scans of these documents and records offer the reader a sense of what to expect.

The appendix section makes up more than two-thirds of the volume. In it, one can find more detailed explanations of pension record index cards (which came in eight types); full wording of pension legislation, joint congressional resolutions, and other documents; and author commentary related to current estimates of pension claim totals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: In a Land of Strangers

New Arrival:

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

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

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

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