Review - "Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions that Defined the Battles" by Hank Koopman

[Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions that Defined the Battles by Hank Koopman (Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series - University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Paperback, 15 maps, photographs, touring guide, orders of battle, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages:xiv,281. ISBN:978-1-62190-847-0. $24.95].

When the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series, the brainchild of retired U.S. Army colonel Matt Spruill, began its official run with 2018's Decisions at Stones River^*, no one could have predicted how prolific it would become. With contributions from respected subject matter experts and avocational first-timers alike, the series, now approaching two dozen volumes, has in a very short time proved a resounding success. The latest volume, from series newcomer Hank Koopman, is Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions that Defined the Battles.

For those new to this series, it should be mentioned that these books do not examine Civil War campaigns and battles through the traditional narrative lens. Instead, analysis is through a series of "critical decisions," which are defined as those command choices that had profound consequences in their immediate aftermath and that meaningfully shaped the course of ensuing events. As outlined in previous reviews, analysis of each critical decision follows a structural format to which every volume closely adheres. Discussion progresses through five linked stages—Situation, Options, Decision, Result(s)/Impact, and Alternate Decision/Scenario. The first and typically lengthiest section, Situation describes the state of affairs at a crossroads moment in the campaign or battle. It provides readers with the background information necessary to recognize and evaluate the range of reasonable Options (most frequently two or three in number) available for addressing the situation. The historical Decision is then outlined very briefly before the Result(s)/Impact section recounts what happened and how those results shaped subsequent events. A degree of emphasis is placed on tracing lasting effects of critical decisions made earlier. Finally, an optional Alternate Decision/Scenario section delves into alternative history discussion based on choices not made.

In the series, critical decisions are categorized as being either strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, logistical, or personnel-related. One key message from the series as a whole is that the side that seizes the initiative and holds it longest will typically author the majority of critical decisions. That is certainly the case here for the Henry and Donelson Campaign's twenty-one critical decisions, with the Union side making thirteen decisions and the Confederates eight. Those totals breakdown further into ten operational and three tactical decisions for generals Henry Halleck, U.S. Grant, and their subordinates. On the Confederate side, there are three operational, three tactical, and two personnel-related decisions.

A chief takeaway from Koopman's analysis is the critical importance of unity of command and the firm wielding of it from above. Everyone recognizes how central those intertwined concepts are to successful military operations, but history is replete with examples of officers that failed to heed their lessons. Along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in early 1862, federal forces used command unity to good effect throughout most of the campaign while the Confederates signally failed to achieve anything close to it. As Koopman keenly observes, Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, in his capacity as theater commander, made the two personnel-related decisions but, from faraway Bowling Green, left all of the critical operational decisions to a dysfunctional three-headed monster of his own creation in the form of generals John Floyd (the senior officer), Gideon Pillow, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, who together failed to carry out any semblance of united command and purpose.

If any one stage of the campaign could be considered the 'day of decision' it was February 15, that distinction reflected by all six of the volume's tactical-level critical decisions taking place on that day. Even though Grant gifted the Confederates with his greatest blunder of the campaign, his decision to leave his command headless and rudderless during a six-hour period that happened to coincide with the Confederate breakout attempt. Koopman's examination of those six decisions reveals a stark study in contrasts, with Grant's subordinate division commanders admirably filling the void while their Confederate counterparts, who started their assault without any concrete plan for extricating the army, operated at cross purposes. Though Pillow and his men earned just credit for hard fighting that dislocated the Union right and placed the absent Grant's entire command in some jeopardy, all of the critical decisions made by the Confederate high command at Donelson on that day (one each by Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner) proved calamitous to their small army and the overall Confederate position in the West. Grant, when he did finally arrive back on the field, is duly credited with calmly reasserting control of the situation and finishing the job of turning the tables on the haplessly indecisive Confederates, who incredibly decided to retreat back within their own lines rather than attempt to extricate themselves through the hard-won gap their morning attack had opened in the federal ring.

Though the avowed purpose of the series is not to provide a full narrative of events but rather to focus on key decision-making as a way "to progress from an understanding of 'what happened' to 'why events happened' as they did," Koopman arguably comes closer than most to providing readers with both. His Situation assessments are more developed than those typically presented by series authors, and his Result(s)/Impact discussions go much deeper than most in exploring tactical events and small-unit descriptive detail. In this volume, argumentation in regard to why each decision is determined to have been critical in nature is strong, and linkage and transition between decision analyses are exceptionally smooth. Like other volumes in the series, there is a collection of maps that help orient the reader as well as a driving tour guide (twelve stops in this case) tied to the critical decisions examined in the main text.

Hank Koopman's Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson is another fine entry in University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series. As to the future of the series as a whole, there have been some interesting developments of late. It has been recently revealed that the series is branching out from its prior focus on single campaigns and battles. For example, last year's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns examined multiple operations conducted at various times around a particular geographical point of strategic significance, and the upcoming Decisions on Western Waters will be a themed volume of a type not seen before. It will be worth keeping an eye out for more of those.

* - Spruill's Decisions at Gettysburg was first published in 2011, providing proof of concept, and it was later incorporated into the series as a formal installment with a 2019 second edition.

Booknotes: Interrupted Odyssey

New Arrival:

• Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians by Mary Stockwell (SIU Press, 2025).

A short while ago, I reviewed a well-argued overview analysis of Abraham Lincoln's various interactions with the tribes of North America (to read it, go here). Of course, the 16th president, mired in the Civil War, could not devote much in the way of personal attention (or political capital) to broader Indian affairs, and his assassination left unfulfilled his promise to more closely address relations between the tribes and the United States government once the war ended.

Direct successor Andrew Johnson had similarly pressing matters of national reconstruction to attend to, but his administration managed to negotiate major new treaties with those that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War as well as with the Plains Indians, agreements with the latter aimed toward safeguarding westward movement and settlement. Those treaties signaled a major new emphasis on resettling tribes to reservations with a long-term goal of assimilating them. Of course, work in those areas was far from over when U.S. Grant, who was involved in that earlier process in his capacity of US Army general in chief, was sworn into office as the nation's 18th president in 1869. The merits of his two-term administration's Indian policy, long disputed in the literature, are the focus of Mary Stockwell's Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians.

Upon taking office, Grant quickly appointed Ely S. Parker, a trusted Seneca lawyer, engineer, and brevet brigadier general who earlier served on Grant's staff during the Civil War, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and they collaborated on developing the administration's "Peace Policy."

From the description: In Interrupted Odyssey, "Stockwell rejects the common claim in previous Grant scholarship that he handed the reservations over to Christian missionaries as part of his original policy. In part because Grant’s plan ended political patronage, Congress overturned his policy by disallowing Army officers from serving in civil posts, abandoning the treaty system, and making the new Board of Indian Commissioners the supervisors of the Indian service. Only after Congress banned Army officers from the Indian service did Grant place missionaries in charge of the reservations, and only after the board falsely accused Parker of fraud before Congress did Grant lose faith in his original policy."

Many other elements of the Peace Policy did not go as planned. More: "Stockwell explores in depth the ousting of Parker, revealing the deep-seated prejudices that fueled opposition to him, and details Grant’s stunned disappointment when the Modoc murdered his peace commissioners and several tribes—the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Sioux—rose up against his plans for them."

Such failures aside, it's probably safe to say that Grant's Indian policies are viewed more positively overall by today's historians, and Stockwell has clearly joined this group of modern revisionists. In the author's view "Grant set his country firmly toward making Indians full participants in the national experience. In setting Grant’s contributions against the wider story of the American Indians, Stockwell’s bold, thoughtful reappraisal reverses the general dismissal of Grant’s approach to the Indians as a complete failure and highlights the courage of his policies during a time of great prejudice."

Joe Johnston, "Preeminent Strategist"?

For a long time, many military history students of the Civil War bought into the notion that Joseph E. Johnston was a master of Fabian-style strategy and operations who offered a winning alternative to the kind of aggressive, high-intensity (and high casualty) style of warfare favored by other generals such as Robert E. Lee and that the Confederacy could ill afford. Over the past several decades, though, I've gotten the impression that fewer and fewer people retain such faith in Johnston's abilities and his capacity for greatness. One of those who quite clearly does is F. Gregory Toretta. The author of one of two recent studies claiming that James Longstreet possessed visionary strategic and tactical acumen, Toretta's Preeminent Strategist: General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, The Confederacy’s Most Agile General (Casemate, NOV '25) takes on the case of another major Confederate high command figure that the author believes misunderstood and underappreciated. When it comes to providing a convincing argument in support of the grand claims outlined in the description, the author has a steep climb ahead of him (at least in my opinion), but I am always open to different approaches to disputed topics.

Coming Soon (August '25 Edition)

Scheduled for AUG 2025¹:
• Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War by Fields & Mackowski.
• Rediscovering the USS Alligator: The U.S. Navy's "Lost" First Submarine by Daniel Basta.
• Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl Hess.
• The 1st Michigan Colored Regiment: Free Men Who Fought Slavery by Maurice Imhoff.
• Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Kleintop.
• Decisions at Chancellorsville: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Sarah Bierle.

Comments: Things are still gearing up for the fall, so, in terms of numbers, August will be another pretty light month. The Grant book is SB's August title, but it got a bit of an early release and is out already. For me, the most highly anticipated release of the month is the Hess book on CW cavalry.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's books, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Booknotes: Unconditional Surrender

New Arrival:

• Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War by Curt Fields & Chris Mackowski (Savas Beatie, 2025).

With previous titles addressing the Civil War careers of well-known figures such as W.T. Sherman, G.A. Custer, P.G.T. Beauregard, J.L. Chamberlain, and John Pelham, military biography has become a fairly steadily produced category of books within the Emerging Civil War series' prodigious body of output. The latest is Curt Fields and Chris Mackowski's Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War.

Of course, U.S. Grant, being the Union Army's premier military leader, needs no introduction, but, for the uninitiated, the description provides a nice summary of the book's content flow: "Born in a modest clapboard house at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River, he first made his military mark near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His successes at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and eventually Vicksburg earned him the steadfast support of President Abraham Lincoln: “Grant,” he declared, “is my man and I am his the rest of the war!” After saving a Federal army in Chattanooga, he was promoted to lieutenant general and put in command of all Union forces. He made his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac and oversaw the campaigns against Robert E. Lee, from the Wilderness through the prolonged siege of Petersburg and, finally, Appomattox Court House. His ultimate victory paved the way for two terms in the White House."

After a prologue and brief introduction from co-author Fields in which he answers some of the most common questions he gets as a Grant living historian, the volume jumps right into the Civil War years. Supplemented by seven maps and scores of captioned photographs and period drawings, the narrative covers Grant's Civil War military career from his appointment as colonel of the 21st Illinois in 1861 to his leadership during the climactic 1865 Appomattox Campaign. The epilogue that reviews Grant's legacy, including the development of his famous memoir, also addresses his faults.

An eclectic appendix section is a highlight of many ECW titles. In this case, however, given the sheer breadth of Grant's Civil War accomplishments, it's no surprise that there is little room left for an extensive one, and the single appendix attached to this title revisits the relationship between Grant and wife Julia. A 'Suggested Reading' list rounds out the volume.

Review - "The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign" by Nese & Harding

[The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign by John M. Nese & Jeffrey J. Harding (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2025). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, tables, charts, appendix. 238 Pp. ISBN:978-1-4671-5846-6. $24.99]

Every Gettysburg student is familiar with the gist of the campaign's weather story. In summary, the combatants had to endure early-summer high heat and humidity during forced marches and fighting, and the post-battle retreat and pursuit offered the survivors different miseries to deal with in the form of rain and mud. However, one might reasonably ask how much deeper we can take this broad-stroke weather assessment of the campaign. Is a daily, perhaps even more granular, description and analysis of weather's impact on men and operations before, during, and after the July 1-3 Battle of Gettysburg possible? According to John Nese and Jeffrey Harding, the answer to that question is a resounding 'yes,' and all is revealed in their fascinating book The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign.

Nese, an academic at Penn State's Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, and Harding, a licensed GNMP battlefield guide, draw upon their respective areas of expertise (in weather science and Gettysburg military history) for a fresh examination of this underexplored topic. The book begins with a meteorological science primer that, among other things, provides background information necessary for readers to understand the practical meaning and significance of a variety of weather-related measurements that the authors utilize in their analysis, from simple thermometer and dewpoint readings to more complex heat index and wet-bulb globe temperature calculations.

Very significant to the study is its employment of a relatively new computer model developed by the NOAA that allows its users to recreate weather maps of the past, keeping in mind that its reliability is more macro than micro. This "reanalysis system" represents one among many research tools that Nese and Harding have at their disposal, the integration of which offers keen insights into the weather encountered by Union and Confederate soldiers in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania during June and July 1863.

Underpinning Nese and Harding's research is a critical body of recorded observations from contemporary weather watchers such as the government staff of the Naval Observatory, the network of daily weather reports from military installations across the country, and dedicated civilian recorders such as those who submitted their data to the Smithsonian Meteorological Project. Many of the individuals involved are profiled in the text. This data recorded from both near and afar, combined with Nese's expert knowledge of local and regional atmospheric and weather patterns, allows the study to trace reliable meteorological readings at any point in time across the campaign's multi-state path. 

It is often said that if you want to know the weather just look out your window, and the historical equivalent of that window view is represented by the approximately 1,500 soldier and civilian journal and letter accounts of the weather that the authors have recovered and organized for their research. This collection of subjective firsthand perspectives critically augments Nese and Harding's quantitative analysis, and the most salient portions of select passages are interspersed throughout the text. In an ingenious manner, Nese and Harding combine this historical documentation with the aforementioned modern weather modeling techniques to provide us with a remarkably detailed reconstruction of weather effects during the entire run of the campaign. Additionally, findings and descriptions revealed in the narrative are supplemented by a plethora of historical and modern weather maps, charts, and tables. For easy reference, a record of daily weather data and notes for the period June 3 to July 14 is also compiled in tabular format in the appendix.

As explained in the book, the June 10-18 heatwave experienced by the armies in the field was exceptional for late spring. Unfortunately for the health of those involved, it also coincided with a period requiring hard marches that resulted in widely reported physical debility and heatstroke death (although those numbers are not quantified). Data suggests that the severity of the conditions was historically rare for June, marking that heat wave as one among several of the campaign's exceptional weather-related events. Without the ability to forecast weather, generals lacked the information needed for weather-adjusted planning (where possible). Examples cited in the book of forced marching during heat wave conditions and operational pauses during fine marching weather are signal reminders of one of many chance elements that contribute to the overall friction involved with conducting war. In an interesting side note, the authors mention that the mixed-material jean cloth of Confederate uniforms breathed better than the wool jackets issued to Union troops. That, combined with the lighter color, made the southern shell jackets more comfortable in hot summer months for those wearing them. Indeed, while today's writers often emphasize the presumed general discomfort of Civil War uniforms, the soldiers themselves complained vastly more about their feet and footwear problems during long, hot marches.

For the three-day battle itself, thermometer temperatures weren't considered extreme on the first day, with much of the discomfort coming from the humidity. July 2 was much hotter, and the book effectively uses the very lengthy approaches to the battlefield of Law's Brigade on the Confederate side and the Union Sixth Corps as case studies of the day's weather effects on marching and fighting. Even though the recorded shade temperature still may not have been extreme, the heat index likely pushed 90 degrees and the effects of direct sunlight made the forced marching even less bearable. In contrast to Sixth Corps, whose march was marked by periodic rest and hydration breaks, Law's Brigade had little of either. The weather, lack of recovery time, and rugged terrain at Little Round Top all hindered the brigade's chances for sustained success as it spearheaded the attack during one of the three-day battle's key moments. The enervated condition of Law's men upon arrival at the front likely contributed mightily to the large prisoner haul that the formation lost during the celebrated Union counterattack involving the 20th Maine. The data and NOAA modeling employed by Nese and Harding confirms contemporary observations that July 3 was the worst of the three in terms of physical discomfort. With the heat index almost certainly over 100 degrees (with some likelihood of even reaching 105), and keeping in mind that the index relies on shade measurements, such brutal body-stressing conditions undoubtedly impaired fighting endurance and performance during Pickett's Charge, especially for the attacking troops.

As detailed in the literature, from July 4 onward the principal weather challenge switched over from head and humidity to rain, with thick mud and rising streams hampering both Confederate retreat and Union pursuit. The volume's data gathering and analysis adds a great deal in the way of finer detail when it comes to the likely timing and quantification of the rainfall episodes. Nese's applied expertise shines through the entire book, but one of the finest examples of it is shown in the attempt to understand the deluge that preceded the Potomac River recrossing of Lee's army back to Virginia. Gaps in the instrument readings and lack of expected results from the NOAA reanalysis model hinder explanation of the massive river rise, but Nese is able to provide a solid meteorological basis for the event through a more complex interpretation of regional weather patterns utilizing contemporary data gathered from afar. On a final note, findings confirm that the steep rise of the Potomac behind Lee's army at Williamsport was a truly extraordinary weather event for any July in recorded history. Lee's army could count itself fortunate to have escaped.

John Nese and Jeffrey Harding's The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign is a truly remarkable, highly useful, and completely original contribution to the ongoing study of the Gettysburg campaign and battle. As the authors maintain, weather and its extremes affected how the campaign unfolded at every stage of its development, and it was a testament to the human endurance and ingenuity displayed by the armies that weather-induced disaster was avoided. Accessible to general reader and specialist alike, this masterfully conceived and executed study is an essential addition to the Gettysburg library, a key reference for every future chronicler of the campaign.

Booknotes: Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command

New Arrival:

• Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Dennis B. Conklin, Jr. (Savas Beatie, 2025).

When Gary Ecelbarger's The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta was published back in 2010, it was a major event in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's military historiography, but no one could have predicted that the following fifteen years would produce an extended run of titles that, taken altogether, amply compensated us for decades of absolute neglect. During that span, numerous books have featured detailed analyses of the Confederate high command divisions that rendered the already tall task of opposing General Sherman's massive Union army group even more challenging. Throwing a new hat into the ring is Dennis Conklin's Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.

The volume's introduction reveals that it is Conklin's contention that Jefferson Davis's "poor performance as commander-in-chief" was the factor that "played the primary role in Confederate defeat in the campaign for Atlanta." Thus, his reexamination of the campaign is largely presented "through a lens of Davis's failings" (pg. xiii).

From the description: Conklin's command study "highlights critical flaws in Jefferson Davis’s leadership and the deep mutual distrust between the Confederate president and Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Tennessee, which led them to work at cross purposes. As the campaign slowly unfolded and William T. Sherman’s advancing armies claimed vast swaths of territory, tensions escalated among Davis, Johnston, corps commander John Bell Hood, and Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, further compounding the Confederacy’s strategic woes."

More from the description: "Davis’s initial unease with Johnston’s leadership partly explains why he promoted Hood to command an infantry corps in the principal Western army before the campaign began. Hood, who had honed his skills as a tactical commander under the aggressive Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia, grew increasingly exasperated by Johnston’s repeated withdrawals. This tension, Conklin argues, culminated in their inevitable clash at Cassville—a pivotal dispute driven by inconsistent maps and divergent battlefield philosophies. The ensuing correspondence among key figures in Richmond further eroded Davis’s confidence in Johnston, paving the way for Hood’s eventual rise to command the Army of Tennessee."

The reader who has eagerly consumed all of the recent literature pertaining to this topic might ask what it is that Conklin adds to an already pretty comprehensive body of work. Fortunately, the introduction to Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command provides a good summary of what interpretive differences, or shades of differences, one might expect to find inside. According to the author, this book "will provide a new assessment of Joseph E. Johnston as a commander." It also provides fresh emphasis on "the role of Governor Joseph E. Brown on the outcome of the Atlanta campaign." Additionally featured is "a complete reinterpretation of the affair at Cassville on May 19, 1864." Robert Jenkins's 2024 book The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 is listed in the bibliography, so it appears that Conklin was able to squeeze in consideration of that exhaustive and highly persuasive study into this post-dissertation version of his manuscript. Lastly, Conklin's "characterization of Hood's tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee in and around Atlanta provides a final point of departure from much of the present historiography" (pp. xiii-xviii). A new voice in all this is always welcome, and I'd say that the above represents a pretty good list for drawing in readers who might be skeptical about investing their time in returning to a topic that has already been heavily revisited in recent years.

Civil War-related titles from the Fall-Winter '25 catalogs

UNC:
• Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Laury Kleintop.
• Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan Jones.
• Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867 by Erika Pani.
• The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War By Lindsay Rae Smith Privette.
• Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean.
• A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era By Sarah Jones Weicksel.

LSU:
• Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl Hess.
• The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert Gudmestad.
• War Fought and Felt: The Emotional Motivations of Confederate Soldiers by Joshua Shiver.

Tennessee:
• The Greatest Calamity: Tennessee in the Civil War Era by John Fowler.
• Decisions on Western Waters: The Twenty-Seven Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations by Michael Becker.
• Missouri and the Secession Crisis: A Documentary History by Dwight Pitcaithley.

South Carolina:
• Soldier of the South: Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace by Edward Hagerty.
• Winning Our Wonder: Rhetorical Re/Constructions of American Civil War Women on the Web by Patty Wilde.

Kansas:
• Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital by Larry Daniel.

Nebraska:
• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander (Potomac).

TAMU Consortium:
• Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield by William Lees (TAMU).

Georgia:
• Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy by Beau Cleland.

Booknotes: American Civil War Amphibious Tactics

New Arrival:

• American Civil War Amphibious Tactics (Elite, 262) by Ron Field, illustrated by Steve Noon (Osprey Pub, 2025).

Ron Field's American Civil War Amphibious Tactics is number 262 in Osprey's "Elite" series of illustrated histories. According to one description of the series, each installment "focuses on a single army or elite unit, military tactics or a group of famous commanders." There's a bit of all of that in this one. With Union combined operations as a whole developing into an elite capability that did much to the win the Civil War, its broad inclusion in this particular series is well appropriate.

Field's text, accompanied by Steve Noon's original artwork, examines significant leaders, tactics, military technologies, and specialized units involved in both coastal and inland Union amphibious operations. In the book, Field "explains how the growing effectiveness of the Union Navy, the willingness of the Union Army to countenance combined operations, and the efforts of officers such as Ambrose Burnside, David Farragut, and John Dahlgren, ensured that amphibious warfare played a key part in the defeat of the South."

A number of operations, all representative of Union combined arms capabilities, are covered in the book. From the description: "In May 1862, foreshadowed by the capture of Roanoke Island and New Bern in North Carolina and Island Number Ten on the Mississippi River, the Union forces' use of combined operations to seize New Orleans dealt a major blow to the Confederacy. The potential of amphibious warfare was revealed by the Union efforts to capture Fort Fisher in North Carolina. While the initial attempt failed in December 1864, a renewed effort in January 1865 resulted in a Union victory."

Units featured in the book that were specifically raised and/or detailed for amphibious operations include the First New York Marine Artillery, the Naval Battalion (4 companies, 13th NY Heavy Artillery), the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron's Fleet Brigade, and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. The last, a controversial formation, shifts attention from the coast to the Mississippi River Valley interior.

As is the case with all Osprey titles, there is some kind of illustration on nearly every page. This volume includes numerous period maps, newspaper illustrations, and photographs. Noon's color artwork depicts dramatic action scenes, specialized equipment, and vessels involved in the combined operations described in the text.

Booknotes: The Invincible Twelfth

New Arrival:

• The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia by Benjamin L. Cwayna (Savas Beatie, 2025).

July has been a desert month for new releases so far, with only one arrival over the past three weeks. Happily, though, three new titles landed in the mail box yesterday.

First up is a fresh South Carolina regimental history. To the best of my knowledge, when Tom Broadfoot retired and sold off all of his remaining stock to a third party, that spelled the end of the South Carolina Regimental-Roster Set series or any other new titles under the Broadfoot Publishing Company name. The website is still up, though, and what appears to be the final list of series titles indicates that they never did get to the 12th South Carolina before folding. Fortunately for those interested in that particular regiment, Benjamin Cwayna has come through with a fine-looking regimental history titled The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia.

Some green regiments, such as the famous Fire Zouaves of New York, were unable to recover from a disastrous introduction to Civil War combat. Others used that experience for future motivation, while perhaps also benefiting from new leadership. The 12th was a shining example of a regiment that recovered from catastrophic beginnings and went on to forge an enviable combat record. From the description: "The regiment’s career commenced with an ignominious defeat in its initial engagement on the South Carolina coast at Port Royal Sound in 1861. This demoralizing event could have set the regiment on a trajectory of self-fulfilling failure and catastrophe. A change in leadership from a perpetually absent political appointee to a tenacious legislator born and bred in the upcountry, however, altered its course. Dixon Barnes instilled discipline and robust leadership in the unit, initiating a transformational process that molded the raw recruits into some of the Confederacy’s most dependable soldiers."

As was the case with many other newly organized regiments from the two Carolinas, the 12th began its field service in the coastal defense role. However, it quickly blossomed into one of the Confederacy's best fighting regiments upon attachment to the Army of Northern Virginia. More from the description: "The 12th was transferred to what would become Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was brigaded with four other regiments from the Palmetto State. Together, they participated in nearly every major engagement of the war in the Eastern Theater. The 12th earned a sterling reputation within the army for its drill and discipline and was renowned for its impetuous, devastating, and occasionally reckless attacks and counterattacks." Such headstrong valor came at an immense cost, though, and "(b)y war’s end, only about 150 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the regiment’s ranks surrendered at Appomattox Court House."

The author self-describes his writing on the 12th as "strictly military history in its purest form," emphasis being on "the tactical minutiae of the regiment's actions in camp, in battles, and on the march" (pg. xii). In support of Cwayna's narrative, which is based on "years of research, exhaustively mining primary sources to reconstruct the 12th South Carolina’s history from its formation in 1861 until its final official reunion in the 1880s and beyond," are 14 original maps.

Review - "Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865" by Damian Shiels

[Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 by Damian Shiels (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, illustrations, graphs, tables, biography appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,176/314. ISBN:978-0-8071-8370-0. $50]

Typically, scholarly studies of Irish American contributions to the Union armed forces during the Civil War possess a very selective geographical (ex. the urban Irish of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) and unit focus (most prominently the famed Irish Brigade). Thus, it is high time for revisiting the big picture with a proper investigation of Irish volunteer demographics, motivations, beliefs, and attitudes that are more representative of the whole. A powerhouse study housed in a compact and highly accessible package, Damian Shiels's Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 succeeds in doing just that.

In researching this project, Shiels consulted an abundance of primary sources while also thoughtfully engaging with the secondary literature (including influential recent works from Catherine Bateson, Ryan Keating, Christian Samito, and Susannah Ural), but the gamechanger was his access to the recently digitized widow's pension files housed at the National Archives. The author's extensive review of those records (first used in creating his 2016 book The Forgotten Irish) unearthed a treasure trove of letters written by or for Irish soldiers during the Civil War, all being supporting documentation to bolster widow or dependent claims. Kept by the government in the files were 1,135 letters (singly or in bunches) from or for 395 soldiers along with almost three hundred additional supporting letters from other sources. That body of wartime letters provides invaluable information on 568 Irish American soldiers, an unprecedented gathering for investigation of this sort. Additionally, in bringing together individuals from 260 units raised from 22 states and districts, this large sample represents by far the widest breadth of Irish volunteer service yet studied. An appendix also compiles brief biographical profiles of those individuals featured in the main text. 

The volume begins with an informative summary of eighteenth-century immigration and settlement patterns from Ireland to the United States, noteworthy for the concentration of Irish immigrants into northern urban centers east and west. There is also some brief background on pre-Civil War Irish contributions to the armed forces, which included disproportionate enlistment in the antebellum Regular Army and a heavy presence in the U.S. Navy.

Early-war enlistment dominates the pension records, with almost three-fourths of the correspondents volunteering before the end of 1862. The overwhelming majority were drawn from the working class (92% were either farm laborers, unemployed, or worked in blue-collar occupations). As expected, the eastern states dominate, with just over 40% of the sample coming from New York alone. Just over a third were born outside the Emerald Isle to Irish parents in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K, and the average age of the Irish American enlistee was over a year and half younger than the average age of the Union volunteer overall. As the author explains, his finding that nearly two-thirds of these volunteers were single was expected given that Irish men tended to marry later than other ethnic groups.

In terms of what Irish American soldiers wrote about their soldier experience, Shiels finds that they expressed themselves in the straightforward, non-sentimental descriptive manner that was much the same across the lower classes of all white ethnic groups. Their written reactions to combat, marching, and camp life also closely matched others. One noteworthy difference among Irish volunteers was a higher than average desertion rate, which the author primarily attributes to the exceptionally precarious financial position of Irish families (a distinction from other ethnicities that's well explained in the book).

The commonly accepted total of Irish who served in the Union Army is, in round numbers, 150,000 men, but Shiels reveals why that figure should be considered much too low. The traditional number excludes certain geographical regions as well as the U.S. Navy and Regular Army. Including those numbers raises the total to over 180,000, and, if you add the children of Irish immigrants to the total, the author believes the best conservative estimate to be at least 250,000. Shiels feels that the implications of this are critically important, as, in addition to simply being more accurate, the amended total upends the long-held conclusion that ethnic Irish were underrepresented (which Shiels questions even when using the old numbers) in the Union volunteer forces. Instead, the revised numbers suggest that the Irish were truly overrepresented. The impact of this on assessing Irish loyalty and duty toward their new country, both of which were sullied by the Irish's heavy role in opposing conscription (especially during the infamous New York City Draft Riot of July 1863), is important to consider.

The great many acts of deadly violence perpetrated during the aforementioned civil unrest in New York City, in which a predominantly Irish mob specifically targeted black residents, has been commonly used as a reference point to gauge Irish American attitudes toward blacks in general. In addition to reminding readers that only a small proportion of New York's Irish participated in the bloody riots, Shiels's research into how Irish soldiers described their interactions with free and enslaved blacks encountered during their service reveals a complicated range of attitudes. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the vast majority of Irish soldiers deeply opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and the war's new direction, their attitude grounded in both racism and economic fears. Interestingly, Shiels's research directly challenges the viewpoint of those contemporary abolitionists (among them Frederick Douglass) who maintained that it was immersion into American society that produced Irish beliefs in black racial inferiority. Instead, Shiels's work strongly suggests that most Irish already held such opinions before they arrived on American soil.

In the arena of Irish American political identity, it is noteworthy that not a single letter in Shiels's sample expressed support for the Republican party. As the author explains, this is understandable given that party's evolution from nativist and anti-Catholic roots, and the Irish's position as the white ethnic group most vulnerable to the economic implications of emancipation and possible mass migration of freedpeople into heavily Irish urban centers. Also pointed out by the author is the Irish's generally conservative interpretation of the Constitution. Shiels does not dismiss the likelihood that many soldiers, in particular the early volunteers most personally invested in finishing the war, voted Republican in 1864 or declined to vote at all in protest of the Peace Party wing of the Democratic Party, but in his opinion it remains highly likely that the Irish cast the largest block of Democratic votes in the Union Army. Given that opposition to emancipation and Democratic affiliation in general both came to be widely viewed as evidence of disloyalty during the mid to late-war period, Shiels acknowledges that the ethnic group's voting patterns contributed mightily, and unfairly, to broad anti-Irish feeling.

Interwoven with nativist doubts about Irish loyalty were issues and perceptions related to chosen identity. From the letters Shiels examined emerged a dual Irish American identity that few among them were uncomfortable with by the 1860s, it being clear that these men were proud of their ethnic heritage but also strongly identified with being an American. Of course, those 1830s and 1840s immigrants and their children were more tightly bound to their American identity than those who arrived during the 1850s wave of new immigration. It is noteworthy that the soldier correspondents of Shiels's sample routinely elevated the Fourth of July holiday above St. Patrick's Day. Additionally, most of these soldiers did not pine for the old country in their letters home but rather expressed deep attachment to their local communities. They also more often than not preferred to get their news from non-ethnic newspapers.

Shiels challenges enduring negatives stereotypes of Irish soldiers as uninhibited rowdies and street toughs who were just as hard drinking as they were hard fighting. There were certainly large numbers of individuals in the Union Army (Irish or otherwise) who were just like that, but Shiels counters that his research reveals that the majority of Irish American soldiers, like their comrades of other ethnicities, valued duty and restraint within a generally more moderate form of what recent scholars term "martial manhood." On the matter of alcohol, the author acknowledges the significance of Irish drinking culture, but notes that all societal classes and ethnicities in the Union service struggled with alcohol abuse, and the nativist stereotyping of the Irish as exceptional offenders often led to harsher punishments than might otherwise have been imposed by officers.

Of course, any investigation into the religious identity of Irish Americans is readily confronted with the cultural dominance of the Catholic Church and its sacramental teachings. However, Shiels's research path also meaningfully encounters the much smaller Protestant Irish identity and outlook that many prior investigators tended to ignore as materially insignificant to the Irish American experience. Perhaps remarkable is that the letters he examined evinced very little in the way of sectarian division between the two groups when they served together.

In examining the crossover between identity and ideology when it comes to enlistment motivation, Shiels finds no evidence to support the popular contention that many Irish joined the Union Army primarily to gain military experience needed to free Ireland from British rule. Among the soldier correspondents, there was widespread sympathy for the Fenian Movement (the individual expression of which Shiels describes as often being "performative" in nature), but the primary focus of their attention was on the practical matter of doing their part to achieve Union victory and secure their own future in their adopted homeland. Rather than dream of returning to the "Old Sod" to free it from British imperial oppression (an aspiration that some individuals certainly did articulate), the far more common cross-Atlantic intention expressed by the sample correspondents was a determination to entice more family members and friends to join them in a reunited post-Civil War America full of promise and opportunity.

If Fenianism wasn't a major enlistment motivator, economic considerations and patriotism certainly were. The role economics played in early-war volunteerism in general has been examined at greater depth in recent years (William Marvel's detailed work being among the most pointed in tone and analysis), and it is clear from Shiels's sample group that the prospect of regular pay and other financial incentives were important considerations for the working-class individuals who formed the vast majority of Irish American volunteers. They, especially the urban workers, were especially vulnerable during the national economy's sharp late-antebellum and secession-period downturn. Whether expressed overtly or with more subtlety, patriotism was also widely expressed in the Irish soldier letters, especially from those who had spent their youth into adulthood years in the United States. Their words and sentiments related to duty and commitment to the preservation of the Union were similar to those of Union volunteers in general, and that evidence collectively reinforces the author's views in regard to the preeminence of local and national American identity over ethnic insularity.

In addition to being the first of its kind in terms of providing a comprehensive profile and analysis of Irish volunteers, Damian Shiels's deeply impressive Green and Blue ranks as one of the most important of all Civil War ethnic soldier studies. One might hope it could be used as a model for studying other large groups of ethnic volunteers such as German American soldiers, both for intrinsic value and for comparative purposes. This book is very highly recommended.

Booknotes: Hero of Fort Sumter

New Arrival:

• Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody (OU Press, 2025).

Kentuckian Robert Anderson's Civil War arc is well known to readers. Handling the situation in Charleston Harbor during the secession crisis as well as anyone could have expected under the circumstances, Anderson's conduct during the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter transformed the relatively obscure U.S. Army major into the Union's first war hero. He was rewarded with a major command in the western heartland, which poor health forced him to relinquish after only a short period in charge. He returned to Charleston in 1865 in an emotional flag raising ceremony at Fort Sumter, his Civil War career ending at the very place it began. Now readers will get the full story of Anderson's life and military service in Wesley Moody's Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson.

From the description: Moody "charts Robert Anderson’s path from an upbringing on the Kentucky frontier to a West Point education and a military career that saw him fighting in nearly every American conflict from the Black Hawk War to the Civil War—catching malaria fighting the Seminoles, taking several bullets while serving in Mexico, writing the textbook for field artillery used by both Union and Confederate forces, mentoring William Tecumseh Sherman."

Anderson had family and personal connections to a number of figures central to American history. More: "(His) family, harking back to the nation’s founding, included William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) and Chief Justice John Marshall. His father crossed the Delaware with George Washington. And among his acquaintances were presidents ranging from the aged John Adams to seven-year-old Theodore Roosevelt."

As fully expected, the centerpiece of Moody's biography is its coverage of the leadership Anderson displayed in Charleston Harbor between South Carolina's secession and the surrender of Fort Sumter. More from the description: "Central to Anderson’s story was his deft and decisive handling of the Fort Sumter crisis. Had Major Anderson been the aggressor, as many of his command urged, President Abraham Lincoln would have been unable to rally the Northern states to war. Had Anderson handed his command over to the Confederate troops, a demoralized North would have offered little resistance to secession." I don't know about that last point, but in upholding national honor Anderson surely did have to walk a fine line between provocation and showing strength.

If you are wondering about how much of the study addresses the remaining balance of Anderson's Civil War experience, around fifteen pages are devoted to his return to duty, promotion to brigadier general, his brief departmental command in 1861, and triumphal 1865 return to Fort Sumter. It will be interesting to get Moody's take on which factor, deteriorating personal health or lost favor with the Lincoln administration, was the principal driving force behind Anderson's replacement by William T. Sherman as Department of Kentucky commander. A handful of pages cover the final years of Anderson's life, from the end of the war to his death in 1871.

Another dormant series revived: Great Campaigns of the Civil War

Last month, I posted [here] some news regarding the impending return of the This Hallowed Ground and Civil War Campaigns in the West series from University of Nebraska Press and SIU Press, respectively. Now there's even more good news. Ten years after the publication of Perry Jamieson's Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War (2015) comes word that the long-awaited next installment of the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series will be released in July of 2026. I've long known that an 1862 Peninsula Campaign addition to the series was in the works and was pleased to learn that it will finally be coming to fruition next year. Like the new This Hallowed Ground guidebook title from the same publisher, Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 is authored by Brian Burton. I don't know anything more about it than what's found at the link provided, but having Burton, best known for his Seven Days work, behind it is a plus in my book.

Review - "Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War" by Albert Nofi, ed.

[Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War edited and annotated by Albert A. Nofi (Savas Beatie, 2025). Softcover, 2 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages:x,146. ISBN:978-1-61121-741-4. $16.95]

Perhaps hearkening back to the melancholy he experienced during his Old Army postings on the frontier (those feelings contributing to his decision to resign his commission in 1854), U.S. Grant arranged for the headquarters presence of close family members on numerous occasions during his celebrated Civil War service. Son Frederick Dent Grant was the frequent beneficiary of this chance of a lifetime opportunity for being present at the making of history, and, with the fulsome consent of mother Julia Dent Grant, the boy spent extensive periods of time with his father in the field. Perhaps the most event-filled of those interludes was when young Fred (12 years old at the time) joined the Grant headquarters family for the most active and decisive months of the 1863 Vicksburg Campaign. His most lengthy and detailed remembrance of that adventurous time is reproduced in editor Albert Nofi's Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War.

According to Nofi, more than a dozen versions of Fred Grant's speeches and interviews pertaining to his time in Mississippi can be viewed in print. The most comprehensive version of his wartime remembrance, and the one that forms the basis of this book, is the 18,000-word memoir account serialized by the National Tribune in 1887. In addition to organizing and transcribing that Tribune account in full, Nofi annotates the material. His footnotes identify or clarify persons, places, and events mentioned in Fred's memoir while dutifully pointing out errors in the account as well as noteworthy differences with, or omissions from, other versions. A selection of important people and places mentioned in the text are addressed at greater length in a pair of appendices as well.

It's easy to see why Fred Grant was a prize get for the Gilded Age speaking circuit. Beyond the obvious appeal of being the son of the Union Army's greatest war hero, Fred, a West Point graduate himself (Class of 1871) who eventually reached the rank of major general, was well informed on military matters in his own right. His Tribune account is a mixture of serious observation balanced by more lighthearted remembrances of boyish antics and adventures near the enemy (sometimes too close for comfort). Though obviously pro-Union in sentiment, the memoir treats friend (even comrades with whom his father sharply conflicted, such as John C. McClernand) and foe alike with an even keel.

Fred's Vicksburg account was developed well after the war ended and apparently without the fact-checking benefit of any additional source material or personal notes. As Nofi mentions, that led to a lot of mistakes in identifying persons, places, and especially dates. Events were also occasionally conflated or mistaken altogether. So what value is there to be had? The memoir definitely provides Civil War readers with a unique perspective in terms of its author being the son of the commanding general, a position that afforded him ready access and opportunity for observing and interacting with the army's high command in the middle of a critically important campaign. The boyish adventures that young Grant engaged in on multiple occasions might also interest many readers. Some anecdotes are uniquely Fred's. For instance, his account of General Grant and Admiral David Porter personally involving themselves with a shipboard test firing of a coffee mill gun, the unfortunate result of which was a fairly severe (by Fred's estimate) accidental injury to the general's hand that took some time to heal. According to Nofi, that incident, though very specific and vividly described by Fred, is mentioned nowhere in Grant's own writings nor could the editor find the incident described in any other books about Grant.

By his own account (which spans the period, with some interruption, from the end of March 1863 to just after the fall of Vicksburg), Fred seemed to have had the ability to freely attach himself to any of Grant's subordinate generals, and he apparently shared company with all the army's corps and division commanders at one time or another, witnessing most in action. He claims to have been adopted as a special "pet" by some of the Grant's officers (ex. James McPherson) and befriended an orderly that joined him on many escapades.

Fred's high command access allowed him to gain the measure of Grant's lieutenants, at least in retrospect, and he freely shares his perceptions of them in the memoir. His impressions of the personalities and abilities of important generals such as Sherman, McClernand, and McPherson closely align with the most common descriptions of those qualities passed down through history all the way to today. Of the division commanders in the Army of the Tennessee, John Logan inspired exceptional curiosity and admiration from Fred. It's interesting that he repeatedly refers to the general as "Fighting Jack," with no mention of the "Black Jack" nickname that today's students are much more familiar with in their own reading.

The absence of extensive discussion related to the Vicksburg operation's siege phase is explained by the fact that the writer was sent away during that time to recover from a festering flesh wound received earlier in the campaign. Given that camp diseases and stray bullets had no regard for rank or youth (ask Sherman about the deadly risks involved in exposing one's own child to that), it is somewhat startling to learn just how enthusiastic Julia was about continually sending Fred to be with her husband at the front, even after the boy was shot and also caught a life-threatening case of dysentery. She even amusingly justifies Grant having Fred around on campaign as being akin to Philip of Macedon mentoring a young Alexander.

This is a fine memoir of the Vicksburg Campaign written from a wholly distinctive perspective, made even more valuable through the prodigious enhancements and supplements provided by the editor.