Booknotes: Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria

New Arrival:

• Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy by Beau Cleland (UGA Press, 2025).

As studies exploring the international dimensions of the American Civil War continue to expand their geographical and conceptual reach, it remains easy to see why various aspects of the three-way social, political, economic, and diplomatic relationship between the British Empire and the United States and Confederate governments still garners the most attention in the literature. Contributing to that discussion, Beau Cleland's Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy draws renewed attention toward those actions undertaken by public and private colonial networks operating close to the conflict in North America.

Cleland's study "recenters our understanding of the Civil War by framing it as a hemispheric affair, deeply influenced by the actions of a network of private parties and minor officials in the Confederacy and British territory in and around North America."

A map on page 178 cites seventeen pro-Confederate plots in North America and surrounding waters (eight of which were actually set into motion) that were directly linked to connections with these British colonial networks. More from the description: "John Wilkes Booth likely would not have been in a position to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, for example, without the logistical support and assistance of the pro-Confederate network in Canada. That network, to which he was personally introduced in Montreal in the fall of 1864, was hosted and facilitated by willing colonials across the hemisphere.Many of its Confederate members arrived in British North America via a long-established transportation and communications network built around British colonies, especially Bermuda and the Bahamas, whose primary purpose was running the blockade." Of course, the parts played by British colonial authorities and enterprising private citizens in blockade running operations based out of Bermuda and Nassau are well established. Nevertheless, "(i)t is difficult to overstate how essential blockade running was for the rebellion’s survival, and it would have been impossible without the aid of sympathetic colonials."

The first two chapters of Cleland's study revisit "antebellum relations between the South and Britain" and restate the "critical importance of British colonial support for the establishment and sustainment of Confederate blockade running" over the first half of the Civil War. The actions of prominent British colonials are also highlighted. Chapter 3 traces Confederate social connections in Bermuda as well as the Confederate government's attempt to "take control over blockade running." The "ambivalent" attitudes toward the Confederacy from black inhabitants of the British colonies, as well as the ways in which they opposed pro-Confederate networks, are examined in the following chapter. Chapter 5 highlights "the case of the Chesapeake hijacking as an example of the increasing fusion of privateering and filibustering by pro-Confederate raiders." The final two chapters, "set largely in Canada, explore how Confederates embraced the logic of informal warfare and diplomacy in 1864-65, with increasingly chaotic results" (pp. 10-11).

In the final estimation, Cleland maintains that the pro-Confederate "informal, semiprivate network(s)" described in the book "were of enormous consequence for the course of the war and its aftermath, and our understanding of the Civil War is incomplete without a deeper reckoning with the power and potential for chaos of these private networks imbued with the power of a state."

Review - "The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864" by David Powell

[The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 21 maps, photos, orders of battle, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xv,484/602. ISBN:978-1-61121-757-5. $39.95]

Since its 1992 publication, Albert Castel's Decision in the West's status as the standard single-volume history of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign has not been seriously challenged. Nevertheless, it has always been clearly recognized that any attempt to cover that four-month operation in North Georgia, with its sweeping large-scale maneuvers, near constant fighting, and numerous major battles, at a depth beyond what might be classified as a campaign overview would require multiple volumes. Tackling that very task with his typical gusto is David Powell, who, fresh off completion of an instant classic three-volume Chickamauga Campaign study, is no stranger to monumental military history projects with a western theater focus. In both research and writing, Powell always sets a high standard for himself, and the first installment of his planned five-book set, 2024's The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864, fully met expectations. Not given to resting on their laurels, Powell and publisher Savas Beatie were then able to give us, just one year later, The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864.

Volume 2 begins with the tale of another squandered opportunity by Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Joseph E. Johnston to strike William T. Sherman's advancing army group while the Federals were briefly divided and beyond mutual support during another complicated flank march and river crossing combination. In Powell's keenly developed estimation (fully explained in Volume 1), the inability to attack Sherman's forces in detail as they were crossing the Oostanaula River was Johnston's "first and best lost opportunity" (pg. 36) of the campaign. Now, in passing below the Etowah River and with the greater part of Sherman's forces striking out into the wilderness west of their Western & Atlantic Railroad lifeline, the part of Sherman's army group constituting its left (Twenty-Third Corps/Army of the Ohio) found itself temporarily isolated and vulnerable. In response, the generally risk-averse Johnston yet again adopted a passive approach to facing Sherman's approaching columns, which were burdened by the heavy subsistence trains necessary for supporting extended operations away from the railroad. These brief openings were representative of precisely the types of situations that Johnston envisioned as his only means of effectively countering Sherman's superior forces, yet in both cases the general demonstrated little of the mental flexibility that would have allowed him to even recognize them as exceptional windows of opportunity.

As Sherman's army group lumbered forward along a wide arc intended to envelop the left of Johnston's smaller force, James B. McPherson, the inexperienced new commander of the celebrated Army of the Tennessee, repeatedly failed to meet his superior's expectations. On both May 25 and 26, Sherman's orders for McPherson to vigorously attack were not carried out. For the 27th, the opposite flank was approached. The resulting Battle of Pickett's Mill was a clear Union defeat, but Powell provides compelling reasons to suggest that Confederate defensive success was a closer run thing than most other accounts are willing to concede. Regardless, Johnston's freedom to reinforce his right to better meet the attack on the 27th would not have been possible without McPherson's inexplicable lethargy. Though work by Powell and others has done much to take the edge off of history's sharpest charges against McPherson for Snake Creek Gap, that supposed blunder and the other events of May 1864 suggest that the talented young major general from Ohio was not yet up to the job of army command.

While Johnston himself may have been unduly pessimistic about his army's offensive prospects, corps commander John Bell Hood continued to seek out ways to strike back. After Pickett's Mill, it was thought (first suggested by Hood) to take advantage of McPherson's hesitancy and the temporary disarrangement of the Union left to launch an attack of their own. Powell credits Johnston for a skillful rearrangement of nearly his entire army directly in the face of Sherman's host, a delicate process that freed up Hood's corps for the proposed flank march and attack on the east end of the federal line on the 28th. This proved to be yet another aborted offensive countermove, as Hood received disheartening intelligence claiming that the previously open enemy flank was now drawn back and strongly entrenched. The attack was called off, the fizzle on the 28th providing yet more fodder for the later war of words between Johnston and Hood. Powell sees little truth behind Johnston's version of events as published in 1874 and 1887, those writings being extremely critical of Hood, accusing the corps commander of inexcusable lateness and hesitation. While Powell's research leads him to believe that the Union left was more vulnerable than Confederate cavalry reported to Hood, he also persuasively outlines the difficulties Hood would have faced in deploying his three divisions in the area's rough terrain and coordinating their attack in a way that could achieve the desired result of crippling the opposition along that sector of the front.

The increased weight attached to the Confederate right left William Bate's lone division to face McPherson's entire army for three days. That McPherson proved incapable of exploiting that vulnerability during that extended time irked Sherman. In the end, Union inactivity on that end of the line led to Bate being ordered to develop the enemy-held position, wrongly assumed to be weakly held, in his front. The Union lines were found to be strongly posted and the assault cancelled, but a communication mishap resulted in two brigades attacking anyway and suffering heavy casualties to no positive result for the Confederates. Even so, The Battle of Dallas conclusively signaled that Sherman's grand western sweep away from the railroad was stymied for good. Over the first half of June, Sherman's logistically strained army group sidled back to the east, eventually regaining possession of the railroad (which was daily becoming more necessary for relief) and again pressing Johnston southward. Noteworthy events from this time include the death of popular Confederate corps commander Leonidas Polk at Pine Mountain and the fighting at Gilgal Church.

Throughout the five and a half week period covered in the book, Sherman lamented opportunities missed by subordinate sluggishness. Powell persuasively maintains that many ill-tempered complaints directed by Sherman toward George Thomas should have been instead laid at the feet of beloved Grant/Sherman protege James McPherson, whose behavior on June 25-27 at Dallas was most deserving of Sherman's ire. Sherman also needled Thomas throughout the campaign for the latter's desire to preserve his own creature comforts and maintain an extensive army headquarters tent village. In defense of Thomas, Powell notes that Sherman assigned the bulk of the entire army group's administrative apparatus to Thomas's Army of the Cumberland headquarters, justifying to a large degree the seemingly excessive number of tents, furniture, and wagons attached to it. Additionally, Thomas's prewar back injury and his desire to avoid commandeering private residences are cited by Powell as justifiable reasons behind the general's avoidance of 'roughing it' in the field over the duration of a long campaign.

As Johnston fell back through successive positions to a more compact front covering Marietta, Sherman's army group continued to press forward closely, adopting, as Powell describes it, 'bite and hold' tactics to establish forward outposts that could then utilize Union superiority in artillery firepower to prompt further Confederate retreats. Kolb's Farm was a costly Confederate attempt to alter the situation. Powell describes the battle and revisits the ways in which it contributed to growing animosity between Twentieth Corps commander Joseph Hooker and Sherman while also being another source of future rancor between Johnston and Hood. The author is sympathetic to Hooker's frustrations in relation to how much offensive burden his corps was forced to assume thus far in the campaign, but Powell also directs reader attention toward yet another of McPherson's shortcomings. When Hood's corps was replaced on the front line by Wheeler's cavalry preparatory to the former's shift to the opposite flank (the movement that produced the fighting at Kolb's Farm), reconnaissance inactivity from McPherson's corps on June 21-22 meant that the dangerously thinned line manned by enemy cavalry in his front lay undetected in its vulnerability. With Johnston's army returning to a defensive posture, the stage was now set for a change in Sherman's offensive tactics.

Earl Hess's Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign is the most complete history of that battle to date, and both he and Powell make clear the ways in which the natural landscape and Confederate defensive improvements (the quality and strength of the latter further enhanced by the delays incurred from Union front line reshuffling) shaped the battle. Historical criticisms of Sherman's Kennesaw Mountain assaults often center around the tactical formations employed during the Cheatham Hill assaults. There, the assaulting brigades of General Howard's Fourth Corps were directed to mass themselves on very narrow, very deep frontages (regiments forming up in closed column of divisions, each regiment stacked directly behind the other). Powell contends that many critics operate under the misunderstanding that Howard intended his attack to rapidly pass over enemy lines with the advancing regiments remaining in column. Citing the writings of participating officers, Powell persuasively argues instead that each regiment would only have maintained column formation during initial deployment and passage to the front, the expectation being for all regiments to quickly redeploy into line for the final assault. With little time for pre-battle reconnaissance after nighttime reshuffling of the attacking divisions, principal fault, in the author's view, lay in the false impression that the rapid columnar movement to the front could achieve tactical surprise, that redeployment into line could be quickly achieved, and that the Confederate defensive lines were not as thickly held as they were.

The fighting on the 27th is recounted over several chapters, making the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain the most deeply covered event in the book. As always, Powell excels in both providing big picture context for the battle as well as detailed tactical treatment at the small-unit level. As it does for the rest of the narrative, the author's vast collection of firsthand sources gleaned from his extensive manuscript research allows the reader to gain a vivid picture of the Kennesaw fighting from the perspectives of its most intimately involved participants, the lower-ranking officers and common soldiers. The action at Kennesaw is also the most thoroughly mapped of the many military encounters described in the book. With 21 total maps supporting a nearly 500-page military history narrative, and the period encompassing Volume 2 consisting of nearly continuous marching and fighting, it is probably inevitable that there would be gaps in coverage. In those cases, the descriptive quality of the text helps visualize events that could not be accompanied by maps, but it is also the case that future readings will undoubtedly benefit from the campaign atlas that is planned.

In the wake of the costly failure of the Kennesaw assaults he ordered, Sherman remained unhumbled. Insisting the attacks on the 27th were necessary—to break his well-established operational pattern of conducting wide flanking movements, to keep Johnston from sending reinforcements to Lee in Virginia, and also to convince Johnston (and perhaps even his own army) that direct assaults remained a viable option that still must be accounted for—was one thing, but blaming his men as being principally behind the failure was a petty accusation not in accord with the measured verdict of history. Neither Powell nor Hess find Sherman's justifications convincing. Nevertheless, the attacks did not result in crippling Union casualties (though several brigade commanders might beg to differ), and the successful advance by the Army of the Ohio against the Confederate left, which was held only by screening cavalry, meant that Union forces were well-positioned to force yet another retreat by Johnston's army (this one with the Chattahoochee River at its back and Atlanta itself sixteen miles away just over the horizon). Thus ends Volume 2.

In terms of supplements, the orders of battle found in the appendix section, representing the organizational state of the Union and Confederate armies on June 1, are more informative than most. Battery compositions are listed for both armies, and the Union side even has regimental strength figures for most units. With two volumes finished, the scale of what Powell's pentalogy intends to accomplish has become more clear. Exhaustive campaign micro-history on the level of the author's previous single-battle trilogy would require a dozen or more volumes, so perhaps the best way to describe the series is detailed operational history with strong micro-tactical elements reserved for describing the most significant battlefield events (examples of that pattern being this book's treatment of the battles of Pickett's Mill and Kennesaw Mountain). In achieving those ends, both books excel.

On to Volume 3!

Booknotes: Tar Heel Civil War Flags

New Arrival:

• Tar Heel Civil War Flags: The Collection of the North Carolina Museum of History by Tom Belton (McFarland, 2026).

Like the title featured in Monday's new arrival announcement, this one explores an important aspect of Civil War-era material culture, the flags under consideration being among the most sacred artifacts to those that served under them. Tom Belton's Tar Heel Civil War Flags: The Collection of the North Carolina Museum of History serves as both major exhibition companion and standalone reference guide.

From the description: "In September 1999, the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh presented North Carolina and the Civil War, an exhibition which highlighted over 350 Civil War objects from the museum's collection. A major component of the exhibit consisted of original Civil War-era flags. Tom Belton was the curator of this priceless collection for over thirty years, and in this book, he presents the history and context of each of the 112 Confederate flags in holding, with studio color quality photographs accompanying each entry."

With one or more modern color photographs, B&W archival images, or reproduced documents placed on nearly every page, this is a prodigiously illustrated volume. Among the flag selections are "state flags, company flags, first and second national flags, and battle flags, as well as entries describing the acquisition of this important collection. Additional entries cover post-war flags and banners associated with heritage groups."

Tar Heel Civil War Flags "presents an insider's perspective on one of North Carolina's most distinguished historical collections."

Booknotes: A Nation Unraveled

New Arrival:

• A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era by Sarah Jones Weicksel (UNC Press, 2026).

Of course, multidisciplinary study of material culture artifacts has long been central to the archaeological investigation of Civil War-associated sites such as army encampments, battlefields, buildings, sunken vessels, and more. Much more recent is the uptick in scholarly examination, using innovative new angles and perspectives, of non-archaeologically obtained material items of study such as preserved period clothing and wartime ephemera. In this group resides Sarah Jones Weicksel's A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era.

From the description: "During the American Civil War, clothing became central to the ways people waged war and experienced its cost. Through the clothes they made, wore, mended, lost, and stole, Americans expressed their allegiances, showed their love, confronted their social and economic challenges, subverted expectations, and, ultimately, preserved their history." "Northerners and Southerners alike understood that clothing—from the weave of a fabric to the style and make of a coat—had the power to affect people’s way of living through the war’s tumult."

With, as the saying goes, pictures being worth a thousand words, it behooves anyone presenting a material culture study to include images that fully reveal what they're writing about, and Weicksel's study doesn't skimp on that element. Her book's seventy-eight illustrations include images of shirts, uniforms, buttons, body armor, slippers, aprons, dresses, ribbons, earrings, coats, undergarments, and more.

Weicksel's investigation "is divided into four parts ["Making," "Wearing," "Destroying," and "Saving] according to the life cycle of clothing and are roughly chronological, beginning with the adoption and production of army uniforms and ending with the preservation of clothing as relics of war" (pg. 11). Specifically, Making "focuses on how making clothing and dress culture were central to making war." Wearing "shifts the vantage point to consider how civilians confronted and felt the effects of war and emancipation through the clothes they wore." Destroying "addresses how war was waged and felt through acts of clothing destruction and defilement, and through the disintegration of dress practices." Finally, Saving "explores the broader phenomena of people keeping and preserving clothing--whether stolen or their own--to narrate, remember, and come to terms with war" (pp. 12-13).

In sum, Weicksel's contribution to the Civil War material culture literature "invites readers to understand how the war penetrated daily life by focusing on the intimate, visceral, material experiences that shaped how people moved through the world."

Review - "The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War" by Robert Gudmestad

[The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert Gudmestad (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, maps, photos, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,212/305. ISBN:978-0-8071-8491-2. $50]

The strategies, leaders, common sailors, ships, and operations associated with the Civil War period U.S. Navy's Mississippi River Squadron (the famed "Brown Water Navy") have been documented and studied in numerous book-length overviews, biographical treatments, and microhistories. Fine modern works from the likes of Gary Joiner, Barbara Tomblin, and Myron Smith have preceded this one, but what makes Robert Gudmestad's The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War exceptional is its development of fresh interpretive themes drawn from, among other sources, extensive use of newly created datasets as well as its unprecedented levels of quantitative integration (including GIS mapping) into the volume's textual description and analysis.

In a compact narrative remarkable for the breadth and amount of focused depth achieved in just over two-hundred pages of main text, Gudmestad explores the Mississippi River Squadron's origins as the army-controlled Western Gunboat Flotilla and documents the full range of its wartime activities, which included squadron-scale engagements, ship vs. ship and ship vs. shore encounters, escort duties, counterguerrilla operations, area control patrolling, and interdiction of both illicit trade and Confederate use of western waterways for their own supply, transport, and logistical uses. An exhaustive presentation of the squadron's Civil War record is beyond the book's scope, but strong summaries of the more significant battles and campaigns (among them Forts Henry and Donelson, early-1862 White River operations, the Battle of Arkansas Post, the 1862-63 Vicksburg Campaign, and 1864's Red River Campaign and Johnsonville debacles) are provided as are brief accounts of a myriad of smaller-scale actions. Shipboard life (including discipline and punishment) is also vividly described and the squadron's central role in military emancipation highlighted at some length.

A key component of the research behind the book is the impressive sailor database compiled from official muster rolls by the author and his team. Their combined efforts produced detailed information on 14,754 sailors. With the likelihood that another 1-2,000 individuals went unexamined, the author estimates that up to 17,000 men served in the squadron. In both text and tabular formats, a detailed demographic profile of Brown Water Navy recruits emerges from that source. Differences between Union sailors and army soldiers are noteworthy. Western sailors were far less likely than Union Army volunteers to be farmers, more likely to be immigrants, and both younger and slightly shorter than their foot soldier counterparts. While there were also demographic differences between the navy's deep water and inland waterway sailors, Gudmestad contends that both groups shared a general lack of ideological enlistment motivation. Though William Marvel has recently argued in convincing fashion that economic considerations drove early Union Army enlistment in previously underappreciated ways, most scholarship highlights saving the Union as the army volunteer's primary motivation (with some enlistees also expressing earnest desire to free the slaves). By contrast, it is the author's conclusion here (though one wishes Gudemestad had developed the argument at greater length in the book) that the evidence best supports the claim that economic reasons, including the prospects of prize money, were what generally motivated western sailors.

Gudmestad's manuscript research, fresh analysis of the relevant primary and secondary literature, and new quantitative measures (the last including GIS mapping of riverine irregular warfare events), together leads him to interpret the Mississippi River Squadron's war as passing through four distinct, yet partially overlapping, phases. Overall, it is a useful construct for tracking the evolution of the squadron's assigned roles and range of activities. During Phase One (July 1861-June 1862), the Western Gunboat Flotilla, primarily manned by former bluewater sailors and transfers from the army, directly confronted Confederate vessels, squadrons, and river forts both alone and in conjunction with the army. Phase Two (ending in April 1863), which further perfected army-navy combined operations and essentially marked the complete destruction of organized Confederate naval opposition, was still characterized by attacks on river forts, but the escalation of irregular attacks against Union rear area shipping during that time transformed the main duties of the squadron to supply line protection and escort duties. During Phase Three (May 1863 to April 1864), the naval counterguerrilla war deepened and intensified, with the navy going on the determined offensive against both guerrilla attackers and their presumed civilian supporters (the targeting of the latter leading to much in the way of unjustified acts of plunder and property destruction). Finally, Phase Four, which encompassed the final twelve months of the war, witnessed a steep drop in squadron efficiency and an accompanying rise in Confederate success in ambushing and destroying squadron vessels.

After the harsh reality of sailor life on a closely confined western gunboat set in, it became increasingly difficult to maintain minimum crew strength. Individualistic northern recruits chafed at naval discipline, which was much stricter than that of the army. That, combined with the many personal discomforts and extreme health hazards involved in the shipboard environment (the squadron routinely operated in the most mosquito-infested areas of the Deep South) deterred new recruits and helped produce a persistent manpower gulf. Gudmestad convincingly argues that black recruitment (willing, half-willing, and unwilling) critically addressed that widened gap that emerged during the second and third phases of the squadron's war. His research reveals that blacks and white immigrants enlisted in nearly equal numbers during the second phase, and black men comprised more than one-third of new recruits during the third phase. Military emancipation facilitated much of that Phase Three influx. The Union Army's role in military emancipation across the length and breadth of the lower Mississippi River Valley has been featured in a number of recent studies. By comparison, the western navy's part in the process has been less appreciated in the literature, and Gudmestad's coverage of the topic represents a significant effort toward addressing that imbalance.

A variety of elements involved in Phase Four make it worthy of special attention. Much has been written about the negative impact late-war recruits had on Union Army of the Potomac combat efficiency (although more recent scholarship has strongly contested many of those earlier conclusions), but far less attention has been paid to how much expiring enlistments affected naval operations over the same period. Gudmestad argues that, compared with 1864 Union Army regiments, Mississippi River Squadron vessels experienced far more critically low reenlistment rates. He attributes much of that to discipline requirements, low onboard quality of life (exemplified by the sailor quote serving as the book's title), and, as also mentioned above, lack of ideological commitment. Other contributors to plunging operational efficiency were very heavy desertion rates (perhaps the highest among all Union military formations) and high personnel turnover from disease and disability. There was also extensive turnover in top leadership, with more than a third of squadron vessels having new commanders for the war's final twelve months. In comparison to the two prior phases, the final phase witnessed a sharp plunge in black enlistment (only 8%), a change likely stemming from native-born and immigrant whites taking advantage of highly lucrative late-war enlistment bounties. The result of all of this was a very noticeable drop in overall leadership aggressiveness, far fewer shore expeditions, and a sharp rise in the incidence and success rates of anti-ship attacks from experienced and highly mobile Confederate guerrilla and raiding forces (a prime example of notable Confederate success against qualitatively declining opposition being the Johnsonville, Tennessee disaster of November 1864). However, as Gudemestad also explains, none of those drawbacks, significant as they were, prevented the squadron from carrying out its primary tasks and finishing out the war wearing the crown of victory.

A deftly composed combination of sound synthesis and groundbreaking original research, Robert Gudmestad's The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War presents a fresh portrait and reassessment of the Brown Water Navy's war. Elements of this study will enhance and challenge the existing knowledge and perceptions of even the best-read students of the subject matter. The extensive datasets created by Gudmestad's team will also be profoundly useful tools for future researchers. Highly recommended.

Coming Soon (January '26 Edition)

Scheduled for JAN 2026¹:
• William Henry Seward and the Secession Winter (November 1860 – April 1861) by C. Evan Stewart.
• Lincoln's Frock Coat: The Enduring Mystery of an Assassination Relic by Reignette Chilton.
• A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era by Sarah Jones Weicksel.
• Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith in the Civil War Era by Timothy Grundmeier.
• Confederate General D. H. Hill: A Military Life by Chris Hartley.
• William Watson and the Rob Roy: The Adventures of a Civil War Blockade Runner by Walter Wilson.
• Soldier of the South: Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace by Edward Hagerty.
• George Templeton Strong: Civil War Diaries ed. by Geoff Wisner.
• The Complete Medal of Honor: Volume 1: 1861–1865 by Kevin Brazier.
• The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln ed. by Allen Guelzo.
• Preeminent Strategist: General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, The Confederacy’s Most Agile General by F. Gregory Toretta.
• A Little Piece of Hell at Gettysburg: The Attack and Defense of the Rose Farm, July 2-3, 1863 by Scott Fink.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They routinely do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, publisher exclusives, 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: In Custer's Boots

New Arrival:

• In Custer's Boots: The Little Bighorn Campaign: Revelations, Reconstructions, and Reviews by Gordon Richard (Casemate, 2026).

By the sheer number of titles that have been (and continue to be) produced, the June 25–26, 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn is easily the Gettysburg of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars in North America. Coming out in a couple months is another addition to that ever expanding book and article literature, Gordon Richard's critical synthesis In Custer's Boots: The Little Bighorn Campaign: Revelations, Reconstructions, and Reviews.

From the description: "The Battle of the Little Bighorn remains one of the most debated events in American military history. In this collection of meticulously researched essays, the author challenges long-standing myths, examines key decisions made by Custer and his superiors, and re-evaluates the evidence surrounding the battle and its participants."

Most of the volume's sixteen chapters are based on published articles in the periodicals The Battlefield Dispatch, The Crow's Nest, and The Greasy Grass between 2009 and today. Several very nice maps are also carried over. Two chapters are composed of previously unpublished material.

A variety of topics are addressed. More from the description: "Drawing on articles published in leading historical journals, this volume delves into topics such as Custer’s reconnaissance, the accusations that he disobeyed orders, the strength of the warrior force he faced, and the reliability of testimony from the Reno Court of Inquiry. It also investigates the fate of the 7th Cavalry’s horses, the provenance of a multi-million-dollar battle relic, and the distortions of modern internet sources."

Offerings from the Spring '26 catalogs

LSU:
• Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief by Kenneth Noe.
• Death or Victory: The Louisiana Native Guards and the Black Military’s Significance in the Civil War by A.J. Cade.
• A Desperate Fight: The Lives of Louisiana's Confederate Soldiers by Henry Motty.
• Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General by David Paul Smith.
• Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith in the Civil War Era by Timothy Grundmeier.

UNC:
• Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era by Warren Milteer.
• A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse by Megan VanGorder.

Kansas:
• Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War by Earl Hess.
• Procuring Victory: The Army Quartermaster and the Economics of Expansion in Nineteenth-Century America by John Wendt.

Kent State:
• Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army by Earl Hess.

Nebraska:
• Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 by Brian Burton.
• Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide by Brian Burton.
• Emancipation War: The Fall of Slavery and the Coming of the Thirteenth Amendment (Potomac Books) by Damon Root.

Oklahoma:
• Mollie Brumley's Civil War: Surviving the Guerrilla War in Arkansas by Theodore Catton.

Mercer:
Forthcoming.

SIU:
• The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 ed. by Woodworth & Grear.

TAMU Consortium:
• Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA (TSHA Press) by McCaslin & Stewart.

Tennessee:
• Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War by Neff & Fluker.
• Civil War Photo Forensics: Investigating Battlefield Photographs Through a Critical Lens by Scott Hippensteel.

Georgia:
• Deserter Declarations: Letters from North Carolinians Who Abandoned Their Confederate Units ed. by Judkin Browning.
• Mercy in Disaster: Abby Hopper Gibbons’s Journals and Letters from Four Years of Civil War Nursing ed. by Angela Schear.

Savas Beatie:
• Through the Civil War with the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry: Horatio Quiggle’s Memoir of Service edited ed. by Hagopian & Powell.
• Stonewall Jackson’s Winter Operations: The Raids Against the C&O Canal and the Bath-Romney Campaign, December 1861 to February 1862 by Timothy Snyder.
• Crisis at Antietam: The Cornfield and West Woods and the Opening Rounds of the Civil War’s Bloodiest Battle, September 17, 1862 by Steven Eden.
• Retreat from Victory: The Battle of Malvern Hill and the End of the Seven Days, July 1, 1862 by Francis O’Reilly.
• This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans by Neil Chatelain.
• Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign by Kelly-Fischer & Greenwalt.

Booknotes: Border War

New Arrival:

• Border War: A Yankee Family in Civil War Missouri by Marilyn Ferris Motz (UP of Mississippi, 2025).

Recent scholarship has emphasized the ways in which so many early to mid-nineteenth century Missourians wished to position themselves as westerners rather than northerners or southerners, but there's little doubt that where they originally came from to some degree continued to shape how they reacted to growing political dissension in the country at large. From the description: "When fiddler and farmer Henry Smith and his wife Harriet moved from Michigan to southwest Missouri in 1858, they considered themselves part of a Yankee cultural community whose taste and aspirations were shaped by northern publications and represented by the new Republican Party. By 1861 Vernon County Court Judge Henry Smith no longer called himself a Yankee or Republican, but he hoped his isolated prairie community would remain in the Union."

Marilyn Ferris Motz's Border War: A Yankee Family in Civil War Missouri is another volume that embeds its featured firsthand writings into a narrative format rather than presenting them in toto accompanied by editor's notes and text. From the description: "Throughout the turmoil, the Smiths documented their experiences in diaries, letters, school essays, magazine publications, and petitions. Drawing on archives, family papers, and government records, author Marilyn Ferris Motz pieces together the Smiths’ saga."

Part I uses the diaries of Henry and Harriet to examine their courtship and prospects for the future. The diaries and letters featured in Part II follow their adaptation to married life, growing political engagement, and decision to make a new life for their family in Montevallo, Missouri.

While Part II covers the path toward Civil War, the diary material highlighted in the third and final part of the volume describes the family's Civil War experiences of being caught in the middle between Union military occupation and mounting guerrilla warfare. More from the description: "Montevallo’s location at the intersection of roads from Boonville and Lexington south to Carthage and from Springfield to Fort Scott, Kansas, placed the Smith family’s log house in the path of troops fighting to establish Confederate or Union control of Missouri. The Smiths saw neighbor turn against neighbor as they played reluctant host to the succession of Union troops, Confederate soldiers, bushwhackers, and jayhawkers who swarmed past their homestead." That war on their doorstep eventually forced them to abandon their home and return to Michigan.

The Smith writings at the heart of Border War "illuminate wide-ranging challenges faced by many rural American households in the Civil War era." "As the Civil War divided family and community alike and future dreams were abandoned to focus on immediate survival, these personal writings capture what it meant to live during a time of immense uncertainty and mortal danger."

Booknotes: The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin

New Arrival:

• The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin: A Critical Edition edited by Jennifer Putzi (UNC Press, 2025).

UNCP has been going pretty hard on the Reconstruction and CW-adjacent stuff in recent catalogs, so it's no surprise that there is some direct overlap among them. That is certainly the case here, with both main subject and her husband also prominently featured in another F/W title, January's Requiem for Reconstruction.

From the description: "In 1867, Frances Anne Rollin, a Black writer and teacher from South Carolina, traveled to Boston to seek a publisher for her biography of famed Black abolitionist, writer, and Civil War veteran Martin R. Delany—the first full-length biography written by an African American. Beginning in January 1868, Rollin kept a diary while in Boston documenting her progression on Delany’s biography, negotiations with publishers, visits from friends, attendance at lectures and readings, and her marriage to William J. Whipper, a Black politician and jurist."

More from the description: Rollin’s diary has the distinction of being "one of the earliest known diaries by a Southern Black woman." Editor Jennifer Putzi's critical edition, The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin, "offers the first complete transcription and annotation of Rollin’s diary, along with a robust introduction providing important biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts for readers."

Saying the introduction is robust is a bit of an understatement as it runs 132 pages! In addition to the extensive footnotes attached to the diary, there is a hefty appendix section (much of it dealing with material related to Rollin's Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany, which was published in 1868). The diary itself "provides one of the fullest pictures of an African American woman as an author, activist, and well-connected and politically involved individual during the Reconstruction era(.)"

Booknotes: Requiem for Reconstruction

New Arrival:

• Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation by Robert D. Bland (UNC Press, 2026).

From the description: "Often remembered as a period of failed progressive change that gave way to Jim Crow and second-class citizenship, Reconstruction’s tragic narrative has long overshadowed the resilience and agency of African Americans during this time."

Robert Bland's Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation weaves that larger narrative together primarily through the words and actions of a select group of contemporary "leaders, educators, and journalists" (ex. "South Carolina congressman Robert Smalls, Judge William Whipper, writer Frances Rollin, and others") who helped shape its course and historical remembrance. In his "cultural history of the political world" in which these individuals operated, Bland argues that the region under consideration, the South Carolina Lowcountry, was a "pivotal site of Black countermemory in the half-century that followed the removal of federal troops" (pg. 3).

More from the description: Framed as a "countermemory of Reconstruction," Bland's study "traces the impact of the Reconstruction generation—Black Americans born between 1840 and 1870 who saw Reconstruction as a defining political movement and worked to preserve its legacy by establishing a new set of historical practices such as formulating new archives, shaping local community counternarratives, using the Black press to inform national audiences about Southern Republican politics, and developing a framework to interpret the recent past’s connection to their present world."

Review - "Saltgrass Prairie Saga: A German American Family in Texas" by Jim Burnett

[Saltgrass Prairie Saga: A German American Family in Texas by Jim Burnett (Texas A&M University Press, 2025). Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, endnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,253/320. ISBN:978-1-64843-273-6. $35]

During the Mexican, independent nation, and early statehood periods of its history, Texas, with its vast amount of economically useful land but having only a small population positioned to develop it, was an inviting place for enterprising American citizens and foreign immigrants alike. An abundant source of the latter were the populous German states of Central Europe, immigrant passage and administration handled by aid ventures such as the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas (to which a fee was paid by immigrants in exchange for those services). Attracted by the prospect of free land along with access to a modest dwelling and other means of becoming quickly self-sufficient within organized Texas Hill Country colonies populated by fellow Germans, large numbers of individuals and families left behind centuries-old roots for opportunities they could only dream about in their land-restricted ancestral lands. One of those risk-taking families was that of Johan (later anglicized to John) and Johanette Stengler, who, along with seven children from Johanette's current and two previous marriages (surnames Krantz and Hankamer), left their home in the village of Dietz in the fall of 1845, arriving in the port of Galveston only two days after independent Texas was formally annexed by the United States on December 29. The Stengler family's immigrant story, with central focus on the Civil War period, is the subject of Jim Burnett's Saltgrass Prairie Saga: A German American Family in Texas.

Scholarly works tasked with publishing a notable body of historical correspondence generally come in two types. The first and most common variety is to reproduce the letters in full, organize them into chapters, and contextualize them via deeply researched introductory passages, bridging narrative, and footnotes/endnotes. The other method, the less common one and the one employed by Burnett, is to incorporate the most meaningful and informative portions of the letters into a broadly researched narrative, oftentimes supplemented with extensive block quotes of particularly noteworthy firsthand material. Each style has its merits, and Burnett's value-added enhancement of the letters through material gleaned from other primary and secondary sources is seamlessly executed.

Upon landing at Galveston after a long ocean voyage, the Stenglers were immediately confronted with a conundrum of life-changing (even life-threatening) proportions. While the German immigrant aid society that brought them to Texas was generally well-organized, its end-stage resources were taxed by both funding limitations and the Texas interior's primitive infrastructure. There was no immediate means of transportation available for the Stenglers to travel with their possessions all the way to the colony's faraway location, where it was also the case that a deadly epidemic was currently raging. Faced with those challenges, John and Johanette reluctantly made the decision to abandon their free land claim in the colony and instead settle on rental property in the Saltgrass Prairie region of SE Texas. In that part of Liberty County, accessed by lake boat travel, there existed good land for farming and cattle raising along with bountiful wood and fresh water resources. Even though there were few Germans in the area and none of the family members spoke English, the gamble paid off as the Stenglers prospered in farming and ranching, eventually owning their own property and assimilating into the local culture through economic exchange and intermarriage.

With the preponderance of the Civil War-era coverage of German immigrants in Texas centered on the pro-Union Germans of the Texas Hill Country, Burnett's detailed portrait of a single Saltgrass Prairie German immigrant family is noteworthy for contrasts in both allegiance and geography. As presented by Burnett, the Stenglers's words don't reveal much in the way of political engagement and nothing on the great slavery questions of the day, so one might surmise that their support for the Confederacy was grounded in localism and determination to protect their substantial and hard-won property gains from expected Union invasion threats.

Eventually, John Stengler himself, five sons, and a son-in-law served in the Confederate Army or with Texas state troops, all surviving the war and none deserting. Most went into the mounted Company F of Spaight's Battalion, which originated in Liberty County and was primarily involved with mobile coastal defense. Philip Caudill's Moss Bluff Rebel: A Texas Pioneer in the Civil War (2009), which doubles as both Company F captain William Berry Duncan biography and unit history of Spaight's Battalion, is arguably the best single source on the battalion's Civil War activities. Interestingly, neither the Stengler nor the Hankamer name appears in its index, their absence making Burnett's study one of even more signal importance in further documenting the unit's highly peripatetic wartime history.

Walker's Texas Division (the "Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi") is often cited as marching the greatest total distance and, less charitably, fighting the least amount of any comparably sized Civil War formation. Burnett describes Company F in similar fashion, likening most of its Civil War service as a chess match of back and forth marching between Galveston and western Louisiana accompanied by relatively little actual fighting. The men of the company were more fortunate than their fellow Texans of Walker's division, however, in rarely venturing more than 100 miles in any direction from their SE Texas homes. The heaviest combat that Company F was engaged in was during the Battle of Bayou Bourbeau, fought during the time when they were temporarily attached to Baylor's Regiment in Louisiana for eight months in 1863 before returning to Texas the following spring. As Burnett describes in the book, most of Company F's more static service time was devoted to dull garrison duties and guarding isolated points of strategic importance (such as bridges) from enemy naval incursions and guerrilla attacks by local Unionists.

With letters both to and from Stengler's Liberty County homestead surviving, Burnett's narrative also includes a great deal of information about the home front experience. Thirteen years her husband John's senior, Johanette struggled running the farm without the working presence of her husband and sons. Like most southern households, hers also had to deal with scarcities of goods and services stemming from the exigencies of war and ever tightening naval blockade. Extended family helped, and Company F's frequent proximity also meant that serving menfolk were able to obtain short leaves of absence from the army for needed farm and ranch work. The Stengler's family network also benefited from the shooting war not directly visiting their doorsteps, though there were constant worries about roaming Confederate deserter bands and Unionist guerrilla encounters.

Burnett's narrative also extends well into the postwar period. While the Stengler-Krantz-Hankamer clan survived the war intact and managed to rebuild and expand their Saltgrass Prairie farming and cattle ranching concerns during Reconstruction, they were visited in 1877 by a devastating smallpox epidemic that killed a great many close and extended family members, including Johanette herself and numerous Wilborns and Hankamers. Nevertheless, the family persevered and its ongoing Texas legacy (which includes Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business) is revealed in the final chapter.

Saltgrass Prairie Saga's numerous contributions to Texas's state and Civil War history are of a conspicuous nature. In addition to providing a fresh angle through which to view the mid-nineteenth century German immigrant experience in Texas, Burnett's study also offers new perspectives on both the Civil War in Southeast Texas and the operations of one of that region's longest-serving and most well-traveled Confederate local defense units. Highly recommended.

Booknotes: The First Confederate Soldier

New Arrival:

• The First Confederate Soldier: George Washington Lee and Civil War Atlanta by Robert Scott Davis (McFarland, 2026).

Robert Scott Davis's The First Confederate Soldier: George Washington Lee and Civil War Atlanta has an intriguing title. Civil War 'firsts' are always a popular topic for research and debate, and the author justifies this particular distinction by claiming that unsuccessful Atlanta businessman George Washington Lee's independent Georgia militia company ("Lee's Volunteers") traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to attend the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and was the first company to enlist its services with the Provisional Army of the Confederate States.

Lee remains an obscure figure, but, according to Davis, the officer "represents a great untold epic of the Civil War." Lee "raised numerous companies for the Southern army," and his fighting career "encompassed Atlanta, Pensacola, Savannah, and Richmond, reaching from the swampy Okefenokee to the Appalachian Mountains. Literally the first soldier of the Confederate army, he was one of the last men in gray, even leading Cherokee warriors in one campaign."

If Lee is remembered it is primarily for his service as provost marshal in Atlanta, where he engaged in "suppression of resistance to the Confederacy." In that capacity, Lee "fought arsonists, bootleggers, counterfeiters, crime syndicate members, deserters, draft evaders, espionage agents, failing Confederate entities, thieves, and war resisters." Those behind-the-lines actions placed Lee front and center in fighting both the covert war between North and South and the 'South versus the South' inner war that plagued much of the Confederate home front. "Lee served the new Southern nation faithfully despite near-fatal bouts of tuberculosis, assassination attempts, and--as ordered by General William Tecumseh Sherman--treatment as a war criminal." In the end, Davis's "account of Confederate Atlanta features an important yet neglected figure who oversaw it all in a dangerous world of devotion, loyalty, and treason."

Booknotes: Brigadier General William Haines Lytle

New Arrival:

• Brigadier General William Haines Lytle: The Union's Poet-Soldier by Bryan W. Lane (McFarland, 2026).

Ohioan William Haynes Lytle, an antebellum lawyer, elected Democratic Party politician, and militia general, began the Civil War as colonel of the 10th Ohio infantry regiment. Fighting in western Virginia in 1861, he was wounded at Carnifex Ferry. Upon recovery, Lytle joined Mitchel's Division for its summer 1862 trek across northern Alabama and, later on that year, at Perryville received another wound while also falling into the hands of the enemy. Paroled and exchanged after the battle, Lytle was promoted to brigadier general and was assigned to the Army of the Cumberland, getting hit yet again by enemy fire and dying on September 20, 1863 at Chickamauga.

The only other major modern work on Lytle that I came across during a cursory online search was Ruth Carter's scholarly editing of Lytle's Mexican and ACW correspondence in her 1999 volume For Honor, Glory & Union. So it appears that Bryan Lane's Brigadier General William Haines Lytle: The Union's Poet-Soldier could be appropriately classed as the first full biography of its subject.

Lane describes Lytle as "a poet, Civil War soldier, lawyer, orator, friend, beloved brother, jilted lover, flirt, drunk, unfocused talent and sometimes genius." His book "gives ample attention to the three battles in which Lytle fought, but does not neglect his relationships with family, friends, and lovers. Talented, charming, and well-liked, even by his enemies, Lytle was a cultured gentleman who made friends easily. At the same time, he was also devoted to his troops and a fearless warrior on the battlefield."

Lane's account of Lytle's life and Civil War career, which is based on "on Lytle's own written words, the words of his family, newspaper correspondents and other primary sources," also incorporates its subject's poetry throughout the narrative. Like it was for many other busy professionals seeking a creative outlet, poetry was a side gig for Lytle. He did achieve a fair bit of fame with it, though, especially through his 1858 poem "Antony and Cleopatra," about which Lane devotes a chapter.