Booknotes: The Sewards of New York

New Arrival:

• The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family by Thomas P. Slaughter (Cornell UP, 2025).

This work represents yet another example of a recently uncovered cache of letters affording us the ability to shed new light on already well-documented figures from our Civil War-era past. In this case, it is roughly 4,000 letters that were previously "buried" within William Henry Seward's massive surviving collection of public correspondence (estimated at 350,000 pages!). These recent discoveries, the product of a decade of effort from University of Rochester students and library staff, helped Thomas Slaughter recover "the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War."

Of course, a major part of Slaughter's The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family is devoted to William Henry Seward. From the description: "William Henry Seward, the family's most prominent member, was a state senator, governor, US senator, and secretary of state. Henry, as his family knew him, was often absent from their Auburn, NY, home, in Albany or Washington, DC, and so remained connected to the family through the long letters numbering in the thousands that they exchanged. These writings reveal Henry as a son, brother, husband, and father, as much as they show him as a politician and statesman."

That said, Slaughter positions another member of the family at the forefront of his narrative. Henry Seward's wife, Frances, "is the hub around which this family story revolves." In a wider sense, the author "explores the extended Auburn family during a half century of profound change in American homes, marriage, and childrearing."

In sum, this study "paints a rich portrait of an extraordinary family that played a key role in nineteenth-century New York and national politics." In getting there, the volume examines four generations of Millers and Sewards from 1817 to 1860. Slaughter presents their story in a way that "takes us behind the curtain of the early Victorian era's private sphere. He, and the Sewards in their own words, portray life as it was lived by the influential and powerful, but also by many who lived more private lives that are now lost to us."

Booknotes: Cassius Marcellus Clay

New Arrival:

• Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform by Anne E. Marshall (UNC Press, 2025).

From the description: "The nineteenth-century Kentucky antislavery reformer Cassius Marcellus Clay is generally remembered as a knife-wielding rabble-rouser who both inspired and enraged his contemporaries. Clay brawled with opponents while stumping for state constitutional changes to curtail the slave trade. He famously deployed cannons to protect the office of the antislavery newspaper [the True American] he founded in Lexington. Despite attempts on his life, he helped found the national Republican party and positioned himself as a staunch border state ally of Abraham Lincoln."

Clay's political support for Lincoln was rewarded with an appointment as US ambassador to Russia, a major part of that role being "to ensure that European allies would not recognize the Confederacy." Sandwiched between his important diplomatic work in St. Petersburg was a relatively brief interlude as a Union general that was, at least by my recollection, pretty unremarkable.

Of course, Cassius M. Clay is also widely remembered for being the birth name of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (who famously rejected the family name his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., passed down to him).

According to Clay's new biographer, historian Anne Marshall, the reformer's abolitionist reputation is largely misplaced. More from the description: "Though often misremembered as an abolitionist, Clay was like many Americans of his time: interested in a gradual end to slavery but largely on grounds that the institution limited whites' ability to profit from free labor and the South’s opportunity for economic advancement. In the end, Clay’s political positions were far more about protecting members of his own class than advancing the cause of Black freedom."

In Marshall's view, Clay was "emblematic rather than exceptional," and her study Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform "reveals Cassius Clay as he was: colorful, yes, but in many ways typical of white Americans who disliked slavery in principle but remained comfortable accommodating it."

Booknotes: If I Can Get Home This Fall

New Arrival:

• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander (Potomac Bks, 2025).

Tyler Anderson's If I Can Get Home This Fall traces the Civil War experiences of Dan Mason, an enlisted man of Company D in the 6th Vermont (with their comrades of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th regiments, part of the celebrated First Vermont Brigade) who later served as a commissioned officer (a captain) with the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. Composed primarily of former slaves from Maryland, the 19th USCI began active service with the Ninth Corps in the spring of 1864, participating in the Overland and Richmond-Petersburg campaigns before transfer to the Fifteenth Corps and subsequent postwar duties in Texas.

From the description: "Drawing on Mason’s letters home to his fiancé, Harriet Clark, and on other historical records, Tyler Alexander provides a compelling account of the human cost of war and offers insight about the experiences and attitudes of those who witnessed war firsthand, including enlisted troops and officers, men and women, Democrats and Republicans, and white and Black Americans."

In Alexander's words, Mason's letters are "elegant, candid, uncensored, graphic, humorous, full of romantic longing and relationship strife, and offer a good deal of insight into the factors that compelled so many off to war and sustained them throughout" (pg. xiv). Much of the original text for Mason's correspondence along with other materials are incorporated into the narrative in large blocks.

According to Alexander, Mason's letters reveal a soldier motivated by both preservation of the Union and "antislavery convictions." More: If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War "examines how the most controversial issues of the war—emancipation, the draft, military strategy, the arming of Black troops, and Reconstruction policy—were viewed in real time by the participants who found themselves engulfed in the maelstrom of war, particularly those from a strongly anti-slavery farming community in the hills of northeast Vermont." Mason "believed in making soldiers of Black Americans," and took pride in the role he played in fostering that transformation.

Book News: Shattered Courage

How Civil War soldiers reacted to battlefield combat has always been a part of prolific military historian Earl Hess's wide range of scholarly interests. His 1997 study The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat heavily influenced our modern understanding of the ways in which Civil War soldiers experienced fighting and learned to cope with its many physical and psychological horrors and trials.

Next year's Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War (UP of Kansas, March 2026) marks a return to that area of study with a major examination of "those men who tried but failed to meet the test of battle in the Civil War." Soldier behaviors and reactions ranging from courage and cowardice to complete surrender have received noteworthy attention in a number of recent works, among them those from Lesley Gordon, David Silkenat, and the late Peter Carmichael, but Hess's upcoming volume aims to provide "the first comprehensive account of soldiers who refused to fight in the midst of combat."

Employing groundbreaking statistical analysis and "decades of research," Hess "charts the limits on combat morale" and is "the first historian to identify combat defaulters from personal accounts and official reports and to then examine their service records to discover what happened to them in the military system." The author's work also traces how both comrades and the army system in general reacted to and dealt with the phenomenon. I have to admit that I've never come across the term "combat defaulter" before (perhaps Hess coined it himself). Such men are described as being "(f)ar from heroes but not deserters," with most willing to try again the test of combat.

Review - "American Civil War Amphibious Tactics" by Ron Field

[American Civil War Amphibious Tactics (Elite, 262) by Ron Field, illustrated by Steve Noon (Osprey Publishing, 2025). Softcover, photos, illustrations, original color art, notes, select bibliography, index. Pp. 64. ISBN:978-1-4728-6316-4. $21]

Everyone can agree with the proposition that U.S. Army-Navy combined operations conducted along both the southern coastline and the continent's strategic inland waterways contributed mightily to Union victory during the Civil War. That significance makes the topic highly appropriate for inclusion in Osprey Publishing's Elite series, which traces "(t)he history of military forces, artifacts, personalities and techniques of warfare." All of those elements are prominently displayed in Ron Field's American Civil War Amphibious Tactics.

Of course, Civil War amphibious operations collectively constitute a very broad topic that can only be selectively addressed in a 64-page study. Field, a frequent Osprey contributor, nevertheless offers readers of all backgrounds a consistently interesting short narrative that touches upon a number of important campaigns and smaller operations. Along the way, Field's writing identifies a number of key military and civilian figures involved as well as specialized equipment and methodologies employed during troop landings on beaches and riverbanks. Given the vast disparity between the war's opposing sides when it came to their respective amphibious capabilities, it's understandable that the topic is addressed entirely from the Union perspective within this limited space, but it is nevertheless the case that Confederate-led combined operations efforts, which did achieve some noteworthy successes during the war, merit at least some recognition.

Amphibious operations summarized in the text include a selection of early-war events in eastern North Carolina between initial Union success at Hatteras Inlet in August 1861 and the fall of New Bern in March 1862. Smaller inland incursions that followed Union occupation of most of North Carolina's coastline are additionally described, those 1862-64 events serving as lenses through which to discuss the presence and actions of lesser-known specialized units such as the First New York Marine Artillery and the Naval Battalion of the 13th New York Heavy Artillery. Though most of the book focuses on coastal operations, the volume also touches upon the Mississippi Marine Brigade's raiding and counter-guerrilla activities in the Mississippi River Valley from 1862-64. Once it became clear that remaining heavily fortified cities and harbors in North and South Carolina could not be captured by direct naval attack alone (that recognition following the dismal failure of the grand ironclad assault on Charleston Harbor in April 1863), a Fleet Brigade of sailors and marines was formed to support shore attacks. Participation in the failed boat assault against Fort Sumter on September 8, 1863 and the campaign against Fort Fisher (December 1864-January 1865) are recounted in the book as examples of that formation's activities.

The above narrative takes pains to direct attention (within the main text as well as in photos and their captions) toward the experiences and signal achievements of numerous officers and men who might otherwise have received little exposure in the literature. It is also worthy of note that the text is accompanied by copious embedded source notes, that very welcome feature being a new, or at least relatively recent, development among Osprey titles (at least in this reviewer's admittedly limited sampling). Steve Noon's color artwork consists of vivid depictions of amphibious warfare action scenes and combat imagery as well as uniform and equipment details.

A selection of essential ships, weaponry, and equipment are featured in the book. The contributions of Norman Wiard designs, which include a multi-use 12-lb. boat howitzer that could be flexibly attached to a launch and a shallow-draft double-ender troop transport vessel (likely modeled after existing ferry boat designs) specially created for amphibious operations, are prominently displayed at many different places in the book. Methods for getting fighting men from their transports to the shore (obviously a key step in all amphibious warfare endeavors) are also described, one being the stringing together of a long line of troop-loaded surfboats behind a swift-moving steamship, the angular momentum created upon casting off the tow line helping carry the small boats to the target beach at speed.

This volume, a fine addition to Osprey Publishing's Elite series, provides readers of all backgrounds a strong introductory-level window into Union amphibious landing and support operations during the Civil War.

Coming Soon (September '25 Edition)

Scheduled for SEPT 2025¹:
• If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War by Tyler Alexander.
• The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War by Lindsay Privette.
• After the Fire: Richmond in Defeat by Nelson Lankford.
• Radical of Radicals: Austin Blair, Civil War Governor - In His Own Words ed. by Jack Dempsey.
• Unreconstructed: Slavery and Emancipation on Louisiana's Red River, 1820–1880 by Carin Peller-Semmens.
• Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield by William Lees.
• Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867 by Erika Pani.
• Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform by Anne Marshall.
• John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk.
• Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean.
• The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War by Tom Zoellner.
• General Philip H. Sheridan: Life, War, and Memory by Jonathan Noyalas.
• Recollections of the Civil War: The life of a soldier in the Ohio 2nd Volunteer Cavalry - 1861-1865 by Polhamus, ed. by Leickly.
• The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864 by David Powell.

Comments: August has been another one of those cobwebs in the mailbox months (thus the less than normal site activity), but September looks to be a pretty solid rebound. There are a number of titles in there that I've been very much looking forward to reading.

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: Radical of Radicals

New Arrival:

• Radical of Radicals: Austin Blair, Civil War Governor - In His Own Words edited by Jack Dempsey (Mission Point Pr, 2025).

Northern war governors and the key role they played in facilitating Union victory, as well as the degree to which each was ideologically aligned with the Lincoln administration on a variety of domestic and military policies, has become a common topic of discussion in recent decades. Michigan's Austin Blair hasn't received the same degree of popular attention awarded to fellow western state leaders such as Indiana's Oliver Morton or Richard Yates of Illinois, but he was a steadfast war advocate widely assigned to the "radical" wing of the Republican party. He also served as governor for nearly the entire war, along the way sinking most of his own personal wealth into furthering the cause.

From the description: "Statesman Austin Blair championed human rights in America, cherished the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and made major contributions to Union victory in the Civil War. Believing strongly that secession is treason, he supported emancipation and the use of the North's military power to defeat the slave owners' rebellion. Labeled a "radical" by political opponents, Blair's vision of a nation of equal opportunity and civil rights for all people marked him as a leader ahead of his time."

Editor Jack Dempsey's Radical of Radicals: Austin Blair, Civil War Governor - In His Own Words explores Blair's beliefs and actions through a large collection of the governor's public words and writings from 1845 to 1865. After setting the stage with a general introduction and chapter-length account of Blair's early life, Dempsey, in addition to footnoting the material, provides additional context and background content for each of the volume's nearly fifty compiled "messages, speeches, and remarks." According to the book's Editorial Note, few of Blair's letters survive, making the excerpts also added to this book a matter of publishing "more of his words than ever before." Finally, a large body of supplementary correspondence and other documents is collected in the appendix, that material also footnoted with attached editorial commentary throughout.

This is the first of two planned volumes. The second, currently scheduled for release in the latter part of 2026, will carry on the project from the end of the war through to Blair's death in 1894.

Review - "Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson" by Wesley Moody

[Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody (University of Oklahoma Press, 2025). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,201/253. ISBN:978-0-8061-9540-7 $36.95]

Though immortalized as the country's man of the hour during the critical five-month standoff in Charleston Harbor that preceded the outbreak of the Civil War, Kentuckian Robert Anderson's long professional life in uniform had other moments worthy of note. Spanning nearly forty years, Anderson's army career encompassed key roles in a number of the nation's most significant nineteenth-century wars and domestic conflicts. The entire breadth of that national service is revealed in historian Wesley Moody's biography Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson.

A bit more than half of Moody's narrative covers Anderson's early life and antebellum military career. According to the author, there is no definitive evidence in Anderson's own hand that he desired a West Point education and army officer's life above all else. That his father was a Revolutionary War hero and many famous military men passed through the Anderson household in his youth must have had some impact, and Moody also credits Anderson's father's determination that all of his sons and daughters be given the best educational opportunities available, the free part of the rigorous West Point education having added appeal. After graduation, Anderson accompanied older brother Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., the newly appointed United States ambassador to Colombia, on a long journey to South America. The author maintains that it was there that Anderson, in the capacity of official aide, received his first practical instruction in developing the diplomatic skills and sensibilities that would serve him so well later on in his career. Unfortunately, Anderson's experiences in Colombia were not all positive. His brother ended up dying in the country, and the long-term sequelae of the malarial disease the younger Anderson first contracted there would negatively impact his general health and ability to carry out his professional duties off and on for the rest of his life.

In addition to temporary assignment on diplomatic-oriented missions that took him to the U.S.-Canada border as a close aide to General Winfield Scott as well as to aforementioned Colombia, Anderson led troops in the field during the Black Hawk, Seminole, and Mexican wars. All of those episodes are detailed in the text. Anderson also translated and adapted for U.S. service an artillery instruction manual. During the war with Mexico, Anderson, who was assigned to the Third Artillery throughout most of his antebellum service, directed a battery at Vera Cruz and also fought in the capacity of an infantry officer during some of General Scott's brilliant series of battles that ultimately captured the enemy capital. During the Battle of Molino Del Rey, Anderson was wounded badly enough to force a premature end to his front-line combat role in the war. He was also rewarded with a brevet promotion. Sick leave and light duties largely characterized Anderson's activities between the end of the war with Mexico and the presidential election of 1860. It was during that interval that he was permanently transferred from the Third to the First Artillery regiment.

Less than two weeks after Lincoln's election, now Major Anderson was summoned to Washington and assigned command of the small army garrison at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The question that arises is 'why Anderson?' According to Moody, Anderson was the personal choice of Secretary of War Floyd, and the decision was made without consultation with army general-in-chief Winfield Scott, who knew Anderson very well. In the author's view, it seems likely that Anderson was chosen for his strong reputation as an officer possessing an exceptionally keen sense of duty and honor, and his Kentucky background would make him acceptable to South Carolina authorities (with whom he would have to closely interact) without causing a general outcry among northerners. That makes sense.

Moody's characterization of Anderson's personality traits supports the notion that the major was the right man at the right place at the right time. On multiple occasions during his army service, Anderson expressed in his letters a sensitivity toward how his actions might affect the enemy. For example, during the bombardment of Vera Cruz he seemed to be just as concerned about the well-being of Mexican civilians and soldiers on the receiving end as he was about doing his own duty. Though his superiors might have been unaware of it (though he was close with Scott), that empathic quality and personal nature not prone to commit rash acts of violence certainly contributed to Anderson being the right sort of officer and person to command U.S. forces in Charleston Harbor during the volatile months following secession. Another example the book cites of Anderson's sensitivity toward others was his long-term advocacy for creation of a government-funded soldier's home for former enlisted men in need.

That Anderson's tempered actions during the Sumter crisis frustrated friend and foe alike speaks to the delicate balance the Kentuckian struck between fulfilling his duty and not provoking conflict. Anderson refused to bow to demands from South Carolina, and later Confederate, authorities who viewed his stealthy withdrawal of the harbor garrison to Fort Sumter as an act of provocation, while on his own side many of his subordinate officers and men thought Anderson not aggressive enough in projecting federal authority over the situation. Adding to Anderson's worries and strains were uncertain communications and vaguely drawn instructions with Washington, which the transition from the Buchanan to the Lincoln administration did not greatly improve. The nearly five months that Anderson spent in Charleston Harbor have already been explored at length among numerous books and articles, so readers won't find much in the way of new material, but Moody's text offers a fresh revisit of those well-documented events from Anderson's perspective.

Still ailing from the mental and physical stresses imposed by sitting for months upon what was essentially a ticking time bomb, Anderson, as the widely acknowledged hero of the day, found himself constantly under demand after his return north and was granted little time for rest and recuperation. Promoted to brigadier general in May 1861 and assigned to head the Department of Kentucky, Anderson was placed in yet another military command position fraught with political turmoil both real and potential, the successful navigation of which required Solomonic wisdom and discretion. That this roughly four-month period, which spanned the sudden end of Kentucky neutrality and the mass influx of troops from both sides into the state, is discussed in only a handful of pages primarily focusing on administrative matters leads one to wonder whether there is more to be said. In the author's view, Anderson's action that had the most lasting significance was his getting future army commanders George Thomas and William T. Sherman transferred to the western theater, where, of course, both men eventually thrived to the enormous benefit of the Union war effort. Though supporters of the Union cause in Kentucky evinced some dissatisfaction with Anderson's conservative approach, Moody does not cite any other factors beyond "the stress and fatigue of command" (pg. 190) being behind Anderson's September 1861 request for relief of command and recommendation that Sherman be his replacement.

Anderson's health did not fully recover at any point during the war, leaving us to ponder where he might have ranked among Union generals had his weakened constitution held up to the demands of higher field command. As Moody explains, Anderson's further Civil War service was limited to a brief appointment to the relatively stress-free post as commander of Newport, Rhode Island's Fort Adams before official retirement, though he did return briefly in a Department of the East staff role. By far the most memorable act of the rest of Anderson's Civil War career was his triumphal return to Charleston Harbor and ceremonial re-raising at Fort Sumter of the original garrison flag surrendered four years earlier. After the war, Anderson was still in demand for public events, but he preferred a more quiet existence, moving to France with his family and dying there in 1871.

A brisk read at just over two-hundred pages of narrative, Wesley Moody's Hero of Fort Sumter offers Civil War readers a more than solid description and appreciation of the entire breadth of Robert Anderson's decades of dutiful service to his country. Moody's biography also contains a great many insights into its subject's character and how those qualities, along with what Anderson experienced during the early stages of his professional career, shaped how he would act during the defining moment of his life in Charleston Harbor when the fate of the nation was in the balance.

Booknotes: Daughters of Divinity

New Arrival:

• Daughters of Divinity: Evangelical Protestant Christianity and the Making of a New Southern Woman, 1830-1930 by Katherine E. Rohrer (LSU Press, 2025).

From the description: Covering a one-hundred year period straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Katherine Rohrer's Daughters of Divinity "tells the story of how well-educated white women of the South used evangelical Protestant Christianity as an instrument to expand their intellectual and professional capacities as well as their agency and influence at home and throughout the world between 1830 and 1930." Given that Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had the most opportunities in those areas for southern women, through their comparatively more numerous Protestant churches and the female educational institutions those faiths founded, women hailing from those states are the focus of this study.

According to Rohrer, Protestant clergymen traditionally served as the South's "intelligentsia," and their female compatriots used the same connection with religion to exert their own influence domestically and abroad. As explained in the introduction, over the chronological span indicated Rohrer "trace(es) both change and continuity in women's religious identities and experiences." She also uses "female mission work as a looking glass into religious and cultural values of the American South." It was through such religious work that these women assumed positions of authority, wielded in both conservative and progressive ways (pp. 4-6).

The first chapter examines private activities in the early part of the nineteenth century through the end of the Civil War. In her study's addressing of the Civil War period, Rohrer's research challenges but "does not entirely reject (Drew Gilpin) Faust's and (LeeAnn) White's interpretations of southern womanhood." According Rohrer, her work fits into the discussion of post-Civil War southern women by scholars such as Sarah Gardner, Caroline Janney, and Karen Cox.

Following chapters focus on the roles evangelical women assumed in domestic religious instruction among the South's slave population and their part in foreign missions to Liberia. The last four chapters look at religious work opportunities for women during Reconstruction and emergence of the New South, their domestic defense of a "conservative worldview," recruitment programs, and individual case studies of female involvement in foreign missionary work in faraway China, Brazil, and Belgian Congo (pp 8-12).

Booknotes: Civil War Cavalry

New Arrival:

• Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl J. Hess (LSU Press, 2025).

After the release of Earl Hess's recent studies covering Civil War infantry tactics and field artillery, I eagerly anticipated completion of a trilogy (of sorts) with a cavalry volume of similar structure. And here it is.

When it comes to both big picture and small picture matters, Hess, whether you agree with him or not, always has something to interesting to add to the discussion. In Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America, he addresses the topic of Civil War cavalry "comprehensively and from new perspectives, challenging standard views of the war’s mounted arm."

The volume "surveys the organization, training, administration, arming, and mounting of cavalry units and examines mounted troops’ tactical formations and maneuvers." As was the case with Hess's infantry and artillery books, this one uses drawings from contemporary manuals (as well as the author's own line drawings) to visually represent the aforementioned cavalry formations and tactical maneuvers.

The book also examines "the nature of cavalry operations, discussing the mounted charge, dismounted fighting, long-distance raids, the varied types of weapons used by troopers, and the difficulty of supplying horses." As revealed in the introduction, there are a number of cavalry-related themes and topics that the author feels "ripe for reevaluation," among them how the rifled musket impacted the role of cavalry on the battlefield, the shift from using cavalry in primarily mounted charges to more regularly fighting dismounted during the war, the idea that evolutionary changes in the use of cavalry during the Civil War anticipated modern mobile warfare, and the contention that southern cavalrymen were on balance better horsemen than their northern counterparts.

Those familiar with 2022's Animal Histories of the Civil War Era, a unique essay anthology that Hess both edited and contributed to, will not be surprised to find that he integrates intersecting animal history themes into this study, using them "to argue that cavalry mounts exercised a degree of agency in shaping their role in the large military machine."

The book ends with a brief overview of cavalry lessons learned and post-Civil War trends on both American and European stages.

Review - "From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership" by Quarstein & Worden

[From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership by John V. Quarstein & Robert L. Worden (Naval Institute Press, 2025). Hardcover, 4 maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, source essay, index. Pages main/total:xv,207/293. ISBN:978-1-68247-444-0. $34.95]

John L. Worden will always be remembered foremost for being the commander of USS Monitor during the famous 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads. His ship versus ship duel with the CSS Virginia proved to be one of naval history's defining engagements of the transition period between the age of wood and sail to a new age of iron and steam, the latter quickly leading to the all big-gun castles of steel that came to represent modern naval power and influence well into the twentieth century. However, while Worden's name has been forever etched into remembrance of that dramatic historical event, his distinguished naval career before, during, and well after the Civil War has, until now, never been properly documented and recognized within the pages of a full-length biography. Ably filling that gap are John Quarstein, former director of the Virginia War Museum and emeritus director of the USS Monitor Center, and Robert Worden, retired from a career with the Library of Congress and a collateral descendant of John L. Worden. These prolific researchers and authors have combined their backgrounds and knowledge to produce From Ironclads to Admiral: John Lorimer Worden and Naval Leadership, a publishing 'first' that provides a very fine comprehensive portrait of its subject's private life and long professional career both ashore and afloat.

It appears that details about the early life of John Worden (surname rhyming with 'burden,' the original spelling being Werden) are pretty sparse. Family connections, those of the Graham family of New York in particular, are cited by the authors as a possible main source of inspiration behind young Worden's decision to embark upon a naval career. At the time, officer development was an entirely hands-on shipboard process, and the book, by tracing Worden's early experiences aboard several vessels, provides readers with a fine introduction into nineteenth-century US Navy midshipmen training.

A major theme of the book is Worden's evolution into becoming a well-regarded scientific officer through multiple stints at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. There, Worden documented meticulous astronomical and meteorological observations and honed his high order mathematical skills through recording calculations based on those observations, particularly the former. It was during his first Observatory assignment that Worden was married, an apparently happy union with Olivia Toffey that produced a family and survived numerous extended absences. Other duties that Worden became closely associated with were the inventorying, testing, and rating of the Navy's modern navigational and scientific instruments.

As the book reveals, lifelong precarious health proved to be a major theme shaping Worden's story. At the same time, though, that laundry list of ailments affecting him over the duration of his professional career did not not keep him from logging an equally long list of noteworthy achievements. When and where these health problems occurred (or recurred) are recorded at length in the appendix section.

The naval component of the 1846-48 war between the United States and Mexico is largely an afterthought in the popular literature of that conflict, at least when compared with the extensive range of published studies of the major land campaigns fought in both northern and central Mexico. Addressing that gap, this biography provides a number of insights into Mexican War naval operations along the Pacific Coast. Worden's first wartime assignment was with a supply ship, but he nevertheless had firsthand experiences with the navy's blockading and seizing of Mexican ports as well as with shore operations supporting small coastal garrisons defending against Mexican attacks. In between the Mexican War and the outbreak of the Civil War, Worden returned to the Naval Observatory and was also posted to the career-enhancing Brooklyn Naval Yard.

The study does not delve much into Worden's political views beyond noting that he was a life-long Democrat. During the secession crisis, his War Democrat credentials were without doubt unimpeachable, as he was entrusted by Navy Secretary Gideon Welles with carrying confidential dispatches to Fort Pickens, the standoff at Pensacola, Florida being one of the national emergency's most delicate political situations and potential military flashpoint. Events, including the firing on Fort Sumter, overtook Worden on the return journey, though, and he was arrested by Confederate authorities and held prisoner for nearly six months. According to the authors, that made Worden the first northern POW of the Civil War.

With a single paragraph devoted to the subject, it remains unclear exactly how the Ironclad Board's selection process led to Worden being assigned captain of the Monitor. Whether it was a case of Worden being in the right place at the right time (his recent release from long confinement by the Confederates was well publicized, and he was readily available awaiting assignment) or his reputation as a scientific officer (though his background was not in naval or steam engineering) was looked upon as a strong prerequisite for managing an experimental vessel, the board judged him the "right sort of officer to put in command of her" (pg. 80).

Given the already exhaustive nature of the literature related to the Battle of Hampton Roads, the book addresses the Monitor's construction, its nearly fatal journey to Hampton Roads, and its celebrated duel with the Virginia in a single, relatively brief chapter that captures the essentials. The main takeaway is the demonstration of Worden's leadership qualities throughout the process between trial runs and his serious wounding in action. Those traits are listed by the Foreword writer as high-order "courage, perseverance, decision-making, and tactical and technical proficiency" (pg. xii). Along with his wielding a sage balance between imposing discipline and granting leniency that made him popular among subordinate officers and crewmen alike, Worden's excellence in those aforementioned areas is exhibited throughout the book. The nature of Worden's wounds incurred during the fight with the Virginia, which included severe ocular trauma, and his road to recovery are well described in the text.

As the authors explain, Worden's wounds and hard-earned experiences led him to submit numerous official-channel suggestions for improvements to the navy's present and future turreted ironclad designs. Some of Worden's recommendations, such as an improved pilothouse arrangement, were approved, but it was nevertheless the case that intraservice decision-making conflicts and the nature of construction contracts still left every ironclad class with serious design flaws.

Recovering his eyesight enough to return to active service, Worden was assigned to command the USS Montauk, a Passaic-class monitor. While destruction of the CSS Rattlesnake, formerly the cruiser Nashville, was noteworthy, his most significant action was his testing of Montauk's ability to reduce Fort McAllister in Georgia. The clear failure to force the fort's surrender convinced Worden that monitors, having only two guns per turret (both slow-firing), did not possess the weight and rapidity of fire necessary to suppress or destroy extensive enemy fortifications. The failure of his superiors to heed his reports, along with a heavy dose of rivalry with the army as to who would capture Charleston, resulted in an intense battering of the ironclad squadron assembled at Charleston Harbor in April 1863, an attack in which Worden also participated. Finally compelled to realize that ironclads alone could not force the issue, from then on army-navy combined operations were the rule for confronting enemy harbors and their protective ring of forts and entrenched batteries.

After Charleston, Worden's failing health landed him back at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for more rounds of overseeing new monitor designs and construction. Non-ironclad construction also proceeded, and Worden's experience with ships like the Idaho illustrate the many enduring problems and challenges involved with steam-sail combo warship designs. He also returned to sea with the North Pacific Squadron.

In another career highlight, Worden served as the seventh superintendent of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. The authors acknowledge divisions among historians in regard to Worden's traditional versus progressive legacy at the head of that venerable institution, and they adopt a judicious approach to that debate as well as in assessing Worden's actions and attitudes toward the admittance of non-white cadets and the apparently intractable problem of cadet hazing rituals. Worden's last great service to the country was in commanding the European Squadron during a period of time in the Mediterranean Sea that, given the great distance from Washington and intermittent communications, required both decisive decision-making and delicate diplomatic awareness.

In examining the entire breadth of John L. Worden's nearly fifty-three years of service in the US Navy, From Ironclads to Admiral goes well beyond the famous duel at Hampton Roads to provide readers with the first full assessment of that distinguished officer's many other contributions to Union ironclad development and naval superiority during the Civil War. Authors Quarstein and Worden also record their subject's significant impact on scientific advancement, protecting United States national interests overseas, and officer education. The attachment of Worden's name to numerous memorials, including a coastal fort, the parade ground at the Naval Academy, and four US Navy ships, attests to how well John L. Worden was admired and remembered by previous generations, and this fine biography reminds the present and future reader why such honors were so richly deserved.

Book News: Civil War Photo Forensics

Scott Hippensteel is one of those rare authors whose Civil War topical interests are both are all over the place and all appealing to me. Their novelty in approach and content is an added benefit. With previous books studying rock geology's effects on Civil War combat [link to review], the ways in which geological sediments (particularly sand) shaped Civil War campaigns and battles [link], and myths of the Civil War [link], Hippensteel has now directed his attention toward Civil War photography.

Civil War Photo Forensics: Investigating Battlefield Photographs Through a Critical Lens is currently scheduled for a Spring '26 release from University of Tennessee Press. In it, Hippensteel "examines various Civil War photographs and photographers, employing metrics to determine which photographs have become the most iconic and which photographs are authentic." In addition to engaging with the journalism versus art debate when it comes to Civil War field photography, the book launches "multiple investigations into a few controversial photographs, applying a critical analysis to both the photographs and the photographic process at that time, and an argument for the legacies of Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and others who placed themselves on the battlefield alongside soldiers and officers on both sides." Like they do everything else, Antietam and Gettysburg dominate previous forensic discussions of Civil War battlefield photography, and I hope that Hippensteel will sample images from other campaigns and theaters.

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."