Review - "Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign" by Kelly-Fischer & Greenwalt

[Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign by Patrick Kelly-Fischer and Phillip S. Greenwalt (Savas Beatie, 2026). Softcover, 5 maps, photos, illustrations, integrated driving tour, appendix section, orders of battle, reading list. Pages main/total:xxviii,131/191. ISBN:978-1-61121-775-9. $16.95]

The Confederacy's early-war New Mexico Campaign is one of those Civil War operations that seems foolhardy in retrospect, seemingly destined for failure if not complete disaster. On the other hand, world military history is replete with examples of campaigns and wars won against longer odds. From the Confederate government's perspective in faraway Richmond, the invasion of New Mexico Territory via the upper Rio Grande River Valley was a self-contained, low-risk gamble that placed a slate of grand rewards on the table. If successful in New Mexico and the declared territory of Arizona, Confederate forces would be well positioned to threaten U.S. overland communications in the West. Critically, they would also gain a pathway to the Pacific and vie for control of vital mineral resources in the Rockies and Desert Southwest. Happily for Confederate planners, the expedition would involve only local troops, local resources, and captured munitions, placing minimal demands upon a central government already overwhelmed by the process of funding, clothing, supplying, and arming the main Confederate armies then gathering in the war's main theaters. Of course, Richmond's rather detached 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' attitude toward the risks and challenges involved in the operation offered little comfort to those whose lives and reputations would be at stake in carrying it out.

The existing literature associated with the New Mexico Campaign is well developed. In addition to classic campaign overviews from pioneering Civil War in the Southwest scholar Martin Hall and, more recently, Donald Frazier, the combined efforts of Don Alberts, John Taylor, and Thomas Edrington have produced an excellent Valverde book and two fine Glorieta battle studies. The well-coordinated, multi-front Union response that first derailed then completely defeated the Confederate expedition has been thoroughly explored by Flint Whitlock and Andrew Masich. Jerry Thompson has also compiled an exhaustive record and study of the New Mexico territorial volunteers and militia. A number of very useful edited primary source materials have been published, too. Combining a strong synthesis of the secondary literature with fresh revisitation of the O.R. documents associated with the campaign (the footnotes are available here), Patrick Kelly-Fischer and Phillip Greenwalt serve up a fine new overview history of the campaign with their book Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign, the latest volume in the Emerging Civil War series of military overviews.

Co-authors Kelly-Fischer and Greenwalt work successfully within the established format of the series. In addition to providing a sound summary of the strategic picture in the Desert Southwest at the outbreak of the war, their narrative offers well-rounded operational and tactical-level summaries of the military events that unfolded across what is today's Arizona and New Mexico. The campaign's primary battles at Valverde and Glorieta are both well described and contextualized, the account of the multi-day fight for control of Glorieta Pass being the centerpiece of the study. Five maps and a multitude of period and modern photographs, along with many other illustrations, supplement the text. A driving tour, its components placed at the tail end of select chapters, is also incorporated into the study.

Logistical considerations, and how well or how poorly each side met their challenges, are a major theme of the book. Headed by General Henry Hopkins Sibley, the Confederate "army" of some 3,000 men, all mounted, was supported by a logistical apparatus entirely inadequate for the requirements of a long campaign conducted over great distances. The Rio Grande could supply most of its water requirements, but food for the men and forage for the horses would be an almost entirely improvised affair, dependent on local sources (most of which would be unfriendly to their cause). On the other side, Union authorities managed their affairs remarkably well. Preparing for the arrival of Confederate forces in the region, they did a good job of spiriting away or hiding supplies previously stored along what would become the main path of invasion, largely denying them to the enemy. At the same time, resources and reinforcements were being concentrated in the northeast corner of the territory at Fort Union for the coming counteroffensive. Sibley's most direct opposition, the sizable Union garrison at Fort Craig led by Col. E.R.S. Canby, was able to husband supplies within the fort for an indefinite stay. However, the authors also note that Canby's own logistical situation, his command's Santa Fe Trail supply line cut off by Sibley's presence in the Union rear, was itself less than ideal. Far to the west, the famed "California Column"'s long advance from southern California to New Mexico across hundreds of miles of inhospitable desert, its own successful logistical support plan undoubtedly informed by the U.S. Army's antebellum experiences conducting desert operations, is recounted in a sparkling essay attached as an appendix. Another shorter appendix discusses the importance and role of Fort Union, as well as New Mexico volunteers at large, to the outcome of the campaign.

Union commanders, none of whom were experienced in managing large numbers of fighting men over vast distances, proved themselves well up to the task of blunting Sibley's offensive. Aggressive Col. John Slough, while suffering a tactical setback at Glorieta Pass, nevertheless blocked the Confederates from reaching Fort Union, and his subordinate officers are credited with destroying much of the Confederate supply and ammunition train during their surprise attack at Johnson's Ranch. While his forces based at Fort Craig could not halt the Confederate advance in its early stages and lost the battle at Valverde, Canby still successfully managed to keep the fort and its stockpiles out of Confederate hands and continued to be a thorn in Sibley's side for the duration of the campaign. The authors, citing Canby's own mounting logistical concerns, are only mildly critical of his unwillingness, or inability, to directly oppose Sibley's retreat during the latter stages of the campaign. How much of Canby's innate caution bled into overcaution and a great missed opportunity to destroy Sibley's crippled remaining forces is left to the reader to decide. Col. James Carleton's deft handling of the California Column is justly praised. Desert logistics and scarce water resources necessitated a journey conducted in stages and at a measured pace. Carleton's arrival on the scene, though it was too late to cut the retreating Confederates off before they reached safe haven, nevertheless completed the final link in Union forces fully re-securing New Mexico Territory and eliminating the Texas-based threat for the rest of the war.

By all accounts, including the one presented in this volume, Henry Sibley had no business being entrusted with an enterprise as complicated and difficult as an invasion of New Mexico Territory. His military judgment and leadership capacity severely compromised by chronic alcoholism, Sibley was ill for most of the campaign, leaving tactical direction to his principal subordinates. Even though those regimental officers—notably Col. Thomas Green, Lt. Col. William Scurry, and Majors Charles Pyron, Henry Raguet, and John Shropshire (the last two killed in action)—were able to produce impressive tactical successes at Valverde and Glorieta, the lack of firm overall direction and persistent logistical nightmares meant that Confederate forces were typically scattered as the campaign progressed and could not fully leverage their speed and maneuverability advantage in being fully mounted. The Confederate offensive effort also did not possess enough artillery firepower to threaten enhanced defenses such as those newly erected at Fort Craig and Fort Union. One interesting what-if to contemplate is if Slough had not disregarded orders to remain at Fort Union and instead drawn the Confederates deeper into the mountains, further isolating them and perhaps affording the California Column enough additional time to truly seal Sibley's fate.

Desert Empire skillfully delivers a comprehensive campaign history in a tight package capable of appealing to a wide range of readers. In all likelihood, the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory represents the Civil War's most extreme disparity between the scale of what was at stake (militarily, politically, and economically) and the numbers of fighting men involved on both sides, and Patrick Kelly-Fischer and Phillip Greenwalt's engaging new account of that unique campaign is highly recommended.

Review - "They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory" by Michael Manning

[They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory by Michael J. Manning (Prairie Star Music & Pub, 2025). Hardcover, maps, photos, chapter notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:564/586. ISBN:979-8-9997957-1-7. $49.95]

When addressing a reading audience interested in the lesser-known parts of the Civil War fought west of the Mississippi River, it is worthwhile to never lose an opportunity to sing the praises of Mary Jane Warde's award-winning When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (2013) and recommend it as the best single-volume treatment of its subject. Nevertheless, with her book's broad approach directing roughly equal focus and attention toward the conflict's political, social, and military aspects, Warde's campaign and battle coverage necessarily lacks the depth of detail that a more specialized study can offer. Providing just that is Michael Manning's They Fought Like Veterans: The Military History of the Civil War in the Indian Territory, which documents the area's collection of 1861-65 skirmishes, battles, and campaigns in a comprehensive fashion not found anywhere else in the literature. Readers might recall Manning's earlier exploration of this topic in two issues of Blue & Gray Magazine published in 2011 and 2015, the limitations of the periodical format in terms of available examination space being obvious. While some of that previously published material makes its way into this work, the new approach to the subject found in They Fought Like Veterans exhibits a marked overall increase in depth and breadth. Indeed, the volume's double-column narrative, numerous accompanying maps, and front/back matter together fill nearly six hundred 8.5"x11" pages.

While military events tower above all other topics of discussion in the book, there is ample social and political background history explaining the forces that drove the many internecine tribal conflicts that emerged in Indian Territory during the secession period and Civil War years. It has been well established in the literature that the bitterest internal divisions within the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek/Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) of Indian Territory were rooted decades earlier in unresolved animosities that developed between pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions (i.e. those who adamantly opposed removal during the 1820s and 1830s and those who reluctantly adopted the path of pragmatic acceptance). Especially among the Cherokees and Creeks, those differences directly impacted the ways in which the various tribes responded to southern secession. Heavily lobbied by Confederate representatives wielding big promises of support, each tribe had to decided for itself whether to maintain treaty ties with the U.S. (which created widespread mistrust by evacuating all of its military posts in the territory) or forge new ones with the nascent Confederacy. All of that background is explored at some length in the book's first three chapters. At the opposite end of the volume, a final chapter summarizes the Reconstruction-era struggles experienced by all the tribes, regardless of wartime loyalties, who had to both rebuild after the war's mass destruction and negotiate new treaties with the restored United States.

In terms of presentation style, the text melds author narrative with extensive block quotes from O.R. reports and a host of other government documents and firsthand accounts. In addition to referencing those government sources, chapter notes and bibliography cite Oklahoma and Kansas manuscript collections, published primary sources of various types, newspaper articles, and the secondary literature. Often full-page in size, military maps number in the many dozens and feature tactical and operational-scale movements and unit positions superimposed upon modern topographical maps. The breadth of map coverage is atlas level in scope. This is a big deal due to map numbers and quality being persistent weaknesses across the Civil War in Indian Territory literature. In many cases, the maps created by Manning are notable improvements upon the best examples found in other publications or are the first of their kind. The most sparsely detailed ones are likely the consequence of inescapable source limitations. Photographs are similarly plentiful in number and feature both archival images and the author's own battlefield photography. On the less positive front, the finished manuscript does exhibit a number of drawbacks common to self-publishing, among them frequent name misspellings and inconsistent rank designations.

In addition to covering many smaller-scale skirmishes and raids, the book offers detailed accounts of all of the major military campaigns fought inside the borders of Indian Territory, among them the battles associated with Opothleyahola's flight to Kansas, the Union Army's First and Second Indian Expeditions, the Battle of Old Fort Wayne, First and Second Cabin Creek, the Battle of Honey Springs, and the 1864 Phillips Expedition and its Battle of Middle Boggy. With Indian Territory situated as a strategic buffer between Union Kansas and Confederate Texas as well as being in close proximity to the Missouri-Kansas border war and the fighting in NW Arkansas, Indians units and other forces stationed in the territory were heavily involved in major and minor campaigns conducted along the periphery. With emphasis on Indian unit participation, Manning also covers those campaigns—which include Pea Ridge, Cane Hill/Prairie Grove, the 1863 Union capture of Fort Smith, and the 1864 Camden Expedition—at appropriate depth.

Manning's comparison of Union and Confederate Indian regiments raised for service in the territory flatters the former far more than the latter. The three (First through Third) Indian Home Guard regiments raised for federal service were better armed, equipped, and clothed than their Confederate Indian counterparts, whose own military upkeep was routinely low priority, but factors behind their success went deeper than just material support. Confederate Indian units operating inside Indian Territory were frequently bolstered by Texas (and sometimes Arkansas) cavalry, but Manning's campaign accounts clearly show that the Indian Home Guard regiments consistently exhibited stronger unit cohesion, were better integrated in the order of battle, and enjoyed far stronger artillery support. On the Confederate side, too many Indian officers and men came and went as they pleased, leaving their forces chronically scattered and understrength when the critical moment of doing battle arose. Of course, some of that could be blamed on poor top leadership (ex. from generals Albert Pike and Douglas Cooper), but it does seem to be the case that the Union Indian regiments more successfully adapted their own martial cultures to what would have been to them alien structures of military organization and discipline.

In keeping with the July 17, 1863 Battle of Honey Springs being widely recognized as the most significant battle fought in Indian Territory during the war, the campaign and its aftermath are accorded extensive coverage. In describing the battle and explaining Confederate defeat, Manning addresses some of the same issues and concerns raised in William Lees's recently published archaeological study. Both authors note the imbalanced concentration of fighting in the center, but, while Lees suggests that Confederate commander Douglas Cooper's leadership deficiencies were primarily responsible for the Indian units on either flank not getting into the action in any meaningful way, Manning sees the problem as being with the poor fighting and leadership qualities of the Indian units themselves (much of the blame for that being due to unfulfilled promises and neglect from the Confederate government). Like Lees, Manning credits clear superiority in Union firepower and the possibility of poorly manufactured/weather ruined powder on the Confederate side as being major contributors to Union victory and Confederate defeat. Manning's analysis follows the established narrative of marking Honey Springs as a significant turning point in Confederate prospects for success in Indian Territory, but he also sees it as coinciding with downsized Union aims. After the demoralizing defeat, Confederate forces inside the territory assumed a largely defensive posture punctuated by occasional mounted raids against Union supply lines. On the other side, the Federals abandoned grandiose plans of using victories in Indian Territory as a springboard for launching offensives into North Texas. Instead, after the occupation of Fort Smith, Arkansas in September 1863 secured the eastern flank of Union occupation forces in Indian Territory, resettlement of tribal refugees to their formerly abandoned homes and maintaining supply and communications with key military posts such as Fort Gibson were prioritized.

Manning is not the only writer to characterize the guerrilla war in Indian Territory as being perhaps the most destructive produced during the war, rivaling the worse excesses in Missouri. The brunt of that mass-scale horse theft, crop losses, livestock rustling, and homestead destruction was concentrated in the northeastern corner of the territory, in the Cherokee and Creek domains. What isn't clearly documented is which bushwhacker-style guerrilla chieftains and bands operated in Indian Territory. Manning blames some of the chaos on Cherokee leader Stand Watie's raiding, but Watie and his men were not guerrillas. Perhaps the source material is too sparse to support such a project, but a truly full study of the guerrilla war in Indian Territory and its impact is sorely needed. What does seem clear is that the relative safety of the Choctaw and Chickasaw home fronts strongly contributed to those tribes maintaining consistent, and largely unified, popular support for the Confederate war effort up until the conflict's waning moments.

Throughout the book, Manning compares the quality of high command leadership demonstrated by both sides, mostly finding the administrative, planning, and fighting capacities of Union generals, particularly James G. Blunt and Samuel R. Curtis, far superior to the string of Confederate commanders that led combined white and Indian forces. The author maintains that Union commanders were generally better able to concentrate their forces at decisive moments, that contention supported by numerous examples of Confederate forces (even when possessing superior overall numbers in the territory) being caught scattered when forced to give battle. Manning is among those who hold General Blunt in high regard for his aggressiveness and military leadership. Unlike historian William Shea, a deep admirer and biographer of Curtis but who has also closely studied Blunt's career, Manning believes Blunt was destined for greater responsibilities (perhaps even departmental command) before his career was derailed (unfairly, in Manning's opinion) by the Baxter Springs debacle of October 1863. Manning's characterization of John Schofield as a petty schemer and intraservice squabbler will be familiar to most Trans-Mississippi Civil War readers but perhaps less so to those primarily acquainted with Schofield's later 1864-65 army command performances in Georgia and Tennessee.

Easily the most comprehensive military history and map study of the Civil War in Indian Territory, Michael Manning's They Fought Like Veterans successfully bridges a longstanding gap in the literature. Recommended.

Review - "Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield" William Lees

[Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield by William B. Lees (Texas A&M University Press, 2025) Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xx,269/327. ISBN:978-1-64843-293-4. $50]

On July 17, 1863, two armies (large ones by frontier Trans-Mississippi theater standards) clashed north of Honey Springs in Indian Territory. The Union army led by aggressive Frontier District commander James Blunt trounced a Confederate force assembled by General Douglas Cooper to oppose the federal advance down the Texas Road, a key military artery in the region. A clear Union tactical victory, the battle was also a major strategic defeat for the Confederate forces, one that further splintered tribal alliances already shaken by prior events and military disasters such as the October 22, 1862 Battle of Old Fort Wayne. Even though many modern historians recognize Honey Springs as being the most consequential Civil War battle fought in Indian Territory, the clash still lacks a book-length treatment. Why that significance, combined with the battle's exceptional stature as a triracial Civil War engagement with allied Indians forming the majority of combatants on both sides, has not garnered more published scholarly attention beyond articles and book chapters remains curious. Thankfully, archaeologist William Lees has stepped in to address that longstanding gap. While not a conventional narrative history, his newly published Honey Springs, Oklahoma: Historical Archaeology of a Civil War Battlefield represents the battle's first major standalone study of any kind.

In Honey Springs, Oklahoma, Lees employs the three-headed interpretive approach that a number of his colleagues have used to noteworthy effect in fostering fresh understanding of both obscure and well-known Civil War military events. Thus, in addition to piecing together a picture of the Honey Springs battle through traditional documentary resources (including "memory" writings such as contemporary letters, journals, official reports, etc.), this study incorporates conflict archaeology methodologies pioneered decades ago by Douglas Scott and others along with extensive terrain analysis supported by widely accepted analytical frameworks such the KOCOA system developed by the U.S. military as a way to "help military strategists evaluate landscape for tactical or defensive advantage and risk" (pg. 5).

Setting the stage, memory sources and official documents were used by Lees to construct a chapter-length narrative overview of the Honey Springs battle along with meticulously crafted orders of battle. In addition to compiling numbers and losses data, that lengthy discussion of army structure and makeup secures a great many details that are central to getting the most out of the archaeological part of the investigation. Identifying and matching uniform, equipment, and weaponry information to specific units allowed the author to use artifact evidence mapping of such items as a reliable means of tracing likely unit positions and locations of concentrated fighting on the battlefield.

Though the author readily acknowledges that the sheer amount and degree of artifact information presented in the book might be tedious to the general reader, his extensive examination of fired and unfired/dropped ammunition (and his documentation of their locations through precise GIS mapping) is for others a fascinating exercise in locating and following opposing battle lines through artifact analysis. The amount of artillery ammunition (in particular case and canister shot) found during Lees's many archaeological surveys of the battlefield matches the use of that arm as revealed in the written documentation. Generally speaking, the great preponderance of spherical ball ammunition of all kinds might seem unusual for a mid-war battle, but many units that served along the trans-Mississippi frontier (especially the Confederate regiments and the Indian units of both sides) had to make due with second and even third-rate arms. Also speaking to theater shortages of military-grade armaments (particularly on the Confederate side) is the large number of civilian-caliber shoulder arm ammunition found on the Honey Springs battlefield.

Diversity of arms and ammunition findings was in many ways expected, but one class of artifact was exceptionally striking. Civil War Indian units were routinely issued available firearms just like their white and black compatriots, but it is nevertheless intriguing that arrowheads made out of reshaped metal were also uncovered during the field surveys. Some maintain that the arrowheads are not battle related, but Lees persuasively determines that contextual correlation with other battlefield artifact evidence points strongly toward a linkage. As Lees explains, the arrow tips also provide further evidence that tribal allies did not entirely discard older martial traditions upon enrollment in regularly organized Union and Confederate units (though it is possible that inadequate arms and ammunition drove some amount of bow and arrow use as well).

In addition to employing GIS mapping to reveal battle lines, likely positions of particular units along those lines, and areas of the heaviest combat, the archaeological investigations of Lees and his colleagues were able to clearly delineate the boundaries of the fighting and separate the battle into three distinct phases labeled by the author as the "Prairie," "Elk Creek," and "Pumpkin Ridge" engagements. Interestingly, Lees's team also found archaeological evidence of another engagement (north of the Prairie clash) not specifically referenced in memory sources. Light in nature, this is thought to have been outpost skirmishing that preceded the main battle.

The U.S. military's battlespace and KOCOA [an acronym representing "Key Terrain, Observation and Fields of Fire, Concealment and Cover, Obstacles, and Avenues of Approach"] concepts of terrain analysis are applied in detailed fashion by the author to all three aforementioned sectors of the battlefield. That process ends up deeply informing our assessments of tactical decision-making during the Honey Springs battle along with the many ways in which topography and other terrain considerations affected battlefield deployments and, ultimately, the nature and foci of the fighting.

The results of Lees's memory, archaeology, and terrain analysis investigations suggest that Cooper's curved battle line established just north of Elm Creek, variously estimated as being between 1 and 1.5 miles in length, was the best position available to receive Blunt's attack. With broad open space in front, a favorable position for both placement of his army's lone battery and utilization of the treeline for cover, Cooper faced off against Blunt's advancing army and its twelve guns (artifact GIS mapping also hints very strongly at a treeline location much closer to Elk Creek than previously realized). Surprisingly, archaeology reveals that fighting on the Prairie battlefield existed on a very narrow front, perhaps only one-third of mile in width (at the center and right of the Confederate defensive line, straddling the Texas Road). With memory sources suggesting engagement on a much wider front, this was a surprising finding. Though the Elk Creek valley has been heavily visited by relic hunters, remaining archaeological evidence strongly indicates a precise location for the Elm Creek bridge. Those artifacts and the reality of overwhelming Union artillery superiority strongly point toward an Elk Creek engagement of only brief duration after the sudden Confederate collapse and withdrawal from the prairie engagement just to the north. Terrain analysis revealing the extent of higher ground north of the creek also supports Cooper's decision to not initially deploy his forces along the waterway's south bank. Finally, the archaeology associated with the Pumpkin Ridge engagement confirms the existence of a determined Confederate stand (most likely from Colonel Tandy Walker's well-regarded First Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment, previously in reserve) that arguably prevented Cooper's general withdrawal from becoming a rout.

While the GIS mapping of the artifact evidence is prodigious, the only Honey Springs battle map included in the book is a reproduction of Wiley Britton's crude schematic drawing first published in 1899. Unfortunately, the volume misses the opportunity to apply the cutting-edge findings of its investigative triad of memory, archaeology, and terrain analysis toward another useful end, that of producing state of the art tactical maps of the Prairie, Elk Creek, and Pumpkin Ridge engagements.

Clearly, multiple factors played a part in Cooper's defeat. Never highly regarded for his generalship, Cooper apparently did not order his forces to prepare temporary breastworks or other improvements to his defensive position, nor did he designate a fallback position to his subordinates. The lack of archaeological evidence of significant fighting on the Confederate left supports Creek Confederate officer George Washington Grayson's critical contention that Cooper did not manage to get all, or even most, of his available forces up to the fighting front before Blunt struck Cooper's center and right with local numerical superiority, breaking the Confederate line. It seems clear that firepower disparities out of Cooper's control, notably the 12:4 superiority in Union artillery pieces, also played a major role in the Confederate defeat. In addition to the fact that Cherokee Confederate Colonel Stand Watie's absence from his unit while on detached service during the battle created a leadership vacuum that was inadequately filled, Lees points out that tribal tactics rarely involved standing up against artillery, and that martial tradition also might have had a significant impact on large parts of Cooper's command being absent from the fighting front. Lees does address Cooper's post-battle (and perhaps self-serving) complaint that defective gunpowder was the primary cause of his defeat. It is a difficult matter to assess in terms of reality versus perception, but the author brings up a good point that the effective stand at Pumpkin Ridge demonstrated that at least some of the units in the Confederate army had decent quality powder supplies available.

Filled with noteworthy insights and persuasive interpretation, William Lees's Honey Springs, Oklahoma is highly recommended for its fresh and fulsome contributions to our modern understanding of an understudied trans-Mississippi battle with a highly consequential shadow. Significantly, Lees's impressive work further buttresses growing recognition that conflict archaeology possesses a unique and highly valuable utility in the multi-disciplinary investigation of Civil War campfires and battlefields. Highly recommended.

Review - "John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri" by Gregory Wolk

[John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk (Missouri Historical Society Press, 2025). Paperback, 3 maps, photos, illustrations, chapter notes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:190/216. ISBN:979-8-9855716-5-3. $22]

Students of nineteenth-century European history are well versed in the details of Napoleon's famous Hundred Days. It was a wildly tumultuous time that witnessed the former emperor's dramatic escape from exile, his return to power as the leader of France, abject defeat at Waterloo, final abdication, and restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Less than fifty years later during the American Civil War, William Dorsheimer, a former major on the staff of Major General John C. Fremont, referenced that earlier period when searching for a catchy title for his own history of his chief's brief time at the head of the Union Army's Department of the West. Published in three parts by the Atlantic Monthly in early 1862, Dorsheimer's "Fremont's Hundred Days in Missouri" presented readers with a favorable defense of Fremont's actions between July 25, 1861, when the famed Pathfinder of the West personally assumed departmental command in St. Louis, and his relief from that lofty position on November 2, 1861. Over the many decades that have passed since the wartime publication of Dorsheimer's influential account, important bits and pieces of Fremont's reign in Missouri have been reexamined within the pages of numerous popular and scholarly articles and book chapters. However, no full-length study, least of all an exhaustive treatment, has yet attempted to fully describe and contextualize all of its military, political, and legal aspects inside a single volume. Touching upon all of those topics, yet directing the lion's share of its attention toward military matters, is Gregory Wolk's new book John Frémont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri.

Of course, the most controversial as well as most widely discussed aspect of Fremont's Hundred Days is the emancipation feature of the general's August 30, 1861 martial law proclamation, which ignited a political firestorm pitting radical supporters of the measure against its more moderate and conservative detractors. Recognizing that broad-scale emancipation was politically premature and bound to antagonize a large segment of the pro-Union base in the Border States and elsewhere, Lincoln, who also believed that such expansive executive powers were reserved for him alone, was unable to persuade Fremont to rescind the order. Instead, Fremont's recalcitrance forced the President to publicly do it himself. At that point, Fremont's days in Missouri were numbered. The most recent, and arguably one of the very best, treatments of the political aspects of Fremont's Missouri tenure is John Bicknell's The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation (2025). Although Wolk dutifully devotes space and attention to this important and far-reaching topic, it is not his study's main point of emphasis.

Every Civil War departmental command was heavily politicized, but the one in 1861 Missouri was clearly among the most highly charged. Wolk's narrative follows many of the personalities involved both at the forefront and behind the scenes, among them members of the powerful Blair family and Fremont's deeply supportive wife, Jessie. Along with other noteworthy figures, some interesting individuals from Fremont's staff, including the aforementioned Dorsheimer, are brought into the discussion. The contentious role of General Justus McKinstry, as both departmental quartermaster and later division commander, is revisited. Judging from what Wolk, Bicknell, and others before them have uncovered, a truly accurate and fair appraisal of the allegations of graft and fraud within Fremont's department, a major part of which centered on McKinstry, seems nearly impossible at this late date given how much political interference was present and how slanted the investigation was conducted at the time.

As mentioned above, the main focal point and strength of Wolk's narrative is its coverage of military affairs. By the time Fremont arrived in St. Louis, hyper-aggressive Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon had already split enemy resistance in the state along the line of the Missouri River, and his and other forces had hounded the largely pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard into the southwest and southeast corners of the state. Wolk recounts Fremont's oversight from afar of Lyon's continued operation that culminated in his battlefield defeat and death at Wilson's Creek as well as other ensuing action in the western part of the state, namely the failed attempt to effectively thwart Missouri State Guard commander Sterling Price's Lexington campaign. Closer to his St. Louis headquarters, Fremont oversaw operations in the Missouri Bootheel between his own forces (which include those of U.S. Grant) and the Missouri State Guard division of M. Jeff Thompson. Covered events there include the October 21 Battle of Fredericktown and the earlier Blackwell Raid. The largest scale operation (involving a Union army totaling upwards of 38,000 men) was led by Fremont in person and is still largely neglected in the literature. Over the last two weeks of October, Fremont marched at the head of his army, which never managed to fully concentrate, from Tipton to Springfield. Price's withdrawing forces, which rapidly diminished in number after Lexington, were never brought to battle, and Wolk persuasively rates the campaign's culminating moment, the famed "Zagonyi's Charge" at Springfield, as more of a wasteful public relations stunt intended to save Fremont's failing reputation than it was militarily sound action. A week later, Fremont was relieved, and he was formally replaced by General David Hunter on November 4.

Fremont's Civil War career has always sparked strong opinions, mostly negative, and one cannot classify Wolk's treatment of Fremont's performance during the Hundred Days as broadly revisionist. It is sympathetic in places, though, and one wishes Wolk had reserved a section at the end of the book for a summary of Fremont's accomplishments and failures. It would also have been interesting to read about what the author deems to have been Fremont's most prominent strengths (if any) and weaknesses as field and department commander. Like most of the recent literature, this study does not characterize the lead-up to the Battle of Wilson's Creek as Fremont hanging Lyon and his gallant little army out to dry. Wolk also counters criticisms of Fremont's actions during Price's Lexington operation by stating that the general did all he could to help Colonel James Mulligan's besieged defenders, but he doesn't elaborate on what those actions were or why those critics who claim that Fremont could and should have done much more to prevent the surrender are mistaken. Like Bicknell, Wolk does credit Fremont for being the first high-ranking officer to utilize U.S. Grant to effective purposes. While Fremont may not have had any great personal regard for Grant or envisioned any special abilities in the Illinois general that others overlooked at the time, both authors argue that he certainly did play a major part in fostering the launching and early development of Grant's Civil War military career.

While Gregory Wolk's John Frémont’s 100 Days may not be the type of comprehensive, exhaustively detailed account desired by some readers, it is well worthy of recommendation as a solid overview of the period. Until such a day arrives when we do get that definitive-level study, a pairing of Wolk's military coverage with John Bicknell's political discussion can provide readers of all stripes with a suitable background in John C. Fremont's brief but eventful 1861 reign in Missouri.

Review - "Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs" by Thomas & Matthews

[Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs by Paul A. Thomas & Matt M. Matthews (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2025). Softcover, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography. Pages main/total:131/160. ISBN:978-1-4671-5808-4. $24.99]

Between the implementation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the end of the Civil War, the borderland between Missouri and Kansas was transformed into a landscape of violence that all too often crossed accepted boundaries. The irregular warfare that that extended conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces spawned possessed a nature and intensity that few other bitterly contested regions rivaled, and perhaps none equaled.

Literature coverage of the most infamous episodes and crimes of the Civil War period in eastern Kansas and western Missouri still focuses most closely on the actions and individuals involved with the pro-Confederate side of the irregular war, but Union guerrillas operating out of Kansas and cutting their own paths of murder, arson, and plunder could be just as ruthless as their Missouri counterparts. As continues to be the case with those studying the Missouri guerrillas, gaps in the available source material and persistent myths passed down through generations plague those writers who want to find the truth behind Kansas's guerrillas. Freshly wading into this heavily disputatious historiographical ground are Paul A. Thomas and Matt M. Matthews, the authors of Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs.

With the "Bleeding Kansas" period already the subject of an expansive modern library of scholarly work, Thomas and Matthews's contextualization of the 1850s Border War that created the Kansas Jayhawker is understandably brief. For the uninitiated, they trace the historical origins of the term 'jayhawking,' which was for decades prior a fairly non-specific word used to describe acts of thievery. The terms Kansas "Jayhawker" and "Red Legs" are defined and differentiated, the latter being a subset group of the former and which came into use after the start of the Civil War. Heavily associated with looting and arson that could be indiscriminate in nature and not strongly averse to committing outright murder, Jayhawkers and Red Legs at various times drew censure from all sides, although participants themselves along with many of their home front backers seem to have proudly accepted those labels. It is the distinct purpose of the authors to avoid playing the heroes versus villains game that has plagued the Border War historiography, focusing instead on portraying these men "in a way that fairly highlights the diverse and often complex reasons that they did what they did" (pg. 18).

Thomas and Matthews frame their largely biographical study around a representative sample of six major leaders: James H. Lane, James Montgomery, Charles R. "Doc" Jennison, George H. Hoyt, Marshall L. Cleveland, and William S. Tough. Of the half-dozen, Lane and Montgomery are the two most towering figures. Content found in their chapters, which offer fine summaries of how the authors interpret their backgrounds, character, and Civil War-era activities, will be familiar to those who have read any of the multiple book-length biographies of each that have been published in recent times. Though he still lacks a full biographical treatment of his own (Stephen Starr's 1974 combined unit history and leader study Jennison's Jayhawkers remains the classic source), Jennison's level of notoriety in the areas of deadly violence and marauding was top-tier. While household names in the region at the time, the rest are fairly obscure today. Hoyt, a lawyer who insinuated himself into John Brown's legal defense, was close to Jennison and was the individual most closely associated with the Kansas Red Legs. As revealed in the book, Cleveland was little more than a criminal freebooter (earning the moniker "Phantom Horseman of the Prairie"), using the Civil War as a means for stealing horses and other forms of property. Tough was another Jayhawker who gained enough wartime notoriety to be given a nickname (the "Paladin of the Kansas Prairie") but remains little known among today's Civil War students.

A number of common threads course through the pages of all six biographical chapters. All of the half-dozen jayhawking figures featured in the study were ostensibly antislavery in disposition. Each was situated somewhere on a spectrum between the ideological true believer (ex. Montgomery and Hoyt) and the most cynical brand of 'practical' abolitionist (ex. Cleveland and Tough). Jennison's abolitionist credentials are in dispute, and the authors note that his own wife denied that he marched to the abolitionist tune. Although the chapter devoted to James Montgomery duly recounts those of his actions that would be considered war crimes, it also generously describes him as the only truly "righteous" man in the bunch.

Although freeing Missouri slaves, regardless of slaveholder loyalties, was a major objective of Jayhawker raids, it was also the case that all the men that Thomas and Matthews profile in their book were involved in very serious episodes of arson and property crimes, the latter even to the extent of robbing banks. Personal motivations ranged among inflicting 'righteous' punishment on proslavery persons to making the war pay for itself to mere cynical personal gain, with the last far too often being primary. With Missourians of all political stripes commonly deemed to be inveterate enemies, many Kansans considered cross-border plunder and robbery justified, and many Jayhawkers used Civil War conflict to amass significant wealth for themselves and their closest associates.

To varying degrees, all of these men also played a role in the worst of all war crimes, the killing of prisoners and civilians. None of the six shied away from deadly violence, and, reading the book, one gains the strong sense that psychological and emotional instability was not uncommon. In recounting specific events, the authors do address conflicting reports. One prominent example involves allegations that emerged from the sacking of Osceola in September 1861. Many secondary sources in print and on the web today maintain that nine prisoners were executed, but Thomas and Matthews have determined that the best evidence points toward period sources mistakenly conflating what happened at Osceola with prisoner killings that did occur days earlier at Morristown.

The book also makes clear that Kansas Jayhawkers and Red Legs proved capable of moving back and forth between the irregular and conventional spheres of warfare, with some of the profiled individuals effectively leading both types of units at some time during their Civil War careers. That crossover led to frequent clashes between them and their military superiors who took a dim view of Jayhawker breaches in military discipline and behavior toward enemy civilians. Nevertheless, as the book shows, arrested Jayhawkers and Red Legs who possessed valuable knowledge and experience often escaped punishment by convincing their accusers of their unique usefulness as scouts and gatherers of intelligence.

It is also unsurprisingly the case that politics was keenly involved in Kansas's notoriously factional relations between prominent Jayhawkers and high-level politicians as well as within the Jayhawker leadership. Results from such political maneuvering often proved complicated, even contradictory. For example, the authors make clear that they could find no compelling evidence to support the common view that Lane and Jennison were friends. Instead, they determine the pair to have been "bitter enemies" (pg. 40). Yet the authors also reveal elsewhere in the book that Lane co-sponsored, with Kansas's other U.S. senator, a petition that strongly urged President Lincoln to appoint Jennison a brigadier general at the very moment the war's most infamous Jayhawker was suffering in official disgrace.

Union Guerrillas of Civil War Kansas makes a hefty contribution to our understanding of those Civil War Kansas leaders who were directly involved in the irregular conflict fought on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border. Sweeping away simplistic portrayals and partisan mythologizing, Paul Thomas and Matt Matthews's collection of Kansas Jayhawker leadership biographies reveals, using the best available evidence and reasoned conjecture, not only who those men were as individuals but how each was situated, relative to each other, within common themes associated with Jayhawker motivations, actions, and justifications of those actions. In that way, readers gain vital insights into an ideological conflict that attracted and produced, as the authors maintain, "both good and bad men who did good and bad things" (pg. 18).

Review - "Nathaniel Lyon's River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union" by Kenneth Burchett

[Nathaniel Lyon's River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union by Kenneth E. Burchett (McFarland, 2025). Softcover, 4 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,219/277. ISBN:978-1-4766-9626-3. $39.95]

A number of solid overview-level explorations of political and military events in Missouri from the secession crisis period through the Battle of Wilson's Creek have been published. Revisiting that well-trodden ground (up to, but not including, Wilson's Creek) at length while also offering up some fresh perspectives and additional details are three interconnected volumes from Kenneth Burchett. Rearranged in chronological order rather than order of release, they are Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War (2024), Nathaniel Lyon's River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union (2025), and The Battle of Carthage, Missouri: First Trans-Mississippi Conflict (2012).

Picking up where Massacre at St. Louis left off, the middle volume in Burchett's 1861 Missouri trilogy sets the stage with a fairly conventional picture of the political situation in the state between that seminal event and the outbreak of general hostilities. The ongoing political influence the powerful Blair family exerted on the policy decisions and personnel appointments of the Lincoln administration, which looked on events from distant Missouri with considerable apprehension in Washington, is duly addressed, as are the Price-Harney Agreement (a failed peace initiative) and the infamous Planter House Hotel meeting. The last represented the final attempt at defusing an increasingly volatile situation. The meeting broke down spectacularly, inaugurating open war between the state and federal governments.

In recounting the above, Burchett also clearly shows that the shocking amount of bloodshed spilled during the aftermath of the Camp Jackson surrender did not end the cycle of violence between soldiers and civilians. By documenting ongoing incidences of street violence in St. Louis, and clashes elsewhere, that are outside those typically covered in the general histories, Burchett adds to our understanding of this precarious period that soon boiled over into open conflict between federal volunteers and the new state militia army (the Missouri State Guard). As was the case with Kentucky, it was clear that Missouri neutrality, however seriously that stance was contemplated by parties involved in governance, was never going to be a workable state strategy of weathering the storm of Civil War.

As the book's title implies, General Nathaniel Lyon's aggressive move to seize control of the Missouri River, one part of a three-pronged offensive designed to isolate, surround, and crush the Missouri State Guard before it had time to organize and grow into a dangerous adversary, is its centerpiece. As other chroniclers have done, Burchett credits Lyon for his boldness and decisiveness in conducting what might seem from the outside to have been a risky ad-hoc riverine thrust deep into the heart of "Little Dixie," the part of the state with the most secession sympathizers. That single-minded aggression paid off in spades, though, as the state capital was quickly seized without a fight, leaving the gathering state opposition off balance and struggling to keep up with the rapid tempo of operations.

As Burchett explains, the speed and efficiency of Lyon's offensive placed Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson in a profound quandary with little time to consider his available options. With the State Guard's commanding general, Sterling Price, sick and away recuperating, Jackson, a complete military novice, assumed the leadership of state troops. The question of what to do weighed heavily in the governor's mind. Jackson desperately needed a military victory to bolster his wavering position. However, taking a stand at either Boonville or upriver at Lexington was a risky proposition as it involved pitting his untrained, badly under-equipped, and majority unarmed forces against Lyon's well-drilled and well-armed Home Guards and volunteers. The other major option, declining battle for the immediate future in favor of a concentration of forces in the southwest corner of the state, arguably offered better military prospects but risked the collapse of popular morale among his strongest base of supporters on both sides of the Missouri River line.

As Burchett recounts, the decision to meet the enemy at Boonville proved foolhardy, and Guard forces were utterly routed by Lyon's men after a brief firefight and subsequent running skirmish. Paul Rorvig's 1992 Missouri Historical Review journal article is widely regarded as the best account of the June 17, 1861 Battle of Boonville, and Burchett's coverage is of similar descriptive depth and interpretation to that and other more recent secondary histories of the fight. Boonville still lacks a really top-level battle map, and the one in this book, borrowed from another source, simply offers readers a general picture of the fighting area between Rocheport (where Lyon landed) and Boonville. The other two major prongs of Lyon's offensive, east out of Kansas and southwest overland and by rail from St. Louis, are also addressed in the narrative, albeit more briefly. Additionally, all of this conventional fighting in the field occurred amid a backdrop of continued rear-area violence, and threats of violence, within Union-controlled St. Louis.

Burchett's study fully conveys the strategic significance of Lyon's successful land-naval campaign, which seized control of the Missouri River's entire course across the state's midsection. This signal achievement effectively isolated the pro-secession supporters of the northern and southern halves of the state from each other. The only thing that slowed Lyon's further advance against the now fleeing State Guard was the need to stockpile supplies. During their incursions into Missouri, Union forces also grabbed control of the state's limited rail net. That, combined with the river offensive, placed Missouri's water and railroad transportation networks out of the reach of Jackson's supporters. Although challenged at various times, that logistical stranglehold established during the first half of 1861 was maintained throughout the rest of the war. As the book's subtitle asserts, Lyon's campaign (regardless of how it ended for him at Wilson's Creek) had indeed played an essential part in securing Missouri for the Union.

Of course, divided communities existed in towns and counties across the state, their relations ranging from wary co-existence to open hostility directed toward each other. While mentioning a number of other similar situations, Burchett devotes several chapters to Benton County, which had a large, fervently pro-Union German population that was deeply opposed by most of the native-born population, both sides forming home guard companies. In addition to possessing the potential for instigating localized outbreaks of violence, these forces were also tied to the events of Lyon's campaign. Indeed, the pro-Union Home Guard forces of Benton County that were assembled at Cole Camp sat directly astride the retreat path of Governor Jackson's growing State Guard army of followers. Burchett's book details the successful surprise attack by local pro-secession forces on the carelessly policed Union home guard encampment. Supported by two solid maps, this account is more expansive than most others found in the 1861 Missouri Campaign literature. In addition to breaking up Union support in the county, the victory cleared the way for Jackson to link up with other gathering state forces and potentially with Confederate Army allies poised across the border in Arkansas and Indian Territory.

Complaints are not of the deal-breaker variety. The book could have used a few more good maps, and the volume's frequent content repetition, along with its occasional small errors and contradictory passages, might have been massaged out through another editorial pass. For those who value bookshelf symmetry, it is also perhaps worthy of mention that this middle volume of the "trilogy," which was produced in the smaller of the two trim sizes offered by the publisher, does not match the taller and wider physical dimensions of the other two.

The volume concludes with a brief overview of events in Missouri over the remaining balance of 1861, a period that included passage of the secession ordinance at Neosho, the establishment of a new pro-Union provisional state government at Jefferson City, and the post-Wilson's Creek revival of secessionist military fortunes (capped by the successful siege and surrender of Union forces at Lexington). From that epilogue there is no indication that Burchett plans to continue his line of books to include a new history of the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Applying perspectives from both sides, Burchett's Missouri trilogy offers an abundance of freshly presented details and insights on the volatile military and political situation that existed in Missouri beginning with the secession crisis and extending well into the events of the summer of 1861 that ultimately decided the state's fate within the Union.

Review - "Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation" by Michael Lang

[Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Michael S. Lang (University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Softcover, 16 maps, illustrations, appendix, orders of battle, strength tables, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:xx,293. ISBN:978-1-62190-916-3. $24.95]

Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation is one of the more unique installments in UT Press's ever-growing Command Decisions in America's Civil War series. In a series now approaching two-dozen volumes, this is only the second Trans-Mississippi theater entry, and its subject, the 1864 Red River Campaign, is the only one to lack a comprehensive book-length treatment that anyone would consider definitive in nature. While numerous overview-level books covering the campaign's operations in the Red River Valley and Arkansas exist, it is still the case that no full-length studies of the campaign's climactic battles, those fought at Mansfield (April 8) and Pleasant Hill (April 9), have been published. In contrast with other series topics, which tend to address major military contests fought between principal field armies, the Red River Campaign is also atypical in that it was driven by political and economic considerations more than military ones. How that mix affected critical decision-making and its consequences adds some interesting elements to the analysis.

For those unfamiliar with the series and its structure, please refer to the site reviews of the early series titles for more explanation. In short, critical decisions are, as Lang explains, those that are "not only consequential in their own right, but also so important that they substantially shape the decisions and events that follow, thus forming the course of history" (pg. xiv). For each critical decision, identification and analysis unfolds in the following sequence: Situation, Options, Decision, and Result/Impact. Situation describes a particular state of affairs (be it "strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, personnel related, or logistical" in nature) at a pivotal moment prompting a critical decision. That background element provides readers with the context necessary to recognize and evaluate the Options (two or more in number) available to the decision-maker. The historical Decision that was selected by that high-level decision-maker is then described. The ensuing Result(s)/Impact section recounts what happened and show how the Situation's historical outcome shaped what followed. An Alternative Decision/Scenario section is optional for contributors (some really get into the alternate history conjecture while others omit it altogether), and Lang includes a brief one or two paragraphs of that type of content for all of his fifteen decisions.

Series contributors typically organize their critical decision compilations into several sub-groupings (most often by specific time intervals). Task ten knowledgeable individuals with the same job of identifying critical decisions and you'll undoubtedly receive back ten different lists. With that in mind, one might quibble with a few of Lang's selections, but that's alright as he brings all of the most centrally important situations and decisions into the conversation. In Lang's analysis, eight decisions are assigned to an extended stretch (January 1863-April 1864) of campaign preliminaries. This is where the bulk of the strategic, organizational, and personnel-related decisions reside. The second grouping, five in number (including the volume's only two tactical-level decisions), addresses the campaign's first big inflection point, the April 6-9 sequence of events encompassing the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. The third and final grouping, covering the period April 9-May 30, discusses the two critical decisions that most shaped the finishing stages of the campaign on both fronts, Union commander Nathaniel Banks's decision to withdraw to the Red River after his tactical victory at Pleasant Hill and Confederate commander Edmund Kirby Smith's decision to divert the bulk of his resources to Arkansas.

Like most others who have examined the campaign at length, Lang wonders what Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith's principal subordinate in the Red River Valley, might have accomplished against Banks's increasingly divided and demoralized command at Cane River had Kirby Smith not redirected the bulk of his available infantry firepower (the Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas divisions of Parsons, Churchill, and Walker) to Arkansas. What more that larger force might have done against the river fleet trapped above the falls at Alexandria is another interesting matter to contemplate. Lang is more noncommittal than most when it comes to taking sides in the epic clash of wills between Kirby Smith and Taylor, instead offering readers the tools to form their own opinions.

Two decisions are tied to the fighting in Arkansas, the first a logistical decision on the part of Frederick Steele, the Union general charged with leading what came to be known as the Camden Expedition, and the second Kirby Smith's weighty decision over where to concentrate his counteroffensive after Banks retreated back to the Red River and the naval support it provided. That relative paucity of critical decisions assigned to the Camden Expedition (essentially 1.5 out of 15) possibly represents a determination that Steele's column and its overextended supply line possessed little in the way of ability and opportunity to truly transform the course and results of the campaign (an opinion that Steele himself held from the outset).

Even though it's not explicitly part of the standardized structure of decision analysis adopted by the series, at times it might be helpful to explain why seemingly important decisions did not, in the mind of the author, qualify as critical decisions. For example, Steele's decision to abandon, perhaps temporarily (he did not yet know that Banks had been defeated at Mansfield and had retreated after Pleasant Hill), his advance on Shreveport and redeploy to Camden, where his supply line to Pine Bluff was shortened, might be considered a critical decision. Similarly, Steele's final decision to abandon Camden (after his two primary foraging missions were smashed by the Confederates and official confirmation arrived that Banks was not only no longer advancing but in trouble) and retreat back to his Arkansas River base might also be considered a critical decision. That said, critical decisions have to have realistic options and, in both cases, the author perhaps determined that Steele's supply situation left him no reasonable alternatives. On the Confederate side of the Arkansas operation, there are no critical decisions assigned to the execution, upon heavy reinforcement from the Red River Valley, of Kirby Smith's plan to cut off Steele's retreat. Cavalry division commander James Fagan was ordered to block Steele's retreat route (a movement that was apparently very feasible), but Fagan instead cleared out his entire force off to the west toward better foraging grounds, leaving Steele's path wide open. Some deem Fagan to have spoiled a golden opportunity to force the outright surrender of Steele's desperately low-supplied army. Of course, we'll never now what might have happened had Steele been compelled to fight his way out of a surrounding cordon of infantry and cavalry, but it was arguably a critical decision left unexamined.

As is the case with a few structural elements of the series, the scale of the driving tour appendix can vary between volumes. With eleven stops that begin in New Orleans and spread across Louisiana and Arkansas, Lang's tour is a substantial journey. In addition to providing driving directions and visual field orientation, the text attached to each stop explains how it is tied to a critical decision. Helpfully, many of the key orders and communications between leaders that are cited in the main text's decision analysis are reproduced at length in the tour appendix. Added to the orders of battle for both sides are some strength tables (divisional for Union forces and district level for the Confederates) and lists of naval forces (gunboats and transports) deployed by both sides.

One of the most noticeable changes in the series between its inception and today is in the cartography, the earliest volumes having wider coverage (with maps in the dozens spread over both the main decision analysis and integrated driving tour) and more small-unit detail. Lacking insider knowledge, one might guess that evolving economics of publishing played some part in this. It's less of a concern in this volume, which has very few tactical-level critical decisions.

In addition to its strong consideration of the campaign's most momentous decisions, Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign also, more than any other entry in the series, starkly demonstrates the ways in which leadership and personality factors can erase seemingly overwhelming one-sided advantages in manpower, firepower, materiel, and waterborne support. Lang's measured analysis of Union plans and their execution, as well as Confederate lost opportunities, only confirms General Sherman's caustic condemnation of the campaign's conduct as being, at least from the Union perspective, "one damn blunder from beginning to end."

Review - "Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations" by Edward Cotham

[Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. (University of Tennessee Press, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix, orders of battle, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages:xiii,170. ISBN:978-1-62190-913-2. $24.95]

It's easy to see why Galveston, Texas was considered a strategic point of interest for both sides during the Civil War. Galveston was Texas's most populous city, its most important commercial center, and it possessed the state's finest deep water port. Its rail connection with the interior also made it a prime base for a Union campaign to seize Houston. The occupation of both places would make Union forces masters of the heart of Texas and its limited modern transportation network. Initially determined to be indefensible with the meager resources available at the time, Galveston was reluctantly abandoned by its Confederate Army defenders. It was quickly occupied in turn by a small Union garrison supported by a naval squadron that easily outgunned anything the Confederates could muster against it. Before the Union foothold on Texas soil could be exploited, however, the port city was recaptured during a dramatic and improbably successful New Year's Day 1863 land and sea assault. Compounding the US Navy's embarrassment, just ten days later the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama lured out to sea and sank the Galveston blockader USS Hatteras. City and island remained in Confederate hands for the duration of the war.

The hits to US naval pride only continued. Approximately sixty miles up the coast, another Confederate naval attack surprised and defeated a US blockading force at Sabine Pass in 1862, and on September 8 of the following year a tiny earthwork battery turned back a massive combined operation that outnumbered the defenders roughly 100 to 1. In the fall of 1863, a two-pronged grand campaign, which consisted of a large overland expedition through western Louisiana and a substantial amphibious landing at the mouth of the Rio Grande that was accompanied by a follow-up movement up the coast, also failed (through a variety of reasons) to knock Texas out of the war. The decision-making involved in all of these events, many of which had military and political repercussions felt far and wide, is examined in Edward Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations.

Fast approaching two-dozen volumes, University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series possesses a unique analytical framework that has proven its value over time. Rather than repeat background material that has already been covered numerous times here on this site, please refer to previous CWBA reviews (such as this one here) for the series definition of a "critical decision" and brief explanation of the flow and structure of the steps involved in the decision analysis.

With published expertise [see Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (1998) and Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae (2004), both gold standard histories of their topics] and over thirty years of ongoing research at his disposal, Cotham is the ideal author for this particular series installment. Calling upon that unique body of knowledge and using it to identify key moments of contingency, Cotham's approach to critical decision selection along with his situational summaries, option formulations, result(s)/impact discussions, and visions of alternate scenarios all display levels of nuance that a less robustly informed contributor tasked with the matter at hand would find very difficult to match. At first glance, it might appear unlikely that one could come up with this high a number of critical decisions (21) for a series of mostly small-scale events that unfolded in the war's tertiary theater (and this reviewer still struggled with one or two), but Cotham's keenly developed arguments and analysis consistently remove most lingering doubts.

The typical book in the series addresses a campaign and/or battle fought between major eastern or western theater field armies, making tactical-level critical decision analysis a common feature. However, Cotham notes that in his own area of study it was faraway decisions that most often and most deeply impacted the course of events. Also, an unusually high number (for the series as a whole) of his volume's critical decisions are personnel related. As Cotham amply demonstrates, leadership selection alone went a long way toward explaining why the underdog Confederates were so successful and how it was that Union forces failed in such disastrous fashion. President Davis's selection of John B. Magruder, that general's reputation under a dark cloud from allegations related to underperformance during the Seven Days, matched man and moment with results few could have foreseen, and the officers Magruder chose as his own principal subordinates no less so. On the other side, US naval hero David Glasgow Farragut, commander of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, made leadership appointments on the Texas coast that he would come to bitterly regret. As Cotham outlines, key officers at Galveston and Sabine Pass served their faraway superior poorly, delivering some of the few black marks against Farragut's otherwise sterling Civil War record.

Magruder proved to be a particularly interesting case to examine. So many Confederate generals thrust into unenviable coastal command situations similar to what Magruder faced wallowed in pessimistic passivity when tasked with pitting their own meager manpower and resources against Union combined operations having the overpowering capability of concentrating superior land and naval forces at nearly any point of their choosing. Magruder broke the mold, confidently seizing the initiative and making his own luck with boldness, creative planning, and decisive leadership. During this shining moment of his Civil War career, all of his decisions struck gold. Like Robert E. Lee did at Chancellorsville, Magruder employed against a dangerously superior enemy at Galveston a complicated battle plan with a lot of moving parts. Such high-risk plans often produced disaster, but, as Cotham effectively reminds us, it could also be an important factor in achieving success against long odds. Unfortunately for the rest of Magruder's Civil War career, his signal success along the Texas coast in 1863 did little to restore his profile as general worthy of being entrusted with coveted commands on major fronts.

Much like historian Donald Frazier has recently done in his Texas and Louisiana series of military history books, Cotham insightfully outlines significant connections (through decisions made and their results) between events in the Trans-Missisippi theater and future plans for the war on the other side of the river. Most notable among them are those involved in delaying the targeting of the key Gulf blockade-running port of Mobile, Alabama.

A mixture of modern maps and others borrowed from the atlas to the O.R. accompany Cotham's text. In the other series titles, the featured tour appendix is designed to be closely tied to the critical decisions presented before it. With his own subject matter more geographically dispersed than the others and with so many of its critical decisions produced from great distances, Cotham elected instead to include a walking tour of Galveston Civil War sites and some brief recommendations for hardy souls willing to take the 133-mile roundabout drive to Sabine Pass.

Joining the top rank of the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War collection of titles, Edward Cotham's Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns, in addition to its atypical features recited above, carries some notable series firsts. The author points out that his book is the first to have a major focus on ship vs. ship and ship vs. shore movements and encounters, and one can also add that it is the first Trans-Missisippi theater volume in the series. Another one, an 1864 Red River Campaign book, is soon to follow, with hopefully even more in the works.

Review - "Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part One: 1861" ed. by Michael Banasik

[Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part One: 1861 edited by Michael E. Banasik (Camp Pope Publishing, 2024). Softcover, 4 maps, photos, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages:xii,276. ISBN:978-1-929919-95-6. $17.95]

If this is your first exposure to Camp Pope Publishing's "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi series, which is itself a sub-series of the press's Unwritten Chapters of the Civil War West of the River series, its constituent volumes are edited compilations of newspaper articles written by Civil War veterans of all ranks. Those reminiscences were printed by The Missouri Republican (St. Louis) in the paper's Saturday editions between 1885 and 1887. Comprising the writings of ex-Confederates, "Tales of the War" Volume VII was published in five parts [follow this link to read site reviews of those titles] and is still in print. This new release, Union "Tales of the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part One: 1861, marks the beginning of Volume VIII, which follows the previous format but from the Union perspective. All installments of the Unwritten Chapters series are chiefly, and most often solely, edited by Michael Banasik.

Given where the center of the action was in 1861, it is not too surprising that Part One is predominantly a Missouri affair. The book's opening chapter collects a series of reminiscences of Missouri political and military episodes from the first six months of the year. Prominent events from the period that are recalled include the struggle over the St. Louis arsenal, the ascendancy of General Nathaniel Lyon, the "Camp Jackson Affair" (and its aftermath), Union recruiting in the state, and some early small-scale operations. The next chapter is comprised of six articles covering various aspects of the battles of Carthage and Wilson's Creek, and Banasik himself contributes an informative piece about the Union army's retreat to Rolla. The third and final chapter contains two articles, one revisits the use of hemp bales as mobile breastworks at Lexington (the most widely known incident of the siege) and the other the fight at Belmont.

The material is heavily annotated, with expansive explanatory footnotes nearly filling an entire page on occasion. Based on manuscript materials, newspaper articles, government records, books, and articles, the notes fulfill the traditional role of providing background and context for persons, places, and events mentioned in the main text. Capsule biographies of noteworthy individuals, both well-known and obscure, are also common footnote features. Banasik's notes frequently, and often at some length, weigh the merits of conflicting interpretations found in the secondary literature, and those discussions are additionally supplemented with his own research and conclusions. In terms of presentation, the only major complaint is with the rampant missing words and typographical errors found in both main text and footnotes, which are very uncharacteristic of both series and publisher.

With multiple pieces featured in the first two chapters, the most frequent contributor to the volume is Otto C. Lademann, a former Third Missouri captain. In this reviewer's opinion, his group of articles are the clear highlight of Part One. In addition to being highly observant firsthand accounts of the marching and battlefield experiences of German soldiers during the Missouri campaigns of 1861, Lademann's writings also frequently go against the grain without seeming agenda-driven. German troops are often stereotyped as ethnocentric "I fights mit Sigel" idolizers of that controversial general's presence and military ability, but Lademann's accounts of Carthage and Wilson's Creek are very evenhanded, and in places highly critical of Sigel's battlefield behavior and decision-making.

The wealth of additional editorial commentary and reference information found in the appendix section is a key feature of every "Tales of the War" title. This volume's Appendix A assembles a collection of relevant official communications in the form of letters, resolutions, proclamations, and political addresses. Expanded biographical treatments of a select group of military officers and political figures are included in the second appendix. The editor's "extended comments" on a variety of topics, mostly battle-related, comprise most of Appendix C. Meticulous order of battle, unit strength, and casualty reviews for both sides at Carthage, Wilson's Creek, and Belmont are compiled in the last appendix. Attached to the revised OB tables are extensive additional editorial commentary and secondary source engagement similar to those found in both main text and footnotes.

Those who appreciate (as anyone with an extensive interest in the Civil War west of the Mississippi should) the five-part Confederate "Tales of the War" writings of Volume VII will be very happy to know that they can expect more of the same in Part One's strong start to Union-focused Volume VIII.

Review - "Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War" by William Nelson Fox

[Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War by William Nelson Fox (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:101/159. ISBN:978-1-4671-5561-8. $24.99]

Early on in the conflict, the Confederate government in Richmond determined that the ultimate protection of its vast lands and people west of the Mississippi comprising the states of Texas, Arkansas, and much of Louisiana was best guaranteed by sending the bulk of their available manpower to the Confederacy's heavily outnumbered primary field armies. Something of an exception to the much-maligned cordon defense strategy maintained by the Davis administration until forced out of it by a string of major military disasters over the early months of 1862, the thought was that territory lost in the trans-Mississippi by designating it a tertiary theater would be readily recovered after the defeat of principal Union armies elsewhere. Predictably, such a policy of temporary abandonment was not popular among those most burdened with the sacrifices made necessary by it, but, as historian Charles Grear concluded in his 2010 study Why Texans Fought in the Civil War, large numbers of Texans were highly motivated to fight east of the Mississippi in defense of the extended family and friend networks they left behind when they migrated to the Lone Star State. In consequence of that, however, Texas was rendered highly vulnerable to direct attack, particularly along its extensive coastline.

When it comes to reading about Texas coastal operations during the Civil War, modern options are actually quite numerous and qualitatively strong. For example, interested readers will find unsurpassed coverage of a pair of stunning Confederate victories in Edward Cotham's Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae (2004) and Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (1998). Covering another part of the coastal war, Stephen Dupree's Planting The Union Flag In Texas: The Campaigns of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks in the West (2008) provides a big-picture view of Union intentions while Stephen Townsend's The Yankee Invasion of Texas (2006) offers a solid overview of the 1863-64 Rio Grande Expedition. Supplementing Townsend's treatment are some extensive Southwestern Historical Quarterly journal articles that address land and naval operations conducted along the string of Texas barrier islands that protected a series of bays and secondary ports. The network of earthen fortifications that finally forced a major operational pause in Union progress up the coast in 1863-64 is discussed in both B.J. McKinney's Confederates on the Caney: An Illustrated Account of the Civil War on the Texas Gulf Coast (1997-rev) and Martha Doty Freeman and Elton Prewitt's book-length 1994 Sargent Beach Project report. For a glimpse into the international dimensions of the Texas coastal war, we have Rodman Underwood's Waters of Discord: The Union Blockade of Texas During the Civil War (2008). Additionally, scholarly works such as Norman Delaney's The Maltby Brothers' Civil War (2013) explore Texas coastal operations on a more intimate level. While all of that is great, it is also recognized that not everyone interested in learning about the topic has the time or inclination to embark on such a series of deep dives. For those individuals, William Nelson Fox's slender volume Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War is a more than suitable introductory-level tool.

In roughly one-hundred pages of principal narrative, Fox impressively manages to explore the entire length and breadth of the Texas coastal war, from the appearance of the first blockading warship off Galveston in 1861 to the war's ill-advised and entirely unnecessary May 1865 coda fought near the mouth of the Rio Grande. In between, he recounts the broader contest for Galveston, the Union naval blockade and coastal harassment campaigns, the unlikely Confederate triumph at Sabine Pass, and the Rio Grande Expedition. In constructing his concise chronicling of coastal war affairs, Fox employs a strongly diverse collection of sources, including archival materials, government records, newspapers, books, and articles. Though some of the miniaturized maps reproduced in the volume are difficult to make out without the assistance of a magnifying lens, the volume is well stocked with photographs, ship drawings, and contemporary artistic renderings of events. A helpful timeline of the coastal war's most prominent happenings is also featured.

As mentioned earlier, Fox makes the most of the limited space available when it comes to describing events both large and small in scale. Land and naval figures little known to general readers but significant in the struggle over the Texas coast (officers such as Union naval lieutenant John W. Kittredge) are frequently featured in the text. In an unusual practice for books of this type, Fox consistently provides small-unit order of battle details in his discussions of events. Additionally, though the title suggests a study written primarily from the Confederate side of things, the narrative does incorporate both Union and Confederate perspectives.

Though the confrontation with the Caney Creek fortifications ended the 'easy' phase of the 1863-64 Rio Grande expedition's seemingly inexorable advance up the coast, Fox agrees with Thompson that Texas was still vulnerable to being knocked out of the war at that time. Both are persuasive in determining that it was primarily a lack of will (a combination of conflicting military/civilian leadership personalities and strategic priorities) on the Union side that saved the heart of Texas's capacity for making war.

For those seeking a well-researched overview of Civil War operations that unfolded up and down the entire length of Texas's contested Gulf coast, this new study, which can be read in a single sitting, deserves top-level consideration.

Review - "Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma" by Dale Chlouber

[Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma by Dale Chlouber (New Forums Press, 2023). Softcover, maps, photos, notes, appendix section. Pages:vi,164. ISBN:978-1-58107-378-2. $26.95]

In a rare diplomatic victory over its Union foe, the Confederate government in 1861 successfully negotiated alliance treaties with the major tribal nations residing within Indian Territory. However, even after principal chief John Ross finally succumbed to the pressure and aligned the powerful Cherokee with Richmond, there were many among the Creeks and other groups who believed their best interests still lay in honoring the old agreements with the U.S. government. Numbering in the thousands, they rallied around the highly respected Muscogee Creek former chief Opothleyahola. On the other side, the now Confederate Indians and their new Texas and Arkansas allies were determined to deny the possibility of armed opposition blossoming under their noses. That rising threat of open warfare caused Opothleyahola and his followers to flee north, a winter trek that some have called the "Trail of Blood on Ice." Pursuit led to a running series of engagements, the most significant of which were the "battles" of Round Mountain (November 19, 1861), Chusto Talasah (December 9), and Chustenahlah (December 26). The last was a rout of Opothleyahola's remaining warriors, but the harried Indian loyalists ultimately reached asylum in Kansas. There they huddled in refugee camps under less than ideal conditions, their sufferings endured amid the hope and promise of eventual return to their former homes under the protection of U.S. forces.

Perhaps the most notable historiographical controversy of the entire campaign revolves around the disputed location of the Battle of Round Mountain (less commonly known as the Battle of Red Fork or Round Mountains). Strong oral history and local tradition built up around the Twin Mounds site west of Yale, Oklahoma, but the controversy really started with the public dissemination of the findings of avocational historian John Melton and the 1949 Chronicles of Oklahoma article authored by professional historian Angie Debo. Their arguments in support of the Twin Mounds site convinced many, and the issue seemed resolved. However, Debo's scholarship was soon challenged by Chronicles of Oklahoma editor Muriel Wright, who initially seemed satisfied by Debo's analysis before rejecting it wholesale in favor of promoting a location (or locations) near the confluence of the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers, the so-called "Keystone Site" or sites. That was followed by decades of back and forth arguments and competing claims among historians, interested individuals, historical societies, and local communities. The conflict, which frequently reached unseemly depths, resulted in competing monuments and enduring questions. This contentious and nearly three quarters of a century-long debate is the subject of Dale Chlouber's Revisiting The Battle of Red Fork: A Two-Part Review and Analysis of the History and Controversy of the First Civil War Battle Fought in Indian Territory in What is Now Oklahoma.

Chlouber's book is divided into two parts of roughly equal length: (1) "Background on the Controversy of the Battle of Red Fork" and (2) "Revisiting the Battle of Red Fork." "Background" re-explores the source of the controversy in depth, one of its most useful reference features being its creation of an extensive and well-documented timeline of events spanning 1949-1996. After professional historians lost interest in the debate, sometimes due to the career problems involved with it, amateurs stepped forward, and Chlouber also critiques the merits of the battle location advanced by Robert DeMoss (called, appropriately enough, the "DeMoss Site"). In strong fashion, the author explains why he is unconvinced by DeMoss's arguments and unsupported conspiracy charges, finding instead that the best features of DeMoss's analysis not only do not reject the Twin Mounds/Yale site but buttress it.

In point by point fashion, the "Revisiting" section reevaluates the merits of the best sets of evidence put forth by proponents of both main locations: the collective Keystone area site(s) and the Twin Mounds/Yale site. Chlouber judiciously weighs the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of evidence, and persuasively concludes that the preponderance of best sources (including maps, participant accounts written closest to the time of actual events, and oral history) strongly supports the Twin Mounds/Yale location over any other suggested site. In determining this, Chlouber is not a lone wolf. By his estimation, knowledgeable persons today support the Twin Mounds/Yale site with near unanimity.

In text and photos (including the results of his own amateur relic hunting), Chlouber also advances the notion that available artifact discoveries tend to support Twin Mounds as being the true battle site. What's really needed, as Chlouber admits, is a more systematic survey of the location candidates using the most current technology and professional practices of battlefield archaeology. Douglas Scott and others have used such tools to great effect on other Civil War battlegrounds. Chlouber reminds us, however, that man-made Keystone Lake has placed some potential survey sites underwater.

In terms of suggestions for improvement, typos were pretty heavy, especially in the first section. Inclusion of an updated, article-length narrative summary of the battle itself would have helped many readers more fully comprehend the events themselves along with their historiographical dimensions. The volume seems to assume that most, if not all, prospective readers possess at least a rudimentary prior understanding of the battle, but the topic along with its sources and critical geography will undoubtedly be alien to a number of interested readers (as they mostly were to this one!). Additionally, key sources excerpted in the main text are limited enough in number to be fully reproduced in the appendix section. For a future edition, the book's overall organizational structure might also be gainfully reconsidered. There is some needless repetition between sections, and, at least from this reader's perspective, there's a great deal of information presented in the second part of the book that provides useful context for sounder comprehension of key matters explored in the first. In some ways, I wish I had read the second part first. Those concerns might have been resolved through employment of a more integrative approach.

In highlighting the negative consequences of institutionalized personal animosity, incomplete and selective research, misuse of sources and context, flawed assumptions, and community rivalry, Chlouber's Round Mountain examination draws sober lessons from the controversy that can be more broadly applied to the practice of history. In what seems appropriate, the author broadly faults Wright's leadership of the publication arm of the state historical society, The Chronicles of Oklahoma, as doing a disservice to history. By "neutralizing and subduing critiques," (pg. 71) Wright's editorship promoted deeply flawed history and engendered a fear of reprisal (i.e. through refusal to publish other professional articles in The Chronicles) that suppressed healthy scholarly dissent.

Out of an abundance of caution, one might still deem the matter of the Round Mountain battle location to be lacking an unassailable resolution. Nevertheless, this volume thoroughly and effectively compiles and analyzes the available evidence in ways that significantly reinforce those assessments favoring the Twin Mounds site. In doing so, author Dale Chlouber strongly rebuffs the claims of those who still argue that good evidence, or not enough of it, in support of one site over the others does not exist. Revisiting the Battle of Red Fork is a very useful tool for guiding readers through a long, complicated, and lesson-filled historiographical dispute.