Review - "The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862" by Woodworth & Grear, eds.

[The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (Southern Illinois University Press, 2026). Paperback, 4 maps, table, photos, illustrations, chapter notes, index. Pages:xi,146. ISBN:978-0-8093-3997-6. $24.95]

The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 is the eighth installment of SIU Press's Civil War Campaigns in the West (formerly Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland) series edited by Steven Woodworth and Charles Grear. In addition to adding their own chapters to the volume, the editors have assembled five other contributors. Together, these seven essays examine various aspects of the campaign and its dramatic impact on the course of the war in the West.

Woodworth sets the stage with a general introduction, and Michael Burns begins the anthology with a reminder of the important ways in which extreme environmental conditions shaped the land and naval fighting at both forts. In some cases, such as the heavy flooding at Fort Henry, the unpredictable power of nature overwhelmed man's attempts at military planning, preparation, and conduct. Similarly, a sudden winter cold snap and flooding to potential escape routes directly affected the results of the contest at Fort Donelson. In each case, Union forces were the great beneficiaries of this powerful natural intervention into human affairs.

Blakeney Hill's following essay revisits the army-navy command relationship that bore such bountiful fruit for Union forces during the campaign. Simon Cameron remains widely reviled for his wasteful and corruption-filled tenure as Lincoln's first Secretary of War, but Hill interestingly credits his insistence that the Brown Water Navy remain under the auspices of the army as a key decision. While the inland navy's command and administrative structure would change as the war progressed, the critical first months of army-controlled joint operations on the western rivers (the actions at forts Henry and Donelson being primary examples) established an efficiency and manner of close cooperation between the services that jump-started Union offensives in the heartland West. The result was a pace of combined operations that the more disorganized and resource-poor Confederates proved incapable of countering, and Union forces essentially wrested control of the vast Mississippi River Valley by mid-1863. This was a stupendous achievement that many would not have thought possible at the war's beginning.

Next, Nathan Bedford Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills revisits Forrest's role in the campaign, which ended with his command's daring escape from the trap at Fort Donelson just before the Confederate garrison surrendered to Union forces. In Wills's view, and that of others he cites, Fort Donelson was a watershed moment in Forrest's image and development as a cavalry commander, his iron drive and leadership traits demonstrated there catapulting him along the path to becoming the western Confederacy's most feared mounted warrior. It also exposed a fiercely independent streak that would impact his later career both positively and negatively.

The Confederate breakout attempt is examined most closely in Jonathan Steplyk's chapter. While this critical episode in the campaign has already been exhaustively examined in the literature, Steplyk's adds a fresh element to the discussion by following the day's battle in the context of a clash between competing military principles, matching Confederate surprise against Union security. Perhaps more than most, Steplyk credits Union picket placement and skirmish lines, in both developing and impeding the Confederate attack, for becoming major obstacles to Confederate success on that day. At the same time, he doesn't simplistically reduce the clash to Union security beating Confederate surprise. It is a much more nuanced analysis than that.

Another shining light in terms of fresh material is Sheilah Elwardani's deeper look at a single Confederate brigade and its commanding officer, Gabriel C. Wharton. Her essay reveals what Wharton's recently published letters and his still unpublished memoir tells us about the attempted breakout from Fort Donelson. Wharton was one of the officers that infamously escaped the doomed fort by steamboat with General John B. Floyd, but, unlike Floyd, Wharton managed to get out of it with career and reputation intact. Elwardani informs us that the memoir's primary focus is on Fort Donelson, and it attempts to explain/rationalize the reasons and justifications behind Floyd's controversial decision-making in the matter (although she also notes that over time Wharton attempted to distance himself from Floyd's defense).

The February 15 attack by Union division commander Charles F. Smith's forces against thinly stretched Confederate defenders opposite the Union left, which seriously endangered the Confederate hold on Fort Donelson itself on that day, is often credited with having a major impact on the Confederate decision to surrender. Steven Woodworth's contribution detailing this assault focuses on the tactics involved, which in some ways presaged more celebrated uses of columnar attacking formations on the Civil War battlefield (notably those employed by Emory Upton at Spotsylvania)

Finally, Civil War Texas expert Charles Grear contextualizes the impact that Fort Donelson had on that state. While Fort Donelson shouldn't be thought of as a Texas battle, the Seventh infantry regiment being its largest and most noteworthy contribution, the battle (combined with Pea Ridge, where a great number of Texan formations fought) nevertheless was a major turning point in Texas's war. As was the case across the Confederacy, the responses of Texas soldiers and civilians to the string of military disasters suffered in the western heartland in early 1862 was a mixture of both demoralization and renewed determination. Prior to that time, most Texas fighting men remained in the Trans-Mississippi theater guarding the state's lengthy land borders and coastline. But, as Grear explains, the twin defeats at Henry-Donelson and Pea Ridge, especially the former, helped propel the passage of national conscription and prompted a new surge in Texas volunteering (part of which was to avoid the stigma of becoming a draftee). Those battlefield defeats, and the massive territorial losses that accompanied them, also prompted the transfer of a great many Texas units eastward across the Mississippi and, in the other direction, civilian and slave refugees to presumed safety in Texas. In those ways, Donelson was a defining moment in the course of Texas's Civil War.

With three major campaign histories (the most recent and best of those being Timothy Smith's) along with a host of other related book-length publications addressing various themes and topics, the Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign of 1862 has been treated quite well in the modern literature. Woodworth and Grear's edited anthology is both a useful new addition to that body of scholarship and a fine new installment in the Civil War Campaigns in the West series. Even the most well-read student of the campaign should find fresh points of interest numerous enough to make The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 a worthy addition to the home library. Highly recommended.

Review - "A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta" by David Allison

[A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta by David Allison (Author, 2025). Paperback, 3 maps, photos, endnotes, appendix section, index. Pages main/total:vi,242/438. ISBN:9798273780811. $19]

David Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1 concluded with the outermost maneuver elements of William T. Sherman's sweeping "Grand Movement" establishing a strong bridgehead south of Atlanta on the east bank of the Flint River. There, advance units from the three corps of O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee were poised to launch a final lunge toward Jonesboro and the Macon & Western Railroad that passed through the depot town on its way north to Atlanta. Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta continues the narrative through the closing stages of the campaign. [Note: Before going further please visit (or revisit) the site review of Volume 1 [here], paying close attention to its general observations in regard to the book's research, writing, and presentation. Those also apply to this second volume, and not all parts of that discussion will be repeated].

From his Atlanta headquarters, Confederate Army of Tennessee commander John Bell Hood charged his ranking subordinate, William J. Hardee, with driving back the federal advance, and he placed two corps (Hardee's own, temporarily commanded by Patrick Cleburne, and that of S.D. Lee) at Hardee's disposal. Aimed at crushing the Union bridgehead before it could be strongly fortified, the launch time of Hardee's attack west of Jonesboro on August 31, 1864 ended up being considerably delayed until mid-afternoon, when the rearmost contingent of Lee's rushed reinforcements from Atlanta finally arrived on the battlefield. That critical breathing space allowed Howard's troops along the east bank of the Flint River to fully establish an entrenched line of defense backed by well-positioned artillery support. Those circumstances alone dimmed Confederate chances for success considerably, but Allison also convincingly finds poor command and control at the highest levels (a common failing in the Army of Tennessee's battles) to be a major factor behind the Confederate repulse on the 31st. Cleburne/Hardee's Corps, which scattered the Union cavalry in its front during its initial assault, ended up derailing its own attacking momentum. Instead of regrouping after initial success and wheeling into the southern flank of the Union line, the corps dispersed its effort by allowing one division to fruitlessly chase the defeated Union cavalry across the river. The division returned, but the opportunity to strike the Union flank with a concentrated blow had already passed. To the north, S.D. Lee's Corps attacked frontally in two strong lines. The veteran Union defenders on Lee's front were unlikely to be overrun by such a direct attack, but Allison also points out that the lack of coordination between Lee's two battle lines badly disorganized and disrupted the assaulting formations. Both Confederate corps were rather easily repulsed by the Union defenders across their respective fronts.

Declining Confederate fighting morale likely also played a role in the failure of their attacks. High-ranking officers on both sides claimed that the Confederates at Jonesboro lacked their usual attacking spirit, and those claims support the conclusion of Gary Ecelbarger that the lopsided results of the earlier battle at Ezra Church heavily impacted Confederate offensive morale at Jonesboro. In their respective Ezra Church battles studies, both Ecelbarger and Earl Hess convincingly mark that battle as the last point during the campaign in which the Confederates were still capable of endangering Union movements through offensive action, and Allison's account of Jonesboro provides no dissuading evidence.

Whatever kind of Confederate victory that was possible at Jonesboro on the 31st would surely have done little to prevent the evacuation of Atlanta. To the north, three Union corps were able to strike the Macon & Western Railroad between East Point and Jonesboro against little to no opposition, in the process establishing practically unassailable blocking positions and tearing up the tracks. In describing this dramatic turn of events, the author contrasts Sherman's hyperactive presence at the front, where he was able to quickly respond to events as they happened, to Hood's static and detached command direction from Atlanta, where he was cut off from accurate information about what was going on to the south.

After the first day of fighting ended at Jonesboro, Lee's Corps was ordered to return to Atlanta, leaving Hardee isolated with only his own corps to continue to hold Jonesboro and protect the army's supply and munitions trains. Now having to also cover the northern approaches to Jonesboro, Hardee deployed his corps in a single, thin L-shaped line, the shorter east-west leg of which extended as far as was possible across the Macon tracks. Allison recounts the fighting on September 1 in great micro-tactical detail. The attack and defense of key sectors of the battlefield, particularly at the 'angle' formed by the elbow in Hardee's L-shaped line and along the far right of the Confederate position astride the railroad, are explored at a depth not found elsewhere. A great multitude of insightful firsthand accounts from both sides pepper the text, and there is even an entire chapter devoted to the assault of a single regiment (the 17th New York). The Fourteenth Corps's attack at the angle, which placed the defenders there under a murderous crossfire, unhinged the Confederate line, although local counterattacks stemmed the breakthrough and restored enough stability until nighttime cover allowed Hardee to safely withdraw his men and trains. Alleged Fourth Corps tardiness in coming up on the Fourteenth Corps's left was blamed by some for Hardee's escape, but the Confederates are also credited for having the foresight to extend their far right flank just enough that it could not be effectively turned by arriving Fourth Corps units until after nightfall. Rough terrain east of the railroad also played a role in hindering rapid Union deployment along that section of the battlefield. In Allison's studied view, Sherman's ill-considered decision to not rush David Stanley's Fourth Corps and John Schofield's Twenty-Third Corps/Army of the Ohio forward at all possible speed earlier in the day, but rather have them continue to wreck rails as they progressed south (only belatedly ordering them to make haste in the afternoon), was primarily responsible for Hardee surviving the September 1 fighting with his corps largely intact.

Regardless of where the credit or blame lies surrounding Hardee's escape, the overall Confederate situation was still far from secure. The success of Sherman's Grand Movement forced the evacuation of Atlanta, which was then occupied by Henry Slocum's Twentieth Corps on September 2. The book follows the course of Slocum's reconnaissance probes that secured Atlanta's surrender, also addressing competing claims in regard to which unit could best lay claim to being the first to enter the city. The biggest remaining question was whether Sherman's army group could finish the job and destroy Hood's scattered forces before they could reunite and cause further mischief. One corps needed to be left at Jonesboro to guard the rear, but Sherman had five corps concentrated for further operations.

As Allison explains, Sherman did little more than test Hardee's fortified defenses north of Lovejoy's Station late on the 2nd. He also directed Schofield to pass around the Confederate right to block the road that Hood would presumably use to reunite his army. However, once he received certain confirmation late in the day that Slocum's men occupied Atlanta, Sherman seemingly lost all remaining desire for continuing the offensive. To Sherman, the big prize of the campaign (Atlanta itself) was already won and any further attacks against entrenched defenders would only result in needless casualties. A.P. Stewart's and Lee's strung out corps were allowed to join Hardee without interference, and the Army of the Tennessee was back together at Lovejoy's late on the 3rd. The merits of Sherman's decision to not go for the killing blow but instead withdraw his armies back to Atlanta for rest and recuperation would be hotly debated ever since.

Jonesboro casualties for both days of the battle are examined separately in the appendix section, which offers extensive breakdowns of losses as well as numerous individual stories of pain and suffering. The last, and most thought-provoking, appendix revisits contemporary finger-pointing and later ink and print warfare surrounding who should be assigned principal blame for Hardee escaping destruction at Jonesboro. The bulk of the text reviews the opinions and writings of the key generals involved in the controversy. In it, Sherman's point of view takes a bit of a battering, and Stanley (so often framed by his contemporaries, especially Sherman, as the battle's scapegoat) emerges from the fray with a strong defense of his conduct. Addressing Sherman's alleged missed opportunity after Jonesboro to defeat Hood's temporarily scattered army in detail, analysis is mostly limited to Army of the Ohio commander John Schofield's pointed critique. The author himself does not adopt a hardened stance toward any single target, nor does he involve commentary from modern historians in the examination of these issues, mostly leaving readers to weigh these matters for themselves.

The state of the book's map coverage is similar to what it was in the previous volume. There is a good situation map of the area between Atlanta and Jonesboro, and a pair of fine maps show the August 31 and September 1 fighting at Jonesboro. The Jonesboro battle maps depict the action at brigade scale. While that doesn't match the regimental-level tactical detail presented in the text, it does at least give the reader a general understanding of the battlefield terrain and relative positions of the formations involved.

In providing a fine, in-depth account of the long-neglected Battle of Jonesboro as well as the follow-on confrontation at Lovejoy's Station, this volume is the first of its kind. More coverage is on the way. Two highly anticipated standalone studies of Jonesboro (one from Earl Hess another from Scott Patchan) are presumably still in the works, and these closing events of the Atlanta Campaign will of course also be examined in due time by David Powell's ongoing series (the third volume of which will be published later this year), so it will be interesting to read and compare everyone's findings when the time comes. In the meantime, it is recommended that every serious student of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign pick up a copy of this groundbreaking two-volume set from David Allison, which is available in hardcover and paperback editions (both very attractively priced).

Review - "Decisions on Western Waters: The Twenty-Seven Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles" by Michael Becker

[Decisions on Western Waters: The Twenty-Seven Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles by Michael D. Becker (University of Tennessee Press, 2026). Softcover, 10 maps, photos, illustrations, driving tour, orders of battle, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xv,142/290. ISBN:979-8-89527-045-5. $24.95]

Naturally enough, the major land campaigns and battles fought in the eastern and western theaters have been the primary focus of University of Tennessee Press's prolific Campaign Decisions in America's Civil War series. However, there has been some shift in direction over the past year and a half or so, with the subject matter of two volumes [Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns (2024) and Decisions of the Red River Campaign (2025)] finally crossing into the Trans-Mississippi theater of operations. Naval orientation is also on the rise, another welcome development. As was the case with Edward Cotham's Galveston book, Michael Becker's Decisions on Western Waters: The Twenty-Seven Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles centers naval and combined operations in its analysis while also departing significantly from the established structural format of addressing only a single, sharply defined campaign. Indeed, Becker's book covers a series of interconnected land and naval operations played out over an extended period of time (1861-64), the unifying theme of which was the bitterly contested strategic struggle for control over the mighty Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Both Cotham and Becker's contributions demonstrate that the format of the series can be adaptable without losing the core elements of its character and identity.

Many readers of this review will already be familiar with the series and its structure, at the center of which is the concept of the "critical decision." For those new to the series, critical decisions, as distinct from mere important decisions, not only have major consequences in their own right but possess the key added feature of substantially shaping those decisions and events that follow it over the course of the rest of the campaign and beyond. For each critical decision, identification and analysis unfolds in the following sequence: Situation, Options, Decision, and Result(s)/Impact. Situation describes a particular state of politico-military affairs (categorized as strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, personnel related, or logistical in nature) at a moment pivotal enough to prompt a critical decision. That decision framework provides readers with the background context necessary to recognize and evaluate the Options (two or more in number) available to the decision-maker. The historical Decision selected from those options by a critical decision-maker is then briefly described. The ensuing Result(s)/Impact section recounts what happened and outlines the ways in which the decision's outcome shaped the historical events that followed. An Alternative Decision/Scenario section is optional for contributors (some go deep into alternate history conjecture while others omit it altogether). In this case, Becker ventures into that territory selectively.

Each of the six categories of critical decisions are represented at least twice in Becker's analysis. While operational and tactical decisions comprise the majority, their sources (both military and civilian leaders) and categorical diversity are emblematic of the range of key actors and factors involved with the initial conception, support, and conduct of Civil War military campaigns. The expansive time interval and geographical space involved with the events of this particular volume are uniquely broad, but the author is up to the challenge when it comes to connecting the decisions in coherent fashion.

The twenty-seven critical decisions involved in securing control over the key waterways of the inland West are organized into four chapters by year: 1861 (9 decisions), 1862 (14), 1863 (2), and 1864 (2). That the great majority are concentrated in the first two years of the war really highlights the exemplary foresight, urgency, determination, and flexibility of Union planners, who built a vast squadron of river gunboats of various types from scratch and quickly put them to highly effective use without any prior experience in the areas of design and tactics from earlier wars. The great rapidity with which that process occurred denied their much more resource-strapped and disorganized Confederate opponents the breathing space needed to coordinate an effective response. The result was that squadron-scale Confederate naval resistance on the western rivers was effectively destroyed by mid-1862. In terms of assessing the campaign to control the western waterways, it might be argued that there were no more critical decisions to had after Vicksburg and Port Hudson were both secured by Union forces in July 1863, but the Red River Campaign of the following spring placed a large proportion of Mississippi River Squadron capital ships at great risk, making Becker's two 1864 decisions (both related to that campaign) worthy of consideration. Nevertheless, even if the entire Union naval contingent was lost it is difficult to imagine the Confederates gaining the capacity to seriously threaten Union control of Mississippi River navigation at that late stage of the war.

Becker's discussion demonstrates strong awareness and appreciation of recent contributions to the literature. His presentation and analysis of critical 1861-62 Confederate decision-making aligns closely with the mistakes and challenges so astutely identified and examined in Neil Chatelain's insightful 2020 study Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865. Among these were inefficient resource allocation, dispersal of effort through debilitating competition over scarce resources, strategic indecision, and lack of unified command. Becker usefully reminds us that, at one point, five different civilian and governmental entities had jurisdiction over fighting vessels in the region, and the single professional naval officer given the most authority, George Hollins, was relieved of command at the worst possible moment. As the author outlines in the book, all of those factors impacted critical decision-making in ways that directly contributed to epic disaster for the Confederate defense of the Upper and Lower Mississippi River Valley during the early war period. In similar vein, the critical decision involving staff officer Lewis B. Parsons's reorganization of theater transportation resources demonstrates keen appreciation of the recent literature's assessment of Union rail and river logistics.

Books of this type are always going to have a subjective element to them. Some readers will point toward possible omissions or differ with the author in identifying certain decisions as being truly critical. One of the latter might be the decision surrounding Union construction of a mortar boat flotilla for shore bombardment. While these vessels were deployed during a number of important ship vs. shore actions fought along the Mississippi River Valley, it would be difficult to maintain that they had a critical impact on any of them. In the area of possible omissions, Becker makes strong cases for designating a number of naval administration matters as critical decisions, but one might also suggest that promoting David Dixon Porter to command the new Mississippi River Squadron was a critical personnel related decision. Compatible personalities mattered a very great deal when any and all naval assistance provided to army operations had to be framed as an interservice request. The personal and professional harmony that existed between Porter's navy and Grant and Sherman's army was instrumental to Union victory on a multitude of occasions, not least of which during the very difficult Vicksburg Campaign. In terms of actual complaints, the Decision and Results/Impact sections of some situations draw significant elements from more than one Option choice, which is a practice not typical of the series. Given that that pops up most often in situations with option numbers as high as four and five, option consolidation would have been one way to address that occasional source of confusion.

A major feature of every book in the series is the driving tour appendix tied to the main text's critical decision analysis. This is achieved through a combination of additional support text from the author and focused excerpts from official reports and military communications. As one might imagine, Becker's task was an especially challenging one given the vast size of the Mississippi River Valley area of operations. Even with careful organization, the twelve tour stops between Cairo, Illinois and Bailey's Dam on the Red River in Louisiana take the user on a journey of 1,300 miles! The appendix section also contains vessel orders of battle for each of the major actions discussed in the text.

A novel variation on the typical subject matter of the Campaign Decisions in America's Civil War series, Michael Becker's Decisions on Western Waters successfully applies the critical decision analysis structure to one of the war's longest running and most geographically extensive military contests, effectively framing the opening of the Mississippi as a single campaign of critical significance. With available land campaigns of major status dwindling in number, it will be interesting to see what other unusual pathways the series might take.

Review - "A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: The Siege of Atlanta, Utoy Creek and The Grand Movement" by David Allison

[A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: The Siege of Atlanta, Utoy Creek and The Grand Movement by David Allison (Author, 2025). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, index. Pages main/total:xxx,300/455. ISBN:9798272419958. $25]

The collective output of 1864 Atlanta Campaign publishing over the past fifteen years or so has managed to achieve, in a remarkably short period of time, a stunning reversal of the rather profound neglect that persisted across preceding decades (the one shining light being Albert Castel's classic 1992 campaign history). Remarkably, just for the July fighting around Atlanta alone, six major studies—two each for the Peach Tree Creek, July 22, and Ezra Church battles—have been produced since 2010. Credited to Gary Ecelbarger, Earl Hess, and Robert Jenkins, all are excellent. What still remains the most overlooked phase of the long campaign, however, is its conclusion. Those events are finally addressed at length for the first time in a two-volume set (available in both hardcover and paperback) from David Allison titled A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign. Encompassing the first thirty days of August 1864, Volume 1 begins with the pressing of Union siege lines forward against Atlanta's inner ring of defenses and ends with General William T. Sherman's army group seizing a bridgehead across Flint River and closing in on the critical Macon & Western Railroad town of Jonesboro.

Allison's detailed descriptive account of the week-long series of events leading up to and including the Battle of Utoy Creek solidly suggests an author possessing intimate knowledge of the ground and strong familiarity with the source material. The ways in which the battlefield terrain and road network west of Atlanta shaped the course and conduct of the fighting between the Union Fourteenth and Twenty-Third Corps and S.D. Lee's Confederate corps are clearly and meaningfully laid out. Variously presented at brigade and regimental scales, the tactical narrative incorporates a vast array of firsthand accounts that really bring to the fore the experiences of the common soldiers and lower-ranking officers that led them. At the higher command level of the discussion, the author also offers a lengthy assessment of the controversy that emerged over Fourteenth Corps commander John Palmer's rank dispute that did much to derail the entire operation. The effect Palmer's obstinate refusal to take orders from Army of the Ohio commander John Schofield (after being directed to do so by Sherman) had on Union opportunities for breakthrough success west of Atlanta remains open for debate, but Allison's analysis supports the view that Palmer's intransigence likely led to hundreds of unnecessary Union casualties. While his actions may have satisfied his sense of personal honor, Palmer's resignation in the middle of an active operation constitutes a major black mark against his otherwise sterling record as one of the Union Army's best-regarded citizen-generals. In the end, Allison's account of the Utoy Creek battle shows that John Bell Hood's Army of the Tennessee, though severely battered by the failed offensive actions of the previous month, remained well capable of defensively thwarting Sherman's methodical extension of the fighting front.

There are some notable flaws. In common with many other self-publishing projects of this scale, text and presentation have some rough edges that an outside editor might have helped smooth over, but the end result is not overly distracting.  A dearth of map coverage marred Allison's otherwise fine 2018 study of the rear area battle at Decatur [site review here]. With inclusion of a pair of good brigade-scale maps of the fighting at Utoy Creek, there is improvement in this volume. At a larger scale, Sherman's initial progress west of Atlanta is traced using maps borrowed from the atlas to the O.R., but they're usefulness is limited. Unfortunately, map coverage ends entirely with Utoy Creek, leaving the reader with only textual means of tracking the course of the Grand Movement and its final approach to Jonesboro.

A great strength behind Allison's narrative account of these operations is the sheer number of firsthand accounts the author managed to compile through his research. They are extensively integrated into every aspect of the study. Indeed, that class of source material deeply colors and enhances Allison's detailed renderings of the opposing siege lines, the mass bombardment of Atlanta, the large-scale maneuvering west and south of the city, and the battlefield events of the thirty-day period (August 1 to August 30) examined in the book. When the contending armies were on pause during the month, the earthworks constructed by both sides, as well as the sharpshooting and skirmish line raids and sweeps that each side participated in, strongly resembled what was going on far to the east around Petersburg. Personal interactions between Union and Confederate soldiers facing each other across no man's land, including widespread fraternization, is also covered extensively. The scale and intensity of the bombardment of Atlanta, and what it was like to experience it on both ends of the barrel, are also informatively revealed in the text. Many Union rifled batteries fired so many rounds that they wore out their tubes, necessitating replacement guns be sent down from northern factories. Confederate soldiers in the trenches around Atlanta and civilians remaining in the city itself undoubtedly suffered from the physical and psychological effects of the bombardment, but the rain of shells at the same time did not lessen their resolve. Bombardment alone could not break Confederate resistance, and there was no patience for regular siege approaches. That reality, along with the check at Utoy Creek and the failure of Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry raid to do much damage to enemy rail communications, finally convinced Sherman that a more radical approach was needed in order to lever Hood's army out of Atlanta. His answer was the "Grand Movement," a far more ambitious flanking strategy that ultimately proved successful.

For his Grand Movement, Sherman pulled Twentieth Corps back to a series of fortified Chattahoochee River bridgeheads and slid the rest of the army group west and south along a wide-arcing left wheel movement that would position it against, and eventually across, Hood's last remaining rail link below the city. Not displaying his usual brand of aggressiveness, Hood did not directly oppose the five-day march of Sherman's flanking forces, and the question naturally arises as to why he didn't attack while Sherman's army group was in motion. The normal explanation is that Hood, lacking full and timely intelligence (Wheeler's cavalry was off on a long-distance raid against Sherman's own communications), mistakenly assumed that the enemy movement was either the beginnings of a general retreat or, at worst, another raid against Atlanta's rail links. By the time Hood realized that the threat beyond his left was being conducted by Sherman's main body (six full corps), it was too late to intervene. Hood himself cited the many offensive hindrances stemming from the broken nature of the ground west of Atlanta and the enemy's ability (consistently demonstrated at all points prior) to instantly fortify as reasons for not attacking. The possibility that Hood's Army of Tennessee, after the failed attacks on July 20 at Peach Tree Creek, the July 22 Battle of Atlanta, and at Ezra Church on July 28 together produced frightening losses in officers and men, might have simply been spent as an offensive force is curiously not part of the discussion, which is a bit surprising given that both Ecelbarger and Hess make that argument in their excellent Ezra Church books. As Allison describes it, Sherman's movement was planned and executed so skillfully (with the Union corps pressing forward cautiously, refusing flanks and fortifying at every stop along the way) that openings for Hood to counterattack and derail it were hard to come by. However, as August 30 approached, Twenty-Third Corps, the original hub of the wheeling movement and then its entrenched rear guard, found itself separated from the other corps by three miles of ground. In the author's view, this moment, as fleeting as it may have been, was Hood's only real opportunity to strike back. Hood's inability or failure to contest the Grand Movement is addressed in the main text and at even more depth in an appendix, and further critical assessment of Hood's reaction to finding the enemy in force and across his communications will undoubtedly be furnished in Volume 2.

In presenting a wealth of descriptive military and human interest detail on some of the most neglected aspects of one of the war's most momentous campaigns, David Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1 is well worthy of recommendation, certainly sparking more than enough interest to proceed onward to the second volume's coverage of the Battle of Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station, and the fall of Atlanta.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to Volume 3!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review - "The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland" by Sean Chick

[The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland by Sean M. Chick (Casemate, 2025). Softcover, 5 maps, timeline, photos, illustrations, reading list, index. 128 Pages. ISBN:978-1-63624-369-6. $24.95]

The American Civil War titles that are a part of the Casemate Illustrated series offer access to concise and up to date histories of major campaigns and battles that are supplemented by color maps and additional visual aids of all types. The latest installment is Sean Chick's The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland.

Chick, who is in the midst of writing a major multi-volume history of Shiloh, situates the battle within the context of a broad wave of Union offensive operations in the western theater that began in February 1862 and quickly produced major land and water advances through Kentucky and deep into Tennessee. The Confederate attack on the Union encampment around Pittsburg Landing on April 6 is properly presented as a desperate attempt to reverse the profound effects of the unmitigated disasters that befell the South's western defense line over the previous two months.

Conventional thought, in both the popular imagination and among scholars, in regard to the personalities, decisions, and events most central to our understanding of the Shiloh campaign and battle has evolved greatly over time. In his book Rethinking Shiloh: Myth and Memory, Timothy Smith identified what he considers to be three distinct historical schools of thought and an evolving fourth. In their own writings and other forms of public engagement, modern subject matter experts such as Smith, Stacy Allen, and others have directly questioned much of what was commonly thought to be true about Shiloh and have rejected many longstanding lines of interpretation along with a number of equally long-cherished myths. Much of that recent reappraisal is reflected in Chick's sound narrative of events. Thus, Chick, though he certainly appreciates its significance, does not make the Hornet's Nest fighting the central event of his April 6 narrative, nor does he opine that it was Confederate army commander Albert Sidney Johnston untimely death that allowed Grant's army to escape defeat on that day. While Chick does wonder what might have been had another hour of daylight been available, the author generally reinforces the consensus view that the Confederates were by no means on the cusp of achieving victory when Johnston's successor, P.G.T. Beauregard, ordered the army to stand down late in the day. That decision was opposed by some front line commanders at the time and was later criticized by pro-Confederate chroniclers seeking a scapegoat for what they saw as a battlefield defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Chick, who recently authored a Beauregard biography, gives the general a mixed review for this part of his Civil War career. Beauregard's mistakes, such as his ill-conceived initial battle plan and the disorganized state of his command on April 7 (when he was surprised by the timing and strength of the Union counterattack), are duly acknowledged, but the general is also praised for his inspirational battlefield leadership against the combined armies of Grant and Buell before enemy numbers and sheer exhaustion pushed his diminished army to the brink of collapse during the fierce morning fighting on April 7.

In assessing the Union side of things, Chick, as Timothy Smith has similarly argued, finds that Grant's early-war overconfidence displayed at Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh was a personality trait that barely escaped producing disaster (for the general's own career as well as for the forces under his command). In arranging his divisions around Pittsburg Landing, Grant's lack of defensive preparedness is deemed by Chick to have been particularly "inexcusable," but, on the other hand, Grant is complimented for weathering the crisis on April 6 in his typically cool and determined fashion, even leading from the front in ways that he generally avoided later on in the war. Sherman is similarly criticized for his lack of defensive preparation (and for his crude dismissals of clear signs that the enemy was near), but the author highly commends Sherman's handling of his green division on April 6, when it held its ground for several critical hours against superior numbers and inflicted crippling losses on its attackers. In the author's view, the stand of Sherman's division was a key factor in staving off defeat on Day One. In addressing a point that still divides opinion, Chick's interpretation of the role of Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio concludes that those forces didn't "save" Grant's army from defeat or annihilation on April 6. Instead, they should be considered the essential reinforcements without which the outright driving of the enemy from the field on April 7 was an uncertain proposition. The Lew Wallace controversy, which has been addressed in-depth inside several recent books, is treated briefly and in evenhanded fashion.

Overall, Chick does fine work in condensing a big topic into a very limited amount of space. The narrative provides both big-picture analysis and an appropriate degree of small-unit (brigade and regiment) detail. Well-selected passages from participant writings further enrich the text. Battlefield maps (two for each day) are brigade-scale and useful mostly for general orientation. Among the large collection of illustrations are a number of less commonly reproduced ones, and the informational sidebars also focus on lesser-known figures and topics related to the battle.

Sean Chick's The Shiloh Campaign, 1862 is a strong modern overview that should readily appeal to readers seeking their first exposure to the greatest western battle of the early-war period. There's also enough interesting, non-'run of the mill' commentary on personalities and decisions scattered about the text to draw the interest of deeper students of the subject.

Review - "Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863" by Daniel Masters

[Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel A. Masters (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 17 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, orders of battle, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,615/671. ISBN:978-1-61121-712-4. $39.95]

Before now, Civil War readers have had three main options to choose from when it comes to single-volume narrative histories of the winter 1862-63 battle in Middle Tennessee between Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee and William Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland. Each of them, in chronological order those from James Lee McDonough, Peter Cozzens, and Larry Daniel, have served us fairly well up to this point and all are roughly comparable in scale, with the latter two vying for recognition as the best of the trio¹. Still, far surpassing each of those earlier efforts in operational depth and level of tactical detail is Daniel Masters's newly published Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863.

With its bibliographical bounty of newspaper, manuscript, and unit history resources, the research underpinning Masters's study exhibits all the primary source variety and depth one would expect to find in a modern campaign microhistory of this grand a scale. In a fashion that invites favorable comparison to the celebrated work of the Civil War field's most able professional and non-professional military history practitioners (a group that includes consistently reliable authors such as Earl Hess and David Powell), Masters skillfully utilizes the research material at his disposal to weave together a comprehensively authoritative, yet still accessible, account of the Stones River campaign and battle. The lavishly descriptive text contained in every chapter is enriched on a consistent basis through the author's seamless integration of revealing firsthand quotes and passages left behind by participants of all ranks. That interlacement produces a profoundly revealing ground-level exploration of the intensity and character of the fighting at Stones River as well as the human cost that combat left behind.

Along the way, Masters quite evidently has gained a degree of expert knowledge about the contested ground between Nashville and Murfreesboro that few others possess, and that background allows him to thoroughly convey to his readers the ways in which key terrain factored into the course of the battle. The many places upon which the battlefield's unusual topography, in particular the area's numerous densely choked cedar groves and forests as well as its ubiquitous pockets of limestone outcroppings, restricted both fields of fire and maneuvering space for infantry and artillery alike are keenly observed throughout.

David Powell's acclaimed Chickamauga Campaign trilogy offers strong arguments in favor of that great western clash being deemed a three-day (rather than two-day) battle. Given Masters's description of the events of December 30, one might be tempted to similarly add another day of battle to Stones River. Masters himself doesn't quite reach that far, though, with the heading of his chapter relevant to the December 30 fighting labeling those events as "Almost A Battle." In this case, he's probably right in resisting revisionist tendencies.

Regardless, the main Stones River fighting on December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863, those days bookending the battle's interrupted three-day span, has already been documented in strong detail among several works, but Masters embarks on an even deeper dive. His volume is roughly twice the length of its strongest predecessors. Additionally, those with a particular interest in gaining more information about the movements and events leading up to the beginning of the Battle of Stones River should find themselves well satisfied with Masters's expansive pre-battle operational history, which comprises well over a third of the book's content. Indeed, it is fast approaching page 250 before the Confederate army's December 31 dawn attack on the Union right is finally launched.

The clashes between infantry are front and center, but the battle narrative also devotes an appropriate degree of attention to the support arms. Masters's text clearly shows where and how Union qualitative and quantitative superiority in artillery deployed on the defensive proved critical in helping slow and ultimately stop the massive series of Confederate assaults against the Union right and center on December 31. The Union long arm also proved instrumental in shattering the subsequent January 2 Confederate attack initiated on the east side of Stones River. On the other hand, as it would throughout much of the war, the Army of Tennessee's artillery arm, saddled with a high proportion of antiquated smoothbore tubes, struggled at Stones River to both adequately support their infantry comrades on the tactical offensive and deliver effective counterbattery fire. With batteries assigned individually to brigades, organization also played a part in hindering concentration of fire.

A comprehensive description and analysis of the mounted forces of both sides and what part they played in this campaign already exists², and Masters's own interpretation is more supportive than not of historian Dennis Belcher's central findings. Both authors credit General Rosecrans for effectively reorganizing and bolstering the Union cavalry in his department prior to the campaign, though that prodigious effort was far from complete by the time Stones River was fought. Both writers rate David Stanley's appointment as cavalry chief to be a faultless executive decision matching man with moment. Belcher and Masters are also on the same page when it comes to the cavalry not being assigned primary blame for the intelligence failures and/or miscommunication on the Confederate right on December 31, a situation that hampered timely reshuffling of forces between the wings of the army separated by the river. Unlike Belcher, Masters does not weigh in heavily on the matter of whether Joseph Wheeler's cavalry, instead of raiding the wagon trains of Rosecrans's army to mixed results, might have been better utilized in the role of providing direct tactical support to the December 31 Confederate attacks on the exposed Union right.

If anything can be criticized about the book's presentation, which is stellar overall, it is the uncomfortable gaps that exist in map coverage. Seventeen maps are often a sufficient number for studies of this general type, but within this particular densely detailed campaign and battle narrative (one that's over 600 pages in length) the rate of change in the progression of events that unfold in the text all too frequently outpaces corresponding map coverage. On the other hand, the quality of the cartography itself is first-rate, with the maps having everything one might wish for in both small-unit detail and terrain representation.

Stones River arguably doesn't possess the weight and number of endlessly debated what-if scenarios that other Civil War battles of similar significance provide as speculative fodder for conversation. One such matter that undoubtedly shaped Stones River to some degree or another was the Davis administration's insistence pre-campaign that Carter Stevenson's large infantry division (some 8,000 men) be transferred from Bragg's army in Tennessee to John C. Pemberton's command in Mississippi. Much like what happened earlier at Shiloh and Perryville, at Stones River the ferocity of the initial Confederate assaults shoved their Union opponents across the battlefield (at Stones River, some three miles) but lacked the reserves to break them. An argument can be made that the troops of Stevenson's Division could have added enough additional punch to Bragg's assaults on December 31 to successfully cut across the Nashville Pike and make decisive tactical victory possible, but Masters elects to not weigh in strongly on either side of that debate. In his very brief overview of the matter, he does cite one historian's grave doubts that Bragg possessed the battle management acumen to utilize Stevenson for decisive effect (an argument along similar lines has long been raised in regard to the consequences of the Army of the Potomac's First Corps being withheld from General McClellan on the Peninsula), but the text is not clear as to where on that interpretive spectrum Masters's own views reside.

The Civil War battle historiography is replete with late-day drama surrounding how certain actions and decisions robbed attacking armies of clear opportunities for achieving complete victory . Much of that brand of speculation is unrealistically conceptualized, one of the oldest examples being persistent claims from Confederate partisans that total victory was in their grasp at the end of the first day's fighting at Shiloh (if only General Beauregard had not halted the attack). There is also the other side of the coin, with particular units or individuals hailed as exceptional saviors of their armies during key defensive actions. The ability of the battered Army of the Cumberland to maintain its hold on the Nashville Pike during the waning daylight moments of December 31 has often been represented as a near-run thing. While Masters does title his chapter corresponding to that defining event the "Miracle at the Three-Mile Marker" and singles out the spoiling attack of Bradley's Brigade as providing saving grace to Rosecrans's shaken army, it is at the same time also strongly suggested that the heavy assembly of artillery concentrated along the pike raised significant doubts that the Confederates, nearly fought out by that point in the battle, could have closed the deal. It was along this sector that the absence of Stevenson's Division was most keenly felt. Of course, the numerous Union army defensive stands that preceded it, among them the stout resistance of Philip Sheridan's division in The Cedars and the determined defense of the Round Forest by the brigades of William Hazen and George Wagner, are fully addressed and their significance duly appreciated.

In contrast to the volume's very extensive coverage of pre-battle events, the aftermath of Stones River, including discussion of those factors that went into Bragg's final decision to retreat as well as the retreat itself (Polk's corps to Shelbyville and Hardee's to Manchester), is handled in a single chapter at the end. At several places in the book, the plight of the wounded of each side receives due attention. The casualty levels suffered by both armies at Stones River (some 27% of Bragg's army and 31% of Rosecrans's) were stunning losses by any measure, and Masters cites the literature's standard numbers. He reports no evidence that would suggest the need for major revision of those figures in killed, wounded, and missing, though perhaps with the caveat that the prisoner hauls might have been higher than those typically accepted.

True to its author's name, Hell by the Acre displays mastery of every major element that goes into creation of the best type of modern Civil War campaign and battle history narrative. When it comes to single-volume treatments of Stones River, this study has indisputably become the new standard. With the high-level research and writing skills amply on display here, Masters joins the upper echelon of talented avocational historians who have contributed so much to the Civil War literature over recent decades. Hopefully, we will get even more of this brand of fine work from him in the future³.

Notes:
1- These traditional battle narratives are James Lee McDonough's Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee (1980), Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River (1989), and Larry Daniel's Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict Between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland (2012). In structure and form, Lanny Smith's massive two-volume set [The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: The Union Army (2008) and The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: Army of Tennessee (2010)] is a different animal entirely.
2 - See Dennis Belcher's The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History (2017).
3 - For a collection of the author's short-form writings, visit his regularly updated blog Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles.

Review - "'Digging All Night and Fighting All Day': The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865" by Paul Brueske

["Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiv,243/331. ISBN:978-1-61121-710-0. $32.95]

By the summer of 1864, northern military planners and political leaders had been advocating a combined operation to seize Mobile, one of the South's largest cities and the western theater's most significant remaining blockade-running haven in the Gulf, for nearly two years. Everyone recognized Mobile's strategic importance, but organizing a campaign against it always got derailed by other priorities. When finally underway, Mobile's reduction proceeded in two major phases: (1) the August 1864 sea and land assault that wrested control of Mobile Bay from Confederate naval forces and captured the masonry forts guarding the bay's entrance, and (2) the March-April 1865 operation that drove the Confederates from their eastern shore fortifications and forced the evacuation of the city. One can argue that each of these stages was sufficiently spaced apart from the other to be considered a separate campaign, and no existing scholarship integrates the two into a single study devoting equal detail and attention to the events of 1864 and 1865.

In terms of modern book-length treatments currently available, readers wanting to learn about the August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay commonly consult Chester Hearn's Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War (1993), its content overwhelmingly weighted toward the 1864 campaign, or Jack Friend's West Wind, Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay (2004). Preceded only by Sean Michael O'Brien's scantily detailed Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (2001) and even briefer works from John Waugh and Russell Blount, Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018) provided readers with the first truly satisfactory book-length overview of the land campaign against Mobile. Even then, though, only limited space could be devoted to the campaign's two main actions, the siege of Spanish Fort and the storming of Fort Blakeley. In his new book, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, Brueske is able to offer his full attention to the strongly contested fight over the east bay's southernmost guardian.

Some contend that the results of the 1864 Mobile Bay campaign effectively neutered the city of Mobile's strategic significance, rendering a massive spring campaign against it unnecessary, but Brueske effectively argues that proponents of that view unduly benefit from the advantages of hindsight. In addition to its value as a logistics and communications hub that effectively blocked Union forces from gaining river access into the Alabama interior, Mobile's defenses also housed in early 1865 one of the western theater's few remaining Confederate troop concentrations of any great consequence. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was never again able to conduct army-scale operations after its devastating defeat at Nashville in December 1864, but it was nevertheless the case that powerful sub-units, though reduced in manpower strength, retained combat effectiveness. Some were dispatched east to North Carolina and others south to Mobile. The handful of veteran brigades sent to Mobile formed the backbone of its defense in 1865, and Brueske makes a strong case for the city's enduring military significance during this waning period of the war.

Brueske's deeply researched operational and tactical-level narrative devotes equal attention to the military actions and strategic concerns of both sides. Union land forces during the 1865 Mobile Campaign were led by Major General Edward S. Canby, and strong elements of two army corps (Thirteenth and Sixteenth) were directed against Spanish Fort upon completion of a brief west bay diversion. Canby's men outnumbered the Confederate defenders of Spanish Fort, initially a mixture of garrison troops and Army of Tennessee veterans under Brigadier General Randall Gibson, by roughly eight to one. Many expected Canby to launch an immediate assault, but he elected instead to reduce the fort by siege approaches. After nearly two weeks of progress, Colonel James Geddes's brigade was able to traverse a covered route around and behind the Confederate left that was previously thought impassable to organized forces. His thinning defenses finally unhinged by Geddes's bold action, Gibson withdrew the garrison overnight, escaping under the enemy's noses using a previously built plank causeway to march north to safety. There was little time for Gibson and his men to celebrate their close call, however, as the subsequent storming of Fort Blakeley left too few men overall to attempt a final combined defense of Mobile. The city's remaining garrison, including Gibson's command, withdrew upriver to Meridian, Mississippi and surrendered soon after.

Events of the two-week siege are meticulously recounted in the text and their details visually well represented in the accompanying cartography. All of the elements of offensive and defensive siegecraft honed by both sides during the war were displayed by the Spanish Fort combatants, including controversial use by the Confederates of subterra shells. Brueske credits the veteran presence of Gibson and the stubborn fortitude of his men for dragging out the operation as long as possible. Gibson's Confederates were able to make expert use of the preexisting earthworks and slowed enemy progress through well-timed sorties and effective sharpshooting. The besiegers were initially stymied through lavish expenditures of rifle and artillery ammunition along with naval support fire, but dwindling powder, bullet, and shell stocks eventually forced the Confederates to adopt drastic cutbacks. With Rebel guns increasingly silent in response, Union superiority in manpower and firepower gradually gained ascendancy. After two weeks, the garrison was forced to either surrender or withdraw. As Brueske details in the book, the latter operation was astoundingly successful.

The siege was noteworthy for the Confederate Navy arguably having a greater impact than its more typically dominant Union counterpart. Before ammunition ran short, the heavy guns of the Confederate naval squadron, in particular its pair of partially completed ironclads, was able to successfully hinder the Union advance by providing enfilade fire down the line. Rear areas also came under heavy fire, disrupting Union command and control. Additionally, Confederate vessels were able to ferry men, guns, and supplies into the fort (and out, as necessary) relatively unhindered. On the Union side, Admiral Henry Thatcher struggled to get his ships within range close enough to materially affect events. The east bay's network of distant shoals, water obstructions, and well-placed torpedoes hindered Thatcher's approach toward Spanish Fort and its supporting batteries, and the admiral's insufficient precautions against floating mines contributed to the shallow water sinking of two monitors and a tinclad.

Though respected by his peers, Canby was widely known to be an abundantly cautious general, and many critics (including U.S. Grant then and later) condemned his methodical approach to reducing the east bay forts as not keeping requisite pace with military events developing elsewhere. Nothing in Brueske's study is about significantly elevating Canby's modest historical stature among Union Civil War army commanders, but he does persuasively lead readers to approach Canby by fairly assessing the general's actions within the context of what was known and expected at the time. Canby initially had to overcome challenging weather limitations (ones that his critics consistently overlook), but he also got the job done with relatively low casualties. We can never know for certain whether an all-out assault to open the campaign would have resulted in fewer overall casualties than those accumulated over the two-week siege, but one can certainly take the position that the probability of suffering high casualties against the small but well led, strongly situated, and highly motivated band of Confederate defenders backed by plentiful artillery made an immediate attack not worth the risks involved. At this stage of the war, no apology was needed for employing a methodical approach that minimized casualties.

A very useful compilation of supplemental material is assembled in the volume's extensive appendix section. Found within are detailed army and navy orders of battle for both sides, lists of casualties and naval vessels lost, POW numbers, and an inventory of captured stores. Another appendix traces the postwar journey of the siege's most famous cannon, the Lady Slocomb. Preservation information is also provided as is a brief but interesting look at the history of the old Spanish Fort, its colonial period origins (Spanish versus British) still in dispute.

In addition to providing the Civil War literature with the first full-length account of the siege of Spanish Fort, the strategic arguments presented in Paul Brueske's "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day" (combined with the author's earlier work on the campaign) offer powerful counterpoints to those that maintain that the late timing and slow pacing of the 1865 Mobile Campaign essentially erased its strategic utility within the overall plan to end the war that spring. Highly recommended.

Review - "The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864" by David Powell

[The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 19 maps, photos, footnotes, orders of battle, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,545/623. ISBN:978-1-61121-695-0. $39.95]

Given the vast scale of opposing forces and the high military and political stakes involved in the western theater's central conflict of 1864, full-length standalone coverage of the Atlanta Campaign's many large battles has taken a puzzlingly long time to gather steam. The only military history students more dismayed by a similar degree of longstanding neglect are 1862 Peninsula Campaign enthusiasts! Thankfully, the floodgates are now wide open, and the past decade and a half have been a godsend for those seeking the most cutting edge understanding of the May-September 1864 chain of events between Dalton and Jonesboro. Oddly enough, the new battle histories released during this grand revival, with its multiple major works from prime contributors Gary Ecelbarger, Earl Hess, and Robert Jenkins, have frequently come in pairs. Ecelbarger opened the ball in 2010 with a fine history of the July 22 Battle of Atlanta, and since then there has been another July 22 book, a Kennesaw Mountain battle history, two Ezra Church studies, and a pair of volumes covering the Battle of Peach Tree Creek (with another addressing its lead in) released. Most recently, the controversial "Affair at Cassville" was thoroughly examined in a groundbreaking book published earlier this year¹. Smaller works of various kinds have also been produced in recent times, and additional major works touch upon the campaign through other angles such as biography and field fortifications.

Of course, when it comes to single-volume military histories of the campaign, Albert Castel's 1992 tome Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 still sets the standard. In perhaps the most exciting development to date, David Powell, best known for his monumental multi-volume study of the 1863 Chickamauga Campaign, has been applying the same level of research, descriptive detail, and keenly informed analysis to an 1864 Atlanta Campaign project of unprecedented scale. A hefty five volumes are planned, the first of which, The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864, is the subject of this review.

Studies of this kind routinely begin with descriptive assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of each side's high command leadership and army organization. With knowledge of the personalities involved in the decision-making process, it is clear that no one save U.S. Grant himself was higher on the list than William T. Sherman was when it came to preferred candidates for leading the great western army group. However, from a dispassionate point of view, Powell suggests that George Thomas's record up to that time might have made him the objective (or at the very least safest) choice. There's certainly merit in that. On army group organizational matters, Powell is justifiably critical of the decision to eschew a wholesale, streamlined reorganization of Union forces in favor of simply combining three existing departments, with each field army component being of greatly different size and varying in support apparatus. Beyond that awkward arrangement conferring unnecessary additional layers of command and logistics management upon the army group as a whole, the individual army commanders would also have to attend to their more distant departmental administration duties. Of similarly haphazard organization was the mounted arm of Sherman's army group, which lacked a unified command structure and was unevenly distributed among the three armies. On the Confederate side, there was friction and loss of confidence from the start between Army of the Tennessee commander Joseph E. Johnston and Confederate president Jefferson Davis as neither could agree on an offensive versus defensive stance in the theater. Davis could not understand that his western army simply did not have the transportation resources necessary to conduct offensive operations, and, as expanded upon below, Johnston's overly passive approach to the upcoming campaign offered equally unrealistic prospects for success.

Powell also fully explores the implications of the military maneuvering in North Georgia prior to initiation of the main advance in May. Winter events that preceded the spring offensive are typically glossed over in the Atlanta Campaign literature, but Powell describes them in great detail. While the Union probing advances achieved nothing of tactical significance on the ground, they did confirm the strength of the Confederate forward positions in North Georgia and, much more important, kept Johnston from detaching heavy reinforcements for service in the heart of Mississippi, where forces there were opposing Sherman's Meridian Expedition.

Snake Creek Gap was the earliest of the campaign's great what-ifs, with critics of Army of the Tennessee commander James B. McPherson (including Sherman himself) lamenting the young major general's failure to enter Resaca and destroy the critical rail bridge located nearby. Powell correctly presents the situation as being much more complicated than that, with a lot of blame to go around. First, those who argue that McPherson, an innately cautious personality, could have just waltzed into Resaca are clearly misinformed, as nearly 6,000 Confederate infantry defended the post by the time McPherson's van arrived. Never ordered to grab and hold Resaca, McPherson was directed by Sherman to cut the railroad then safely withdraw to the mouth of the gap and await support. Powell argues strenuously and convincingly that it would not have been in McPherson's nature to exceed his orders nor did he have the troops necessary to simultaneously storm and hold Resaca, guard the army trains well to the rear, and block the several roads between the gap and Resaca that led down from the north into his army's rear. That doesn't leave McPherson entirely off the hook, though. The strongest charges leveled against McPherson in the book, that he did not even attempt to seriously damage the railroad north of Resaca and did not make any kind of effort to employ Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry division forward, are compellingly drawn and supported, even after taking into account the cascading effects of another cavalry general's dilatory absence (to an extent, Kilpatrick had to fill in for Theophilus Garrard's late-arriving division). Generally speaking, McPherson and Sherman were both guilty of not positioning the available cavalry to the best effect, with the former taking his cues from the latter. In Powell's final estimation of what most went wrong on the Union side, Sherman erred greatly in not providing his and Grant's beloved protege with enough troops to ensure the assigned task could be completed and the unexpected dealt with, and orders for Joseph Hooker's Twentieth Corps to join McPherson were a day late.

On the other side of the equation, it has been alleged that Joe Johnston was surprised by the presence of McPherson's army at Snake Creek Gap and even that the Confederate commander was unconscionably unaware of the gap's existence. Powell forcibly demolishes any support for the latter claim, but he does justifiably contend that Johnston was indeed unduly surprised by Union passage through Snake Creek Gap and that the blame for it must go to both Joseph Wheeler and Johnston himself for failing to occupy the gap. As Powell keenly observes, Wheeler heavily overcommitted his forces to the Dalton front and Johnston, who devoted his mental energies to the defenses of Dalton and Rome while also personally directing some of his army's cavalry affairs, was similarly neglectful in his duty toward the security of the Snake Creek Gap approach to Resaca.

As he always does, Powell combines operational and tactical narrative seamlessly, his style of presentation and detail-levels more than satisfactory in both areas. Of course, the amount of micro-tactical discussion in this hybrid study can't match that found in a standalone battle tome, but there is more than enough of it selectively reserved for the most momentous events. The Snake Creek Gap, Resaca, and Lay's Ferry sequence receives the most consistently detailed treatment, which is important as the Battle of Resaca has never really received the full attention that it deserves, the previously standard history being Philip Secrist's slim volume². Along the way reminding us that Resaca produced more than 8,000 casualties, Powell's intricate account restores its status as a major battle of considerable import. Indeed, the amount of fine detail lavished upon Resaca in the book bodes well for hopes that future volumes in Powell's series will provide the same reader rewards when it comes to other big clashes similarly awaiting their own turn amid the current sharp upsurge in Atlanta Campaign battle history publishing.

Powell interrupts his discussion of the final stages of the Resaca fighting with a concise yet highly revealing summary of Sherman's logistical preparations for the campaign. In that chapter, Powell effectively explains the pathway through which those talented logistical planners and managers (with immense resources at their disposal) made possible the army group's ability to cut loose from the railroad and achieve wide sweeping maneuvers across rugged, barren geography in ways that its opponent could not match. However, that is not to say that Union superiority in wide maneuver left Johnston bereft of opportunities of his own. It is common enough for critics to point out Johnston's repeated failure to use his central position astride the railroad to mass local superiority against some portion of Sherman's host, which tended to advance on a broad front leaving its river-crossing spearheads vulnerable on occasion to getting caught mid-stream. In addressing this particular phase of the campaign, Powell certainly agrees with eminent Army of Tennessee historian Thomas Connelly that the overly defensive Confederate commander missed a golden opportunity to maul McPherson's vanguard near Calhoun.

Powell's handles the "Cassville Affair" in a pair of late chapters. Powell agrees with Robert Jenkins (as previously mentioned, the author of a book fully dedicated to the topic) that Johnston's version of events, as recorded after the war, was faulty and misleading. Powell is also entirely in accord with the most important aspect of the mystery, the fact (grossly underemphasized in nearly all accounts) that, even if John Bell Hood's corps was not distracted by encroaching Union cavalry and attacked as planned from its flanking position on the Confederate right, there was no substantial Union force present there to damage or destroy. In the informed judgment of both writers, Sherman failed to take the offered bait on that sector of the battlefield, and that stroke of fortune essentially rendered the morning phase of the day's controversies immaterial (beyond it being a source of mutual friction within Hood and Johnston's previously harmonious relationship).

The book's 19 maps are a solid number, with only a few gaps in expected coverage. You won't find the kind of all-pervasive, regimental-level map detail found in the most diehard volumes entirely dedicated to single battles, but that quality is present on a selective basis in Powell's book. Generally speaking, the map content matches the scale and level of detail presented in the accompanying text.

Though President Davis himself, who repeatedly urged Johnston to take the offensive (and, once he did, would be reinforced), possessed an unrealistic perspective on the capabilities of the western Confederacy's principal field army, Johnston proved equally incapable of coming up with a viable alternative strategy for the campaign. As Powell's account of the first weeks in May clearly shows, that did not change as the campaign progressed through its earliest stages. Erroneously maintaining that his army was outnumbered two to one, Johnston completely ceded the initiative to Sherman, believing his only two options were to either take up a strong defensive position (and hope Sherman would attack it head on) or wait for Sherman to commit a gross blunder that could then be exploited by a devastating counterstroke. It was a strategy entirely dependent upon best wishes. As Powell and others have pointed out, the overall disparity in numbers was never as grave as Johnston liked to proclaim, and at one point Sherman held only a roughly 9:8 edge in manpower. Simply hoping that his opponent would pull a Burnside at Fredericksburg was no plan at all, and, as the opening weeks of the campaign clearly demonstrated, Johnston was not audacious enough or flexible enough to take advantage of openings given him nor was he informed as well as he should have been about either the landscape around him or the positions of the opposing chess pieces on it³. Johnston and cavalry chief Wheeler were also no Lee and Stuart when it came to obtaining and processing intelligence. Johnston ultimately electing to retreat whenever and wherever confronted with a difficult operational dilemma would form a running pattern of command behavior first established during the period covered in this book. It was a self-defeating pattern set by Johnston that failed to pay its supposed attritional dividends, further emboldened his Union opponents, demoralized his own army, and eroded already shaky confidence in his leadership.

In The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864, David Powell's ambitious pentalogy has gotten off to a rousing and fully satisfying start. On to Volume 2!

Additional Notes:
1 - Students of the Atlanta Campaign are fortunate that the quality matches the quantity of these battle studies. In chronological order of release (with links to CWBA reviews posted at the time):
• The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta (2010) by Gary Ecelbarger.
• Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign (2013) by Earl Hess.
• The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Sortie, July 20, 1864 (2014) by Robert Jenkins.
• To the Gates of Atlanta: From Kennesaw Mountain to Peach Tree Creek, 1-19 July 1864 (2015) by Jenkins.
• The Battle of Ezra Church and the Struggle for Atlanta (2015) by Hess.
• Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 (2016) by Ecelbarger.
• The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta (2017) by Hess.
• July 22: The Civil War Battle of Atlanta (2023) by Hess.
• The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 (2024) by Jenkins.
2 - Philip Secrist's The Battle of Resaca: Atlanta Campaign, 1864 was originally published in 1998 and reissued in paperback in 2010 (see the site review of the latter edition). The book offers a fine summary of the fighting on May 14 and 15 as well as an interesting discussion of battlefield archaeology at the site.
3 - Indeed, numerous critics condemn Johnston for his apparent lack of knowledge about the terrain and road networks between Dalton and Atlanta beyond a very narrow corridor encompassing both sides of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. It is a point well taken, although, as Powell suggests, it might be a bit overblown.