Review - "Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA" by McCaslin & Stewart

[Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA by Richard B. McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart (Texas State Historical Association, 2025). Paperback, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,119/189. ISBN:978-1-62511-090-9. $29.95]

While upwards of 70,000 men joined Confederate forces during the Civil War, an estimated 2,000 Texans volunteered instead to serve in the Union Army, the majority of those enlisting in the First and Second Texas Cavalry (U.S.). For a variety of reasons, both regiments struggled mightily to fill their ranks to regulation strength, and the First only reached its full complement after the Second was merged into it in September 1864. Though some of its activities are fairly well documented within a number of modern campaign studies, the First Texas Cavalry still lacks a dedicated regimental history of its own. Among prominent Texas Unionist leaders, Edmund J. Davis (the First's colonel and later a brigadier general) is the subject of a 2010 biography by Carl Moneyhon. Another general officer, Andrew Jackson Hamilton, was appointed military governor of Texas by President Lincoln. Authored by John Waller, Hamilton's only book-length biography was published way back in 1968 by Texas Western Press. Another noteworthy Texas Unionist military officer and political figure is Francis Asbury Vaughan. His life, Civil War service, and postwar political career are explored in Richard McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart's biography titled Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA.

The book opens with discussion of Vaughan's early life, and the migratory movements of his extended family are also surveyed, the common emphasis being on southern geographical and cultural roots. When the Civil War broke out, everything in Francis Vaughan's family background suggests that Confederate service was most likely to be in his immediate future, but that did not turn out to be the case. A record of antebellum voting patterns is absent (and it is not revealed in the book, if such information exists, who Francis voted for in the 1860 presidential election), but the slaveholding Vaughan family had a kinship network located across multiple southern states. As historian Charles Grear explains in his book Why Texans Fought in the Civil War (2010), it was that kind of extended geographical family network that bound a great many Texans to the Confederate movement and inspired them to defend not only Texas but other states on the other side of the Mississippi. Most pertinent to Francis were the twenty-one brothers and cousins spread between Texas and Mississippi who joined either state or Confederate units. According to the authors, the Texas branch seemed more lukewarm toward the Confederacy than the family's Mississippi branch, but Francis was the only open Unionist among them. Nevertheless, in regard to depth of commitment, excellent recent work from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot on late-war Union recruits usefully reminds us to exercise caution before making too many assumptions about the loyalties and motives of those who weren't early-war volunteers, and the same might be true for the other side. Echoing the views of a great many fellow Southern Unionists, Francis himself described joining the Union Army as a means to "defend our famlys and our homes & our country from the roothless hands of the Rebels who would sink the Country with the honest part of the Community to the deps of Pardision for the sake of establishing an Aristocratic government" (pg. 141).

Vaughan's early-war experiences consisted of a dangerous month-long (July 1862) journey across South Texas and northern Mexico, beginning at his home in Prairie Lea (northeast of Seguin) and ending at Matamoros, his arrival at the Mexican port preparatory to a voyage across the Gulf to New Orleans. Arriving in Union-occupied New Orleans, Vaughan enlisted in the First Texas Cavalry, drilling with the new regiment and getting promoted to Second Lieutenant. All of this is detailed in Vaughan's own account as written in his travel 'memorandum,' which was transcribed from the original document by Stewart and reproduced in this volume's appendix section for readers to peruse. Vaughan's escape from Confederate patrols and his travel group's harrowing experiences in Mexico (where their reception by local authorities was at all times uncertain and potentially life-threatening) are the lengthiest, and arguably most colorful and interesting, part of Vaughan's memorandum. Unfortunately for us, Vaughan's account abruptly ends with his regimental detachment's approach to Galveston by sea in January 1863, everyone onboard initial unaware that the city had been recaptured by the Confederates on New Year's Day. While Vaughan's wartime memorandum comes to a frustratingly early end, it is a precious document given the rarity of surviving firsthand accounts of any kind from Texas Unionists.

Other sources are brought on board to assist with the volume's chapter-length summary of the remaining war service of Vaughan and his regiment in Louisiana and Texas. Subsequent to the aborted landing at Galveston, members of the First participated in Louisiana operations against Camp Moore and other sites supporting the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson. The regiment also joined other Union forces for the Bayou Teche operation, Sabine Pass, the Fall 1863 Texas Overland Expedition, and Nathaniel Banks's Rio Grande Expedition. During the summer of 1864, the First was consolidated with the Second regiment, and Vaughan was promoted to captain. Remaining active service was largely spent conducting raids in Louisiana and Mississippi before being mustered out in November 1865 while on occupation duty in their home state. It is beyond the scope of McCaslin and Stewart's book to provide more than a brief overview of the First Texas Cavalry's activities, but the quality and extent of that service, along with status as the war's premier Texas Unionist military unit, mark the First as being sorely in need of a full regimental history.

The final two chapters trace Vaughan's postwar years, from Reconstruction through his 1896 passing. Those sections, plus the Afterword, compile an abundance of information regarding Vaughan's family relationships and activities of his descendants. They also fully explore Vaughan's postwar political engagement. For more than two decades, Vaughan was active in Republican Party politics. In addition to being a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, he held elective offices on a local level and secured a number of federal patronage appointments. He was also a lawyer and businessman. As noted in the book, trust and personal regard for Vaughan among his fellow Texans crossed party lines. This is evidenced by his cultivation of business partnerships with ex-Confederates and the fact that, after his death, newspapers across the political spectrum praised Vaughan's character in their eulogies.

With just a few individuals among the Civil War's Texas Unionist military and political leadership grabbing the lion's share of attention, this new biography is a breath of fresh air. While not holding the same lofty military rank or political clout of an Edmund Davis or Andrew Jackson Hamilton, Francis Asbury Vaughan, as documented in the pages of McCaslin and Stewart's Texan in Blue, nevertheless managed to establish a Texas historical footprint significant in its own right.

Review - "From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War" by Patrick Garrow

[From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War by Patrick H. Garrow (University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Hardcover, map, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,221/292. ISBN:978-1-62190-963-7. $75]

A companion volume to his 2020 book Changing Sides: Union Prisoners of War Who Joined the Confederate Army, Patrick Garrow's From Gray to Blue: Galvanized Yankees in the American Civil War strives to both redefine and expand our understanding of the "Galvanized Yankee" phenomenon of altered wartime allegiances. In his Centennial-era study The Galvanized Yankees (1963), author Dee Brown narrowly defined the term as encompassing those captured Confederate soldiers who were recruited into the U.S. Army straight from northern prisoner of war camps. An escape from the deadly health dangers and overall harsh living conditions of the camps was offered to these men in exchange for a defined period of army enlistment that was typically, but not always, served in the frontier West (where the chances of encountering former comrades in battle were minimal). Subsequent scholars and popular history writers alike have accepted and adopted that characterization ever since. However, Garrow sees that longstanding definition as being too restrictive in nature. In this volume, a Galvanized Yankee is any soldier "who first served in the Confederate army and then changed sides and joined the Union army" (pg. x). So added to the POW cohort are those who completed their Confederate term of service and subsequently enlisted in the Union Army as well as those who deserted Confederate service and later wore the blue uniform. In addition to bringing more motivational factors into play, the scale of numbers involved also increases from the thousands into perhaps tens of thousands through Garrow's examination.

Previous research, including Garrow's own, has made it clear that the overwhelming preponderance of Union soldiers who switched sides did so out of sheer desperation born of the miserable living conditions inside overcrowded and under-resourced Confederate POW camps. With northern facilities exhibiting many of the same problems, Confederate prisoners often shared similar motivations. However, Garrow's more expansive definitional approach and his broader research into Union and Confederate service records, regimental histories, pension records, and newspapers move additional motivational factors to the fore. One is money. Without further access to Confederate army pay, which was consistently in arrears and constantly devalued anyway, mid to late-war prisoners, especially those with increasingly destitute families of their own to support, were attracted by the financial prospects of stable pay in U.S. dollars and even enlistment bonuses. Latent unionism (or simply anti-Confederate feelings) among conscripted Confederate soldiers also led many of those individuals to switch sides when the opportunity arose. According to Garrow, perhaps the most significant yet least appreciated factor was the growing sense among many that the Confederate government had broken faith with its volunteer soldiers, in terms of both the direction of the war and promised support for them and their families, and was no longer deserving of loyalty and sacrifice.

After providing brief summaries of the living conditions within the camps that many of these individuals came from and the respective role each camp assumed in the recruitment of Galvanized Yankee units, the book profiles a selection of units that, in part or in whole, were composed of galvanized (or, as others put it, "whitewashed") recruits. These are the Twenty-Third and Sixty-Fifth Illinois, Ahl's Battery (aka First Delaware Heavy Artillery), First Connecticut Cavalry, Third Maryland Cavalry, First Florida Cavalry, Second North Carolina Infantry, Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, and, most significantly, the First through Sixth United States Volunteer Infantry. As one comes to realize, this group of unit selections—consisting of company and battalion-sized augmentations to existing northern regiments, new regiments raised locally within Confederate states (the assumption being that sizable numbers of Confederate deserters or those with expired enlistments joined them), and full regiments of former prisoners destined for the western frontier—together paint a strong representative picture of the types of Galvanized Yankee units that existed, their range of duties, and their areas of service. For each, Garrow explores recruitment and organization (with emphasis, of course, on the galvanized elements), outlines a basic demographic profile (state of birth, prewar occupation, etc.) of the recruits, and traces a fairly detailed account of the unit's military service. Also rather heavily emphasized in the unit histories are selections of medical case histories. That information is more anecdotally descriptive than thematic in nature but, to an extent, does speak to the lingering effects of the unhealthy conditions at the camps. Some indication of local civilian reaction to the presence of Galvanized Yankees in their midst is also of interest. For example, given the events of the previous ten years, the intensely negative reaction of Kansas newspapers to having their streets policed for a time by ex-Confederates of the Third USVI is easy to fathom.

There are some research limitations that hindered the author's efforts to dig deeper into the subject and provide the kinds of engaging and informative firsthand accounts that color the more standard Civil War unit histories. Understandably, some otherwise good resources for obtaining Civil War soldier information (such as newspaper obituaries) were reluctant to mention galvanized service. According to Garrow, prisoner accounts from Galvanized Yankees are exceedingly rare, and only a single dairy from one of those individuals (John C. Riggs of the Fifth USVI) is known to exist.

As mentioned above, Dee Brown's The Galvanized Yankees is a classic of the Civil War literature, but it is dated at this point, and Garrow offers some revisionist engagement with Brown in addition to his own study's expanded definition and analysis. As an example, Brown's study claimed that only one officer attached to the six USVI regiments (Capt. John Shanks, Co. I/Sixth USVI) had previously served in the Confederate Army, and it spends an entire chapter on that person's story, but Garrow's research identified more examples from the First, Fourth, and Sixth regiments.

In the end, the question arises as to whether organized units composed of Galvanized Yankees were worth the U.S. government's effort and expense. The record was mixed. Often, the soldiers were not trusted by officers, either those within the unit or those leading regiments that served alongside them in the field. Many of the units profiled in the book suffered from outrageous levels of desertion (as much as 50+%), the combination of that and disease dwarfing actual combat losses far more than was the case with the typical Civil War regiment of either side. What was behind that could be traced to a number of things, one being the three-year enlistment terms of some units organized very late in the war. With leading galvanized units not being necessarily an attractive prospect, officer quality could also be mediocre. Indeed, many of the galvanized units were not seen as reliable enough for front line combat and were relegated to rear area duties. Others did come to be relied upon to carry out important tasks. For example, the Second North Carolina suffered significant losses fighting in the eastern part of the state, and Garrow credits the First Florida Cavalry for becoming a principal stabilizing force in the often chaotic borderland between Florida and Alabama. Ahl's battery, which had a desertion rate far below other galvanized units and lost few men to disease or disability, is rated as the most successful unit in the study, but the gunners also had a comparatively cushy position as Fort Delaware camp guards during the entirety of their 1863-65 term of service. At the end of each unit treatment, Garrow rates the unit as being either successful or unsuccessful. Though a concrete set of criteria for differentiating between successful and unsuccessful galvanized units is not developed, it does seem to be the case that those units operating on the messier fringes of the conflict, where conventional manpower was at its most scarce, are often judged to have been the most successful. Shorter enlistment terms helped, too, particularly with desertion rates. Indeed, it is Garrow's studied opinion that the roles of the USVI soldiers as western frontier security troops and wagon train escorts filled a critical need for the United States at a fraught period of transition.

The postwar lives of a few individuals are profiled in an epilogue to offer readers a sense of the variety of social receptions they experienced upon returning home, but, as Garrow explains, broader analysis is beyond the scope of his study. Undoubtedly, many Galvanized Yankees were ostracized by their home communities and others were accepted depending on circumstances. The author's suggestion that the mass desertion that occurred within the late-war Confederate Army may have, at least to some extent, softened the home population's overall judgment of these men is an interesting point worthy of consideration.

Patrick Garrow's From Gray to Blue significantly widens and deepens our understanding of those Confederate soldiers who decided to switch sides during the Civil War and fight for the Union. While the contributions of Galvanized Yankee units to Union victory were relatively limited in scope, a strong case is made that they nevertheless assumed important military roles at a number of different times and on a variety of fronts.

Review - "Southern Army Units, 1861-1865: A Compilation - Volume 1, Alabama to Mississippi" & "Volume 2, Missouri to Virginia" by Philip Osborne

[Southern Army Units, 1861-1865: A Compilation-Volume 1, Alabama to Mississippi & Southern Army Units, 1861-1865: A Compilation-Volume 2, Missouri to Virginia by Philip J. Osborne (Author, 2025). Softcover, footnotes, bibliography, appendix section. Pages main/total: (V1) x,396/406 & (V2) x,386/396. ISBN: (V1)-9798269241180 & (V2)-9798270767471 $35 ea.]

Even though the Confederate Army was dwarfed in raw size by the Union forces that opposed it, assembling a reliable catalog of its great multitude of components remains a daunting task. The process has had a long history, from Marcus Wright and Claud Estes's rudimentary lists to far more detailed book-length compilations from Joseph Crute and Stewart Sifakis. A number of authoritative single-state volumes that contain much more unit-specific information than what is possible to fit inside general reference guides have been produced as well. Particularly fine examples of those include Jim McGhee's out of print and highly desirable Missouri guide and Art Bergeron's Louisiana volume. We also have access to well-researched army-wide orders of battle from Steven Newton and Dan Fullerton, the former focusing on the critical year of 1864 and the latter the entire conflict. Building upon all of this previous work while conducting his own intensive research is Philip Osborne, the author of a new two-volume record titled Southern Army Units, 1861-1865: A Compilation.

A focused scouring of national and state government archives is a prominent feature of Osborne's primary research. That is supplemented by additional use of manuscript materials as well as published primary and secondary sources. Newspapers from every state, together numbering in the hundreds across both volumes, were also widely utilized by the author.

Within the set's state sections (which are ordered alphabetically), basic Confederate Army units (i.e. infantry and cavalry regiments and battalions, consolidated units, and both light and heavy artillery units) are listed by ascending unit number. Where applicable, miscellaneous and specialized units such as engineers are also grouped together. Each Confederate Army entry includes primary and alternate unit designations, field grade officer lists for the regiments and battalions (and for artillery batteries their captains and lieutenants), and departmental assignments (with date ranges). Many readers will particularly appreciate the close attention paid to battery compositions and, since so many of those changed over time, date ranges. Unit notes are variable in length and content (the information conveyed by some is pretty wide-ranging) and are not intended to be comprehensive service summaries. The most consistent feature is a rough time (month/season and year) of initial organization. Campaign and battle records are not listed. As useful as the previous Crute and Sifakis reference books are, gaps in their work have long been recognized, and Osborne cross-references his own lists with the corresponding reference number from Sifakis's Compendium series (so units lacking that number were among those absent from Sifakis's books). Indicated by "(A)" in Osborne's listings are those field grade officers also found in Bruce Allardice's Confederate Colonels.

Titling these volumes "Southern Army Units" rather than "Confederate Army Units" was by design, the intention being to apply equal emphasis to state and Confederate units. The comprehensiveness of this broader approach is unprecedented. Previous guides have offered only limited state unit coverage, but Osborne's set truly takes it to another level. State and local entities of all designations, including the plethora of state militia, state army, state guard, state line, home guard, local defense, minute men, and 'old men and young boys' reserves infantry, cavalry, and artillery units, appear in Osborne's guide. Paper units never fielded and temporary formations of very short duration, Mississippi's 60-Day "Army of 10,000" being associated with the latter group, are also dutifully referenced. Post-secession state armies (before they were incorporated into the Provisional Army of the Confederate States) are added, too. All of this pushes the number of units listed in Osborne's two books into the thousands. Unlike the Confederate Army sections, the portions of both volumes that are devoted to state units are widely footnoted and occasionally arrange units within higher organization tables. The author's prodigious newspaper research proved particularly useful in finding key information about these more obscure state units.

This two-volume set is not intended to be the be all, end all reference tool of its type (Osborne himself modestly describes their content as a "starting point" for users), and anything of this scale will have errors and omissions of its own, but there are more than enough new and enhanced features in it to produce unquestioned value when measured against what else is available. Authoring even the most ambitious reference books can seem like a thankless task, and (as was the case here) even finding an outfit willing to publish it can prove to be a disheartening quest. With the added challenge of doing all this while being based in the U.K., author Philip Osborne deserves a lot of credit for the dedication of his research and for his long-term perseverance, even if it ultimately meant channeling all of that considerable labor into, in all likelihood, the audience-limiting route of self-publishing. Southern Army Units, 1861-1865: A Compilation merits a place in any Civil War reference library, and hopefully this review can help get the word out.

Review - "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" by Lesley Gordon

[Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Softcover, 3 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,284/327. ISBN:978-1-108-72919-2. $29.99]

Organized in 1861 when volunteerism across the country was at fever pitch, the Union's 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" and the Confederacy's 2nd Texas, both infantry regiments led by officers of promise and boasting their section's best soldier material, went to war with full anticipation of producing bravery in action and battlefield success. Instead, both regiments were routed in their first battle, the New Yorkers on July 21, 1861 at Manassas and the Texans on April 7, 1862 at Shiloh. The substance of their controversial first performances in the field and fallout from sustained recriminations that followed are the subject of Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.

At first blush, it appeared that the Fire Zouaves were destined for Civil War battlefield laurels that would fully justify the public acclaim granted them before they even fired a shot in anger. The regiment was led by the most celebrated militia officer in the country, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, who was master of the "Zouave drill" that swept popular culture across the nation during the years leading up to the conflict. The regiment's rank and file consisted of New York City firemen, renowned for their physical prowess and willingness to rush headlong into danger, and the junior officers were largely Ellsworth acolytes. Additionally, the regiment was backed by the country's largest city, its most powerful state, and the greatest newspaper circulation on the continent. Instead of glory, though, tragedy and disaster was the fate of both commander and unit. Ellsworth exposed himself recklessly and was killed by an angry civilian, and the regiment crumbled during its very first battle. After the defeat, months of relentless public censure finished off the unit that began its service with such high hopes and expectations.

The reasons behind the regiment's ultimate fragility are many, and Gordon explores them all convincingly. Like other 90-Day regiments, the 11th was rushed into service without the benefit of extensive training and drill time that later waves of volunteers would be accorded. At the top, Ellsworth himself could be resistant to subordination and was very impulsive in nature, undisciplined personal characteristics that would get him killed in the infamous off-the-battlefield incident in Alexandria. His demise sparked a top-down leadership shakeup that undoubtedly weakened cohesion within a regiment already possessing a reputation for unruliness. Ellsworth's successor was well respected by the men, but he immediately set out to abandon the Zouave drill and distinctive uniform in favor of army standardization, and many junior officers associated with Ellsworth left the regiment in the wake of their idol's death. Though the true proportion of regimental troublemakers is impossible to estimate (the claims varied wildly among critics and supporters), it seems clear that enough resisted their officers' attempts to instill military discipline for the regiment as a whole to gain an unenviable reputation for misbehavior, which included various forms of mistreatment against civilians. Compounding discipline-related unrest in the ranks were widespread complaints about absent pay, lack of supplies, and deficiencies in clothing and weapons.

Gordon's narrative, which unfolds in two parts (one for each regiment), is less about reconsidering the available evidence in order to comprehensively reconstruct the most accurate and detailed picture possible of the battlefield experience (indeed that type of coverage for both regiments is rather brief) and more concerned with the contemporary perceptions of expectation and reality that shaped each unit's fate. For the Zouaves, initial post-battle newspaper reports were positive, and the unit's high casualties were deemed by many to have been sufficient demonstration of their bravery, but those favorable views were quickly challenged by subsequent editorials alleging battlefield misbehavior and cowardice. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, many Zouaves deserted and hundreds more took French leave, that widespread abandonment of duty only adding fuel to the fire. Then came the scathing official after-action reports from superior officers and nearby unit commanders that singled out the 11th for not properly supporting their comrades on the battlefield and breaking without rallying. Joint Committee interviews conducted later further fanned the flames of public anger and dismay. The regiment did have defenders in the press, but the relentless newspaper and letter campaigns attacking the character of the officers and men of the 11th certainly contributed to the demoralization that hindered restoration efforts. Unfortunately, all too many common soldiers (more disillusioned by the experience than motivated to prove their critics wrong) continued to resist adaptation to military life, and many officers lost faith and resigned. Several attempts (which stretched into 1862 and even beyond) to reorganize the broken regiment for redemptive service were launched, but all failed in the end. Ultimately, Gordon is in accord with contemporary military and civilian critics in suggesting that the 11th had plenty of individuals capable of bravery but was undone by the general incapability of channeling that ardor through discipline. Of course, many Civil War regiments faltered early on in their careers before going on to forge distinguished records, but it seems clear from Gordon's presentation that the relentlessly public nature of the critical lens through which the 11th, as perhaps the early war's most famous Union regiment, was scrutinized and journalistically flogged for months on end after Manassas greatly (perhaps decisively) hindered the unit's recovery, reorganization, and quest for redemption.

In marked contrast to the 11th New York, the 2nd Texas was afforded plenty of time to organize and drill in its home state before the onset of active field service. Nevertheless, the regiment suffered from the Confederate Army's logistical limitations and was additionally affected by further privations imposed by the long journey from Texas to Corinth, Mississippi, where the unit finally joined up with General Albert Sidney Johnston's concentrating army. Gordon stresses officer corps turmoil as a troubling omen for the 2nd Texas, but it is perhaps useful to recall that officer infighting and politicking for higher rank was practically part and parcel to the organization of Civil War volunteer regiments. Seeing its first major action of the war at Shiloh, the rookie 2nd performed well during the offensive operations of April 6. The following day, however, the Texans crumbled under heavy enfilade fire from an unexpected direction and were apparently unable to rally as a cohesive unit.

Rumors of cowardly misbehavior under fire on the part of the Texans were subsequently traced to General William J. Hardee and one of his trusted staff officers who claimed that the 2nd also resisted all efforts (including that officer's own) to rally. Unlike the 11th New York, however, the 2nd Texas did have the opportunity to wipe away the stain of failure by replacing it with fresh laurels, which they did earn at Farmington east of Corinth. In defense of themselves, the officers and men of the regiment reminded critics that they had received express authorization from the army high command to add "Shiloh" to the collection of battlefield honors stitched onto their regimental flag. This was cited by their supporters as powerful evidence that the unit's superiors were satisfied with the 2nd's overall performance during the battle.

It was after Second Corinth that the negative Shiloh rumors were solidified in print. While the officers and men of the 2nd Texas believed, at the very minimum, that their costly assault against Battery Robinett at Corinth on October 4, 1862 should have left no doubt as to their bravery and fighting qualities, General Hardee, in a sharp letter to Richmond authorities, doubled down on his earlier claims against the Texans. Gordon offers some possible scenarios behind why Hardee was so determined to single out the Texans over what happened on the second day of Shiloh, but none of those possibilities seems entirely convincing on it own. An unmentioned alternative relates to the common enough (though disreputable) motivation of a high-ranking officer to protect his own reputation at the expense of others. One could argue that Hardee, having been personally involved in placing the regiment in a poor situation and having misrepresented the friendly fire dangers ahead of it, consciously or unconsciously saw highlighting the collapse and pell mell retreat of the Texans as a convenient way of escaping his own culpability for how things turned out on that sector of the battlefield.

After providing further proof of their bravery during the attack at Corinth, the regiment excelled on the defensive during the Vicksburg Campaign, most prominently while holding the 2nd Texas Lunette against heavy assault. After the city's surrender, the 2nd Texas, along with at least three other Trans-Mississippi regiments, refused to reassemble at the Demopolis parole camp, instead returning to their home state. In addition to citing disillusionment with the army as a source of that discontent, the author might also have added long-standing issues Trans-Mississippi Confederates had with Richmond over the central government's neglect of their home region. After some months in limbo over official parole status, the regiment reformed for coastal defense, never again fighting in pitched battle.

Several common themes emerge from the pages of this study. As Gordon outlines in her examination, the clearest lesson to be drawn from the first-battle failures of the 11th New York and 2nd Texas was that bravery, either individually or as collective fighting stock, matters little on the battlefield unless it can be managed by way of thorough military discipline and training and enhanced through strong leadership and experience. On the face of it, that's rather obvious, but it wasn't necessarily a uniform belief or expectation at the time. The book also strongly argues that attempting to draw a line of demarcation between bravery and cowardice creates a false dichotomy, with the truth of the matter nearly always lying somewhere in between those indefinite extremes. It was certainly true of the New Yorkers and the Texans during each regiment's first battle, where a host of different factors (major and minor) combined to make, in one terrible moment during the chaos of combat, "cowards" of both units. That's a common enough Civil War story, the difference being that a great many regiments tainted by initial failure were able to overcome lasting damage to their reputations and fully redeem themselves during subsequent fighting. As Gordon shows, that was not at all the case with the 11th New York and only partially the case with the 2nd Texas, the latter of which continued to struggle with the old charges even after demonstrating incredible bravery during later action. Using two high-profile regiments as examples, Lesley Gordon's Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War offers a fresh and interesting new look into the more unheroic aspects of Civil War service and the dark shadows, sometimes permanent, they often cast.

Review - "The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio: A Civil War History" by Dennis Belcher

[The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio: A Civil War History by Dennis W. Belcher (McFarland, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, OB charts and tables, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,326/389. ISBN:978-1-4766-9232-6. $49.95]

It is generally agreed upon that Union cavalry forces navigated the early Civil War period in an unfavorable position. By traditional understanding, during the first two years of the war federal mounted forces suffered from strategic neglect and widespread inferiority in organization, leadership, quality of horseflesh, and even numbers. However, by dint of great supporting effort both behind the lines and at the fighting front, blue troopers, gradually equipped with superior firepower, an organized remount system, and benefiting from the emergence of a strong stable of experienced and gifted leaders, finally achieved rough parity with their foes by the war's midpoint. With Confederate cavalry worn down by steady attrition in all phases and a failing national war effort overall, the pendulum swung even further during the latter stages of the conflict, and by the end of the war Union cavalry, east and west, reigned supreme. Of course, that arc of progression is an oversimplification, but according to prolific western theater cavalry historian Dennis Belcher it largely holds true for the Union Army of the Ohio's mounted arm, which was composed of units from Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and even Pennsylvania.

Belcher's The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio: A Civil War History represents the first comprehensive treatment of the topic. Given the lack of continuity involved, after all the Army of the Ohio had two distinct lives (1861-62 and 1863-64) and arguably a third iteration, researching the subject and attempting to organize and write a cohesive history of it was a difficult task. As explained by the author, the process was rendered even more challenging by the existence of numerous wide gaps in the available source material.

At its heart, the book is a remarkably thorough organizational and operational history of mounted forces attached directly to the Army of the Ohio (and to a lesser extent the military department as a whole). The sheer breadth of military actions described in the volume, from tiny company-sized skirmishes all the way up to major battles. will impress novice and expert readers alike. Those discussions are not allowed to exist in a vacuum either, as the context of each confrontation, large or small, is typically explored at suitable depth. Documenting the progress of larger campaigns and battles from a cavalry-centric perspective also gives coverage of even the most well-trodden ground a fresh sheen. As was the case with Belcher's sister study of the Army of the Cumberland's cavalry, the narrative is richly supplemented with orders of battle, strength and casualty tables, maps, and illustrations. Inserted into the text at regular intervals, the detailed cavalry order of battle charts in particular are essential aids in piecing together which units were present at a given location and moment in time. Fighting events deemed too small to merit their own discussion in the main text are helpfully compiled into reference tables placed nearby.

As quickly becomes apparent while reading Belcher's narrative, mounted forces attached to the army and department of the Ohio during the early war period generally operated in a dispersed fashion, defensive rather than offensive in stance and reactive rather than proactive in movement. Most regiments were relegated to either rear-area security (guarding important railroad communications against up and coming Confederate raiders such as John Hunt Morgan and Nathan Bedford Forrest) or fulfilling traditional scouting and screening duties at the front. The earliest-formed regiments spent their time primarily in Kentucky and Tennessee, major points of involvement being Wildcat Mountain, Mill Springs, the Army of the Ohio's march on Nashville and to Shiloh, and the "Siege" of Corinth. In addition to those larger and more well-documented events, a host of smaller and more obscure engagements and skirmishes are described in the text. As Belcher relates, results in the field were generally mixed during the balance of 1861 and first half of 1862, but important structural improvements were in the offing.

The book traces the origins of offensive capability in the cavalry to post-Corinth movements of the Army of the Ohio and subsequent developments that led to the belated concentration of mounted regiments into multiple brigades. Critics of the measured pace of Army of the Ohio commander Don Carlos Buell's advance across northern Alabama toward Chattanooga often seem to underappreciate the logistical limitations involved. Incessant Confederate raids against Buell's lines of supply and communication proved to be a major problem. Indeed, Belcher explains that the lack of cavalry, in both numbers and organization, to oppose those rear-area raids played a major part in delaying his march (including a critical two-week halt). Buell repeatedly asked his superiors for more cavalry, but, as Washington responded, there were none to be had from elsewhere. New units would have to be recruited. By the time additional brigades (which would be able to finally go on the offensive against rear area threats to the railroads) could be employed, it was already too late to secure control of the Gateway to the South. Stop-gap measures such as creating mixed-arms brigades (with cavalry providing the mobility and infantry the firepower) and rushing newly raised cavalry regiments into the field without adequate arms and training had predictably mixed, and frequently atrocious, results. As Belcher clearly outlines in the book, 1862 would very much be a critical catch-up year for the mounted forces of the Army of the Ohio.

The book's in-depth coverage of Union mounted operations during the 1862 Kentucky Campaign notes both lingering problems in the cavalry arm and hope for the future. In the end, Belcher credits Buell's newly formed cavalry division with playing a major part in repelling the Confederate advance. Contributions included the capture of an entire Confederate cavalry regiment by McCook's Brigade, a screening of Buell's movements successful enough to keep his Confederate counterpart from correctly divining his intentions, and other noteworthy events. In the lead-up to Perryville and during the climactic battle itself, Gay's Brigade displayed a mixed record, fighting well at the front line but proving negligent in relaying critical intelligence information to the infantry it was supporting. To the south on Lebanon Road, McCook's Brigade led the advance of Crittenden's Corps but was unable to penetrate the enemy screen. On the whole, things were getting better, but further improvements were still necessary. As emerged during the Buell court of inquiry, the cavalry's chain of command was still a confused and internally miscommunicated mess. Nevertheless, as the Army of the Ohio was dissolved with Buell's dismissal and its cavalry folded into the new Army of the Cumberland led by William Rosecrans, the roots of the strong performances of federal cavalry brigades during the Stones River Campaign had their foundation in incremental improvements made over the previous summer and fall.

While the Army of the Ohio was not formally reborn until 1863, the balance of 1862 witnessed a number of operations by Department of the Ohio cavalry, most notably (and as detailed in the book) Carter's Raid into East Tennessee and the Union response to Morgan's Christmas Raid. With the dissolution of the Army of the Ohio, it was left to scattered cavalry units back in Kentucky to guard Rosecrans's rear and combat a new series of Confederate raids into Kentucky and East Tennessee. According to Belcher, sources suggest that at least five provisional brigades were organized during this time and the efficiency displayed by those involved in opposing Morgan's Great Raid of June-July 1863 proved that some strong measure of parity with Confederate cavalry in the West had finally been accomplished. Coincidentally or not, this is the exact same moment in time that the eastern theater Union cavalry proclaimed that it had achieved the same qualitative and moral edge against J.E.B. Stuart's celebrated troopers.

When the new Army of the Ohio finally advanced into East Tennessee in August 1863 and captured Knoxville against little opposition, it was primarily through the cavalry-heavy Twenty-Third Corps. After capturing the city, the cavalry spread out over a large area of occupation, frequently coming into contact with the enemy. In addition to detailing the most important aspect of the mounted arm's contributions to the successful campaign, Belcher provides comprehensive lists of a great many minor actions. By any estimate, the dispersed cavalry of Burnside's army did the lion's share of the fighting in occupied East Tennessee that fall and early winter. During the Confederate attempt to recapture Knoxville, the cavalry also had a large impact on the flow of events. Among other episodes, Belcher details their key role in winning the "race to Campbell's Station" and Colonel William Sanders's stiff rear guard delaying action before Knoxville that cost him his life.

An argument could be made that the Army of the Ohio cavalry's prodigious, but largely behind-the-scenes, labors in East Tennessee rank highest among its many contributions to the Union war effort. In recounting at length numerous engagements of which the cavalry fought front and center, including an abundance of obscure small actions that even many informed students of the Civil War in this region will likely not readily recognize or know only in passing, Belcher builds a strong case that the cavalry of the Army of Ohio performed its best and most valuable service during a highly active six-month period beginning in September 1863. During that time, the cavalry operated at corps strength (nearly 9,000 troopers with even more units added as time went on) over a large geographical area, constantly battling and skirmishing with the enemy under some of the war's most challenging environmental and logistical conditions (so much so that obtaining sufficient remounts was a widespread and persistent problem).

In January 1864, the Army of the Ohio received yet another new commander, General John Schofield, and for the upcoming Atlanta Campaign he would have the controversial George Stoneman as his cavalry chief. When readers think of the role of the Army of the Ohio's cavalry during the Civil War, it is likely that this campaign most often comes to mind. Unfortunately, by a combination of factors (including Sherman's widely documented inability to get the best out of his army group's large mounted forces), the ways in which the campaign unfolded did not display the cavalry's improved performance and stature at their finest. According to Belcher, much of that was due to what happened during General Samuel Sturgis's short tenure as Army of the Ohio cavalry chief, during which longstanding issues went unresolved and there was massive turnover in divisional and brigade leadership. As revealed in the book, the general "disarray" in the cavalry's organization, leadership, and condition extended through the early months of 1864 (when lack of remounts continued to plague the army). All of that left the mounted forces directly attached to the Army of the Ohio poorly prepared for the upcoming rigors of the four-month Atlanta Campaign. While the more disastrous deep raids conducted beyond Atlanta garner much of the attention and largely reflect poorly on the decision-making and priorities of the higher echelons of command (including Sherman, but Stoneman in particular), Belcher convincingly maintains that the veteran regiments continued to operate at a high level, most notably during the earlier stages of the campaign.

Upon the successful conclusion of the Atlanta Campaign, the cavalry's association with the Army of the Ohio ended, but Belcher's narrative continues to follow the noteworthy services of the old regiments through the balance of the war (much of the focus being on the Nashville Campaign). As demonstrated throughout the book, the evolution of the cavalry attached to the Army of the Ohio largely paralleled wider trends and developments across the western theater, the end stage of which was embodied in James Wilson's celebrated lightning campaign through the heart of the Deep South during the waning moments of the war.

The author of a major biography of Union major general David Stanley, an organizational history of the Army of the Cumberland's mounted arm, a unit study of the Chicago Board of Trade battery, and a trio of deep studies detailing cavalry operations during the Stones River, Chickamauga, and Nashville campaigns, Dennis Belcher has quickly become one of the leading authorities on Civil War cavalry in the western theater. Admirably weathering the prodigious challenge of taking an inherently fragmented topic and instilling a coherent order of progression to its history, The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio only enhances Belcher's growing reputation. Highly recommended.

Review - "North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard" by Hatton & Meekins

[North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 2024). Cloth, maps, photos, illustrations, roster, appendix section, index. Pages:xi,468. ISBN:978-0-86526-504-2. $55]

Currently under the auspices of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, the origins of the North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster series stretch all the way back to 1961. As explained on the jacket flap, the project's mission is "to publish a service record for every man who served in a unit raised in North Carolina during the Civil War, and to publish a history of each of these units." With previous entries focused on army and militia units and leaders, the final Confederate volume^*, North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard, awards the nautical service's sailors, marines, and naval station support personnel their just due. The book compiles roster information on roughly 2,450 individuals.

To call the volume's text a supporting narrative to the roster feature does not do justice to its depth and quality. Many aspects of the naval war fought on North Carolina rivers and sounds have been well addressed among numerous specialized manuscripts, scholarly articles, and chapters within broader studies, but editors Katelynn Hatton and Christopher Meekins employ both synthesis and their own primary research to create for this series a remarkably fresh and comprehensive overview of the subject. In fact, no other single-volume study of the Confederate Navy in North Carolina waters approaches the inclusiveness of this one. In it, Hatton and Meekins provide important big picture views and interpretations of events and strategy, but they also explore on a more tactical level an extensive array of squadron-level operations and single-ship actions along with a host of land and seaborne raids of both well known and highly obscure natures.

The text offers in-depth explanations of the many military, economic, and political challenges involved with creating a Confederate naval presence in North Carolina from scratch. The most defining setback to that process was the great success of the Burnside Expedition in seizing strategic points located along the North Carolina coastline. Similar to how the fall of New Orleans in April 1862 dramatically decreased Confederate capacity for building a navy to serve on the western waters, the quick loss of eastern North Carolina, according to the authors, set Confederate naval construction in the area back by at least a year. That was critical lost time that could not be made up. Additionally, outside of Wilmington's preserved facilities, enemy seizure of the rest of the North Carolina coast's shipyards and ports forced new warships to be constructed at ad hoc facilities located some distance upriver, an inescapable liability that limited design possibilities (ex. displacement and draft considerations). So equipment saved from Gosport in Virginia went to the new naval yard at Charlotte, North Carolina and to additional yard facilities for ironclad construction established at places such as Tarboro on the Tar River and Whitehall on the Neuse. In carrying out the region's ironclad program, well-defended Wilmington had it better when it came to industrial potential, but the authorities there labored under similar manpower and resource restrictions.

Indeed, the leadership, strategy, organization, interservice relations, and resource allocation associated with the ironclad construction program in the state is a major focus of attention. In addition to limited availabilities of everything needed (especially skilled labor, powerful steam engines, and iron for armor plating), the naval yards in North Carolina also had to compete with the supply and logistical needs of the army in Virginia for use of the region's overworked rail system. The various naval construction yards also had to compete with each other for pieces of the human and material resource pie, and the dispersal of effort involved in all that greatly extended the project finishing times for every ironclad and exposed the safety of many to ever increasing Union land and naval encroachment. The careers of the CSS North Carolina, Albemarle, Neuse, and Raleigh (along with the particular challenges and problems associated with each of those ironclads) are discussed at some length, as are the fates of others either burned on the stocks to escape capture or destroyed by enemy raiders.

The Confederacy's overall return on investment when it came to its ironclad programs is a hotly debated topic. Some have argued that coordinated defense systems of torpedoes, obstructions, and fortified heavy batteries could have fulfilled the same defensive purposes as ironclad squadrons and at a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, ironclads, even deployed singly, held significant "fleet in being" value, and adoption of purely defensive measures also meant that strategic locations once lost had almost no possibility of being regained without the punching power provided by ironclads. As editors Hatton and Meekins note, aside from the Albemarle's signal contribution to the recapture of Plymouth in 1864, the overall benefits the Confederate war effort gained from use of its North Carolina ironclads (most of which were destroyed or dismantled by their own crews after experiencing relatively little action over the course of their existence) were not in favorable proportion to the sheer amount of scarce financial and material investment poured into their construction. With active ironclad operations being primarily a middle-late war phenomenon in North Carolina, one also really sees the impact of the lost year referenced earlier.

Analysis of the merits and strategic impact of commerce raiding missions based out of North Carolina, specifically those of the Tallahassee and the Chickamauga, is another strong element of the study. The popularly celebrated exploits of those vessels are recounted at some length, but perhaps the most interesting issues raised by the writers surround the animosity that developed between the commerce raiders (and their mission supporters in Richmond) on one side and both local army authorities and blockade runners on the other. At Wilmington, General W.H.C. Whiting believed that the raiders only served to bring more unwanted enemy attention to the port, making his job much more difficult that it already was by 1864-65, and the runners decried being forced to allocate precious anthracite coal from their own limited stocks to the raiding ship bunkers. Accurately or not, complaining blockade runner captains also tied the successes of the cruisers against northern merchant shipping to a tightening of the North Carolina blockade and its heightened dangers to their own ships.

In addition to the differences in strategy espoused by state leaders and the Confederate authorities in Richmond, the book also reveals the interservice divisions that greatly hampered efficiency. Far different from the cooperative spirit so often demonstrated between Union generals and naval officers on the western waterways, so many incidents of serious tensions between the Confederate Army and Navy are cited in the book that it is suggestive of far more than traditional service rivalry and more of a pervasive conflict over authority, objectives, and resources that proved harmful to the general war effort in North Carolina. For example, army-navy relations were so bad for so long at the Wilmington station that an armed standoff developed between the respective commands of General Whiting and Commodore William F. Lynch, the situation only defused after both leaders were ordered to Richmond to explain themselves. Things were better elsewhere, the best example being the triumph at Plymouth, but such occasions of brotherly interservice cooperation tended to be few and far between in North Carolina.

The significant sailor and marine contributions to the land defenses of Fort Fisher and surrounding batteries during both major Union efforts to take them are well outlined in the book; however, as Hatton and Meekins explain, much of the heroics of the rank and file were hampered by the less than stellar Confederate leadership at the top from generals Braxton Bragg and Chase Whiting. As Union land and naval forces gradually overwhelmed the defenses in North Carolina and remaining naval vessels were scuttled, officers and crews were incorporated into land units that served as infantry up in Virginia during the eastern war's final campaign.

As is the case with many reference book projects, visual aids and frills are relatively few here, with just a handful of maps, photographs, and drawings scattered about the volume. There is no bibliography, but the source material is fully documented in the footnotes. In terms of strength and quality of construction, the physical package is built to withstand decades of heavy use. The jacket is lightweight, but gray cloth binding and paper are both of high standards.

It appears that no stone was left unturned in the quest for obtaining roster information. Sources used include "ship muster rolls, newspapers (casualty lists, officer appointments, etc.), Confederate paymaster receipts, North Carolina Governor's Office records, diaries, and personal letters." "Confederate pension records, the dicennial federal censuses (1860-1930), cemetery records, published reminiscences," and previous roster series titles were also consulted (pg. 243). Entries are organized alphabetically, and the most detailed ones offer personal and service-related information such as rank, birth and death dates and locations, burial site identification, enlistment/commission dates, list of appointments/commands (dates, stations, ships, etc.), promotions, transfers, wounding(s)/POW/KIA dates and info (if applicable), and sickness records. Impressed black sailors and naval yard laborers are also included. The C.S. Marine Corps and Charlotte Naval Station rosters are presented separately, as are lists of ships stationed in North Carolina, blockade runners that passed in and out of Wilmington, and other vessels upon which North Carolinians served.

In this first exposure to the North Carolina Civil War roster series, this reviewer has come away roundly impressed by the depth of research and effort that went into both the history and roster features of Volume XXII. The narrative portion alone ranks as one of the best naval histories in the Civil War literature. If the other series installments display the same degree of thorough and authoritative excellence, one is surely left with a truly monumental reference tool for future generations of scholars, genealogists, and topic enthusiasts.

Additional Note:
* - As mentioned in the earlier CWBA Booknotes entry, in fulfillment of the ongoing mission the editors are now working on the Union series, which will "include service records of North Carolinians who served in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps." However, that doesn't automatically mean that the Confederate series is finished for good with the release of Volume XXII, as new information is always being solicited from the public and an addendum is cited as a distinct possibility. If you feel you have any information that might help, follow the series link provided in the review above and you'll find submission requirements and suggestions.

Review - "We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky" by Derrick Lindow

[We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky by Derrick Lindow (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 10 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,209/238. ISBN:978-1-61121-668-4. $32.95]

Though the title choice might seem to suggest a more general survey of the subject, Derrick Lindow's We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky is very specific in its content and focus. It closely follows two budding Confederate officers (Adam Rankin "Stovepipe" Johnson and his principal lieutenant Robert M. Martin) and their activities over an expansive, roughly triangular-shaped area bounded on each side by the Ohio River, the Cumberland River, and the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Seeking to take advantage of the formal protections offered through the Partisan Ranger Act passed by the Confederate Congress in April 1862, Johnson and Martin conducted numerous behind-the-lines raids between June and October 1862, gaining for themselves precious arms, ammunition, supplies, and recruits with each passing success. Their most notorious raid even took them across the Ohio River into Indiana. Impressively, the pair were able to form an entire regiment, which came to be known as the 10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers. With each triumph, however, came a stronger state and federal response. Before too long, western Kentucky became too hot for Johnson's command to handle. Though the 10th was thoroughly defeated in Johnson's absence during its largest fight of that period, at Sutherland's Hill on September 20, 1862, the regiment continued the fight elsewhere in the western theater (thenceforth as conventional cavalry), with Johnson himself eventually promoted to brigadier general.

The hybrid warfare careers that Johnson and Martin embarked upon together were relatively unusual but not entirely unique. Rapid, large-scale Union gains in the West and Trans-Mississippi early on in the conflict seized control of Missouri and Kentucky along with vast sections of Arkansas and Tennessee. Those occupied areas still contained large pockets of potential recruits, both for the Confederacy's conventional armies and for small partisan groups more interested in fighting Union forces near their own homes and communities. In many ways, Johnson and Martin's success in organizing a sizable command deep behind Union lines in Kentucky mirrored what was going on across Missouri during the same period. With Missouri largely denuded of frontline federal forces destined for the downriver campaigns of 1862, Confederate recruitment officers eagerly spread out across the state. One of the most successful in recruiting and organizing large numbers of troops was Colonel Joseph C. Porter, who was able to raise two active regiments in the northeastern part of the state. The immediate problem confronted by Porter and Johnson alike was isolation, as both leaders operated far from any sustainable logistical support. Time needed for proper training was also limited. There was heightened personal danger involved in these undertakings, too, as Union authorities proved more than willing to execute captured recruiting officers, even those that were in uniform and in possession of legitimate Confederate military commissions. As Lindow shows, that risk to life and limb was something always on the minds of Johnson and Martin. In the end, the commands of both Porter and Johnston-Martin felt the enemy's wrath for their temerity, the former even more severely than the latter.

Early on, Johnson experienced the dilemma common to many youthful and aspiring partisan officers, namely how to garner recruits without any lofty community stature or prior record of success. In order to make a big splash one had to have the manpower to do it, but potential recruits were understandably wary of risking their lives by joining unknown and untried leaders. So Johnson and Martin had to start at the bottom, and Lindow traces how they used a series of small raiding successes to build their reputations and their following. When needed, they and their growing band were also able to temporarily blend into the countryside in a similar manner employed by Mosby's Rangers in Virginia.

Lindow performs a signal service to the Civil War's irregular warfare literature by providing deeply informative discussions of a series of lesser-known events at places such as Clarksville and Dover in Tennessee and Madisonville, Uniontown, Owensboro, Geiger's Lake, Ashbyburg, and Sutherland's Mill in Kentucky. Most of those actions still garner little attention in either general or specialized works. A fine book-length history of Johnson's most celebrated, or infamous depending on one's perspective, raid (and the one that gave him his "Stovepipe" moniker) already exists in Ray Mulesky's Thunder from a Clear Sky: Stovepipe Johnson's Confederate Raid on Newburgh, Indiana (review), so Lindow does not attempt to retrace all of those steps. However, he does embark on a detailed study of the federal and state response to the Newburg raid, and the leaders and men of the Indiana Legion figure very prominently in Lindow's overall narrative. The wider counter-guerrilla strategy employed in Kentucky over the length of the war, including specialized units raised for that purpose, is beyond the book's 1862 scope and is only briefly addressed, but a full picture of the coordinated response that was specific to Johnson's activities, and that involved both land and naval forces, is presented in the text.

Unfortunately for the 10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers regiment, Martin, though earnest and personally brave, proved to be a battlefield leader notably inferior to Johnson. That gulf in natural leadership and talent is starkly illustrated in the book's rendering of the batterings experienced in Johnson's absence at Dover and especially at Sutherland's Mill. The book's centerpiece is a unique and thoroughly satisfying account of the Battle of Sutherland's Mill along with the events at Owensboro and Panther's Creek that led up to it.

Civil War militia units hold a very mixed fighting reputation that's richly deserved, and the Indiana Legion [which has one modern history in John Etter's The Indiana Legion: A Civil War Militia (review), a 2006 study based on the author's master's thesis] is most often brought up in the context of its role in opposing John Hunt Morgan's "Great Raid" of 1863. As Etter's did earlier, Lindow's study portrays elements of the Indiana Legion at their finest. At Sutherland's mill, Legion leadership, tactics, and discipline more than made up for their inferior numbers in defeating the Martin-led partisan regiment additionally hampered by deficient arms and more limited ammunition stocks.

As a writer Lindow demonstrates a well-developed eye for assessing terrain, and he skillfully conveys to the reader the many ways in which the ground affected the course of the battle at Sutherland's Hill. He also possesses a gift for writing clear and meticulously drawn tactical narrative that also proves powerfully evocative in places. The key elements behind Union victory and the reasons why the previously successful Confederates were so badly defeated in the end effectively shine through the author's writing. The text is additionally enhanced through strong map coverage and inclusion of a number of modern photographs of the Sutherland's Hill battlefield. All of those visual supplements are immensely helpful given the general obscurity of the topic.

A highly original work, Derrick Lindow's We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in 1862 Western Kentucky presents a fresh and highly detailed picture of a connected series of lesser-known, early-Civil War episodes associated with the irregular conflict within a key Border State. It also provides by far the best and most in-depth coverage of the partisan phase of Adam Johnson's Confederate officer career while also raising renewed awareness and appreciation of the Indiana Legion's major role in securing Union-controlled rear areas on both sides of the Ohio River. This is a highly commendable first effort, and one looks forward to finding out what Lindow might have in store for the future.

Review - "The Old War Horse: The USS Benton on Western Waters, 1853-1865" by Myron Smith

[The Old War Horse: The USS Benton on Western Waters, 1853-1865 by Myron J. Smith, Jr. (McFarland, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,190/264. ISBN:978-1-4766-8689-9. $49.95]

Students of Civil War naval matters associated with the West's most strategically significant inland waterways owe a great deal to Myron Smith and his prodigious body of work. The author of ten volumes published beginning in 2007 that include ship histories, vessel class histories, officer and builder biographies, operational studies, and reference guides, Smith has been remarkably prolific. Though there is considerable overlap among those wide-ranging publications, it's undeniable that the amount and quality of information conveyed inside them about the men, ships, and actions of the Union Brown Water Navy and (to a lesser extent) their western Confederate counterparts are far more than anyone has the right to expect from a single person. The value of the narrative history work is also very considerably enhanced by Smith's willingness to scour libraries and archives for relevant photographs, design drawings, period maps, and popular illustrations, all kinds of which are liberally distributed throughout the pages of his books. With the release of his eleventh title from McFarland Publishing, The Old War Horse: The USS Benton on Western Waters, 1853-1865, Smith is still going strong.

Combining new research with a deep understanding of the existing scholarship (while also building upon his own previous work), Smith's new book effectively allows the Benton's story to freshly shine amid coverage of well-trodden ground. At times the flag vessel of the Mississippi Squadron and operating under a series of commanders, the Benton's role in a number of major waterborne actions—including engagements against Island No. 10, Fort Pillow, Memphis, and Vicksburg's Yazoo and Mississippi river defenses—is recounted in great detail and in stirring fashion. Smith is the author of a standalone CSS Arkansas ship study, and this volume offers further perspective of that flawed ironclad's famous run through and past the Union river fleet. The Benton's role in combating the theater's intractable contraband trade is also discussed, along with the notoriety the ironclad earned by being among the western squadron's premier exploiters of the Navy's cotton prize system. Supplementing the relatively few photos we have of the Benton are a great number of period drawings and illustrations of the vessel in action. Day to day life aboard the Benton is not a major focus of the narrative, though aspects of it such as the effects of leadership changes and the role widespread tropical sickness played in crew health and composition are duly noted.

But the Civil War years comprise only part of Smith's research and writing efforts. While details of the squadron-level naval actions associated with the Benton are familiar to this book's intended reading audience, the ironclad vessel's own origin story, conversion process, and early history are much more likely not. Comparable in depth and insight to the aforementioned Civil War sections (and just as heavily illustrated) are those that explore the Benton's earlier career as the catamaran marine salvage vessel Submarine No. 7. In devoting so much space to the innovative vessel's prewar activities, Smith gifts readers a fascinating view into both the omnipresent dangers inherent to the West's early to mid-nineteenth century riverboat trade and the lucrative business that was built around salvaging lost vessels and their cargoes. Brilliant engineer and inventor James B. Eads, who became one of the Mississippi River Valley's wealthiest salvage company operators, is at the center of an expansive narrative that provides numerous insights into the West's river economy during the antebellum period. Though many of the cutting-edge mechanical features and systems (such as a diving bell and steam-powered winches and cranes) that went into Submarine No. 7 were removed during the warship conversion process, Smith's descriptions of them and how their workings made Eads a rich man in the steamboat salvage business comprise a fascinating side story.

Smith's in-depth discussions of Eads's struggles coordinating the vast material requirements, labor, and financing (all on a time-compressed schedule) that went into the construction of both his purpose-built City Class ironclads and the Benton conversion offer an informative window into the nuts and bolts of the U.S. government's military contracting and procurement processes, which were full of interpersonal, professional, and political-level pitfalls and challenges. Bidding and conflict of interest issues, such as those associated with Eads's success in getting the government to buy his own vessel for the conversion, are addressed as are the independent inspection and valuation procedures devised to help combat the types of fraudulent and/or unethical practices that plagued the army and navy procurement systems.

Following Smith's absorbing point by point explanation of the conversion process itself (with its meaningful insights into key design features) is an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the resulting warship. As Smith reveals, the great size and punching power of the Benton proved to be both asset and limitation. Benton and the City Class ironclads shared unfortunate traits of dangerous vulnerability to plunging fire, plodding maneuverability, and suboptimal motive power, but the Benton, at nearly twice the displacement, was especially deficient in the latter two qualities. Initial tests revealed the Benton to be little better than a floating battery. In its first propulsion configuration, the Benton's insufficient power plant could not make headway against the Mississippi's current, and though it was never replaced it was reconfigured to at least offer passable upriver efficiency. A City Class ironclad could not match the Benton in total armament array, but there were places that those smaller vessels could go with a modicum of safety that the massive Benton could not.

Myron Smith's The Old War Horse is a marvelous history of the USS Benton from birth to dismantlement. For those interested in the practices and technologies involved, the book's lively and informative discussion of the steamboat salvage business is interesting enough to stand on its own. Nevertheless, it is the Civil War coverage that will draw the largest audience. In addition to providing a comprehensive account of the ironclad's warship's western river service, the book offers noteworthy contributions to our knowledge and understanding of a host of people, policies, and events associated on a wider basis with the birth and early history of the Union's Brown Water Navy.

Review - " Artillery of Antietam: The Union and Confederate Batteries at the Battle of Antietam " by James Rosebrock

[Artillery of Antietam: The Union and Confederate Batteries at the Battle of Antietam by James A. Rosebrock (Press of the Antietam Institute, 2023). Hardcover, 28 maps, chapter notes, appendix section, bibliography, index. 442 Pages. ISBN:979-8-218-18099-7. $44.95]

Perhaps more than any other major Civil War battlefield of comparable size, Antietam was made for artillery. With expansive sight lines across vast swaths of the battlefield, rifled artillery (especially the heavier Union guns deployed on the heights across Antietam Creek) had ample opportunity to enfilade defenders, smash counterattacks, and significantly disrupt both lateral enemy redeployments and reinforcements rushing forward. Countless Confederate accounts spoke of their inability to escape the reach of federal guns. The power of the long arm at Antietam was so pronounced that Curt Johnson and Richard Anderson, taking their cue from Confederate artillery battalion colonel S.D. Lee's famous description of the battle, titled their classic study of the subject Artillery Hell. But the terrifying effects of flying solid shot and shell at Antietam weren't all one sided. As detailed most recently, and arguably more vividly than anywhere else in the literature, inside Scott Hartwig's monumental history of the battle, I Dread the Thought of the Place, there were several desperate moments at Antietam when (in the absence of available infantry reserves) scratch concentrations of Confederate artillery were indispensable to holding the line.

Though it has stood as the standard reference work on the subject for decades, it is nevertheless true that Johnson and Anderson's Artillery Hell is quite limited in scope. You certainly can't say that about NPS certified battlefield guide James Rosebrock's Artillery of Antietam: The Union and Confederate Batteries at the Battle of Antietam, which provides military historians and artillery enthusiasts with all the information they could possibly want. Released by the Antietam Institute's publishing arm, this is the artillery companion to 2021's Brigades of Antietam.

According to the foreword, Rosebrock's book examines 135 batteries in total (72 Confederate and 63 Union). However, the volume does not have defined sections for each battery. This might appear odd at first to readers but, upon reflection, is appropriate to the org progression precedent set by its aforementioned infantry and cavalry companion volume edited by Bradley Gottfried. Being the book structure's lowest-level order of battle scale presented in standalone fashion, narrative and data sections are created for Union divisional and corps (unattached and reserve) artillery and, for the Confederates, artillery battalions and army reserve formations. For those seeking information about a single battery of interest, it takes little enough effort to tease that out of the higher order section of the book in which it belongs. The index helps in that regard as well.

Artillery of Antietam is a thick, 8.5" x 11" hardcover with double-column text. In overview fashion, Union corps and Confederate Wing sections summarize artillery organization, engagement, and casualties on the various battlefields (in addition to Antietam and Shepherdstown, the artillery fighting at Harpers Ferry and the South Mountain passes are covered). More intensive examination begins at the divisional artillery, reserve, and battalion levels. In those parts of the book, component batteries are introduced (with battery composition, strength, and loss data provided at the top) and followed throughout the 1862 Maryland Campaign. With information drawn from a large and diverse research body of primary and secondary source materials (all documented in the chapter notes), descriptive text in regard to battlefield positioning and fighting experiences is impressively thorough and vividly enhanced through seamless integration of abundant participant quotes and perspectives. Suitable attention is paid to the battlefield context of each battery's contributions, and the highlights are well summed up in each section's concluding recap.

Grouped together near the front of the book are 28 maps created specifically for this volume. According to the cartographer's note, these are the product of cross-referencing map data from historical maps with modern aerial photography and surface scans. Utilizing that process to both pinpoint period features and assist in brushing out postwar changes, the end result is an 1862 Antietam landscape, presented at a self-described "high level of precision," upon which to place the batteries. The maps are time stamped and also include nearby infantry units for additional context.

Enhancing the main text's already tremendous reference value is a substantial appendix section. It houses full artillery orders of battle for both sides, strength and casualty tables for each battery, armament tables for each battery, and a reproduction of Army of the Potomac artillery chief Henry Hunt's Sept. 12, 1862 order instructing his subordinates how to better manage their commands.

James Rosebrock's Artillery of Antietam is a perfect example of the type of grand-scale reference tome that readers and researchers dream about, but rarely get, for their favorite topics. This is a must-have new addition to every serious Maryland Campaign bookshelf.

Review - " Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest during the Civil War " by James Robbins Jewell

[Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest during the Civil War by James Robbins Jewell (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). Hardcover, 7 maps, photos, figures, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxvi,272/352. ISBN:978-1-4962-3303-5. $45]

For a very long time, the standard published account of the Civil War years in Oregon from a military participant's perspective has been Gunter Barth's All Quiet on the Yamhill: The Civil War in Oregon (1959), the edited diary of Corporal Royal A. Bensell of Co. H, 4th California Volunteer Infantry. Unfortunately, Bensell's experiences of garrison duty in the Willamette Valley from 1862 through 1864, during which no engagements were fought and bored frustration abounded, served to reinforce the false popular notion that little to nothing actually happened in the state during the Civil War (or perhaps even that Oregon produced no regiments of its own). Those seeking the rest of the story had to find it in bits and parts through unpublished academic monographs or within relatively obscure journal articles. Even Scott McArthur's 2012 book The Enemy Never Came: The Civil War in the Pacific Northwest did not venture much outside the Willamette Valley, where the vast majority of Oregon's settler population was concentrated but conflict was rare.

Historian James Robbins Jewell changed all that in 2018 with the publication of his groundbreaking book On Duty in the Pacific Northwest during the Civil War: Correspondence and Reminiscences of the First Oregon Cavalry Regiment (UT Press). In it, Jewell clearly demonstrated that the narrow personal perspectives of Bensell and others represented a very limited picture of a much larger wartime experience that encompassed long marches, extended campaigns, and sharp little skirmishes with native opponents. Happily, Jewell has now followed up that earlier effort with a full-length regimental history titled Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest during the Civil War.

With the outbreak of Civil War sparking the Regular Army's departure from Oregon, it was recognized by all that a state-raised mounted force (at least a regiment) was needed to fill the void and perform important tasks. Those troopers would be tasked with securing posts first established during the Indian troubles of the 1850s, suppressing any pro-Confederate plots that might emerge, and protecting citizens and emigrant trains from attacks by Northern Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone tribes in the east and the Modocs and Klamath Indians to the south. However, raising that kind of force was easier said than done.

With an 1860 census figure below the 60,000 stipulated for statehood, Oregon, which joined the Union as the 33rd state in 1859, was sparsely populated for its size and as isolated as one could get from the seat of war, a challenging combination that Jewell cites as very problematic for recruiting. By contrast, with both native and Confederate threats closer and judged more real by its own leaders and residents, the Mountain West's Colorado Territory successfully raised multiple regiments in 1861-62 from a much smaller population. When it came to actually volunteering, Oregonians were apparently much tougher to convince, but reluctance to serve didn't stop their communities from demanding military protection.

As Jewell recounts, recruiting was slow from the start and did not much improve over time, the result being that the First Oregon Cavalry never came close to reaching a full complement of companies and men (though roughly 900 individuals in total served with the unit over the course of the conflict). The backgrounds and lives of many of these men before, during, and after the war, particularly the field grade and company officers, are explored in the text, though some readers will be disappointed that there is no roster appendix of the kind frequently attached to unit histories of this depth.

During the secession crisis and early stages of the war, Union supporters across the West were concerned with the presence and alleged strength, often vastly overstated, of pro-Confederate secret societies such as the Knights of the Golden Circle. It was widely believed that such groups might take advantage of the military vacuum created by the Regular Army's absence to disrupt or even overthrow loyal state and territorial governments. As the war progressed, "Copperhead" influences were added to the list of individuals and groups believed to be dangerous to Union authority. As mentioned before, the First Oregon Cavalry was tasked with suppressing such activities, though Jewell's research did not uncover the presence of any significant threats along those lines. Opposition that did prove to be real was from the native tribes of the area, particularly the Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone bands that came to be collectively called "Snake" Indians by their settler foes. The wily Chief Paulina was regarded as particularly troublesome to those entering lands claimed by his band of Paiutes.

Several chapters recount in great detail the sequence of yearly 1862-64 summer campaigns conducted by the regiment east of the Cascades and along today's California, Nevada, and Idaho borders with Oregon. During those movements, especially when ground needed to be held for an extended period of time, the troopers of the First Oregon Cavalry received close support from the Washington Territory's own volunteer infantry regiment and later the First Oregon Infantry. Highlighting differences between how those military actions unfolded and how more typical Civil War mounted operations were performed, the unique character of the campaigns, which lasted for many hot and dry months and often crossed hundreds of miles of extremely rugged terrain, is very well expressed in the text. Hampered by home front pressures to hold entire companies back for community defense, advancing columns were small (mostly one or two companies with some additional allied Indian scouts and auxiliaries). Pack encumbrances often limited speed, and the Oregon troopers were only rarely able to bring strength to bear against sizable concentrations of warriors (the largest fight was the McCall engagement of May 18, 1864, an indecisive two-company affair). While the Oregon cavalry, in failing to crush the Snakes, did not achieve all they set out to do during the Civil War years, they did succeed to providing a measure of protection to emigrants and miners. They also managed, albeit only temporarily, to bring Paulina to the negotiating table. As the author suggests, the most that can be said is that the First Oregon played a major part in setting the stage for the ensuing Snake War of 1864-68, a very violent but mostly little-known conflict most extensively recounted in Gregory Michno's 2007 book The Deadliest Indian War in the West.

As Jewell maintains, perhaps the regiment's strongest record of success lay in its key contributions to the economic development of the state as well as that of surrounding areas. The literature exploring this larger western theme is strong, especially that tracing how California Column veterans enhanced the development of the Desert Southwest and accelerated the region's ties to the rest of the westward expanding country. As Jewell reveals, Oregon cavalry troopers, through shielding emigrants, mapping previously unexplored lands, protecting road surveying crews, and marking resources (such as water and minerals) for current use and future exploitation, had much the same impact. A very strong case is made that those achievements, on both state and national levels, represent the unit's most lasting legacy.

The memory of the men and military service of the First Oregon Cavalry languished over the decades following the war. Jewell posits persuasively that a major reason behind that suppression was that the regiment's veterans, proud though they may have been, were reluctant to publicize their own experiences after finding themselves in the midst of battle-hardened Civil War veterans who emigrated to the Far West in droves. Even an editor of the state's most prominent newspaper, the Oregonian, mocked the regiment and its veterans for contributing nothing to the war effort. Transcending such ignorance and correcting its influences, Jewell's pair of works succeed in ensuring that the historical legacy of the First Oregon Cavalry is both understood and appreciated.

Though Jewell does not fully engage with current popular debates over what degree, if any, military operations in the Great Plains, Mountain West, and Far West should be regarded as part of the same conflict fought by Union and Confederate armies far to the east, On Duty in the Pacific Northwest during the Civil War and now Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest during the Civil War both enhance growing recognition of the American Civil War as continent-wide in breadth and scale. In that way, Jewell's scholarship also critically argues that fighting men who died in Oregon were just as much 'Civil War soldiers' as those celebrated for their battlefield heroics as members of the Union armies of the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Potomac. Civil War military history readers should always resolve to venture outside traditional comfort zones every once in a while, and they can certainly do that through the education lessons offered inside James Jewell's highly original and praiseworthy scholarship.