Booknotes: The Last Battleground

New Arrival:
• The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina by Philip Gerard
  (UNC Press, 2019).

During the Sesquicentennial, the Civil War stories of fifty individuals of varying backgrounds were published on a monthly basis in the magazine Our State: Celebrating North Carolina. Their author, UNC-Wilmington creative writing professor Philip Gerard, has now anthologized the articles in book form under the title The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina.

"Distilled" from the original collection, the forty-three chapters comprising The Last Battleground are not narrative biography composed in the traditional format. What the reader will immediately notice is the present tense writing, "reporting the war as if it were happening in the present rather than with settled hindsight--to capture the dreadful suspense of lives caught up in a conflict whose ending had not yet been written."

Another goal of the project was to present the ground-level picture of Civil War North Carolina using the broadest sweep of actors possible. "To understand the long march of events in North Carolina from secession to surrender is to understand the entire Civil War--a personal war waged by Confederates and Unionists, free blacks and the enslaved, farm women and plantation belles, Cherokees and mountaineers, conscripts and volunteers, gentleman officers and poor privates. In the state's complex loyalties, its sprawling and diverse geography, and its dual role as a home front and a battlefield, North Carolina embodies the essence of the whole epic struggle in all its terrible glory."

More: "As Gerard reveals, whatever the grand political causes for war, whatever great battles decided its outcome, and however abstract it might seem to readers a century and a half later, the war was always personal."

Booknotes: The Seventh West Virginia Infantry

New Arrival:
• The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State by David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell (UP of Kansas, 2019).

"Though calling itself “The Bloody Seventh” after only a few minor skirmishes, the Seventh West Virginia Infantry earned its nickname many times over during the course of the Civil War. Fighting in more battles and suffering more losses than any other West Virginia regiment, the unit was the most embattled Union regiment in the most divided state in the war. Its story, as it unfolds in" David Mellott and Mark Snell's The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State, "is a key chapter in the history of West Virginia, the only state created as a direct result of the Civil War. It is also the story of the citizen soldiers, most of them from Appalachia, caught up in the bloodiest conflict in American history."

Though the regiment spent the early months of the war in the western Virginia highlands securing the B&O Railroad and other vital points, it was transferred east to the Army of the Potomac in 1862. It "fought in the major campaigns in the eastern theater, from Winchester, Antietam, and Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg." Integrating military, political, and social history, the study certainly appears to have all the qualities readers expect from better quality modern regimental histories. The Seventh West Virginia Infantry "details strategy, tactics, battles, campaigns, leaders, and the travails of the rank and file. It also examines the circumstances surrounding events, mundane and momentous alike such as the soldiers’ views on the Emancipation Proclamation, West Virginia Statehood, and Lincoln’s re-election."

Along with the rest, a rich portrait of those who fought with the Seventh also emerges from the study. "The product of decades of research, the book uses statistical analysis to profile the Seventh’s soldiers from a socio-economic, military, medical, and personal point of view; even as its authors consult dozens of primary sources, including soldiers’ living descendants, to put a human face on these “sons of the mountains.” The result is a multilayered view, unique in its scope and depth, of a singular Union regiment on and off the Civil War battlefield—its beginnings, its role in the war, and its place in history and memory." This soldier information is sprinkled throughout, but the appendix section is also used for additional data presentation, with an age distribution graph and a trio of pie charts depicting birthplace, occupation categories, and hospitalization stats. Numerous photographs are included along with eleven maps.

Booknotes: Presidents, Battles, and Must-See Civil War Destinations

New Arrival:
• Presidents, Battles, and Must-See Civil War Destinations: Exploring a Kentucky Divided by Cameron M. Ludwick and Blair Thomas Hess (Indiana UP, 2019).

The flu (or some other similarly horrible virus) swept through the CWBA camp last week, and I am still on light recovery duty only, so with feverish brow we'll just continue to get through the growing backlog of Booknotes entries. March was a very busy month.

Over the past few years, Cameron Ludwick and Blair Thomas Hess have teamed up to co-author a number of Kentucky road trip and adventure guides. Their fourth and latest collaboration is Presidents, Battles, and Must-See Civil War Destinations: Exploring a Kentucky Divided. In it, Ludwick and Hess "plot the course for a fun-filled road trip through history and across the Bluegrass State."

More: "Ludwick and Hess make planning a trip to historic Kentucky easy by exploring the history and stories behind each major site and highlighting nearby attractions you won't want to miss. Featuring step-by-step guidelines and exclusive tips on sites, monuments, and attractions from presidential homes to the best modern re-enactments, Presidents, Battles, and Must-See Civil War Destinations helps the whole family experience and enjoy history together."

At around 75 total pages in length it's a slim book with lots of photographs and cheery advice, definitely less hard-core and more family trip fare. Military site selections do cover some lesser-known battles and skirmishes such as Ivy Mountain, Sacramento, and Middle Creek to go along with more expected choices of Perryville, Munfordville, Mill Springs, the occupation of Columbus, and the like.

Booknotes: General Custer, Libbie Custer and Their Dogs

New Arrival:
• General Custer, Libbie Custer and Their Dogs: A Passion for Hounds, from the Civil War to Little Bighorn by Brian Patrick Duggan (McFarland, 2019).

"General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Libbie Custer, were wholehearted dog lovers. At the time of his death at Little Bighorn, they owned a rollicking pack of 40 hunting dogs, including Scottish Deerhounds, Russian Wolfhounds, Greyhounds and Foxhounds." I bet that was popular with the neighbors!

"Told from a dog owner's perspective," Brian Patrick Duggan's General Custer, Libbie Custer and Their Dogs: A Passion for Hounds, from the Civil War to Little Bighorn is a different kind of Custer family biography. Part of the publisher's Dogs in Our World series, the book "covers their first dogs during the Civil War and in Texas; hunting on the Kansas and Dakota frontiers; entertaining tourist buffalo hunters, including a Russian Archduke, English aristocrats and P. T. Barnum (all of whom presented the general with hounds); Custer's attack on the Washita village (when he was accused of strangling his own dogs); and the 7th Cavalry's march to Little Bighorn with an analysis of rumors about a Last Stand dog. The Custers' pack was re-homed after his death in the first national dog rescue effort."

I'm a bit surprised that such a huge book could be crafted from the topic. The volume is well illustrated and includes photographs of the Custers with their animals. The book also has a cultural feature, with an extensive appendix "giving depictions of the Custers' dogs in art, literature and film."

Booknotes: Exposing Slavery

New Arrival:
• Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America by Matthew Fox-Amato (Oxford UP, 2019).

Given how deeply entwined slavery was with American society as a whole, it's not surprising to learn that photographs of slaves started to appear soon after the technology became widely available in the country. "Within a few years of the introduction of photography into the United States in 1839, slaveholders had already begun commissioning photographic portraits of their slaves. Ex-slaves-turned-abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass had come to see how sitting for a portrait could help them project humanity and dignity amidst northern racism. In the first decade of the medium, enslaved people had begun entering southern daguerreotype studios of their own volition, posing for cameras, and leaving with visual treasures they could keep in their pockets. And, as the Civil War raged, Union soldiers would orchestrate pictures with fugitive slaves that envisioned racial hierarchy as slavery fell. 

In these ways and others, from the earliest days of the medium to the first moments of emancipation, photography powerfully influenced how bondage and freedom were documented, imagined, and contested. By 1865, it would be difficult for many Americans to look back upon slavery and its fall without thinking of a photograph." You could say that about a lot of Civil War topics.

Matthew Fox-Amato's Exposing Slavery "explores how photography altered and was, in turn, shaped by conflicts over human bondage. Drawing on an original source base that includes hundreds of unpublished and little-studied photographs of slaves, ex-slaves, free American Americans, and abolitionists as well as written archival materials, it puts visual culture at the center of understanding the experience of late slavery. It assesses how photography helped southerners to defend slavery, enslaved people to shape their social ties, abolitionists to strengthen their movement, and soldiers to pictorially enact interracial society during the Civil War. With diverse goals, these peoples transformed photography from a scientific curiosity into a political tool over only a few decades."

As one would hope for and expect, the volume is heavily illustrated with crisp reproductions of contemporary photographs and images. The thick, glossy paper stock helps readers see the photos to their best effect and gives the comparatively slim book a surprising physical heft to boot.

Booknotes: All Hell Can’t Stop Them

New Arrival:
• All Hell Can’t Stop Them: The Battles for Chattanooga-Missionary Ridge and Ringgold, November 24-27, 1863 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2019).

David Powell's All Hell Can’t Stop Them is the sequel to 2017's Battle Above the Clouds, which covered the Union army's breaking of the Chattanooga siege through the successful conclusion of the Battle of Lookout Mountain. "To many of the Federal soldiers watching the Stars and Stripes unfurl atop Lookout Mountain on the morning of November 25, 1863, it seemed that the battle to relieve Chattanooga was complete. The Union Army of the Cumberland was no longer trapped in the city, subsisting on short rations and awaiting rescue; instead, they were again on the attack."

All Hell Can’t Stop Them recounts Grant's attempt to finish the job. "That blow landed on the afternoon of November 25. Each of Grant’s assembled forces—troops led by Union Generals William T. Sherman, George H. Thomas, and Joseph Hooker—all moved to the attack. Stubbornly, Bragg refused to retreat, and instead accepted battle. That decision would cost him dearly."

"But everything did not go Grant’s way. Despite what Grant’s many admirers would later insist was his most successful, most carefully planned battle, Grant’s strategy failed him—as did his most trusted commander, Sherman. Victory instead charged straight up the seemingly impregnable slopes of Missionary Ridge’s western face, as the men of the much-maligned Army of the Cumberland swarmed up and over Bragg’s defenses in an irresistible blue tide." The account ends with the Confederate rear guard stand at Ringgold Gap, which "held Grant’s Federals at bay and saved the Army of Tennessee from further disaster."

A nice set of maps were commissioned for the book. In addition to a driving tour there are four appendices. The first revisits the enduring controversy surrounding the Union charge up Missionary Ridge, the second looks at Longstreet's East Tennessee campaign, the third examines monument disputes, and the last traces the redeployment of two corps from the Army of the Potomac to reinforce Chattanooga (where they would be redesignated Twentieth Corps).

Booknotes: Illusions of Emancipation

New Arrival:
• Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery by Joseph P. Reidy (UNC Press, 2019).

Joseph Reidy's Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery joins a growing number of studies primarily addressing the complicated and messy "then what?" aspect of emancipation. "As students of the Civil War have long known, emancipation was not merely a product of Lincoln's proclamation or of Confederate defeat in April 1865. It was a process that required more than legal or military action. With enslaved people fully engaged as actors, emancipation necessitated a fundamental reordering of a way of life whose implications stretched well beyond the former slave states. Slavery did not die quietly or quickly, nor did freedom fulfill every dream of the enslaved or their allies." In common with many hard war features of the military conflict, emancipation "unfolded unevenly."

More from the description: "In this sweeping reappraisal of slavery's end during the Civil War era, Joseph P. Reidy employs the lenses of time, space, and individuals' sense of personal and social belonging to understand how participants and witnesses coped with drastic change, its erratic pace, and its unforeseeable consequences. Emancipation disrupted everyday habits, causing sensations of disorientation that sometimes intensified the experience of reality and sometimes muddled it. While these illusions of emancipation often mixed disappointment with hope, through periods of even intense frustration they sustained the promise that the struggle for freedom would result in victory."

Review - "The Army of the Cumberland: Organization, Strength, Casualties, 1862-1865" by Darrell Collins

[The Army of the Cumberland: Organization, Strength, Casualties, 1862-1865 by Darrell L. Collins (McFarland, 2019). Paperback, tables, notes, indexes. 199 pp. ISBN:978-1-4766-7507-7. $49.95]

The Army of the Cumberland: Organization, Strength, Casualties, 1862-1865 is the fourth volume in Darrell Collins's Civil War army order of battle series. With The Army of the Potomac (2013), The Army of Northern Virginia (2015), The Army of Tennessee (2017), and now the Cumberland army all in the books the primary field armies that faced off against each other in the two most important theaters of war have now been covered. Only the Army of the Tennessee remains.

The Army of the Cumberland officially came into being in October 1862 as a larger scale replacement for the early war Department/Army of the Ohio (though the latter was resurrected later), and major elements were added to its ranks throughout its existence. Beginning with the Middle Tennessee campaign leading up to the Union victory at the Battle of Stones River, the Army of the Cumberland was the Union army chiefly responsible for operating along the trans-Appalachian heartland's main axis of war, though to the frustration of its veterans the smaller Army of the Tennessee under Grant overshadowed it in western fame and fighting reputation.

As before, Collins's source material in the Cumberland book is self-limited to the Official Records. General format is also mostly consistent across the series, with the information sectioned off into three main areas—I. Organization, II. Strength, and III. Casualties.

Beginning on November 30, 1861 and concluding on July 8, 1865, Section I traces the organization of the Cumberland army from its aforementioned Army of the Ohio origins through the dissolution of its constituent corps at war's end. Orders of battle are presented in the usual cascading top-down manner, with the army commander at the top and regiments, battalions, batteries, and independent companies at bottom. For any given year, full OBs are provided at varying intervals. For example, the book compiles full departmental OBs on four occasions for 1863 (at the end of June, July, August, and October). This time around, though, the helpful "commander timelines" that afforded readers the opportunity to easily find who was in command of any unit at any given time are not present. This feature was introduced in the previous volume and the dropping of such a useful supplement is disappointing.

The strength tables compiled in Section II begin on February 14, 1862 and end on April 30, 1865. These consist of army present-for-duty (PFD) numbers arranged in eight columns across the page, their headings consisting of unit name, effective officers, effective men, effective total, total present, present and absent, percentage present, and guns. Strength figures are generally presented at brigade level and higher, although some regimental PFD figures are scattered about. In this section, the artillery complements attached to the various higher formations are only expressed in gun totals.

Section III tabulates casualty reports by battle (against mostly at a higher organization level) in seven columns [by unit, number present, KIA, WIA, MIA, total, and casualty percentage]. Battle and operations coverage, in order, include Mill Springs, Shiloh, Corinth siege operations, Perryville, Tullahoma Campaign, Chickamauga, Chattanooga Campaign, Dalton, Atlanta Campaign, March to the Sea, Franklin, Nashville, Averasboro, Bentonville, and the Carolinas Campaign. It is in this section where you'll occasionally find more detailed battery composition information. As is the case in many other sections of the book, the amount of data and information available varies widely among the various subsections. The volume concludes with an O.R. reference list and separate indexes for unit and commander names.

Though one might wish, yet again, that sources beyond the Official Records could have been consulted for corrections and also to help fill in many of the often large informational gaps that exist, consistency does have value of its own at this late stage of the series. Regardless, Collins's data mining of the O.R. has again gifted users with a tremendously useful starting point for deeper exploration. The thankless heavy lifting that went into producing the book's organization, strength, and casualty tables will save other serious investigators countless hours of base research.

Booknotes: Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign

New Arrival:
• Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Larry Peterson (UT Press, 2019).

With previous Command Decisions in America's Civil War series books covering the Stones River, Second Manassas, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga battles, Larry Peterson's Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation will concentrate even more on campaign-level decision making. Though the earlier series entries certainly did address some strategic and operational level decisions leading up to a culminating battle, Atlanta will be the first volume to address the origins and conduct of an entire extended campaign (December 1863 through September 1864) consisting of a series of major battles. Presumably, the upcoming 1862 Kentucky Campaign book, also scheduled for release this year, will be similar in concept.

Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign "introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout that tide-turning summer of 1864. Rather than offering a history of the Atlanta Campaign, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions confronting commanders on both sides of the clash to provide a blueprint of the campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the campaign to progress from a rudimentary sense of the what of warfare, to a mature grasp of why."

Accompanying the decision discussion is an extensive driving tour that follows the series's now well-established format. Supplementing both sections are 34 maps (20 for the main text and 14 modern road maps for the tour). Orders of battle, notes, bibliography, and index round out the volume.

Booknotes: Private Confederacies

New Arrival:
• Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers
  by James J. Broomall (UNC Press, 2019).

James Broomall's Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers asks and attempts to answer the question "How did the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction shape the masculinity of white Confederate veterans?" According to the author, "the crisis of the war forced a reconfiguration of the emotional worlds of the men who took up arms for the South. Raised in an antebellum culture that demanded restraint and shaped white men to embrace self-reliant masculinity, Confederate soldiers lived and fought within military units where they experienced the traumatic strain of combat and its privations together--all the while being separated from suffering families. Military service provoked changes that escalated with the end of slavery and the Confederacy's military defeat. Returning to civilian life, Southern veterans questioned themselves as never before, sometimes suffering from terrible self-doubt." 

That's interesting that Broomall would describe southern antebellum culture as one that "demanded restraint" among its males. Unless I am misunderstanding the context (which is entirely possible as the book is a brand new arrival and obviously unread by me at this point), this determination is contrary to the mountains of modern scholarship that tend to characterize white masculine culture during the period as excessively violent and lacking in restraint.

More from the description: "Drawing on personal letters and diaries, Broomall argues that the crisis of defeat ultimately necessitated new forms of expression between veterans and among men and women. On the one hand, war led men to express levels of emotionality and vulnerability previously assumed the domain of women. On the other hand, these men also embraced a virulent, martial masculinity that they wielded during Reconstruction and beyond to suppress freed peoples and restore white rule through paramilitary organizations and the Ku Klux Klan."

Booknotes: Lost and Buried Treasures of the Civil War

New Arrival:
• Lost and Buried Treasures of the Civil War by W.C. Jameson (Lyons Pr, 2019).

In W.C. Jameson's Lost and Buried Treasures of the Civil War "(t)he most compelling and exciting tales of lost and buried treasures associated with the Civil War have been collected, extensively researched and investigated, and are included in this entertaining book from one of America's foremost treasure hunters. They represent fortunes that have been lost for over one-and-a-half centuries and involve colorful characters from lowly privates up to famous officers, including Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. 

The thirty-one tales in this book provide backstory and pertinent information, are distributed between the Union and Confederate armies, and range from Texas to the Atlantic Cost, from Louisiana to the Canadian border."

Jameson is a professional fortune hunter who was a consultant for the old Unsolved Mysteries show and numerous more recent programs shown on the History network and the Travel Channel. There are a lot of buried treasure myths and legends associated with the Civil War, and the book addresses in a popular-style narrative a selection of both famous and obscure ones.

Confederate Centennial Studies

If you're a frequent browser of eBay offerings, one thing you'll come to expect is a steady appearance of titles from the Confederate Centennial Studies series. Oddly enough I never see them in brick and mortar bookstores, but that could just be a regional thing. The brainchild of William Stanley Hoole, the Confederate Centennial Studies series was published by (Hoole's?) Confederate Publishing Company out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Volumes were steadily released over a decade-long period preceding the end of the Civil War Centennial. The series was reprinted in a limited edition of 750 sets by Broadfoot in 2000, and these must be the ones I most frequently see for sale online. I don't know how many first edition sets were produced.

Below are the 28 titles in no particular order, just a list I found online. Oddly, the Broadfoot set has 28 volumes while Eicher's reference lists only 27 in the first run. I don't know if the latter was a mistake or if Broadfoot added one to the original contingent. If interested you can compare the two lists (this one and the linked one) yourself to find the outlier. It's a pretty impressive range of topics and book categories.

• A TEXAS SURGEON IN THE C.S.A. By John Q. Anderson.
• LOST GENERATION: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JAMES BARLOW, C.S.A. By Merton E. Coulter.
• COLIN J. MCRAE: CONFEDERATE FINANCE AGENT. By Charles S. Davis.
• A VISIT TO THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA IN 1863. Memoir Addressed to His Majesty Napoleon III by Charles Girard.
• CONFEDERATE EXILES IN VENEZUELA. By A. J. Hana and Kathryn Abbey Hanna.
• LEROY POPE WALKER: CONFEDERATE SECRETARY OF WAR. By William C. Harris.
• A CONFEDERATE MARINE: A SKETCH OF LT. HENRY LEA GRAVES. With Excerpts from the Graves Family Correspondence. Ed. by Richard B. Harwell.
• LINCOLN’S PLAN FOR RECONSTRUCTION. By William B. Hesseltine.
• WILLIAM STANLEY HOOLE: Student, Teacher, Librarian, Author. By Martha Dubose Hoole.
• ALABAMA TORIES: THE FIRST ALABAMA CAVALRY, U.S.A., 1862-1865. By William Stanley Hoole.
• LAWLEY COVERS THE CONFEDERACY. By William Stanley Hoole.
• VIZETELLY COVERS THE CONFEDERACY. BY William Stanley Hoole.
• RECONSTRUCTION IN WEST ALABAMA: THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN L. HUNNICUTT. By John L. Huynnicutt and Edited by William Stanley Hoole.
• YANKEES A’COMING. By MARY SHARPE JONES AND MARY JONES MALLARD. Edited by Haskell Monroe.
• THE CONFEDERATE RAMS AT BIRKENHEAD: A CHAPTER IN ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS. By Wilbur Devereux Jones.
• REBELS IN THE MAKING: PLANTERS’ CONVENTIONS AND SOUTHERN PROPAGANDA. By Weymouth T. Jordan.
• THE PEACE CONVENTION OF 1861. By Jesse L. Keene.
• “MY EVER DEAREST FRIEND”: THE LETTERS OF A. DUDLEY MANN TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, 1869-1889. By A. Dudley Mann and Ed. by John Preston Moore.
• SWAMPFOX OF THE CONFEDERACY. By Jay Monaghan.
• HOWELL COBB’S CONFEDERATE CAREER. By Horace Montgomery.
• CONFEDERATE ENGINEERS. By James L. Nichols.
• THE DIPLOMACY OF THE CONFEDERATE CABINET OF RICHMOND AND ITS AGENTS ABROAD. By Paul Pecquet Du Bellet and Edited by William Stanley Hoole.
• SEVEN MONTHS IN THE REBEL STATES DURING THE NORTH AMERICAN WAR OF 1863. By Justus Scheibert.
• CONFEDERATE MORALE AND CHURCH PROPAGANDA. By J. W. Silver.
• THE CRUISE OF C.S.S. SUMTER. By Charles G. Summersell.
• THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF GEORGIANA GHOLSON WALKER, 1862-1865. By Georgiana Gholson Walker.
• THE CONFEDERATE VETERAN. By William W. White.
• THE CONFEDERACY AND ZEB VANCE. By Richard E. Yates.

I don't have any of these in my personal library and am curious to know if any of you out there own the entire set. Feel free to leave a comment about your thoughts on the series as a whole or any volumes you value in particular. Thanks in advance.

Booknotes: Armies of Deliverance

New Arrival:
• Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War by Elizabeth R. Varon
  (Oxford UP, 2019).

Elizabeth Varon's Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War is a new overview of the conflict that casts the Union war effort as one of white and black liberation. In a more figurative sense the war began as a means to "deliver" whites from a social and economic system on the wrong side of progress and history. This failed appeal was followed quickly by the very real liberation of slaves in the wake of advancing armies. "Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike. The theme of deliverance was essential in mobilizing a Unionist coalition of Northerners and anti-Confederate Southerners."

As one might easily imagine, the South's Confederate majority didn't see it that way, and they were "determined to preempt, discredit, and silence Yankee appeals to the Southern masses. In their quest for political unity Confederates relentlessly played up two themes: Northern barbarity and Southern victimization. Casting the Union army as ruthless conquerors, Confederates argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South."

More from the description: "Interweaving military and social history, Varon shows that everyday acts on the ground—from the flight of slaves, to protests against the draft, the plundering of civilian homes, and civilian defiance of military occupation—reverberated at the highest levels of government. Varon also offers new perspectives on major battles, illuminating how soldiers and civilians alike coped with the physical and emotional toll of the war as it grew into a massive humanitarian crisis.

The Union's politics of deliverance helped it to win the war. But such appeals failed to convince Confederates to accept peace on the victor's terms, ultimately sowing the seeds of postwar discord. Armies of Deliverance offers innovative insights on the conflict for those steeped in Civil War history and novices alike."

Booknotes: Farragut's Captain

New Arrival:
• Farragut's Captain: Percival Drayton, 1861-1865 by Peter Barratt (Author/Lulu, 2018).

His life bookended by major American wars, Charleston native Percival Drayton (1812-1865) was a prominent member of the Union Navy's second tier of officers, and Peter Barratt's Farragut's Captain: Percival Drayton, 1861-1865 is a slim biography that centers on the Civil War years. Drayton "played a central role in four of the key naval engagements of the American Civil War, and as a personal friend and trusted subordinate of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut and Rear Admiral Samuel Francis du Pont, Drayton made a vital contribution to the ultimate success of the Union Navy in the struggle to maintain the Union. As the son of a noted Jacksonian Unionist obligated to leave South Carolina for Philadelphia many years before the war, Drayton was the very embodiment of the romantic war between brothers" [Confederate Brig. Gen. Thomas Drayton was his older brother].

"Captain Drayton was a highly literate and intelligent observer of the world around him and the people in it. And throughout the war, he maintained a constant flow of letters to naval colleagues and friends. His letters provide a captivating insight into his service and into the personalities of many Civil War-era figures, and so his letters-and his biography-stand as a primary record of the war at sea and of the collapse of the slave system on the South Carolina coast."

Drayton's Civil War letters have been published before but my cursory search for prior book-length biographies came up empty. Barratt's bibliography doesn't reveal any either.