Booknotes: Lincoln in Private

New Arrival:
• Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President by Ronald C. White (Random House, 2021).

The author of Lincoln's Greatest Speech (2002), The Eloquent President (2005), and a full biography published in 2009, Ronald White continues his scholarly fascination with Lincoln's words in Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President. Lincoln famously filed away notes and letters that were either never meant for public consumption or were intended to be such but withheld for some reason or another. Those insights into the man and president are the focus of this book.

From the description: "A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts,” as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these frank, unpolished pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole."

White could have approached this project in different ways. Space considerations might make examining them all in a single volume a pretty superficial exercise, but one could alternatively take a selection of them (gathered by theme or importance) for in-depth discussion. For Lincoln in Private, White wisely opts for the latter.

More from the description: White "walks readers through twelve of Lincoln’s most important private notes, showcasing our greatest president’s brilliance and empathy, but also his very human anxieties and ambitions. We look over Lincoln’s shoulder as he grapples with the problem of slavery, attempting to find convincing rebuttals to those who supported the evil institution (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”); prepares for his historic debates with Stephen Douglas; expresses his private feelings after a defeated bid for a Senate seat (“With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure”); voices his concerns about the new Republican Party’s long-term prospects; develops an argument for national unity amidst a secession crisis that would ultimately rend the nation in two; and, for a president many have viewed as not religious, develops a sophisticated theological reflection in the midst of the Civil War (“it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party”)."

Though the main analytical part of the book is selective, White does provide a valuable additional service by including the text of the entire collection of private notes, a number of which are quite lengthy, others fragmentary, and some only a single sentence in length. "(I)n a historic first, all 111 Lincoln notes are transcribed in the appendix, a gift to scholars and Lincoln buffs alike."

Booknotes: Command at Antietam

New Arrival:
• Command at Antietam: Lincoln, McClellan and Lee by David L. Keller (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2021).

Commonly understood as a tactical draw that became a Union strategic victory after Lee's army abandoned its campaign in Maryland and withdrew back to Virginia, the military, social, and political outcome of the Antietam battle has been explored by countless modern writers. A new look at the topic, David Keller's Command at Antietam: Lincoln, McClellan and Lee "reviews the time leading up to the Battle at Antietam, the battle itself and the results of the decisions and actions of the commands of Lincoln, McClellan and Lee."

The introduction doesn't offer specific hints regarding what unconventional ideas might be explored in the author's "fresh look at the command decisions of Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan before, during and after the Battle of Antietam." According to the author, diagnosing McClellan's "psychological and personality issues" is intentionally avoided in the book. Instead, he has "chosen to evaluate only (McClellan's) military actions and the results of those actions." The book also aims to provide "insight into President Lincoln's evaluation of McClellan and his use of the Battle of Antietam for political purposes."

A retired army officer, Keller has authored a number of Civil War prison camp books and NPS studies. He served on General Westmoreland's staff during Vietnam, so he certainly has inside knowledge on modern army high command goings on as well as the military-political interplay at that level, a perspective that may have been useful in putting together this study.

Booknotes: Moonlit Mayhem

New Arrival:
• Moonlit Mayhem: Quantrill's Raid of Olathe, Kansas by Jonathan A. Jones (Floating Spark Pub, 2021).

Pro-Confederate guerrilla leader William C. Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas in 1863 is by far the most infamous event of the Missouri-Kansas Border War than extended into the Civil War years. However, it certainly wasn't the only time Quantrill and his men crossed the border. In early September 1862, nearly a year before Lawrence was sacked and a great many of its civilian male inhabitants killed, Quantrill raided Olathe, a Kansas town located southwest of Kansas City and just across the border. With chapters also addressing Border War context at some length, both before and after that September, Jonathan Jones's Moonlit Mayhem: Quantrill's Raid of Olathe, Kansas provides the first book-length account of event.

From the description: "Quantrill's raid is an event that would shape Olathe's history for many years to come. Most locals have little knowledge of this event that so heavily impacted the history of their town. Moonlit Mayhem provides a view of life, on both sides of the border. In addition, short summaries of events before and after the Olathe Raid, give the reader a complete picture of the time and key players on both sides. Moonlit Mayhem is packed with over 100 color images and maps showing the modern locations of historic events."

As noted above, the book is full of visual goodies, including a superabundance of photographs and charts, and there is seemingly a map of some kind (typically historical overlays of modern maps) on nearly every other page. I am well familiar with the Lawrence Raid but don't recall much about the Olathe Raid from prior reading, so I am looking forward to checking this one out.

Review - "No Place for Glory: Major General Robert E. Rodes and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg" by Robert Wynstra

[No Place for Glory: Major General Robert E. Rodes and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg by Robert J. Wynstra (Kent State University Press, 2021). Hardcover, maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvii,233/307. ISBN:978-1-60635-410-0. $55]

Between the period when he first entered Confederate Army service in 1861 as colonel of the 5th Alabama infantry regiment and his death in action during the Third Battle of Winchester in 1864, VMI-trained Major General Robert E. Rodes earned a reputation as one of the Army of Northern Virginia's finest combat officers. Some have even gone so far as to rate Rodes as that army's premier division commander. However, the battlefield has always been an unforgiving place and even the best generals have bad moments that they'd like to forget. Unfortunately for Rodes, his occurred during consecutive days on the Civil War's grandest stage, the July 1-3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. While he would quickly return to form during the Army of Northern Virginia's subsequent campaigns, it has been argued that the stain of Gettysburg ensured that Rodes would not be considered for any of the corps command openings that emerged the following year (though one might also attribute that barrier against further advancement to his lack of a West Point education). A new examination of Rodes's flawed Gettysburg performance and what consequences his actions there had on the course of the great battle are central to Robert Wynstra's new book No Place for Glory: Major General Robert E. Rodes and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg.

From an outsider's superficial perspective, Rodes's five-brigade division of nearly 8,000 men might have appeared to be a robust organization at peak fighting capacity by the summer of 1863, but danger lurked within. Every Gettysburg enthusiast knows that General Alfred Iverson and Colonel Edward O'Neal were the weak links among the division's brigade commanders. Wynstra's study certainly reinforces that common perspective, but it also usefully explores the dysfunctional nature of the interpersonal relationship between Rodes and his two most troublesome principal subordinates and shows how that mutual dislike and distrust may have affected Rodes's handling of them during the battle. Rodes also had newcomers to consider. Junius Daniel's North Carolina brigade was by far the largest in the division, but it was also largely untried (at least by mid-war ANV standards) from top to bottom. Fortunately for Rodes, the solid performance of Daniel and his men on July 1, as detailed in the text, did much to retrieve Confederate fortunes after the division's bloody initial repulse.

While it was Rodes's Division that eventually shattered the Oak Hill hinge linking the Union First and Eleventh Corps positions north and west of Gettysburg on July 1, the achievement was gained at a tremendously high human cost (by all accounts far more than it should have been) in three of the five brigades. The book recounts in detail the July 1 fighting along the length of Rodes's front, from the Forney Farm on the west to Carlisle Road on the east, where Rodes's left connected with the right of Jubal Early's fellow Second Corps division. In common with all modern critics, Wynstra finds fault with Rodes's blind deployments and poorly coordinated assault plan, the latter made worse by it being spearheaded by Iverson and O'Neal. Rodes also ordered away a significant part of O'Neal's available strength just before the Alabama brigade's unsuccessful initial attack. Somewhat in defense of Rodes, the decision to lead the attack with the brigades of O'Neal and Iverson (with Daniel in support of Iverson) could have come down to the fact that those were his numerically strongest units. His two best brigade commanders, Stephen Ramseur and George Doles, led the division's two smallest brigades (though Doles's was nearly the same strength as Iverson's). Order of march (Ramseur was bringing up the rear of the divisional column on July 1) and the pressure to deploy quickly might also have figured into the fateful decision. When they did get into action, Ramseur and Doles performed superbly on the day and their efforts, combined with that of Daniel, significantly upgraded the results of the division's Oak Hill assault from complete disaster to costly victory. Though Rodes's overall leadership performance on July 1 was less than exemplary and incurred unacceptable casualties, his division did end up defeating its opposition in a way that significantly contributed to the overall success of that day's action.

As Wynstra relates, there is some evidence to suggest that Rodes was ill during the campaign, sick enough to force him to ride in an ambulance for a period, and the author raises the possibility that that was one factor behind the general's uncharacteristically poor command performance at Gettysburg. The illness is unspecified in the record, but more than one contemporary source reported that Rodes was very visibly inebriated at Carlisle. While Rodes does not rank high on any list of the Civil War's hardest drinking generals, Wynstra does note that he did, like countless other officers of all ranks, occasionally drink to excess during the war, and it is possible that Rodes was still experiencing the aftereffects of Carlisle on July 1.

While the mistakes and failures of Day 1 have received the most popular condemnation, according to Wynstra it was Rodes's failure to support the July 2 assault on Cemetery Hill that was his most consequential misstep of the campaign, the one that contributed most significantly to Confederate defeat in the battle. The dramatic infantry assault on East Cemetery Hill by two brigades from Early Division (Avery's and Hays's) late on July 2 is well documented and has long impressed observers, but its success mattered little without support and that was to come from Rodes's Division to their right. In another uncharacteristic failure, Rodes took too long in extricating his troops from the streets of Gettysburg and assembling them along Long Lane, where they were to link up with two supporting brigades from Pender's (now Lane's) Division for an attack up the western slope of Cemetery Hill. Of course, some care needed to be taken with Union defense lines so close by and bristling with artillery, but by the time Rodes was ready it was well into darkness and Early's two brigades, despairing of Rodes's help, had already been withdrawn. No longer required, the attack was canceled and Rodes's reputation within the army suffered another blow, with Ewell and even Lee himself taking notice of Rodes's shortcomings on the day. Undoubtedly, getting clear of Gettysburg's streets took Rodes longer than he anticipated, but he did little to make up for time lost amid the urban clutter when making his final preparations. It is possible that the Oak Hill disaster made him leery of conducting another hasty attack. According to Wynstra, Rodes had developed a positive reputation within the army for exceptionally meticulous preparation that made his commands successful in the attack and difficult to defeat, and though that mostly admirable trait might have helped on July 1, it did not suit the situation on July 2 when satisficing alacrity should have held priority over perfection of deployment.

On July 3, Rodes was ordered to detach two brigades to assist fellow Second Corps division commander Edward Johnson in the attack on Culp's Hill. Though Rodes himself was not present there, the actions of his troops at Culp's Hill are detailed at length in the text. Disappointed in his diminished role in the battle's final stage, Rodes was left to hunker down in Long Lane with his remaining three brigades and await orders to support the left of Lee's planned assault on the Union center. Those orders never came, and after the repulse of Pickett's Charge Rodes's Division fell back to a strong defensive position.

During three days at Gettysburg, Rodes's Division suffered almost 3,000 casualties. Losses were also very unequally shared, with the brigades of Iverson, O'Neal, and Daniel suffering devastating losses while Doles and Ramseur's casualties, though significant, paled in comparison. A very large portion of the book is devoted to the hospital care and medical treatment of these casualties as well as the collection and burial of the dead. As crippling as the rank and file losses were, the numbers of dead and wounded officers were frightful and, as Wynstra notes, arguably even more irreplaceable.

In its detailed coverage of the retreat from Gettysburg, the book also documents at Monterey Pass and Hagerstown the beginnings of General Iverson's path to at least partial redemption for his abysmal brigade leadership at Gettysburg. Wynstra, who has written extensively elsewhere about Iverson and his Civil War career (see 2010's The Rashness of That Hour: Politics, Gettysburg, and the Downfall of Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Iverson), also acknowledges Iverson's more celebrated victory at Sunshine Church in Georgia, though he cautions readers regarding how much credit the general deserves in that 1864 action, citing more evidence that Iverson hung well back from the front there just as he had done at Gettysburg.

No Place for Glory is the product of a rigorous primary source investigation in newspapers, archives, and published sources of all kinds. Supported by a handful of fine maps, the narrative created by that impressive body of research provides readers with a fresh appreciation of the role of Rodes's Division in the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign from beginning to end while at the same time conveying a nuanced analysis and understanding of its commander's controversial leadership actions during those critical first two days in July. While the degree to which Rodes's performance contributed to Confederate defeat remains an object of conflicting opinion, what isn't up for debate is that Gettysburg was clearly the general's career low point. Another very fine contribution to the Gettysburg historiography, this volume solidifies its multiple award-winning author's status as one of that campaign's best current historians.

Booknotes: Unsung Hero of Gettysburg

New Arrival:
• Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg by Edward G. Longacre (Potomac Bks, 2021).

Wider appreciation and book coverage of the mid-war transformation of eastern theater Union cavalry into a force that could match and even better its far more celebrated mounted opponents began in earnest in the 1990s, gathered momentum around the millennium, and continues to today. An important outgrowth of this literature, which features pioneering works from Eric Wittenberg, Edward Longacre, and others, is the amount of attention paid to previously neglected mid and lower level Union cavalry generals who were responsible for much of that arm's success in the field. David Gregg certainly ranks high among those in that group, and now we have from Potomac Books a modern biography in Edward Longacre's Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg.

From the description: "Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg (1833–1917) was one of the ablest and most successful commanders of cavalry in any Civil War army. Pennsylvania-born, West Point–educated, and deeply experienced in cavalry operations prior to the conflict, his career personified that of the typical cavalry officer in the mid-nineteenth-century American army. Gregg achieved distinction on many battlefields, including those during the Peninsula, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe, Overland, and Petersburg campaigns, ultimately gaining the rank of brevet major general as leader of the Second Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac."

Just a few pages at the beginning of the book cover Gregg's pre-West Point upbringing and a handful at the end address the general's long (he lived well into the WW1 years) post-Civil War life, so the volume is clearly a military biography tightly focused on Gregg's antebellum frontier service (in New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest) and Civil War career. According to Longacre, the "highlight of (Gregg's) service occurred on July 3, 1863, the climactic third day at Gettysburg, when he led his own command as well as the brigade of Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer in repulsing an attempt by thousands of Confederate cavalry under the legendary J. E. B. Stuart in attacking the right flank and rear of the Union Army while Pickett’s charge struck its front and center."

Manuscript research comprises a large section of the book's bibliography, with Gregg's correspondence and personal papers distributed among the Library of Congress and numerous Pennsylvania archives. Nine maps were commissioned for the book, and they allow the reader to follow Gregg's involvement in many campaigns and battles from the Peninsula through Petersburg.

Gregg himself was not present at the war in the East's finishing stroke, as he resigned his commission in early February 1865. According to Longacre, Gregg never satisfactorily explained his reason(s) behind leaving both the volunteer and regular army service (though I would imagine that the author explores the possibilities in the book), and doing so undoubtedly went some way toward blocking his 1868 effort to reenter the army. This "long overdue" biography should draw great interest from Gettysburg and Union cavalry students.

Booknotes: A Short History of Charleston, Revised and Expanded Edition

New Arrival:
• A Short History of Charleston, Revised and Expanded Edition by Robert N. Rosen (USC Press, 2021).

Originally published in 1982 and intended to be both informative and entertaining, Robert Rosen's A Short History of Charleston quickly became a popular overview of the topic. It remains widely recommended as the standard introductory city history and a useful tool for prospective visitors.

From the description: "Beginning with the founding of colonial Charles Town and ending three hundred and fifty years later in the present day, Robert Rosen's fast-paced narrative takes the reader on a journey through the city's complicated history as a port to English settlers, a bloodstained battlefield, and a picturesque vacation mecca. Packed with anecdotes and enlivened by passages from diaries and letters, A Short History of Charleston recounts in vivid detail the port city's development from an outpost of the British Empire to a bustling, modern city."

The volume has been released in several editions over the years. The first edition was published by Lexicos in 1982 and that was followed by a 1992 revised second edition from Peninsula Press and the first University of South Carolina Press edition in 1997. Incorporating into its narrative the past four decades of the city's history is this new 2021 revised and expanded edition from USC Press. It "includes a new final chapter on the decades since Joseph Riley was first elected mayor in 1975 through its rapid development in geographic size, population, and cultural importance. Rosen contemplates both the city's triumphs and its challenges, allowing readers to consider how Charleston's past has shaped its present and will continue to shape its future."

The volume is heavily illustrated with photographs, drawings, and maps, most of which are placed in page sidebars that also contain additional anecdotes, commentary, and biographical notes supplementary to the main text. As is the case with many books of this type intended for a popular readership, the text is not annotated. However, there is a selection of sources included at the rear of the book.

Civil War-era coverage is spread among three of the book's ten chapters. It is part of a general treatment of Charleston as the "capital" of southern slavery, and there are standalone chapters discussing the Civil War and Reconstruction periods of the city's history.

New 1864 Camden Expedition series project

As I've mentioned on several occasions, I very much welcome helpful notes from readers informing me about book news and rumors. If the topic interests me and I can get some sort of confirmation, I'm happy to pass it along here. Just such a thing happened this week when reader M.B. let me know about Joe Walker's upcoming multi-volume history of the Arkansas wing of the 1864 Red River Campaign. The topic has been covered pretty well in bits and pieces, and over the past decade Walker himself has self-published a pair of books along those lines in Harvest of Death: The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas and Hail & High Water: The Battle of Elkins' Ferry, Arkansas (the former of which in its third edition), but the only attempt at a standalone book covering the entire operation remains Michael Forsyth's The Camden Expedition of 1864 and the Opportunity Lost by the Confederacy to Change the Civil War, which was published in hardcover in 2003 and reissued in paperback four years later.

While Forsyth's rather slim study is light on detail and focuses on higher level strategy and decision-making, Walker promises a "a three volume work, encompassing over 1,000 pages and +100,000 words." That would represent a huge step up in scale and depth from his previous work (which I have read), and I'm looking forward to checking it out when the time comes. Hopefully the website will be updated soon, but my informant tells me that Walker told him the trilogy is halfway through the final editing process and it is anticipated that the books will be released sometime in 2021-22.

[update (6/18/22): Mr. Walker reported on social media in December '21 that he had completed the project and sent it to his editor. Sadly, he passed away less than a month later.]

Review - "The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War" by Kenneth Noe

[The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe (Louisiana State University Press, 2020). Cloth, 13 maps, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,495/685. ISBN:978-0-8071-7320-6. $59.95]

The American Civil War has no grand analog matching the history-altering magnitude of the massive typhoon that wrecked the Mongol fleet during their second invasion of Japan, the providential winds and storms that scattered Phillip II's Spanish Armada and helped save England, or even the brutal winter that finished off Napoleon's army during its retreat from Moscow, but it is undeniable that weather and North American climate patterns impacted the conduct and course of the military conflict between North and South in significant ways. Indeed, weather as a third combatant in numerous campaigns and battles is among the broadest themes addressed in historian Kenneth Noe's impressive new tome The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War.

At its most fundamental level, The Howling Storm is a new military history of the entire 1861-65 land war from Sumter to Appomattox with the focus placed on interpreting how weather impacted campaigns large and small across all three major theaters—East, West, and Trans-Mississippi. In researching and piecing together this splendid, almost 500-page narrative, the author mined archives, newspapers, and a host of other published and unpublished primary and secondary sources to densely fill his narrative with all manner of environmental temperature and weather details. Weather-related observations from soldiers, home front civilians, and dedicated weather watchers (ex. even some Smithsonian-affiliated sources dutifully maintained readings during the war) are quoted throughout. Noe's references to climate and weather terminology are limited to introductory-level remarks, just enough to offer the reader appropriate general background information regarding the modern understanding of weather science. The text appropriately explores the ways in which oceanic-atmospheric oscillations (ex. El Nino and La Nina) and other events disrupt normal North American weather patterns and emphasizes how those extremes affected Civil War armies in their winter encampments, on the march, and during battle.

While it is true that contending armies opposing each other on a given front experience the same local weather, Noe effectively reminds readers in what manner the consequences and ill-effects of that shared weather might not be equally distributed. In the most obvious example, superior Union logistics and supply meant that its better clad and supported troops most often suffered less than their Confederate foes during the winter months. Also, some hours or days during which weather events were most challenging could clearly be more critical to the fortunes of one side, and weather could thus have a more decisive affect. As an example of that, Noe cites key moments, especially during the final week of operations, when the exceptional spring rains of 1862 (argued to have been the wettest of the previous 25 years) helped Stonewall Jackson evade and finally escape converging Union columns during his famous Shenandoah Valley campaign. The point is not that weather was actually deterministic of victory or defeat in many campaigns, but rather weather, especially in its extreme forms, could create a multitude of serious problems that commanders could not entirely overcome. As detailed in the book, such constraints might take the form of delayed offensives (ex. the December 1864 Battle of Nashville), immobilized armies (ex. Burnside's "Mud March"), strong limitations on the scale of victory or defeat (ex. the 1863 Tullahoma Campaign), and much more.

Unequally distributed weather effects occurred on the home front, too. As just one illustration of that phenomenon, too much early rain in 1862 followed by drought in the early summer months caused widespread corn, wheat, and cotton failures across the southern states, while at the same time there were record crop yields across the North. Other war-related home front issues had at their core underappreciated weather underpinnings. A striking example cited by Noe is the infamous Richmond bread riots that have been most commonly attributed to official indifference and predatory pricing. Noe instead argues that supply and transportation woes directly caused by the unusually wet and cold Virginia winter and spring of 1863 led to the bread shortages.

While the United States possessed an enviably modern rail network by the outbreak of the war, its system of interconnecting country roads remained highly primitive by comparison. Few paved thoroughfares designed to hold up to heavy traffic of the kind produced by anything even approaching the size of Civil War armies existed, so almost any rain that fell on those dirt roads proved problematic for military movements, and deep mud became an inevitable and constant source of complaint on both sides. In that vein, a multitude of campaign and battle events most profoundly affected by mud (ex. Burnside's "Mud March," the fighting at Spotsylvania, Rosecrans's flank movement at Tullahoma, Stoneman's Chancellorsville raid, and many more) are examined in the book. Perhaps the book's freshest and most interesting discussion related to this topic is Noe's explanation of how the continent's geographical soil patterns (specifically what quality and depth of mud those different soils produced during rainy periods) variably impacted Civil War army movements and troop morale. In the end, the author persuasively argues that all wet soils were not equal when it came to adversely affecting large-scale military operations.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of rain and mud was drought, and that weather effect produced some of the most significant follow-on effects. For example, the desire to provide a period of recovery for Virginia farmland is commonly cited as one of the most important factors behind the Confederate raid into Pennsylvania in 1863, but Noe argues it was the 1862 drought and subsequent late planting season that primarily created those conditions, not the physical devastation of war. More drought in 1863 meant that even a widespread switch from cotton to food production could not make up enough lost ground to adequately feed the Confederacy's armies and cities while also building up the stockpiles of food and forage necessary to accommodate future gaps in supply. As demonstrated in the book, 1864 drought conditions were largely confined to Virginia, Missouri, and the northern states, and Confederate leaders anticipated that that misfortune would spark further antiwar unrest in the North before and during the critical fall elections. According to Noe, it is a prevailing myth that northern farm production increased during the war due to mechanization. In actuality, total agricultural production peaked in 1862 and weather was a major part of why that was so. Nevertheless, as it turned out, the election year drought that Confederates pinned some of their rapidly dimming hopes of independence upon never caused enough of an overall deficit to greatly diminish northern home front support for the war.

Microclimates, particularly highland ones, also had a direct impact on Civil War armies. For a particularly vivid example, readers might recall A. Wilson Greene's contribution to the anthology Civil War Places (2019). In it, he memorably recounts his own personal encounter with the unpredictable and unseasonable weather extremes atop Allegheny Mountain that made it such a miserable place to fight a war. Noe does not specifically address the microclimate phenomenon in The Howling Storm, but he does so tangentially by covering the extreme case of Sewell Mountain. As Tim McKinney did before him in that author's book-length study of the Sewell Mountain phase of the 1861 West Virginia campaign, Noe presents the unique weather there as so severe a third opponent that it rendered both sides combat ineffective.

Noe admits the temptation among scholars and readers alike of seeing prominent examples of Union success in overcoming environmental obstacles as proof that weather complaints were primarily excuse-making on the part of recalcitrant generals, but his book clearly shows that exceptional weather and its timing could seriously sabotage many a best-laid plan. As the author maintains, however, it should also be equally appreciated that luck imparted by the weather gods could also go the other way, and Noe cites, as one example, the stretch of "perfect" weather during the entire length of Sherman's March to Sea that significantly diminished that daring movement's many inherent risks.

Noe also convincingly credits strong Union leadership as an important factor in dealing with southern weather. The ability of General Sherman's army to quickly traverse roads and swamps thought nearly impassable during the wet winter and spring 1865 Carolinas Campaign sparked despondent awe in his opponents. Perhaps the best example, and also cited in the book, is Joseph Hooker's comprehensive set of celebrated army reforms and morale boosting initiatives (all brilliantly documented in Albert Conner and Chris Mackowski's Seizing Destiny: The Army of the Potomac's "Valley Forge" and the Civil War Winter that Saved the Union) achieved during an extended period of terrible Virginia weather that stretched between the general's appointment to army command all the way to the end of April, during which it incessantly rained more than half those days. On the other hand, that example and others also, according to Noe, highlight an occasional blind spot in Union leadership at the top, one that frequently demonstrated a distinct lack of appreciation for how much weather could impede the movements and plans of armies. Grant was the high-ranking general who most closely and consistently shared Lincoln's views on seeing weather as an always surmountable obstacle, but while that view served Grant very well on many occasions it also made him, like the president, appear out of touch in others.

A great strength of Noe's far-reaching treatment of the topic of Civil War weather is that readers can for the first time in a single volume comprehensively absorb, front and center, how weather affected every campaign. Chronological arrangement of the weather narrative also allows readers to appreciate the many cascading effects of particular events. It might be recalled how well Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver's 2020 book An Environmental History of the Civil War illustrates the ways in which an unforeseen weather pattern that materialized over the first half of 1862 in the form of extraordinary rains and flooding affected Civil War operations and home front agriculture across the continent, but Noe's work does much the same for the entire war.

Mostly when citing exceptional weather patterns but also very effectively overall, Kenneth Noe's The Howling Storm brings weather effects out of the realm of excuse making and into their proper place as a major variable impacting victory and defeat on the Civil War battlefield. Noe's study ends with an interesting capstone conclusion that the Union Army won the weather war as well as the shooting war. His argument developed throughout the book that Union leadership and logistical superiority in providing better transportation, better winter shelter/housing, more reliable food and medical supplies, all-weather clothing, and consistent quantities of replacement footwear all combined to both sustain Union soldier morale amid the most trying environmental circumstances and allow Union armies to deal more effectively than their native-born opponents with the South's infamous weather and climate extremes. While it is obvious that Civil War armies could never entirely overcome the military challenges imposed by climate and weather, the book offers a powerful argument that many of those effects could nevertheless be significantly ameliorated through the combined forces of leadership, resources, experience, and adaptation. As Noe's work illustrates at great length, the complete victory achieved by Union forces clearly demonstrated the falsity of prewar assumptions that northern armies would simply melt away in harsh southern climes.

Booknotes: The Bonds of War

New Arrival:
• The Bonds of War: A Story of Immigrants and Esprit de Corps in Company C, 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry by Diana L. Dretske (SIU Press, 2021).

The works of countless Civil War researchers and writers have been directly inspired by encounters with historical artifacts. In museum curator Diana Dretske's case, that inspiration came in the form of an archival photograph of five Union soldiers who enlisted in a local company. From the description: "When curator Diana L. Dretske discovered that the five long-gone Union soldiers in a treasured photograph in the Bess Bower Dunn Museum were not fully identified, it compelled her into a project of recovery and reinterpretation." Her resulting book, The Bonds of War: A Story of Immigrants and Esprit de Corps in Company C, 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, employs a "microhistorical approach" that "(u)tilizes an impressive array of local and national archives, as well as private papers" to construct a manuscript that is both collective biography and unit history.

The book provides biographical sketches of each soldier, all of whom were U.K. immigrants who settled in Illinois and joined the same local infantry company raised in the northeastern part of the state. From the description: "This book, the most intensive examination of the 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry since the regiment’s history was published in 1887 centers on immigrants from the British Isles who wished to be citizens of a country at war with itself. Far removed from their native homelands, they found new promise in rural Illinois. These men, neighbors along the quiet Stateline Road in Lake County, decide to join the fighting at its most dangerous hour. The bonds of war become then the bonds of their new national identity."

The story of the five soldiers at the center of the book is also extended outward to document the Civil War service of their company and regiment. The 96th was mustered into the Union Army (yes, I will keep calling it that) in early September 1862 and was immediately shipped to Kentucky to confront the Confederate invasion of that state. After assorted garrison duties, the regiment participated in a string of important western campaigns beginning with Tullahoma and progressing through Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Franklin-Nashville. All of those experiences are described in the book (including time spent by one or more in Andersonville prison).

The study expands into the postwar years, addressing the enduring bonds between soldiers of Company C and the difficulties met by many (especially those seeking disability and pension assistance) during the process of reintegration into civilian society. A roster of Company C at time of enlistment is included as an appendix.

Booknotes: West of Slavery

New Arrival:
• West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire by Kevin Waite (UNC Press, 2021).

Don Frazier's Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest (TAMU Press, 1995) was the first scholarly book to popularly contextualize Confederate Civil War campaigns in the American Southwest as earnest attempts to realize decades-old grandiose dreams of a southern-oriented, coast to coast territorial "empire" favorable to proslavery interests, mineral wealth exploitation, and international trade through western ports. Since then (but mostly more recently), a new generation of scholarship has added a great deal more context, and fresh avenues of study within the general topic of western expansion and slavery's role in it have emerged. Much of this investigation also intersects with one of the hottest areas of emerging academic scholarship, borderlands studies. Indeed, Kevin Waite's West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire is part of UNC Press's The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History.

From the description: "When American slaveholders looked west in the mid-nineteenth century, they saw an empire unfolding before them. They pursued that vision through diplomacy, migration, and armed conquest. By the late 1850s, slaveholders and their allies had transformed the southwestern quarter of the nation - California, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah - into a political client of the plantation states." That last part ("client of the plantation states") strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration, especially for California (a state that decisively rejected the Southern Democratic candidate in 1860, with both Lincoln and Douglas alone beating Breckinridge, the former by four points). In the introductory passage borrowed for the description, Waite himself uses the term "appendage." Regardless, it was the case that "(s)laveholders' western ambitions culminated in a coast-to-coast crisis of the Union. By 1861, the rebellion in the South inspired a series of separatist movements in the Far West" (though none proved decisive or lasting). "How this transcontinental sphere of proslavery influence was created, how it was destroyed at the end of the Civil War, and how it reemerged from the ashes of the conflict—albeit in a modified and more modest form— is the subject of this book" ^{(pg. 2)}.

The traditional view of slavery's possible reach into the Far West holds that all parties involved knew that establishment of plantation-style slavery was impossible. Instead, southern nationalists primarily sought proslavery western territories (and later states) as tools for maintaining the political balance of power in Washington and counterweights to increasing antislavery and abolitionist activism in the North. Using a base of modern scholarship that has studied the economic viability of slavery in other large-scale enterprises outside farm and plantation labor, Waite suggests at least the possibility, if proslavery goals were met, of a more deeply established institution in the Far West than previously considered.

Of the three main sections of the book, the first "explores how southern powerbrokers imagined the far end of the continent and how they schemed, through a series of transportation projects, to bring this distant region into their political and commercial orbit." According to Waite, many prominent southerners dreamed of a pan-Pacific trade network (primarily in southern cotton). The second section "explains how residents in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah embraced key parts of the proslavery agenda, triggering a wide-ranging crisis of the Union by 1861." The third and final section "examines how the logic of westward expansion shaped Confederate grand strategy during the war and ultimately sowed the seeds for slavery's destruction." Furthermore, Waite suggests that "(i)n the immediate postwar years, political ties between the South and West were reconstituted to fuel a national, rather than a purely sectional, revolt against federal Reconstruction." ^{(pg. 3)} The volume should have strong appeal among readers and scholars with a wide range of interests in today's slavery, Civil War, westward expansion, and borderlands studies.

Book News: "We Gave Them Thunder"

Waaaay back in 2011 I reported some secondhand scuttlebutt that Bill Piston and John Rutherford were working on an 1863 Battle of Springfield (often called the Second Battle of Springfield, the first being the far smaller October 25, 1861 engagement there—calling it a 'battle' is pretty generous—that was popularized through embellished accounts of "Zagonyi's Charge") study. I had forgotten about this Piston-Rutherford project over the years (so many cool-sounding things that pop up in the rumor mill disappear into the ether never to be heard from again) but am absolutely delighted to pass along the latest news that it will be actually be released later this year from Moon City Press (University of Arkansas Press is the distributor) under the title "We Gave Them Thunder": Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas (August 2021).

This will not be the first book on the subject. Most recently, Larry Wood covered it in Civil War Springfield (The History Press, 2011), but the standard account is still Up From Arkansas: Marmaduke's First Missouri Raid, Including the Battles of Springfield and Hartville by Frederick Goman (Wilson's Creek NB Foundation, 1999). The most obscure book-length source is Daniel Plaster’s privately printed Marmaduke’s First Missouri Raid, 1862-1863: The Roles of Federal Scouts and Outposts in the Defense of Springfield (1999), which is a fine addition to your Missouri raid collection if you can find a copy of it. There's great work in all of the above but plenty of room remains for a more 'definitive' treatment of the kind expected from Piston and Rutherford.

It seems like it's been forever since the publication of a proper, full-length Missouri or Arkansas battle study. Unless I am forgetting something big, I don't recall a release of anything of this scale ("354 pages,..., 13 maps and 43 color illustrations") since Kyle Sinisi's 2015 book on Sterling Price's 1864 Missouri Expedition. I am greatly looking forward to reading this "authoritative study of Marmaduke’s raid into Southwest Missouri, the Battle of Springfield (January 8, 1863), and the Battle of Hartville (January 11, 1863)."

Book Snapshot: "Echoes From Gettysburg: Georgia's Memories and Images"

Echoes From Gettysburg: Georgia's Memories and Images (Fox Run Publishing, 2021) is the second volume of Keith Jones's Echoes of Gettysburg series of books collecting published reminiscences of the battle by state. The first, Echoes From Gettysburg: South Carolina's Memories and Images, was published back in 2016. The Georgia volume also serves as a revised and expanded update to an earlier book from the author, Georgia Remembers Gettysburg: A Collection of First-Hand Accounts Written by Georgia Soldiers, which was released in 2013 by Ten Roads Publishing.

As one of the Confederacy's most populous states, Georgia's contribution in officers and men to the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg was substantial, and Georgia units and formations figured prominently in many well-known events that occurred during the campaign and battle. From the description: "The first infantry actions of the Gettysburg Campaign involved Georgia troops. Brigadier General John B. Gordon's brigade crossed the Potomac River on June 22, 1863, and was the first Confederate infantry to march into the town of Gettysburg on June 26. They also flew their flag over a one-time seat of the Continental Congress in York, Pennsylvania and engaged in early action during an attempt to capture the bridge over the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. Most discussion about Gettysburg focuses on the third day, obscuring the first two days in which Robert E. Lee' s troops were far more successful, in fact on the first day, they dominated. Thirteen thousand Georgia troops played a significant role in the three-day battle."

Georgia's role in the Gettysburg campaign is recounted in an annotated introductory essay of around thirty pages in length, with the narrative supported by a set of eight splendid Philip Laino maps. Spread throughout the volume are dozens of images (often full-page sized) of Georgia officers and men. The appendix is an order of battle for Georgia ANV units at Gettysburg, and the volume concludes with a bibliography and a unit, name, and place index.

Georgia "memories" of the battle fill just over 230 pages in the book and are almost entirely sourced from articles that appeared in thirteen (mostly Georgia) newspapers and Confederate Veteran magazine, a few published during the war years but mostly between the 1880s and early 1900s. Unpublished soldier letters or journal entries are not part of the collection.

The material is organized into standalone chapters by unit, with the first covering the Georgia artillery. Published reminiscences from those serving in the many Georgia infantry brigades (Anderson's, Benning's, Doles', Gordon's, Semmes', Wofford's, Wright's, and Thomas') that fought at Gettysburg follow that in succession. There is also a chapter for the Georgia cavalry. The final section consists of reunion accounts.

Booknotes: John P. Slough

New Arrival:
• John P. Slough: The Forgotten Civil War General by Richard L. Miller (UNM Press, 2021).

As we all know, if you happened to toss a rock into a roomful of Civil War volunteer generals you faced a very good chance of hitting someone who was both a lawyer and former legislator. Richard Miller's John P. Slough: The Forgotten Civil War General recounts the eventful and tragically brief life story of one such a man. Practicing law and politics in his native Ohio, Kansas, and Colorado until 1861, the then Denver resident Slough traded all that for the uniform of a Union officer when the Civil War broke out.

Not exactly "forgotten" in some circles (Trans-Mississippi students will immediately recognize him for his key role in the 1862 New Mexico Campaign and Valley Campaign students might recall his part in defending Harpers Ferry), it is certainly the case that General Slough is far from a household name among Civil War readers. From the description: "John Potts Slough, the Union commander at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, lived a life of relentless pursuit for success that entangled him in the turbulent events of mid-nineteenth-century America. As a politician, Slough fought abolitionists in the Ohio legislature and during Kansas Territory's fourth and final constitutional convention. He organized the 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry after the Civil War broke out, eventually leading his men against Confederate forces at the pivotal engagement at Glorieta Pass."

As amply demonstrated during his antebellum public life and first foray into military service, Slough could be an irascible colleague and subordinate. He resigned his commission after the New Mexico Campaign but reentered the Union Army soon after with a brigadier general appointment that took him to field service in the Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry and later a district-level command at Alexandria that he held for the duration of the war. Readers might also recall that he was one of the military court appointees to the Fitz John Porter trial.

After the guns fell silent, Slough's difficult nature continued to follow him. More from the description: "After the war, as chief justice of the New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court, he struggled to reform corrupt courts amid the territory's corrosive Reconstruction politics." He also fought the entrenched peonage system that proved difficult to eradicate completely after the U.S. took control of the territory after the War with Mexico. "Slough was known to possess a volcanic temper and an easily wounded pride. These traits not only undermined a promising career but ultimately led to his death at the hands of an aggrieved political enemy who gunned him down in a Santa Fe saloon." He was only 38 years old. The publication of a Slough biography is certainly unexpected, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Review - "Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862" by Dwight Sturtevant Hughes

[Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 by Dwight Sturtevant Hughes (Savas Beatie, 2021). Softcover, 11 maps, 20 diagrams, photos, illustrations, appendices, reading list, order of battle. Pages main/total:xxvi,135/191. ISBN:978-1-61121-525-0. $14.95]

According to the series home page tabulation (in retrospect, numbering the books on the spine would have been a cool idea), this is the 35th Emerging Civil War series volume published since the 2012 release of Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862. That's quite a record of output over less than a decade. Though western topics are duly sprinkled in every once in a while, the series remains largely oriented toward eastern theater land campaigns, so another noteworthy aspect of the release of Dwight Sturtevant Hughes's Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 is its status as the ECW library's first naval-themed installment. Of course, the contest between the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia very much remains the battle most synonymous with Civil War naval combat, its coverage still far outstripping that of everything else (including the famous Battle of Mobile Bay and the popular story of the ill-fated CSS Hunley). Publication of books and articles related to the famous pair of ironclad warships and their epic duel continues unabated. Of marked assistance in the matter was the 2002 raising of the Monitor's great revolving turret. The preservation of it and other artifacts sparked a fresh round of intense study and writing.

Like many other Monitor-Merrimac/Virginia books that came before it, Unlike Anything That Ever Floated highlights the challenges each side faced in addressing the new realities of mid-century naval warfare. Both navies had only a very short period of time (months instead of years) to come up with a working ironclad design that met the needs of modern firepower and armored protection, and Hughes's recounting of the hurried construction of both ships contrasts their solutions. Also presented in some detail in the book are lively accounts of the epic March 9, 1862 Monitor vs. Virginia clash and the preceding day's Hampton Roads battle where the Virginia dealt the Union Navy a heavy blow by sinking two of its wooden capital ships and threatening another damaged and grounded foe with the same treatment.

Both warships, neither of which was truly seaworthy, employed new and untested naval designs and technologies, and many of the most significant of those features are addressed in the book, as are the strengths and weaknesses (some predicted and others unanticipated) of the vessels when it came to dealing or absorbing damage. A very helpful adjunct to the text discussion is J.M. Caiella's set of angled cutaways, vessel profiles, and cross-section diagrams. Many of those drawings usefully provide readers with a detailed visual representation of key design elements (ex. the Monitor's revolving turret mechanism and belt-driven air ventilation system).

Hughes's blow-by-blow account of the March 8-9 fighting at Hampton Roads can be considered among the finest short-form narrative treatments of those events. There are no notes or bibliography provided to indicate the full extent of the author's research, but a great multitude of participant accounts and other quoted eyewitness writings are seamlessly incorporated into the text. The result is a highly engaging record of the two days of battle interpreted primarily through the eyes of those who were there.

For how long and to what degree the Virginia delayed Union movement up the Peninsula in early 1862 will always be a source of debate, but determining who "won" the Battle of Hampton Roads also has a long and contested history. Hughes prefers to present both arguments and leave it to the reader to decide if any grand pronouncements regarding victory or defeat are in order. While everyone acknowledges that the March 9 nautical boxing match between Monitor and Virginia was a tactical draw, Confederate partisans at the time claimed overall success by pointing to the destruction of Congress and Cumberland, the vast disparity in casualties [Union 261K/108W vs. Confederate 7K/17W], and Virginia's self-destruction being the result of strategic considerations unrelated to its performance. On the other hand, Union advocates correctly note that the Monitor succeeded in its initial mission of saving the Minnesota from destruction, and its actions secured the Union Navy's continued vital presence at Hampton Roads.

Both ships demonstrated serious problems during their brief careers, but Hughes is persuasive in emphasizing instead how impressive it is that both ironclads fought and maneuvered as well as they did given that neither ship design had the opportunity to be fully tested before being committed to action. Some interesting what-ifs are also raised. That the Monitor used short charges (a direct consequence of having no time for extensive firing trials) is commonly cited, and Virginia had its own firepower issue in that it had no supply of solid shot with which to engage Monitor. Monitor crew claims that they could have pierced Virginia's armor with full propellant charges seems to have had at least some justification given the depth of plate denting and underlying wood framing damage that occurred with half-charges. On the other side, given a bit more time the Confederates might have had the opportunity to cast the armor-piercing shot that were being conceptualized. One wonders how the battle might have turned out differently had it occurred only a few months later.

Appendix section essays, a common feature of the series, address a range of topics. The first offers an 8-stop driving tour of Hampton Roads highlighted by visits to museums as well as interpreted park and historical overlook sites. This is followed by a brief overview history of Civil War ironclad operations. The third and final appendix highlights the large-scale and ongoing artifact preservation efforts of the USS Monitor Center located at the Mariners' Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia.

In terms of the quality of its writing and extent of its informational content, Unlike Anything That Ever Floated resides in the top rank of ECW series volumes. Though release of an 1862 New Orleans Campaign volume did follow closely in its tracks, the book will hopefully be the first of many more when it comes to naval representation in the series. Hughes, with the help of other contributors, also places both ships in their proper world history context in regard to the development (before, during, and after the American Civil War) of armored warships.