Review - "Hell Comes to Southern Maryland: The Story of Point Lookout Prison and Hammond General Hospital" by Gottfried & Gottfried

[Hell Comes to Southern Maryland: The Story of Point Lookout Prison and Hammond General Hospital by Bradley M. Gottfried & Linda I. Gottfried (Turning Point Pub, 2018). Paperback, photos, illustration, appendices, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:115/136. ISBN:978-0-0692128640. $13]

Its coastal breezes thought to have been healthful for the recovery of sick and wounded patients, Point Lookout, Maryland was confidently selected by US Army medical authorities for construction of a massive military hospital complex early in the Civil War. The first patients arrived in August 1862, and the facilities began to take Confederate wounded as well the following year. However, Point Lookout soon became more than just a hospital. After the exchange system broke down new POW camps were needed and construction of what would become the military prison at Point Lookout was ordered in summer 1863. Unfortunately, the location on a narrow spit of land where the Potomac River meets Chesapeake Bay proved to be less than ideal for housing military prisoners in tents and taking care of hospital patients in open-air structures. Summer and winter temperature extremes caused suffering for prisoner and patient alike, but particularly for the former group. It also didn't help that nearby wetlands were perfect breeding grounds for disease-vector mosquito populations.

The topic of Civil War POW camps and the multitude of issues surrounding the responsibility for the high death tolls and preventable suffering within both Union and Confederate facilities remain hotly debated today. Though major studies of Point Lookout already exist, Bradley and Linda Gottfried's concise Hell Comes to Southern Maryland: The Story of Point Lookout Prison and Hammond General Hospital is remarkable for its comprehensive range of topics addressed as well as its evenhanded tone and nature. Much of the general hospital material is concentrated in the first chapter, with most of the balance of the book focused on the POW camp. Even though the main narrative runs little over one hundred pages in length, its scope encompasses camp leadership; food, shelter, and medical treatment quality; prison discipline and punishments; prisoner living conditions; camp defenses and associated military actions; the effects of overcrowding and disease on prisoner health; differing conclusions regarding the prison death toll; camp remembrance and preservation; and more. As is the case with many works intended for a popular audience, attribution is not fully realized. While specific sources of their information are commonly disclosed in the main text, the authors did not footnote their material. Additionally, the volume's bibliography is more of a collection of recommended reading and not a complete list of sources consulted.

In their discussions of the many topics referred to above, the authors provide multiple firsthand perspectives from all sides of each issue (ex. from prison authorities, a US Sanitary Commission report, and the prisoners themselves). Of particular focus in the book, due to its detail, is the highly critical November 1863 report composed by Dr. William Swalm of the US Sanitary Commission, presumably an impartial critique of the conditions present at the camp that was nevertheless harshly repudiated by Union prison authorities. The authors perceptively raise an important point regarding the dangers of globally describing or condemning the living conditions at Point Lookout by simply pointing to the situation there at a single point in time. The truth was that practices and regulations were always in flux, and shortages, abuses, and policies noted at one time by observers were not necessarily present at another. Retaliatory measures in Union prisons created in response to reports of abuses in southern prisons as well as prisoner-friendly policies (ex. the ability to receive packages from family members) were always coming and going. Though logistical problems sometimes interfered with prison management at Point Lookout, the frugality of prison bureau administration officials (ex. in issuing condemned army tents to prisoners and severely limiting blanket and wood supplies even in winter) also had a profound effect on the supply side of prisoner food, clothing, fuel, and shelter provisions.

As the Gottfrieds frequently demonstrate in their book, conditions at Point Lookout often pointed toward problems endemic to the prison camp system as a whole. A general lack of consistency was a hallmark of prisons. For example, the authors clearly would agree with the conclusion of David Keller's recent Civil War prisons study that a major mismanagement factor common to nearly all POW camps was constant turnover in leadership and guard units. Camp commandants and guard regiments were barely acclimated to their required duties (and the prisoners themselves used to their expectations) at Point Lookout before they were transferred elsewhere and replacements brought it to begin anew the steep learning curve process of doing a difficult job no one was trained to perform. The result was a notable lack of continuity in the areas of prison management, camp improvements, and overall prisoner treatment and care.

Well cognizant of the degree to which the widespread death and suffering present in Civil War POW camps still evokes strong emotions in readers and writers alike, the authors succeed in their mission of creating an introductory history of Point Lookout that is also dispassionate in nature, though the value of their work could have been improved through proper and more thorough source citations. While the result is a measured evaluation of the genesis and nature of prisoner suffering as well as the degree of official responsibility for deficiencies and neglect involved in managing the overcrowded prison there, the higher conclusion that nearly every aspect of the prison system could have, and should have, been handled better is something to which everyone can agree.

Booknotes: The Record of Murders and Outrages

New Arrival:
• The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction by William A. Blair (UNC Press, 2021).

From the description: "After the Civil War's end, reports surged of violence by Southern whites against Union troops and Black men, women, and children. While some in Washington, D.C., sought to downplay the growing evidence of atrocities, in September 1866, Freedmen's Bureau commissioner O. O. Howard requested that assistant commissioners in the readmitted states compile reports of "murders and outrages" to catalog the extent of violence, to prove that the reports of a peaceful South were wrong, and to argue in Congress for the necessity of martial law. What ensued was one of the most fascinating and least understood fights of the Reconstruction era—a political and analytical fight over information and its validity, with implications that dealt in life and death."

Based on in-person bureau agent interviews throughout the former Confederacy, the official Records Relating to Murders and Outrages eventually reached thousands of pages and recorded between "5,000 and 6,000 crimes" that took place postwar in both rural and urban environments by 1868. According to Blair, this documentation of those events had a strong influence on Reconstruction policy and debates. As one example cited in the introduction, the records "helped slow the timetable for readmission of states, especially Georgia" (pg. 3). While the documents have been used by other Reconstruction historians as source material, the author notes that The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction marks the first history solely devoted to their creation and impact.

Booknotes: Worthy of a Higher Rank

New Arrival:
• Worthy of a Higher Rank: The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign Journal of Colonel Joseph Thoburn, Commander, First Infantry Division, Army of West Virginia by Scott C. Patchan (35th Star Pub, 2021).

Though far outnumbered in Civil War armies by lawyers turned volunteer colonels and generals, there were enough fighting physicians of similarly high rank to be noticeable, and one of the best was West Virginia's (by way of Ireland, Canada, and Ohio) Colonel Joseph Thoburn. "Based primarily on his 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign journal, this biographical work [Worthy of a Higher Rank: The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign Journal of Colonel Joseph Thoburn, Commander, First Infantry Division, Army of West Virginia] provides significant insight on this period of the Civil War, as well as background on an important field commander of the Union Army who was a physician from Wheeling, West Virginia."

During the 1864-65 campaigns, casualties reached such levels in all ranks that many officers were thrust into positions several grades above their actual rank. Thoburn was certainly one of those officers, eventually leading a division while still only a colonel. His diary covers many key battles and operations of the 1864 Shenandoah campaigns, including New Market, Piedmont, and General David Hunter's Lynchburg raid while serving as a brigade commander, and, after being appointed a division commander, the battles of Cool Spring and Second Kernstown. The diary ends on August 7 just after the arrival of General Philip Sheridan to take command of the Army of the Shenandoah.

Himself the author of several essential works related to the Valley campaigns, Scott Patchan assumes the editing role here with gusto. In addition to contributing a general introduction to the diary, Patchan's writing frames each of the book's six chapters with essential context, all of which is annotated. He's also stocked the pages with excellent maps, numerous historical photographs, a set of modern battlefield viewsheds, and numerous other illustrations.

A large section of the book is devoted to addressing the gap between August 7 and Thoburn's mortal wounding at Cedar Creek on October 19. Patchan reproduces two letters from Thoburn to his wife that cover events from Sheridan's Valley Campaign. In one the colonel mentions that he plans to start a new journal (alas no evidence of its existence has been found). The text of Thoburn's official reports for the period are also included, expertly shepherded along for the reader by the editor's bridging text. In three parts, the appendix section contains a small collection of letters from Thoburn's First West Virginia regiment, Thoburn's Piedmont battle report, and a collection of historical accounts of Thoburn's death.

This looks to be a very valuable resource for those seeking fresh information on the Shenandoah campaigns along with the life and Civil War service of Col. Thoburn. Going the extra mile, the scholarly presentation of the material by editor Scott Patchan is both extensive and visually appealing.

Booknotes: Searching for Irvin McDowell, Forgotten Civil War General

New Arrival:
• Searching for Irvin McDowell, Forgotten Civil War General by Frank P. Simione, Jr. and Gene Schmiel, with E.L. Schneider (Authors, 2021).

Though unquestionably a major figure in the mobilization of the Union war effort in the East as well as a prominent army and corps-level commander during the 1861-62 fighting there in Virginia, Major General Irvin McDowell still lacks a comprehensive biography. There are several reasons for that gap's continued existence, the most salient one being that the general apparently did not leave behind much in the way of personal papers that have survived, or been found yet if they exist.

From the description: "Irvin McDowell was a major actor in the Civil War for a short, but critical time, and his life history deserves to be told and remembered. Like so many others, he was caught up in that national calamity. He was a dutiful, dependable, and diligent military officer. But perhaps unlike some others, early in the Civil War he was called upon to perform duties which, in retrospect, may have been beyond his capacity and only served both to enhance his peculiarities and shine light on his shortcomings."

Searching for Irvin McDowell, Forgotten Civil War General "is the first attempt to make the journey of searching for Irvin McDowell and trying to understand him and his role in the Civil War era via a full-length biography." The book is a self-published effort, and co-author Gene Schmiel freely admits that it is intentionally limited in scope. The narrative, which runs a bit over 250 pages in length, is at its core an analytical synthesis of information found in published primary and secondary sources (a deep dive into the archives being an undertaking left to others, perhaps by someone inspired in part by reading this book).

With coverage of McDowell's early life and pre-Civil War career contained in the first chapter and a very brief summary of his postwar activities found in the final chapter, the text's overwhelming focus is on examining the general's conduct during the early-war eastern campaigns from First Bull Run through Second Bull Run. Also explored is the general's role as a key witness for the prosecution during the Fitz John Porter trial that followed Pope's defeat. I'm looking forward to reading it. I'll have to tag Harry on this one, too.

Review - "Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command" by Kent Masterson Brown

[Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command by Kent Masterson Brown (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Hardcover, 13 maps, photos, illustration, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:375/488. ISBN:9781469661995. $35]

Having the benefit of expansive knowledge gained from an all-embracing and continually revised Gettysburg literature, today's Civil War students reserve nearly universal praise for how General George Gordon Meade conducted himself over the short week between his appointment to command the Army of the Potomac and the final repulse of the enemy on the third and final day of the great battle. At the time, however, views on the campaign's results as a whole were mixed and the honeymoon afforded Meade by his Gettysburg victory was very short lived. Lincoln himself made no effort to conceal his dismay over the pursuit from Gettysburg not resulting in the capture or destruction of most of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Meade's star faded further over the next six months, as the series of campaigns fought in Virginia between the two main armies over that period failed to net any further progress toward Union victory in the East. Never fully trusted by the administration, Meade would remain in command of the Army of the Potomac, but he would be placed under Grant's direct supervision during the subsequent Overland and Richmond-Petersburg campaigns of 1864-65. Unfortunately for Meade, the exalted outcomes of that long and bloody string of events (the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox) were popularly attributed to Grant and Meade's own key role further pushed into the shadows.

However, over the past few decades a number of book-length studies of military operations from Gettysburg through Appomattox have significantly enhanced our knowledge of Meade's direction of the war's principal Union army from mid-1863 onward through the end of the conflict. The effect has been a fairly significant raising of Meade's command profile along with greater appreciation of the full scope and range of his accomplishments. The latest contribution to that growing body of literature is Kent Masterson Brown's impressive Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command, a new tome that exhaustively details and analyzes the general's operational and tactical-level judgment and actions during the 1863 Pennsylvania Campaign.

As every student of the campaign knows, Meade originally intended for his army to occupy the strong natural line around Pipe Creek that fulfilled the requirements of his orders to cover Washington and Baltimore, and all of his logistical arrangements were devoted to that, but historiographical controversy still surrounds assignment of credit or blame for how and why the main fighting instead took place well to the north at Gettysburg. Brown disagrees with both Edwin Coddington and Harry Pfanz that Meade left it up to Reynolds whether to bring on a general engagement at Gettysburg. He also takes issue with Stephen Sears over the matter of Reynolds not receiving instructions (he clearly did) and finds baseless what he sees as Allen Guelzo's characterization of Reynolds as being "reckless and insubordinate" (pg. 101) in forcing a fight at Gettysburg. The author most completely aligns himself with Meade scholar John Selby's contention that the First Corps movement to Gettysburg was primarily an information gathering mission seeking to find answers to questions regarding the current locations of Lee's corps and what their aims might be. All of the evidence presented in the book closely supports that most highly persuasive interpretation of what Meade intended Reynolds to do, act as an advance guard to force Lee to reveal his cards.

The debate over General Daniel Sickles's controversial decision to advance his Third Corps all the way to the Emmitsburg Road has raged ever since July 2, and Sickles has defenders on the matter. Brown shares the position of those who maintain that the move was both inadvisable and a clear act of insubordination. However one sees the effect of the Peach Orchard salient fighting—as needless sacrifice or, on the other extreme, taking the steam out of Longstreet's assault and even saving the Union left—the forward repositioning of Third Corps is generally considered to have exceeded the traditional latitude given corps commanders. In the author's view, as well as that of many others, Sickles disobeyed the substance and spirit of Meade's order to form a line with the Third Corps right connected to the Second Corps left and the Third Corps left anchored on Little Round Top. Sickles's final line fulfilled neither directive (though one might tortuously argue that each flank of Sickles's meandering salient ended at least in the general neighborhood of where Meade directed).

While Meade displayed considerable operational skill under pressure during the time between his appointment to command and the outbreak of battle at Gettysburg, he also, according to Brown, exhibited a high level of tactical ability on July 2, when he personally guided the army's response to the heavy Confederate attack that crushed the Third Corps's exposed salient. Unlike previous Army of the Potomac commanders, Meade gambled heavily in stripping other threatened parts of the field (arguably he risked too much on the far right and ended up owing much to General George Greene's determined defense of Culp's Hill against heavy odds for staving off disaster) to quash Longstreet's attack through sheer weight of men and guns. Meade's personal direction of the fight on the left, where he ordered into action elements of every corps in the army, saved the day in Brown's view, albeit at an unavoidably horrendous human cost.

With the knowledge that Lee's lines of communication and supply were far longer than Meade's and infinitely more precarious, many readers can be forgiven for scoffing at the author's assessment of the severity of Meade's supply situation when viewed relative to the enemy's. However, as exhaustively detailed in Brown's earlier book, Lee's army, through its thorough foraging efforts throughout the campaign, was abundantly supplied with food and animal fodder in comparison to Meade's men and horses, who were receiving inadequate amounts of both by the July 1-3 fighting. The condition of the animals was most concerning. This was due to roads south from Gettysburg being deemed insecure as well as the supply depots at Westminster, which were served by the Western Maryland Railroad and designed to supply the nearer Pipe Creek Line not the forward position at Gettysburg, being inadequate to the task until a herculean effort by military railroad chief Herman Haupt and others finally managed to push an influx of food and forage on to Gettysburg by July 4.

Most writers who have examined the post-battle situation and pursuit are satisfied with Meade spending the rainy 4th resting and refitting his army and then pausing to see what Lee's next move would be. If Lee embarked on a general retreat (an action Meade needed to know, not assume, was happening), Meade would, as best practices dictated, pursue on a parallel path as a direct pursuit through the mountains would achieve little. Brown's excuses for Meade's operational starts and stops during the pursuit, which revolve around the author's determination that Meade needed to make sure his movements still covered Baltimore and Washington in a way that ensured that Lee could not effectively double back and advantageously regain the offensive, will not entirely convince every reader to have been a necessary precaution. On the other hand, the author's confident conclusion that an all-out assault on the Williamsport defenses had only the barest chance of success and high probability of disaster is entirely persuasive. In fact, the substance of that view, in direct opposition to the Lincoln administration assertion at the time that success was practically ensured if only the army attacked, is the current consensus.

Meade critics have frequently latched onto the general's series of high command meetings as evidence of weakness and indecision, but Brown raises several relevant objections to the most uncharitable characterizations. As Brown observes, Meade was thrust into army command unexpectedly and at midstream, so it is reasonable that he would consult with his top generals with some frequency during those critical two weeks of marching, battle, and pursuit. The author's suggestion that Meade, after already having a course of action in mind, used those meetings more as an effective way to gauge how much enthusiasm and teamwork he could expect from his corps commanders seems like a valid piece of the puzzle. Brown's portrayal in the book of the character of Meade's war councils is often more fair-minded and nuanced than others that have gained prominence in the literature.

Brown frequently analyzes Meade's decision making in the context of the influential writings of Carl von Clausewitz (and to a lesser extent Baron Jomini's). This is done effectively (perhaps best during the discussion of Meade's deployment of First Corps toward Gettysburg as his advance guard) and mainly to show how often Meade's actions were driven by classic tenets of that western military tradition as taught by West Point theoretical successor Dennis Hart Mahan. Meade clearly paid attention in class more than some other Civil War generals.

The author is evidently a great admirer of Meade's character and generalship as displayed during the Gettysburg campaign, and in the book he is distinctly unafraid to challenge a host of more negative assessments that exist in the historiography. Refreshingly, Brown's aggressive, yet still respectful, objections to many of the critical opinions and interpretations contained in major popular works are discussed in the main text rather than being relegated to footnote commentary. Employing reasoned interpretation backed up by primary evidence, Brown's generally favorable defense of Meade's actions offers strong counterpoints to both long-accepted dogma and more recent critiques.

Centered on exhaustive description and analysis based on intensive primary source research, the picture that emerges in Meade at Gettysburg is of an army commander highly skilled in both the operational art of war (the primary sphere of the army commander) and tactical-level battlefield management. Immediately thrust into army command during the middle of a major campaign, Meade, by instinct and training, calmly sifted through intelligence reports and confidently managed his new command's marching orders while also displaying remarkable powers of adaptation when his initial plan of operations was ruined by events at Gettysburg outside his control. During the July 2 fighting, Meade skillfully and decisively shifted forces across the battlefield, often risking the safety of one part of his line to ensure that a critical breakthrough was avoided on another. This was yet another display of the general's powers of improvisation under pressure when the actions of a key subordinate (in this case Sickles on the left) upset his carefully arranged dispositions. Notably, during the course of the battle he also put all of his corps into the fight, leaving no questions to posterity regarding the holding back of reserves. Finally, his army crippled by casualties, suffering from shortages of food and forage, and still bound by previous orders to cover the capital, gamely pursued the enemy's retreating army. In the end, Meade's decision to not risk the moral and military gains from his recent Gettysburg victory by launching his army across open ground against Lee's formidable line of fortifications covering Williamsport and Falling Waters was, with the benefit of modern knowledge and hindsight, undoubtedly the correct course of action.

While the book presents a strong argument for renewed appreciation of Meade's command leadership during the Gettysburg Campaign, how high Meade ranks among Civil War army commanders as whole remains as issue much more open for debate. Though constrained by administration limits as to possible lines of advance, the only opportunity Meade had to independently conduct his own campaign from start to finish—the season of fall operations in Virginia that spanned the period between the end of the Gettysburg Campaign and the winter encampment preceding the Overland Campaign—lacked any distinguished accomplishments (although Jeffrey Hunt's recent multi-volume history of those events does finds much that is positive in Meade's generalship). How Meade would have fared without Grant's oversight of the reorganized and replenished Potomac army during the 1864-65 campaigns is a grand question mark that no one can answer with any degree of certainty. Opinions likely differ, but even Meade-friendly readers of modern studies of the war's post-Gettysburg campaigns in the East can still certainly be left with the overall impression that the general was perhaps not up to the job of dealing the finishing stroke to enemy resistance in the theater. What is less open to debate, not least due to fine studies like this one from Kent Masterson Brown, is that the great victory at Gettysburg was a timeless achievement that will forever be associated with George Meade and that came at a momentous point in the war.

Booknotes: The Union Blockade in the American Civil War

New Arrival:
• The Union Blockade in the American Civil War: A Reassessment by Michael Brem Bonner & Peter McCord (UT Press, 2021).

From the description: "Throughout the war, Lincoln’s blockade and attempts to breach it touched nearly every aspect of the war effort. The Union prevented crucial material from reaching Confederate forces, while blockade runners smuggled hundreds of thousands of guns to rebel armies. No other military campaign lasted as long or had as many long-term consequences on the outcome of the Civil War." Undeniably, the scale of the blockade and the amount of resources devoted to it were incredible. "Covering more than three thousand miles of Southern coastline and employing the services of 100,000 sailors, the blockade was a massive undertaking largely dictated by two Atlantic powers: Great Britain and the United States."

Michael Bonner and Peter McCord's The Union Blockade in the American Civil War "build(s) on the extensive scholarship of the blockade and incorporate(s) previously unexamined British primary sources to deliver a fresh analysis of the Union blockade, blockade-running, and a reassessment of the blockade’s effectiveness. Their multifaceted study reassesses several key aspects of a “critical component of Union strategy,” including diplomatic and legal issues and the significance of the Confederacy’s reliance on European supplies to sustain the war effort." With the 'works cited' list populated entirely with published primary and secondary sources, it appears that the book is of the synthesis variety.

Finally, "(t)he authors present statistics showing that the blockade was not nearly as effective as is commonly believed; moreover, its successes against steam-powered blockade runners actually decreased as the war went on." It will be interesting to see how the writers present this kind of raw numbers information, as many commonly cited statistics (ex. the percentage of runners that safely made it into port over a certain interval) often neglect the bigger picture. For example, if 99 out of 100 blockade runners are successful that looks bad for the blockaders but unmentioned in that analysis are the thousands of ships that might have entered southern ports over that same period had the blockade by its very existence not extinguished ordinary trade. There are many other considerations as well. The description touts "diversity and comprehensiveness of coverage," so I'm looking forward to reading the entirety of this reassessment.

Booknotes: Ends of War

New Arrival:
• Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney (UNC Press, 2021).

Symbolic of the tidiest aspects of the end of the Civil War, the formal surrender at Appomattox has received the lion's share of past attention in both scholarly and popular publishing, but the less tidy features of the immediate postwar period have received increasingly intensive coverage of late. Caroline Janney's Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox aims to contribute to that growing body of work. While most officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia submitted to battlefield defeat and accepted their paroles, "others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender."

As the book demonstrates, shock waves emanating from the Lincoln assassination also changed much of the character of war's end and the demobilization of Lee's army. The killing of the president "led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom."

A "new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox," Janney's study "reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the deliberations of government and military authorities to the ground-level experiences of common soldiers." The book also examines the post-surrender paths of noncombatants, black and white, who were attached to Lee's army. The full range of the civilian response to the presence of hungry ex-soldiers passing through their farms and communities is addressed as well. "Ultimately, what unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years that followed."

Booknotes: A Fine Introduction to Battle

New Arrival:
• A Fine Introduction to Battle: Hood's Texas Brigade at The Battle of Eltham's Landing, May 7, 1862 by Joseph L. Owen (Fox Run Pub, 2021).

From the description: "The Battle of Eltham's Landing on May 7, 1862 was the baptism by fire for the Texas Brigade of Gen. John Bell Hood. The Texans distinguished themselves throughout the war as members of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of Eltham's Landing was considered small compared to the battles the brigade fought soon afterwards: Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas/Second Bull Run, Sharpsburg/Antietam, Gettysburg and Chickamauga. However, the brunt of the fighting at Eltham's Landing was done by the Texans. Hood's Texas Brigade's first combat experience proved they were a force to be reckoned with."

As was the case in Owen's earlier compilations Texans at Gettysburg, Texans at Antietam, and Lone Star Valor, the new book is also a collection of transcribed reports, letters, newspaper articles, diary entries, and interviews. Most accounts included in the book were first published in newspapers, but material was drawn from other sources (including books, articles, manuscript collections, and magazines), too.

More from the description: "In these accounts, the soldiers wrote how bravely the brigade fought in its first battle. Newspapers throughout Texas, Georgia and the whole South expressed their pride about the gallantry and aggressiveness of Hood's Brigade in their first battle, and began building the reputation of Hood's Texans becoming Robert E. Lee's "Grenadier Guard."" Together, they "provide a valuable view of this overlooked, early battle through the eyes of the Texans that reflected pride not only in themselves but in fellow brigade members of the 18th Georgia and Hampton's Legion." These brigade sources are organized in four main chapters organized by unit (First, Fourth, and Fifth Texas along with a very brief Eighteenth Georgia section). There is also a chapter-length collection of material written by generals, and the volume concludes with a useful casualty appendix.

Owen does not provide a narrative history of the battle written in his own hand that explores the action in detail, but the introduction section of the book does contain a very brief summary of events. In addition to some writer biography remarks preceding each source entry, the author contributes other background and bridging text throughout the volume. Many accounts have a photograph of the writer attached. Certainly if one were to begin a research project on the battle, this book would be a very valuable resource to own.

Coming Soon (September '21 Edition)

**NEW RELEASES¹** Scheduled for SEPT 2021:

• Crosshairs on the Capital: Jubal Early’s Raid on Washington, D.C., July 1864 - Reasons, Reactions, and Results by James Bruns.
• Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso by Christopher Grasso.
• The Union League and Biracial Politics in Reconstruction Texas by Carl Moneyhon.
• The River Batteries at Fort Donelson: Construction, Armament and Battles, 1861-1862 by Cathey & Robnett.
• Lincoln and Native Americans by Michael Green.
• Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville by Christopher Thrasher.
• Lincoln's Northern Nemesis: The War Opposition and Exile of Ohio's Clement Vallandigham by Martin Gottlieb.
• Port Hudson: A History in Photographs by Lawrence Hewitt.
• Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox by Caroline Janney.
• Civil War Witnesses and Their Books: New Perspectives on Iconic Works by Gallagher & Cushman, eds.
• The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today by Stephen Cushman.
• Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen Guelzo.
• Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas–New Mexico Borderlands by Blackshear & Ely.

Comments: Janney's book arrived in the mail already, so it looks like it might get a slightly earlier general release. The biggest title of the month, at least in terms of sparking wide discussion and differing opinions, will surely be Guelzo's Lee biography. I hope I can get a review copy of it from Knopf.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include non-revised/expanded reprints of previously published books and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.

Booknotes: Lincoln Comes to Gettysburg

New Arrival:
• Lincoln Comes to Gettysburg: The Creation of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address by Bradley M. Gottfried & Linda I. Gottfried (Savas Beatie, 2021).

Lincoln Comes to Gettysburg "recounts the events surrounding the creation of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, its dedication, and concentrates on Lincoln’s visit to Gettysburg on November 18- 19, 1863."

As one might imagine, burying the dead from the Gettysburg battle in a suitable manner was a pressing matter as well as a huge organizational and logistical challenge. From the description: "First, appropriate land needed to be identified and purchased. After the State of Pennsylvania purchased the 17 acres, a renowned landscape architect designed the layout of the cemetery. All was now ready for the bodies to be interred from their uneasy resting places around the battlefield, placed in coffins, marked with their names and units, and transported to the new cemetery to be permanently reinterred. More than 3,500 men were moved to the Soldiers National Cemetery."

The cemetery dedication planning involved some touchy considerations. More: "Most of the program was easily decided. It would be composed of odes, singing, prayers, and remarks by the most renowned orator in the nation, Edward Everett. The committee argued over whether President Abraham Lincoln should be invited to the ceremony and, if so, his role in the program. The committee, divided by politics, decided on a middle ground, inviting the President to provide “a few appropriate remarks.”" Lincoln accepted the invitation, of course, and his journey to Gettysburg, activities in town, his famous address, its reception, and its legacy are all discussed by co-authors Bradley and Linda Gottfried in the volume.

The appendix section includes a pair of tours (one focusing on Lincoln's activities and another on National Cemetery sites) along with an essay discussing the centennial commemorative event that featured a speech by former president Dwight Eisenhower (then president JFK was invited to be the keynote speaker but had to pass on it due to his fateful commitment to a Texas political visit of which we are all familiar).

Booknotes: Passing Through the Fire

New Arrival:
• Passing Through the Fire: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in the Civil War by Brian F. Swartz (Savas Beatie, 2021)

Brian Swartz's Passing Through the Fire: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in the Civil War "chronicles Chamberlain’s swift transition from college professor and family man to regimental and brigade commander. A natural leader, he honed his fighting skills at Shepherdstown and Fredericksburg. Praised by his Gettysburg peers for leading the 20th Maine Infantry’s successful defense of Little Round Top—an action that would eventually earn him Civil War immortality—Chamberlain experienced his most intense combat after arriving at Petersburg."

Military biographies are not a common part of the ECW series lineup, but I would welcome more of these, especially some covering figures who don't already have extensive biographical treatment. Chamberlain's story, of course, has been abundantly covered in books, magazines, and films, and popular interest in his Civil War career continues to remain steady. Using "Chamberlain’s extensive memoirs and writings and multiple period sources," Swartz's book "follows Chamberlain across Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia while examining the determined warrior who let nothing prevent him from helping save the United States."

Passing Through the Fire dutifully covers the entirety of Chamberlain's Civil War service, including Fredericksburg and his most famous leadership exploit at Little Round Top, but well over half the book recounts the general's activities during the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign. Nearly forced to retire from the service due do his horrific injuries, Chamberlain did return to the army and was present at the Appomattox surrender, where he contributed yet another episode to famous Civil War legend and lore.

Twelve maps support the text along with numerous period and modern photographs. The appendix section contains three essays. The first is a tour of Chamberlain-related historical sites across Maine while the second discusses Chamberlain's relationship with his wife Fanny (a subject much explored and debated in the extensive Chamberlain literature) and the third looks at how Chamberlain gained (largely through the Shaara Gettysburg novel and the Burn's documentary series) his lofty and enduring stature in modern Civil War popular culture and history.

Review - "Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department" by Guy Hasegawa

[Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department by Guy R. Hasegawa (Southern Illinois University Press, 2021). Softcover, photos, illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,183/275. ISBN:978-0-8093-3829-0. $26.50]

The American Civil War's mass mobilization of the military-age populations of both sections presented near insuperable challenges to the army medical departments of the US and Confederate governments. Though neither belligerent was adequately prepared to meet the healthcare needs of hundreds of thousands of newly inducted men, or the casualties incurred during war's early battles (which were small by later standards), the United States did have the benefit of an existing bureaucracy to help it at least begin to effectively address those trials. On the other side, the Confederate medical department possessed nowhere near the same resources but also did not have to start completely from scratch. A number of senior and experienced medical department officers left their posts in the US Army and were able to essentially copy that well-established bureaucratic system and put it to use in the new Confederate Army. The history of that process and its wartime application is the primary focus of Guy Hasegawa's excellent new book Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department.

Hasegawa's study is remarkable through the extent by which the author was able to mitigate basic source limitations. Most of the records of the Confederate Army Medical Department did not survive the chaos of the war's final moments, being either destroyed at Richmond or lost during the retreat from the capital. Nevertheless, Hasegawa's research effort was able to collect more than enough supporting sources of all types to provide a very comprehensive survey of the medical department's key personnel, organization, breadth of operations and responsibilities, and overall war record.

In the book, Hasegawa explains at some length the duties and responsibilities of the key cogs in the medical department bureaucracy—most specifically the Surgeon General but also the medical directors of army hospitals, medical inspectors responsible for enforcing regulations, and medical purveyors tasked with obtaining all of the department's necessary medicines and supplies. It quickly became apparent to the last group of officers that obtaining adequate medical supplies would be an enormous challenge that could only be adequately met by a combination of importation through the blockade and renewed exploitation of domestic sources. Procurement would always be limited by supply and payment shortages, but there was also considerable resistance to the official use of many native remedies (especially from the allopathic medical community), and that conflict within the profession (which still exists today) is outlined in the text. Also addressed in some detail are the roles of medical department officers and personnel in battlefield care, general hospital administration, and prison hospital operation. The department's recognition of the need for examining boards to ensure competence of surgeons and other medical staff is discussed as well. In conjunction with Confederate lawmakers, the department also assumed a key role in the army's disability certification, medical discharge, and even furlough procedures. The ways in which that process became more involved and more controversial as the war progressed (particularly after national conscription was enacted) is well explained in the book.

As much as the volume serves the reader well as a general history of the medical department, it is just as much an account of the wartime role of the Confederate Office of the Surgeon General (SGO) and a detailed professional biography of its longest serving and most influential leader, Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore. Though he could be abrupt in manner, Moore was by nearly all accounts a gifted, no nonsense administrator. While, as mentioned above, the Confederacy avoided having to create a medical department out of whole cloth by adopting the existing US Army system of organization, regulations, and seniority, that mostly sound decision sometimes had the detrimental effect of stifling innovative initiatives that might have helped mitigate problems attached to the Confederacy's inferior material and human resources. Nevertheless, Moore often took a pragmatic approach to addressing those problems. For example, like his Union counterpart, Moore was impressed with the French model of battlefield casualty care and evacuation, but he also recognized that his own organization did not have the resources to emulate it for every major army. Instead, Moore attempted to create a "Reserve Surgical Corps" that would be sent as needed to major battlefields, which was a good idea in theory that was derailed in practice by legal barriers and resource, staff availability, and transportation limitations outside of his control. The impossibility of being able to anticipate when or where major battles would occur was another drawback to Moore's otherwise promising idea of a central medical reserve. Another Moore initiative was in the area of medicine procurement. With the blockade affecting supplies of prepared medicines, Moore sought, with considerable opposition in some quarters, to supplement unreliable supplies of allopathic medicines with plant remedies indigenous to the South by creating a regulated procurement and testing program. Moore also recognized the need to document for future education purposes the discoveries and advances made in military surgery and medicine, and made that a priority as well (although, as Hasegawa explains, those efforts mostly went unappreciated at the time because much of the data was collected immediately but held back for publication until after the war).

While the medical department was described by one qualified contemporary observer as a "matchless organization," a combination of forces frequently thwarted promising initiatives involved with the ongoing quest for improvements in organizational structuring and patient care. Those self-constructed barriers against further refinement form one of the book's major themes and offer a powerful explanation of the ways by which SGO efficiency, while laudable overall, was negative impacted by factors outside of money, manpower, and resource scarcity. As an example, the stubbornly honest Moore as a rule refused to grant special favors to influential persons and in that way failed to procure powerful legislative friends in Congress. While he seems to have got along well with President Davis on a personal level, Moore found many of his plans and suggestions that did make it through Congress thwarted by presidential veto, frequently on the grounds of legal technicality. In another example, army commanders often interfered with medical department prerogatives when it came to authority over army general hospitals. Intra-departmental interferences included things such as surgeon resistance to examining boards and officers assuming grand titles and responsibilities of no legal basis. While these factors challenge the admittedly exaggerated idea that the Confederate Medical Department operated as a truly matchless organization, they do not collectively muster striking opposition to the book's conclusion that the department generally exceeded expectations.

In Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department, author Guy Hasegawa has created a history that is arguably the greatest single-source advancement in our knowledge of the Confederate Army's medical apparatus since Cunningham's Doctors in Gray (1958). The book's highlighting of the talents and achievements of Surgeon General Moore, a figure largely unknown to most Civil War students, also effectively reminds us that the Union did not possess a complete monopoly on the war's most talented top-level administrators. While there isn't enough surviving source material to offer a fair comparison between the Union and Confederate medical departments, Hasegawa makes a strong argument that Moore's organization could very well have been the Confederate government's best-run department, one that served its wounded soldiers remarkably well given the many limitations imposed upon their care.

Booknotes: The Summer of ’63 Vicksburg and Tullahoma

New Arrival:
• The Summer of ’63: Vicksburg and Tullahoma - Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War edited by Chris Mackowski & Dan Welch (Savas Beatie, 2021)

By any estimate, the first week of July 1863 was a momentous time that encompassed the concluding moments of major Union campaign victories in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. The companion volume to The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg - Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War, this book addresses the other two events from that triumvirate of triumphs referenced above. While Vicksburg has received plenty of recognition along with solid coverage in the literature, the Tullahoma Campaign received its first major study only this year with David Powell and Eric Wittenberg's Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Course of the Civil War, June 23 - July 4, 1863, an exhaustive operational history that cannot be recommended highly enough.

As is the case with the Gettysburg volume, The Summer of ’63: Vicksburg and Tullahoma is based on the public history work of a number of Emerging Civil War contributors who engage their audience through "writing for the popular Emerging Civil War blog, speaking on its podcast, or delivering talks at its annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge in Virginia." This book "is a compilation of some of their favorites, anthologized, revised, and updated, together with several original pieces. Each entry includes helpful illustrations."

In addition to a foreword and introductory comments on photographing Vicksburg, the book includes 29 chapters of Vicksburg discussion (with some crossover) and 10 chapters of Tullahoma coverage, all of varying degrees of length and depth. Leadership, strategy, battles, firsthand military and civilian experiences, memorialization, and remembrance of both campaigns are among the many topics and themes explored in the book. In support of these are eight maps.

Various Things

1. A regular reader recently notified me that Craig Swain's website is back. It is still under construction and also undergoing a bit of a rebranding (in addition to Civil War matters, Craig will also be getting into modern subjects on the site), but I've bookmarked the link [you can find it here] and will be checking back frequently to see how things are going. Welcome back, Craig.

2. Accounts of the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay begin with the surprise sinking of the Canonicus-class monitor USS Tecumseh, an event that doesn't get a whole lot of attention beyond inducing from the reader a brief shudder of horror at the grim fate of most of the crew trapped within (the vessel went under so fast that only a small number could escape) before moving on the famous damning of torpedoes, battering of the Tennessee into submission, and Union victory. Hopefully, the story will finally get the attention it deserves in David Smithweck's The USS Tecumseh in Mobile Bay: The Sinking of a Civil War Ironclad. Look for it in October.

3. A number of Savas Beatie titles recently popped up on the long-range radar (2022 and beyond). Among the major releases are The Maps of Spotsylvania through Cold Harbor and “If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania” (the latter the first of a pair of volumes covering the march to Gettysburg by both armies), but there are three others that closely align with my interests.

Perhaps no one is more qualified than Richard Hatcher to discuss Fort Sumter, and I've been looking forward to reading his ECW title on the topic. However, the publication date keeps getting pushed back. Perhaps the reason behind that is the author has been fleshing out the subject for a full-length study. I'm not sure if the ECW entry has been entirely abandoned in favor of this larger scale treatment, but they share the same title (though the subtitles differ) so I am thinking that that might be the case. Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War will cover the fort's role in the entire conflict.

Also related to the Charleston campaign is James Morgan's Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell: The Battle of Secessionville. Patrick Brennan's Secessionville study remains my favorite military history related to Civil War Charleston, and, given the quality of Morgan's earlier work on a small but significant Civil War battle, I am looking forward to the new take on the same subject.

Finally, I am no fan at all of Joe Johnston's military character and generalship, but he is intimately connected with many topics that interest me greatly, including the Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Peninsula campaigns. Thus, I was excited to discover news of an upcoming two-volume reassessment of the general by Richard McMurry. As the title suggests, The Civil Wars of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston: Volume 1: Virginia to Mississippi, 1861-1863 addresses the general's Civil War career from the war's beginning through the failure to relieve Vicksburg. Out of all of the books in this group, this one interests me most.