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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booknotes: Yankees in the Hill City

New Arrival:

• Yankees in the Hill City: The Union Prisoner of War Camp in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1862-1865 by Clifton W. Potter, Jr. (McFarland, 2024).

When it comes to Civil War Virginia, the Richmond-area military hospitals and POW facilities naturally dominate the discussion of those topics, but Lynchburg, with its railroad connections and relative isolation from advancing Union armies and cavalry raiders (at least until the latter stages of the war) also proved an ideal location. Indeed, the city was one of the Confederacy's primary hospital centers.

From the description: "With three railroads and a canal passing through the city, Lynchburg, Virginia, was a major hospital center during the Civil War, far from the remote battlefields. A transit camp where Union soldiers remained before being paroled or transferred to another prison opened in June 1862 at the Fair Ground, just outside the city limits. Upon arrival, the sick and wounded were assigned to one of the 32 hospitals regardless of the uniform they wore."

Clifton Potter's Yankees in the Hill City: The Union Prisoner of War Camp in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1862-1865 is a "complete history of this Union POW camp in Lynchburg: the context of its founding, its operations, and its fate after the war." Like other military detention facilities throughout the South, the number of prisoners at Lynchburg quickly exceeded both expectations and capacity, and by June 1862 the prisoner population had already expanded six-fold. At mid-summer there were 5,000 men held there. According to Potter's research, the administrator of the camp, Col. George Gibbs, was exceptionally proficient with making the most of his limited resources. Potter estimates that the death rate there was "roughly 1.56 percent" under Gibbs's watch (pg. 7), a pretty impressive figure that included wounded individuals.

More from the description: "Union POWs who died were buried in the City Cemetery by the local funeral service, which also carefully recorded their personal data. Local ministers daily performed burial services for all soldiers, regardless of their race or the color of their uniforms, and all their expenses were paid by the Confederate government."

The first appendix consists of a register of Union POW deaths at Lynchburg between 1862 and 1865. Record data includes name, unit, date and location of death, detailed burial plot info, and cemetery number. Chapter Five of the book covers the 1864 campaign and battle of Lynchburg, and a corresponding appendix lists Union casualties suffered during those events from May to June 1864. In a cool little detail of the kind I've never encountered before, every source listed in the bibliography has attached commentary discussing its content and significance.

The final chapter covers the camp's post-war history and current state of historical memory attached to it.

Booknotes: Lincoln's Rise to Eloquence

New Arrival:

• Lincoln's Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination by D. Leigh Henson (Univ of Ill Pr, 2024).

Combining disciplined self-education, ambitious drive, and natural intelligence, Abraham Lincoln was one of those gifted men able to successfully rise above presumed limitations of humble beginnings. His public oratory, seamlessly alternating between being folksy in popular appeal and striking in formal political and legal expression, was an essential tool in Lincoln's political arsenal. What was behind its development is the focus of D. Leigh Henson's Lincoln's Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination.

Presented in two parts, the first addressing Lincoln's early Whig career and use of language to "gain distinction in Congress" and the second his 1850s rhetorical duels against both Stephen Douglas and slavery, Henson's study "examines Lincoln’s pre-presidential development as a rhetorician, the purposes and methods behind his speeches and writings, and how the works contributed to his political rise."

As outlined by numerous Lincoln experts, Lincoln's rhetorical power was rooted in multiple sources. More from the description: "Lincoln’s close study of the rhetorical process drew on sources that ranged from classical writings to foundational American documents to the speeches of Daniel Webster. As Henson shows, Lincoln applied his learning to combine arguments on historical, legal, and moral grounds with appeals to emotion and his own carefully curated credibility."

When it comes to analyzing the structure of Lincoln's rhetoric, other works of recent vintage—such as those from David Hirsch and Dan Van Haften that have deconstructed Lincoln's words and speeches using principles of science and math (specifically geometry)—come to mind. Henson "also explores Lincoln’s use of the elements of structural design to craft coherent arguments that, whatever their varying purposes, used direct and plain language to reach diverse audiences--and laid the groundwork for his rise to the White House."

Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence "follows Lincoln from his early career through the years-long clashes with Stephen A. Douglas to trace the future president’s evolution as a communicator and politician."

Booknotes: Roads to Antietam, Third Edition

New Arrival:

• Roads to Antietam, Third Edition by John W. Schildt (Antietam Inst, 2024).

With its release of a third edition of John Schildt's Roads to Antietam, the Antietam Institute has now added classic reprints to its current stable of publications, which includes the biannual Antietam Journal and yearly "member incentive" original books.

Prior editions of Schildt's book are the original 1985 hardcover from Antietam Publications and the 1997 version from Burd Street Press (or at least that's what Google Books tells me). As of this writing, I don't have a cover image to share here and there aren't any book page links available for this particular title on the institute's website yet. I would imagine that those will become available soon. The third edition is a hardcover with dust jacket (the binding being similar to that of the institute's most recent release, From Frederick to Sharpsburg).

Here is the publisher's description from an earlier edition: "An informative guide to the actual routes followed by armies of both North and South and the experiences of the men before the crucial battle. Roads to Antietam is the story of the armies marching to battle in September 1862 and what that experience was like for the men in the ranks and the civilians along the routes. Clouds of dust, marching men, the rumble of wagons, and the late summer heat and haze added to the noise and confusion of hundreds of units snaking their way up from Virginia and the camps around Washington, D.C. Soldiers from the North and South wondered where they were going as they marched along the roads of Maryland."

Not having available an earlier version for direct comparison, I don't know anything about the quantity of material that has been added over the years between editions or if the many illustrations present here in this copy are new to the third edition. That said, Tom McMillan's new foreword does point out that the third edition contains an "addition of extensive primary source material and an updated series of distinctive maps..." (pg. viii). The newly commissioned maps from Aaron Holley are six in total.

Review - "Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War" by Roberts & Locke

[Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War by W. Clifford Roberts, Jr. & Matthew A.M. Locke (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxviii,206/287. ISBN:978-1-61121-714-8. $32.95]

It certainly wasn't for want of trying, but every Union effort to carry Charleston harbor by direct land and naval assault and finally seize the Cradle of Secession failed. Instead, Charleston's fate would ultimately be determined by outside forces. In February 1865, the city and its surrounding forts, outflanked and isolated by General William T. Sherman's inexorable inland advance up through the Carolinas, were evacuated by their defenders.

So how did Charleston hold out for so long when so many other Confederate fortresses and cities were unable to cope with the Union's vast superiority in combined operations technology and strength? One major factor was the harbor's extensive defense in depth, which consisted of mutually supporting forts and batteries, torpedoes, and fixed obstructions, all backed by a small but powerful ironclad flotilla. That combination proved so effective that even the perimeter, which consisted principally of forts Sumter, Moultrie, and Johnson, successfully resisted both heavy enemy land forces and the Union Navy's greatest concentration of ironclad warships. That maintenance of the harbor's outermost cordon of defense meant that interior posts were left relatively untested throughout the conflict and their own stories largely neglected in the military history literature. As just one example, the wartime history of Castle Pinckney, a Second System fort situated on Shute's Folly Island that oversaw both the mouth of the Cooper River and the city of Charleston's commercial waterfront, has been completely overshadowed by those of the outer forts (Sumter in particular). Ably bringing that topic to the forefront is W. Clifford Roberts, Jr. and Matthew A.M. Locke's Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War.

Roberts and Locke's study touches upon the entire length of Castle Pinckney's existence, even addressing its Colonial-era antecedents. During the Early Republic period, much of the nation's military spending went into coastal defense, and the need for more modern fortifications on Shute's Island was well recognized by local, state, and national planners. That recognition resulted in Castle Pinckney being built over the remains of the old Fort Pinckney. With its guns capable of hitting Charleston itself, the Second System fort figured prominently during the Nullification Crisis, and the harbor post also served as a holding facility for Second Seminole War prisoners (which would not be the last time the fort doubled as a prison). Throughout the book the authors do a fine job of selecting which aspects of the fort's long history to emphasize, and both of those events are discussed. However, as time went on the Shute's Folly fort's utility as a first-line military position was overtaken by the nation's new Third System of coastal defense, which addressed major advances in engineering and technology (in particular, more powerful and longer range artillery).

Appropriately, perhaps half the book covers the Civil War-era, with Pinckney gaining early distinction as the first fort in the harbor seized by hastily organized southern militia. Throughout its history, Pinckney's security and relative isolation made it useful as a multi-purpose facility, and during the Civil War it also housed prisoners (the first batch being those captured at Manassas in 1861). In addition to detailing that part of its story, Roberts and Locke also recount at length the continual defensive improvements made to the fort, which included massive sand revetment, armament upgrades, wall reinforcement to hold up the increased weight, and new enclosed field works to address the vulnerability of the fort's open rear. Their text also offers numerous insights into the personalities and daily lives of the fort's rotating series of defending units and leaders. While increasingly massive Union rifled siege artillery gradually pounded Sumter into rubble from 1863 onward, the more distant Pinckney did not escape occasional shelling. Nevertheless, that threat was never far from the minds of its defenders and much of the text serves as a highly informative case study of the many ways in which the Confederates responded to the enemy's steadily growing edge in heavy artillery capabilities with effective military engineering countermeasures of their own.

The volume is filled with historical maps, engineering drawings, and both period and modern photographs. Those complementing the narrative's exploration of Pinckney's Civil War history are especially helpful in making more intelligible the many physical alterations made to the fort as the war progressed. Enhancing the reference value of the book is its extensive appendix section, which is filled with a series of prisoner list and defending unit rosters along with a bevy of additional historical documents.

After the Civil War, federal Reconstruction governments used Castle Pinckney as a place to confine prisoners convicted by martial law's military commissions. These were their own soldiers as well as southern civilians held there for various crimes. Existing island infrastructure as well as enough area for new construction also made Pinckney suitable as a lighthouse system supply depot, and that peacetime role is also detailed in the text.

For the next hundred years, as recounted in the book, governmental entities at all levels (local, state, and federal) struggled to determine how or if to preserve Castle Pinckney. During that time responsibility for the fort passed through a series of historical associations and government departments, with some of the latter doubting its historical value as being worthy of expensive, long-term restoration and maintenance. Aptly describing Castle Pinckney as a "hot potato" alternately maintained and neglected by various responsible parties, the authors, also citing the fort's archaeological treasures unearthed during recent excavations, make a strong case for Pinckney being still worthy of both study and preservation. Regular harbor channel work, which has resulted in Shute Island's near complete erosion into the sea, continues to threaten the fort's delicate existence, but the Castle Pinckney Historical Preservation Society remains determined to both save it and keep its historical memory alive for future generations. This fine book can certainly aid in that worthy mission.

Booknotes: Fort Fisher

New Arrival:

• Fort Fisher by John Hairr (Arcadia Pub, 2024).

This is a new release from Arcadia's Images of America series.

Not part of the nation's antebellum system of brick coastal fortifications, the massive soil and sod-based Fort Fisher was erected during the war and evolved into one of the conflict's toughest nuts to crack. From the description: "The sandy dunes stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Cape Fear River may not have looked impressive, but Fort Fisher, North Carolina, was a key part of the coastal defenses protecting the most important link in the lifeline of the Confederacy. Blockade runners and naval raiders alike sheltered for cover under the protection provided by powerful artillery batteries, which warships of the Union Navy dared not challenge. Modeled by the fort’s commander, Col. William Lamb, after Russian-engineered designs, the sandy ramparts defending the New Inlet entrance to the Cape Fear River eventually became the largest fortifications in the South, gaining the nickname “Confederate Gibraltar.”"

Following a brief introductory outline of the late-war campaigns against Fort Fisher, the rest of the material is divided into five chapters. Utilizing captioned maps, newspaper illustrations, old and modern photographs, and images (often full-page photos) of key figures in the struggle over the fort, the first chapter covers Fisher's construction and early-war history. Its key role in shepherding blockade runners in and out of the Cape Fear River is highlighted in the following chapter. A number of the ships involved in those endeavors are featured. The first major direct action against the fort, spotlighted by the failed powder vessel experiment, is the subject of the third chapter's sequence of captioned photos and illustrations. The January 1865 fall of Fort Fisher through direct assault is explored in the fourth chapter. The highlight of the fifth chapter is the series of Timothy O'Sullivan photographs documenting the fort's appearance and condition after Union forces took possession of it.

Coming Soon (September '24 Edition)

Scheduled for SEPT 2024¹:
• A Day in September: The Battle of Antietam and the World It Left Behind by Stephen Budiansky.
• High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin Rutan.
• Reckoning with the Devil: Nathan Bedford Forrest in Myth and Memory by Court Carney.
• The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry by Thomas Mack.
• A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War by David Brown.
• Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games ed. by Lewis & Welborn.
• A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864 by Chris Mackowski.
• Digging All Night and Fighting All Day: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske.

Comments: The Rutan title is already out.

¹ - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include reprints that are not significantly revised/expanded, special editions not distributed to reviewers, children's 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: The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery

New Arrival:

• The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery: How George McClellan, Southern Spies and a Confidence Man Nearly Derailed Emancipation by Phil Roycraft (McFarland, 2024).

If you're like me, the memory banks are empty in regard to what the alleged plot referenced in this title could possibly be about.

From the description: "In the aftermath of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued the most significant presidential decree in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which would forever free all slaves in territory not under Union control. Nevertheless, his chief military commander in the field, Major General George B. McClellan, was outraged. Within days, two former Union officers nefariously crossed the lines into rebeldom, an initiative resulting in an elaborate subterfuge to scam Lincoln into withdrawing the Proclamation in return for nebulous promises of peace."

Perusing the Preface and Introduction of The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery: How George McClellan, Southern Spies and a Confidence Man Nearly Derailed Emancipation, the "confidence man" referred to in the book's subtitle is John Wesley Greene. Author Phil Roycraft claims that his "ten years of exhaustive research" and use of "historical forensics" has revealed a plot "never revealed during the war or since, which casts a new light on the dramatic events of 1862" (pg. 1).

More from the description: "This book tells the story, obscured in a veil of secrecy for 150 years, of the cloak and dagger chess match between Union detectives and Southern operatives in the months before emancipation become effective. Despite an ominous warning by author Herman Melville five years before, the scheme to perpetuate slavery almost succeeded, for it was engineered by a man the National Police Gazette once declared the "King of the Confidence Men.""

On pages 4 and 5 of the Introduction, the author summarizes the book's "series of disquieting conclusions" that are "(b)ased on largely circumstantial but compelling evidence" in eight bullet points, which you can read for yourself via the 'Look Inside' feature found by clicking on the bolded title link provided above.

Review - "New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865" by M. Jane Johansson, editor

[New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865 edited by M. Jane Johansson (University of Tennessee Press, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiv,298/399. ISBN:978-1-62190-861-6. $39.95]

Big picture investigation of Civil War military engineering has drawn increased attention from scholars over the past quarter century. Given the viewpoint expressed in his book Engineering Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War (2016), Thomas Army is arguably the most vigorous proponent of the idea that the vast disparity between North and South in the areas of formal engineering education, practitioner pools, technology, and resources was a primary (and even perhaps the key) factor in Union victory. While Army's case is compelling on a number of levels, it is also clear through studies such as Larry Daniel's Engineering in the Confederate Heartland (2022) and Saxon Bisbee's Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War (2018) that impressive feats of military engineering effort and skill were not entirely beyond the limited capabilities of the South. Examples of relatively recent works focusing on military engineering's role during specific campaigns are Earl Hess's excellent series of books published between 2005 and 2018 that cover field fortifications in the eastern theater and the western theater's Atlanta Campaign. Justin Solonick's Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg (2015) is equally insightful. Histories of specialized engineering units have also emerged during this time, two examples being Mark Hoffman's "My Brave Mechanics": The First Michigan Engineers and Their Civil War (2007) and Patterson's Independent Company of Engineers and Mechanics 1861-1865 (2020) by Charles Bogart.

Scholarly editing and publication of the writings of Union engineers is another major feature of this expanding body of literature. Correspondence from one of the war's most celebrated military engineers can be studied through Paul Taylor's My Dear Nelly: The Selected Civil War Letters of General Orlando M. Poe to His Wife Eleanor (2020). Also in 2020, University of Tennessee Press published A Volunteer in the Regulars: The Civil War Journal and Memoir of Gilbert Thompson, US Engineer Battalion (edited by Mark Smith) through their Voices of the Civil War series. Another Voices title of similar vein is the subject of this review, M. Jane Johansson's New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865. Johansson's volume possesses the added distinction of being the rare military engineering volume centered on the Trans-Mississippi theater, not only Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas but the Great Plains and Mountain West as well.

Married at the end of 1859 and a father by the outbreak of the Civil War, Connecticut-born Illinoisan Lyman Gibson Bennett derived the bulk of his personal income from surveying, an in-demand skill that would place him in good stead during the coming conflict. He enlisted in the Thirty-Sixth Illinois, and by the fall of 1861 found himself in Rolla, Missouri, a town located at the terminus of the Southwestern Branch of the Pacific Railroad. Rolla's location made it one of the state's most strategically important posts, and Bennett's surveying skills were immediately put to use in the construction of Fort Lyman and in mapping the surrounding countryside. Johansson very aptly describes Bennett's writing style as being similar to a "travelogue." Indeed, Bennett's engaging prose combined with his lengthy and highly detailed descriptions of physical distances between points of interest, the weather, the natural landscape (and its most prominent geographical features), habitations, and developmental improvements are a prime feature of all of his writings and serve as a veritable goldmine of historical information for today's readers and scholars. Perhaps only the late John Bradbury, the foremost expert on Civil War Rolla, could have told us for certain, but it seems likely that Bennett's extensive diary of this period is the most notable single source behind our knowledge of the critical early-war period in and around that center of transportation and military occupation. Significantly, unlike so many other Civil War diary, letter, and journal writers, Bennett was also very willing to 'talk shop,' detailing for readers the instruments he used and processes he followed for accurately estimating distances, laying out fortifications, and platting out the countryside for military use.

Soon, Bennett's engineering skills brought him to the attention of higher ups, and after a brief hospital stay in St. Louis he returned to active service, rejoining his regiment as it crossed into northwest Arkansas with General Samuel Curtis's Army of the Southwest. In addition to describing the increasing levels of devastating observed during his march to the front, during which he was also detailed to lead a side expedition, Bennett also offers very extensive eyewitness accounts of the battles of Bentonville and Pea Ridge. In hailing Bennett's account of his experiences during the Battle of Pea Ridge, Johansson is certainly not exaggerating the depth and significance of it as one of the most enlightening ones written by a soldier serving in the ranks. His regiment, the Thirty-Sixth Illinois, was a key contributor to Union success in the highly consequential Oberson's Field sector on March 7, 1862. There, its skirmishers essentially decapitated the Confederate high command in that area of the sprawling battlefield by killing in close succession generals Ben McCulloch and second in command James McIntosh. An admirer of General Franz Sigel, Bennett also vividly describes his regiment's participation in the March 8 counterattack that routed the Confederate army and produced, by many accounts, Sigel's best day as a Civil War general. After the battle Bennett formally joined Curtis's staff and performed topographical engineering duties during the army's long march across northern Arkansas.

Returning to St. Louis to finalize his maps, Bennett became bored with department headquarters desk work and received a commission to raise troops in northwest Arkansas. His two-part memoir "Recruiting in Dixie," written in the 1870s, vividly recounts his dangerous entry and recruitment adventures in that guerrilla-infested part of the state, where anti-Confederate "Mounted Feds" enlisted and fought in large numbers. While tall tales of enemy atrocities abound, readers nevertheless gain a clear sense of the societal breakdown that occurred in a mountainous region where lethal violence was common on and off the battlefield and household neutrality impossible to maintain. Bennett eventually was promoted to major of the Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US), and his writings offer useful firsthand perspectives on operations in the area. Hand in hand with those accounts are rather sharp opinions of the region's backwardness (at least in comparison to his own views of elevated civilization). Citing what he felt to have been "unjust prejudice against northern officers" (pg. 232), Bennett resigned his commission near the end of 1864.

In 1865, Bennett returned to the war, this time as a civilian contract engineer. As his diaries reveal, Bennett surveyed battlefields from the recently concluded Price Expedition as well as government lands in eastern Kansas. Those intimately familiar with the atlas to the O.R. will immediately recognize the former. In a remarkable journey spanning, by Johansson's estimate, two thousand miles, Bennett then followed the overland trail across Nebraska and into Colorado (with a detour to observe the territory's gold fields). He also was sent on a mission to survey fortifications at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, Dakota Territory. Though those journeys were full of danger from Indian raids, extreme weather, and frontier privation, Bennett's typical curiosity and colorful travelogue style of writing remained intact. Finding no need to return to the Bennett material already well covered by another scholar [see David Wagner's Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865 - The Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts (2009)], Johansson's examination ends in April 1865.

Johansson's professionalism in compiling, arranging, and editing the Bennett writings is exemplary. She puts her own considerable primary and secondary source research to good use in the volume's illuminating chapter introductions, the epilogue, and endnotes. The notes provide consistent source and background information on persons, places, and events described in Bennett's writing while also offering corrections to Bennett's factual mistakes. Johansson also makes sure to include as many of Bennett's surviving maps and drawings as possible, noting that copyright precluded reproduction of the artwork Bennett produced for his "Personal Reminiscences," one part of which was the aforementioned "Recruiting in Dixie."

Bennett's Civil War writings and Jane Johansson's expert editing of them for scholarly publication should draw interest from a broad range of readers, among them those concerned with the major military campaigns of the Trans-Mississippi West, the role of military engineering in both the conduct and historical documentation of those campaigns, and the hardships and military contributions of the Unionist minority in Arkansas. This fresh Voices of the Civil War series title is very highly recommended.

Book series progress updates

Given the quality, depth, and floor joist-groaning weight of the final product, no one can possibly quibble with Scott Hartwig for taking more than a decade to finish the second installment of his monumental two-volume history of the 1862 Maryland Campaign. On the other hand, there are others (such as Tim Smith with his recently completed five-book Vicksburg Campaign series) who have managed to complete similarly massive projects in a remarkably short period of time. That got me thinking about the current situation with a few other big projects that remain unfinished.

Of course, the first volume in David Powell's highly anticipated Atlanta Campaign series has already arrived (see here), but I recently sent out some CWBA e-couriers to politely solicit updates from a few authors of follow-up titles that have been in the works for a number of years now.

When asked about the fifth and final volume of his expanded "Louisiana Quadrille" (the most recent series title, Tempest over Texas: The Fall and Winter Campaigns of 1863–1864, having been released in 2020), Don Frazier responded that he was prioritizing another publishing project and that the eagerly awaited fifth installment was still in mental "outline" form. I don't know if that means the research is all finished and don't have a projected completion date.

A. Wilson Greene, author of A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 1: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater (2018), responded immediately that the second volume in his Petersburg series (I believe it is a planned trilogy) will be in UNC Press's Spring '25 catalog, with a targeted pub date somewhere in the February to April range. He goes on to say that the manuscript is currently in final editing, with page proofs arriving soon. I gave a highly positive review to Volume 1 and am looking forward to the second installment.

Like Campaign of Giants, River of Death - The Chickamauga Campaign, Volume 1: The Fall of Chattanooga, the first half of William Glenn Robertson's two-part operational history of the Chickamauga Campaign, was published back in 2018. When asked about V2, Robertson responded with the following:

"I am currently working on Chapter 15, out of a projected 15, plus possibly an epilogue, so the end is in sight. I hope to finish the manuscript by the end of September of this year, although the completion date might extend into October. Maps and photos are yet to be finalized. The University of North Carolina Press has been most gracious in sticking with me over such a long period of time. They will choose the publication date, but I am hoping for their spring list."

So it sounds like it will be a while yet before we get the Frazier book, but if things go smoothly we might be able to read both the Greene and Robertson titles as early as next spring.

Booknotes: Massacre at St. Louis

New Arrival:

• Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War by Kenneth E. Burchett (McFarland, 2024).

A couple of McFarland titles arrived just as I was beginning a short summer break, so let's get to the first one.

Every study of the 1861 fighting in Missouri up to and including the climactic Battle of Wilson's Creek, and there are quite a few of them, includes background information (often quite extensive) on political and military events between Lincoln's election and the outbreak of the shooting war in the state. A pretty consistent narrative has emerged from all that, with variation in interpretation primarily found in discussions of the character and motivations of two principal antagonists, Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson and U.S. Captain (later Brigadier General) Nathaniel Lyon.

From the description: "In 1861, Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon marched through the divided slave state Missouri en route to St. Louis. Lyon was to arrest a state militia unit at Camp Jackson that planned to raid a federal arsenal in the city. Upon capturing the men, Lyon's troops encountered crowds of hostile citizens and, after a gun shot, they fired on the mob, killing at least 28 civilians in what is now known as the Camp Jackson affair, or the St. Louis massacre."

Stretching back to some of the earliest origins of the sectional divide, Kenneth Burchett's Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War fleshes out those preliminaries mentioned in the first paragraph considerably. I've mentioned before [in this post] that this new book is part of a trio of works from Burchett that will recount events in Missouri leading up to the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

The book covers an extended length of time. In the Preface, Burchett notes that the book "is in ten parts; each part links a series of events that took place over a period of four decades" (pg. 1). In those parts, "the author describes partisan activities leading to hostilities, promotes awareness about the history of slavery in America, and explores political divisions still evident in American culture." The description offers some hints in regard to new information, noting that "(p)reviously unpublished materials about Governor Claiborne Jackson are included, as well as the role of Montgomery Blair in the fight for Missouri, an analysis of the number of arms in the St. Louis Arsenal and the unknown total number of casualties of the St. Louis massacre."

Booknotes: Holding Charleston by the Bridle

New Arrival:

• Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War by W. Clifford Roberts, Jr. & Matthew A.M. Locke (Savas Beatie, 2024).

Two of Charleston harbor's main forts have received full history treatments from publisher Savas Beatie this year. First there was the February release of Richard Hatcher's Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War and just months later we now get W. Clifford Roberts and Matthew Locke's Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War. A Third System fort that was still incomplete by the outbreak of the Civil War, Sumter guarded the outer harbor's channel entrances while the older Second System's Castle Pinckney was finished before the War of 1812 and more closely covered the inner harbor and the city itself.

From the description: "On the eve of the Civil War, the London Times informed its readers that Castle Pinckney has “been kept garrisoned, not to protect Charleston from naval attack from the ocean, but to serve as a bridle upon the city.” Located on a marshy island in the center of Charleston’s magnificent harbor, the large cannons on the ramparts of this horseshoe-shaped masonry fort had the ability to command downtown Charleston and the busy wharves along East Bay Street. This inescapable fact made Pinckney an important chess piece in the secession turmoil of 1832 and 1850, and in the months leading up to the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter."

Roberts and Locke's study is the first to comprehensively address the fort's entire history from its "innovative design as part of America’s “Second System” of coastal fortifications to the modern challenges of preserving its weathered brick walls against rising sea levels." Castle Pinckney's long active history encompassed numerous events between its construction and the Civil War period. Indeed, "defending the fort was one of Winfield Scott’s major concerns during the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Seminole Indians and Africans from the illegal slave ship Echo were held there" as well.

Of course, the Civil War years, during which the fort served as both seacoast artillery platform and prison, are a major focus of the book's content. More: "In 1860, Maj. Robert Anderson knew Pinckney was the key to protecting his small Federal garrison at Fort Moultrie, but his requests to Washington for troops to hold it went unheeded. That December, three companies of Charleston militia scaled Pinckney’s walls and seized the fort in a daring act that pushed the nation to the edge of civil war. After First Manassas (Bull Run), 156 captured Yankee officers and enlisted men were sent to the island, and in 1863, members of the famous 54th Massachusetts were held there as POWs. The fort’s guns helped defend Charleston during the war’s longest siege. By 1865, the old fortress had been transformed into an earthen barbette battery with a Brooke Rifle and three giant 10-inch Columbiads." Former Confederates were also held as prisoners within Pinckney's walls during Reconstruction, and it was a lighthouse depot for forty years more.

The volume is enhanced through a large collection of maps, drawings, photographs, and artwork. Numerous rosters of prisoners held at Castle Pinckney and of units defending the fort can be found in the appendix section, which also contains other relevant documentary supplements.

Review - "The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863" by Timothy Smith

[The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith (University Press of Kansas, 2024). Hardcover, 22 maps, photos, illustrations, orders of battle, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxvi,385/557. ISBN:978-0-7006-3655-6. $54.99]

Written and published in non-chronological sequence between 2020 and 2024, Timothy Smith's masterful five-volume history of the long and winding 1862-63 Vicksburg Campaign has come to an end with the release of the middle installment The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863¹. The series certainly concludes with a bang, as the two and a half week interval addressed in the book encompasses the most consequential and combat-intensive period of the entire eight-month land and naval contest for possession of the western theater's Confederate Gibraltar.

Smith begins with the first moves that followed the unopposed landing on the Mississippi shore at Bruinsburg of the leading elements of Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee. Immediately striking inland, John C. McClernand's four-division Thirteenth Corps, soon trailed by a pair of divisions from James B. McPherson's Seventeenth Corps. As was the situation with McPherson's third division, the entirety of William T. Sherman's Fifteenth Corps remained on the other side of the Mississippi guarding key points in Grant's rear and, in Sherman's case, keeping up appearances of a possible landing north of the city. Deprived of a cavalry screen of their own on the ill-timed and ill-conceived orders of Confederate theater commander Joseph E. Johnston and much distracted by Grierson's Raid to the east, the often blind defenders were scattered across central Mississippi's military chessboard. Over the ensuing seventeen days, Grant would aggressively maintain the initiative against a hesitant and confused opponent, employing local superiority at the point of attack against detachments of John C. Pemberton's army at every turn. The result was comprehensive defeat for the Confederates over a series of battles fought at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River Bridge.

Though those five connected battles have been strongly detailed inside a number of previous books (most notably Ed Bearss's classic Vicksburg Campaign trilogy) and essays, standalone full-length histories of them are limited to Smith's own 2004 Champion Hill study and Battle of Jackson titles from Chris Mackowski in 2022 and co-authors Bearss and Warren Grabau in 1981 (and even the last shares space with the later Jackson siege and some other regional events). In the preface, Smith is quick to disclose upfront that this book is designed to be an operational-scale history and analysis of the campaign (with maps of corresponding scale), and that readers should know from the start that this narrative will not provide text and map treatments of each battle on the small-unit tactical levels of those found in Smith's earlier Champion Hill book or in the similar style of other battle micro-histories from the likes of Earl Hess, David Powell, and others.

But what a smart and insightful operational history this is. The pros and cons of each critical decision made (or not made) by Grant and Pemberton are carefully weighed by Smith, and logistical concerns are always accorded their full and proper context and significance. The narrative is marked by the heavy contrast in levels of operational thinking and skill the veteran campaigner Grant and the comparatively untested Pemberton displayed. At every turn, the former sought opportunity to seize and maintain initiative and tempo. As demonstrated by his mobile army's almost seamless changes in front, direction of movement, and operational objective as opportunity arose and circumstances allowed, Grant's flexibility along with the ability and willingness of his subordinates to promptly carry out his directives consistently resulted in his formations being in line where and when he wanted them.

On the other side, Pemberton, caught between incompatible directives from President Jefferson Davis and immediate superior Johnston, maintained his headquarters too far away from the front to adequately respond to the accelerating pace of events, and he was indecisive with the limited information he did get. When Pemberton did finally react to Grant's inland advances with intercepting movements of his own, they were marked by rampant command confusion, poor staff work, and lack of coordination. Earlier in the series, Smith presented a compelling command portrait of Pemberton as a desk general who could effectively manage slow-developing events but was easily overwhelmed by those requiring a series of quick decisions from incomplete information. What happened over the first half of May 1863, as recounted in this book, definitively buttresses that keen assessment of Pemberton's fatal limitations as a field general.

Smith's lasering in on the role of logistics in Grant's inland campaign is proper, deeply considered, and also insightful as to what might have been had the Confederates responded better. While Grant handled his army's precarious logistical tail with the same attention and skill that he gave to his army's marching orders and fighting, he was always under the gun when it came to supply. As the book explains, the long Union supply line back across the Mississippi and up its right bank to depots at Milliken's Band and beyond could be supplemented by organized foraging, but there were clear limits as to the quantities of local foodstuffs and animal forage what could be obtained. Like all large-scale expeditions highly dependent on foraging, Grant's army had to stay on the move to keep from starving. Though undoubtedly anxious, Grant demonstrated the same calmness over his logistical problems that he did under fire. A key turning point described in the book is the post-Port Gibson operational pause inside the protective cul de sac formed by the Big Black River, Mississippi River, and Bayou Pierre, during which Grant was able to accumulate, under no pressure from Pemberton's entirely defensive stance, the minimum amount of supplies that would enable him to hazard the subsequent leap into the unknown that paid off in spades. In the end, as revealed through an abundance of sources (from top to bottom) raising the same concerns, the campaign between Bruinsburg and Vicksburg was a close run thing in terms of supplies and, as Smith argues, any additional delay (such as Johnston holding on for a day or two longer in Jackson, or Pemberton maintaining his preferred defensive line across the Big Black River's opposite bank) would have made Grant's food situation fast approach critical levels. A strong case could be made, as Smith does, that Pemberton did not even need to defeat Grant militarily in the Mississippi interior, he just had to maintain his own position until dwindling supplies and the exhausted countryside forced Grant to make a very difficult decision as to the further direction of the campaign.

However, all of this is not to say that the book is lacking in matters of tactical-level discussion. There is about as much of that detail as could be expected to fit inside just under four-hundred pages of narrative. The closest comparison is with the corresponding battle sections of the Bearss trilogy, with Smith's more modern accounts of those events much further enriched through incorporation of participant accounts gleaned from the author's extensive manuscript research. There is small-unit detail present in Smith's collection of battle narratives, but it is selectively focused on the most noteworthy battlefield moments rather than applied generally throughout. In interpreting the May battles, the book does not offer startling departures from current mainstream understanding, but the overviews are first class. There is perhaps some evidence of evolved thinking in regard to Champion Hill, of which Smith is the leading expert. For example, compared to what he wrote twenty years ago, Smith's pared down to essentials version of the battle in this study seems a bit more critical of McClernand and leading division commander Peter Osterhaus's Middle Road passivity in the face of desperate fighting that was raging just a short distance away.

Timothy Smith's The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg wraps up a truly epic campaign history series project, an instant classic that will undoubtedly stand the test of time. When added to Smith's other similarly authoritative works on the Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and (both) Corinth campaigns, the continuity that emerges represents what is essentially a western theater mega-series tracing the rise of Grant in the West and, more generally, the first half of the war in the Mississippi River Valley corridor², an eighteen-month series of operations that proved critical to Union victory and equally disastrous to future Confederate fortunes. Coming from a single author, there's really nothing quite like it in the Civil War literature.

Notes:
1 - Below is a list of the series volumes with links to their CWBA reviews:
• Volume 1 - Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25-December 31, 1862 (2022)
• Volume 2 - Bayou Battles for Vicksburg: The Swamp and River Expeditions, January 1 - April 30, 1863 (2023)
• Volume 3 - The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863 (2024)
• Volume 4 - The Union Assaults at Vicksburg: Grant Attacks Pemberton, May 17–22, 1863 (2020)
• Volume 5 - The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23-July 4, 1863 (2021)
2 - Of course, it can only be considered a series in hindsight, so there are gaps such as the campaign for Island No. 10.