Byrd: "A UNIONIST IN EAST TENNESSEE: Captain William K. Byrd and the Mysterious Raid of 1861"

[ A Unionist in East Tennessee: Captain William K. Byrd and the Mysterious Raid of 1861 by Marvin Byrd (The History Press, 2011). Softcover, map, illustrations, appendices, notes, index. Pages main/total:158/192. ISBN:978-1-60949-245-8 $21.99 ]

During the first months of the Civil War, with Confederate general Felix K. Zollicoffer pursuing a generally conciliatory policy in East Tennessee, rival militias coexisted, wary of each other's intentions but without a large degree of physical violence between them. This all changed with the November 8, 1861 railroad bridge burning campaign conducted by pro-Union militants, a dramatic event that instigated a large scale Confederate crackdown characterized by mass arrests and the hanging of suspects. While the planned Federal invasion from Kentucky was canceled, pro-Union militias were targeted by Confederate authorities as immediate threats.  The following month, in Hawkins County (somewhere between Lee and Pumpkin valleys), a band of unionist militia was attacked by local pro-Confederate forces. Their sixty-year-old leader, William K. Bird, was allegedly abused and killed after his capture, leading to widespread calls by unionist Tennesseans for revenge and prosecution of the perpetrators. The political, military, and judicial matters surrounding this "raid" are the subject of Marvin Byrd's A Unionist in East Tennessee.

In his book, the author does a fine job of communicating the charged political atmosphere in 1861, in isolated Hawkins and Hancock counties and in East Tennessee at large. With local Civil War history publications (especially those authored by descendants) often characterized by wild leaps from scant evidence, Byrd's more careful handling of the available source material is refreshing. Just about every aspect of the raid -- who ordered it, who led it, the exact location of the clash, and the particulars of what happened -- is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. While the site location remains unknown and details of the fighting (often characterized as an ambush) sparse, the author constructs a strong case that the planning and conduct of the raid was a local affair not ordered by Confederate military authorities. Additionally, although built around circumstantial evidence, Byrd's case that the raid was planned and led by local secessionist and Confederate congressman Joseph Brown Heiskell is strongly presented.  What happened after the death of William Byrd is better known, and the author's coverage of the region's arrest and imprisonment record is extensive, as is the subject of lawsuits (during and long after the war) brought against the alleged attackers and murderers of Byrd, including the socially and politically prominent Heiskell.

On the complaint front, while the book's endnotes indicate a wide net was cast for relevant source material, a bibliography should have been included.  Also, the single tiny East Tennessee county map provided was wholly inadequate for guiding readers to the locations mentioned in the text.  Especially for non-natives, a detailed map of Hancock and Hawkins counties would have been enormously helpful.

A Unionist in East Tennessee can be recommended on a number of counts. While the subject of East Tennessee unionism at large has been covered well in many books and articles, this monograph provides a satisfactorily researched and unique micro-examination of an obscure incident between opposing local forces in an area of East Tennessee far less well studied than others.  Also, readers with genealogical interests will appreciate the massive amount of individual and family connection information uncovered by Byrd and presented in the text.  Finally, scholars of post war lawsuits brought against ex-Confederates will find a great deal of useful information for their pursuits.

Civil War in Indian Territory '61-'63: B&G Vol. XXVIII Issue 3

Dominated by old and/or amateurish works, the Civil War in the Indian Territory possesses on the whole one of the most deficient bodies of literature in Civil War historiography, so I was surprised and delighted to find that the next issue of Blue & Gray Magazine will tackle the battles of Chusto-Talasah (Caving Banks), Chustenahlah, Bayou Manard, Old Fort Wayne, Cabin Creek, Devil's Backbone, and Honey Springs. The level of authority that author Michael J. Manning possesses on these subjects is unknown to me, but I really hope he does a good job and I also hope my B&G renewal gets processed in time.

Booknotes II (November '11)

New Arrivals:

1. CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: Cherbourg 1864 by Mark Lardas (Osprey, 2011).

Vol. 40 in Osprey's Duel series.

2. Gettysburg's Forgotten Cavalry Actions: Farnsworth's Charge, South Cavalry Field, and the Battle of Fairfield, July 3, 1863 by Eric J. Wittenberg (Savas Beatie, 2011).

This is a newly revised and updated edition. In addition to the main text discussions of the three major actions named in the book's subtitle, the appendices include OBs, walking/driving tours, and the full text of Wittenberg and Petruzzi's rebuttal of Gettysburg licensed tour guide Andie Custer's theory on where Farnsworth's charge occurred. Petruzzi has a nice post about the new edition here.

Frazier: "THUNDER ACROSS THE SWAMP: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February - May 1863"

[Thunder Across the Swamp: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February-May 1863 by Donald S. Frazier (State House Press, 2011). Cloth, 56 maps, 123 photos, 75 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:559/630. ISBN:978-193333744-9 $59.95]

Not completely neglected, the Civil War in southwest Louisiana has received some fine coverage in the literature, from Christopher Pena's detailed history of the 1862 fighting in the Lafourche District to David C. Edmonds' classic account of the 1863 Texas Overland Expedition. However, sandwiched in between these campaigns occurred perhaps the most interesting operation of them all, the 1863 Bayou Teche Campaign. Almost completely overlooked in the literature beyond a deficient work published in the 1970s, the Teche campaign has finally received its due with Donald S. Frazier's Thunder Across the Swamp: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February - May 1863, the second volume of the historian's projected four-volume "Louisiana Quadrille".

In the spring of 1863, the two major Union armies in the Mississippi Valley, U.S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee opposite Vicksburg and Nathaniel Banks' Army of the Gulf near New Orleans and Baton Rouge, were embroiled in a debate on how best to cooperate in the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. While it was assumed that one army would detach a large force to aid the other, then combine armies to tackle the remaining post, the generals instead elected to move in opposite directions, Grant east to the Mississippi capital and Banks west up Louisiana's rich Bayou Teche region before turning north to the Red River. Both were ultimately successful.

Combining deep research with lively writing and numerous, highly detailed maps, Thunder Across the Swamp is shining example of the best of modern Civil War campaign history. The federal movement up the Teche was a well conceived combined operation, composed of a direct land attack by Banks' main force against Confederate General Richard Taylor's small army at Fort Bisland and a water-borne turning movement via Grand Lake. Taylor's entire command barely escaped destruction when the federal amphibious force, Cuvier Grover's infantry division, landed at Irish Bend, struck the weak Confederate rear but failed to cut off the enemy escape route. Taylor's army had survived, but on its long retreat almost disintegrated through straggling and desertion. Meanwhile, the Army of the Gulf engaged in large scale property destruction (a prelude to the Overland and Red River campaigns) and extracted a vast amount of supplies from the rich farms and plantations in the region. Gunboats also struck north up the Atchafalaya River and opened communications with Union naval forces above Port Hudson.

In addition to his analysis of General Banks's strategic options and intentions within the wider Union effort to open the Mississippi to navigation, Frazier's operational coverage of the Teche campaign is just as thorough and his tactical battlefield narratives first rate. Skillfully incorporated into the main narrative, participant accounts are numerous and representative of all ranks. The battles of Fort Bisland and Irish Bend and smaller fights at places like Vermilion Bayou, Fort Burton, Washington, and Chenyville, are meticulously recounted at a micro-tactical scale. Readers who revel in regiment and company level battle history are richly rewarded here.  Additionally, the book's cartography, a diverse collection of 56 strategic, operational, and tactical maps, is intimately tied to the text, never leaving the reader lost on the battlefield or on the march. The amount of detail conveyed, in terms of terrain features and unit positions and movements, is immensely satisfying on all counts.

While the book has a few too many typos to escape mention, other complaints are relatively minor.  An explanation of why Bisland was chosen as the main strongpoint of the Confederate defenses on the Teche is not explained. Given how easily it could be (and was) turned by water movement, one suspects it was a concession to non-military concerns, protection for the valuable agricultural resources located upstream.  Also, Banks is perhaps not accorded enough credit for a sound operational plan, one that came within a hair's breadth of bagging Taylor's entire command. On the Confederate side, while the author is justly critical of Henry Sibley's failure to impose march discipline on the retreat from Irish Bend, Taylor's responsibility as overall commander should not be overlooked.

Though one hesitates to label any study definitive, in a military historical context, Thunder Across the Swamp approaches that level as closely as anyone should care to wish.  Also, in terms of informational depth and quality of presentation, the book significantly raises the bar of reader expectation for the series. If things continue as they are going, volumes 3 and 4 will be major events in the publishing of Civil War Trans-Mississippi theater military history. In a time when cost cutting too often results in history books with significant material and presentational deficiencies, Frazier and State House Press ought to be congratulated for holding nothing back.  Thunder Across the Swamp brilliantly bridges a significant gap in Louisiana Civil War military historiography and is deserving of the highest of accolades.


Other CWBA reviews of State House/McWhiney titles:
* Campaign for Wilson's Creek: The Fight for Missouri Begins
* Love and War: The Civil War Letters and Medicinal Book of Augustus V. Ball
* Fire In The Cane Field: The Federal Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861 - January 1863

The Civil War in South Carolina

South Carolina Historical Magazine, the SC Historical Society's peer reviewed journal, apparently has published many Civil War related articles over the years, enough that only a selection of these can fill a new 600+ page book. Edited by Lawrence S Rowland and Stephen G Hoffius, The Civil War in South Carolina (Home House Press, 2011) boasts that

 "Some of the finest articles exploring the Civil War in South Carolina, first published in the South Carolina Historical Society Magazine, are collected here in a remarkable volume that stretches from the gathering for the Secession Convention in December 1860 until the battles that followed the Confederate surrender in 1865. The book provide both sides' perspectives on the opening attack on Fort Sumter and on Sherman's March. Every corner of South Carolina is featured in these selections because the War touched the lives of everyone. Contributors to the volume include some of the state's leading historians".

I hope to have my review copy soon.

September Blood reprint

Long out of print and often rather expensive to find in fine condition on the secondary market, the best history of the Battle of Carnifex Ferry has been reissued by Quarrier Press with a new introduction by author Terry Lowry. September Blood is an essential element to the West Virginia Civil War bookshelf.  I've never read Lowry's contributions to the H.E. Howard unit history series, but Last Sleep: The Battle of Droop Mountain November 6, 1863 and The Battle of Scary Creek: Military Operations in the Kanawha Valley, April-July 1861 are also highly recommended by me.

Divided Loyalties in Kentucky

Like many other unpublished Civil War nuts I suspect, I always have book ideas swirling around in my head on neglected subjects that never actually get off the ground. One of my favorites is a history of the first year of the war in Kentucky, roughly from Sumter through Johnston's retreat from Bowling Green. However, knowing that my not doing a project is no loss to Civil War scholarship, I'm always glad to find someone else crossing something off my wish list. While James Finck's Divided Loyalties: Kentucky's Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War (Savas Beatie, May 2012) covers a slightly different time period (November 1860 - November 1861), there is more than enough overlap to capture my interest.

I do wish authors and publishers would come up with a more original title phrase than "divided loyalties" when describing areas of the South with particularly contested civilian populations. It is almost as overdone as the "thunder" of so many campaign and battle histories.

Booknotes (November '11)

New Arrivals:


1. The Denbigh's Civilian Imports: Customs Records of a Civil War Blockade Runner between Mobile and Havana by J. Barto Arnold III (Inst. of Nautical Archaeology, 2011).

This is a massive reference book containing invoices and customs forms from the blockade runner Denbigh into Mobile.  Beyond allowing researchers to track what civilians imported through the blockade, the book should also inform readers about changes in price and item over time.

2. The Campaigns for Vicksburg 1862-63: Leadership Lessons by Kevin J. Dougherty (Casemate, 2011).

Through the lens of Vicksburg, the author analyzes 30 different aspects of leadership using vignettes involving 30 political and military personalities associated with the campaign.

Patchan: "SECOND MANASSAS: Longstreet's Attack and the Struggle for Chinn Ridge"

[Second Manassas: Longstreet's Attack and the Struggle for Chinn Ridge by Scott C. Patchan (Potomac Books, 2011). Hardcover, 11 maps, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Page main/total:146/205. ISBN:978-1-59797-687-9  $26.95]

Book length treatments of portions of Civil War battles are typically the purview of Gettysburg scholars and enthusiasts. However, with Second Manassas, Scott Patchan instead offers readers a new look at James Longstreet's crushing August 30, 1862 attack that decided the Battle of Second Manassas in the Army of Northern Virginia's favor.  With its main narrative text coming in at less than 150 pages, Second Manassas: Longstreet's Attack and the Struggle for Chinn Ridge is tightly focused on activity south of the Warrenton Turnpike, the heavy fighting at Chinn Ridge and Henry House Hill with some attention paid to the southern end of Dogan Ridge.

The military historical writing skills displayed in Patchan's previous works have vaulted him into the higher echelon of Civil War campaign and battle history authors. It's obvious he knows the ground, and few exceed his ability to convert a deep knowledge of the source material into a coherent, detailed, and engaging tactical narrative.

In Second Manassas, the story of Longstreet's left to right echelon attack unfolds masterfully, but the common wisdom that the attack was a classic counterpunch executed in textbook fashion is overthrown. Part of the problem was a faulty command structure, which got the attack off to a bad start. Bizarrely, Hood retained command of his own brigade (leaving a lowly staff captain in nominal charge) as well as his division and Nathan Evans continued to lead his brigade semi-independently. Cadmus Wilcox did the same with his own division. Through blunder, he ended up personally advancing with his old brigade, leaving the division's other two behind.  The result was a weak, disjointed initial attack instead of a solid avalanche of two whole divisions hitting the almost entirely open Union flank.

As more and more Confederate brigades and divisions were committed on Hood's right, they were forced into an early left wheel in order to dislodge stubborn federal units positioned atop Chinn Ridge instead of advancing directly to Henry House Hill and cutting off the Army of the Potomac's retreat. Leadership of brigades and regiments was generally superb, but problems existed at division level. While Patchan is effusive in his praise of Confederate division commander David R. Jones, his writing is critical of James Kemper's lack of control and Richard Anderson's caution (although he admits that it is difficult to assess Anderson's role without his missing report). Stonewall Jackson also comes under fire for not demonstrating strongly enough against the federal right and for not using his own long arm to draw some of the attention of the massed federal batteries atop Dogan Ridge.

However, as Patchan makes clear, the other side had something to do with lessening the impact of Longstreet's attack.  Brave and quick thinking Union officers ensured their defeat on the left would not turn into disaster.  The brigades of Nathaniel McLean, Zealous Tower, John Koltes and Wladimir Krzyanowski did wonders on Chinn Ridge, while the Pennsylvania Reserves and Sykes's division of Regulars held firm at Henry House Hill until outflanked at dusk. Criticism of the uninspired performances of corps commanders Franz Sigel and Irvin McDowell, who sent reinforcements to the left in driblets, is factual and restrained, avoiding the mocking tone of abuse one often finds heaped upon the reputations of both men.

A minor complaint I have with the book is the relegation of any discussion of Longstreet's role in the attack to a brief section of the concluding chapter, which actually comprises a very nice overall summary of the successes and failures of the various Confederate command levels -- corps, division, brigade, and regiment. A much larger problem can be found with the cartography.  So many of the maps are difficult to read, due to small size and blurry printing.  This is too bad, as the level of detail, in terms of terrain features and unit positions and movements, is otherwise excellent.

One question a reader might reasonably ask is why read Patchan when we already have John Hennessy's universally acclaimed Return to Bull Run? Hennessy himself generously offers an answer to the question in his introduction to Patchan's book. Ensuing decades inevitably witness the uncovering of new source material that can be used to fill the knowledge gaps that remain sprinkled throughout all battle histories.  In addition to its unique tactical presentation of the Chinn Ridge and Henry House Hill fighting, the information in Patchan's Second Manassas acts as a corrective to all prior work.  A new library essential, it should be paired with Hennessy on all Second Manassas bookshelves.

Booknotes VI (October '11)

New Arrival: 

Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War by Mark Neely (UNC Press, 2011).

I am around 100 pages into this book and liking it. Neely examines the usual issues -- secession, habeas corpus, emancipation, conscription, etc. -- but a major part of what makes his book unusual is the in depth look at the northern pamphlets published during the war both in support and of in opposition to the policies of the Lincoln administration.  In general, the pamphlets in question are those offering serious legal arguments, not merely partisan emotional pleas, and Neely's analysis (in the interrelated contexts of legal and historical precedent) of their merits is very much worth reading.  The book also devotes a large section to a similar scrutinization of the Confederate constitution.

"Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863"

Joseph O. Shelby's "Great Raid" has been the subject of one book length account, Mark Scott's thesis The Fifth Season (Two Trails, 2001). Directed at a general audience as part of Osprey Publishing's Raid series, Sean McLachlan's Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863 (2011) is another summary account. Coming in at 80 illustration-filled pages, the book is a typical Osprey offering in length and visual style.

Civil War Missouri was similar to Kentucky in the context of hosting Confederate mounted raids launched from out of state, a major difference being the far more celebrated nature of the Kentucky operations.  McLachlan provides some context in this regard by briefly outlining (and mapping the course of) John S. Marmaduke's 1862-63 Springfield and Cape Girardeau raids that preceded Shelby's own.  Overall, I think the author provides a reasonably good summary of the Great Raid, and its most significant military action -- the October 13 Battle of Marshall. In researching this section, McLachlan consulted the work of historian James Denny, an authority on the battle. A pair of detailed orders of battle (including such information as unit effectives engaged and artillery tube types) and bird's-eye isometric view maps at regiment/battalion/battery scale accompany the Marshall section, with sidebar and main text offering a fairly clear explanation of the fighting's sequence of events. Beyond the maps, the selection of illustrations is unremarkable (I don't recall seeing anything new to my eyes).

In general, Osprey books are meant to be quickly digested popular history and are not presented in a scholarly format; thus the lack of documentation and sparse bibliography require a trusting reader.  I do niggle with some of the material presented. Complaints range from gross errors of fact (e.g. page 7's "After the St. Louis massacre, Governor Jackson easily passed a resolution to secede from the Union") to an overly simplistic (even for a short work such as this) description of the unionist militia system as a dual entity. Given that the various militias were the primary active defenders of Missouri during this period, I would also quibble with McLachlan's conclusion that Shelby's raid (Sept. 22 - Oct. 26, 1863) measurably aided the Army of Tennessee in the West by preventing major troop transfers from Missouri to Tennessee.  These reservations aside, and given the continued dearth of publications dealing with Civil War mounted raids in Missouri, the book is worth a look.

Booknotes V (October '11)

New Arrivals:

1. A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community by Nicole Etcheson (UP of Kansas, 2011).

 Regular readers might recall that I have a high opinion of Etcheson's earlier "Bleeding Kansas" book. This new effort centers around the impact of the Civil War on the Putnam County, Indiana home front, but it also examines the much broader period of societal change 1850-1870.

2. The Fate of War: Fredericksburg, 1862 by Duane Schultz (Westholme, 2011).

3. The Artillery Service in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65 by John C. Tidball, ed. by Lawrence M. Kaplan (Westholme, 2011).

Through his own experiences, Tidball analyzes the artillery services in the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Tennessee. Kaplan's editing work appears to be primarily organizational in nature (there is also some added Tidball material in the appendices), as the text itself is not annotated.

Hess and the war in the West

I've been wondering what increasingly prolific historian Earl Hess has next on his plate. Unfortunately for me, it is not his history of Burnside's East Tennessee campaign (please let that be next). Instead, next spring we'll get The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi (UNC Press, March 2012). That's a pretty massive subject to tackle from one side, let along both, and maybe difficult also to come up with something significantly new to say. I'll be interested enough to find out.

"A Little Short of Boats: The Civil War Battles of Ball's Bluff and Edwards Ferry, October 21 - 22, 1861" (Revised and Expanded ed.)

A trio of Ball's Bluff histories were published in the 1990s -- Byron Farwell's Ball's Bluff: A Small Battle and Its Long Shadow (1990), William Howard's The Battle of Ball's Bluff: The "Leesburg Affair," October 21, 1861 (1994), and Kim Holien's Battle of Ball's Bluff (1995) -- but a definitive study would not appear until the next decade, when James A. Morgan III burst on the scene in 2004. Ball's Bluff treatments as part of larger works by Russel Beatie and William Marvel have also emerged, but these have done nothing to shake Morgan's reputation as the accepted master of the subject. Fast forwarding to today, publisher Savas Beatie has published a "Revised and Expanded" edition of Morgan's A Little Short of Boats: The Civil War Battles of Ball's Bluff and Edwards Ferry, October 21 - 22, 1861.

The book is a masterful micro-treatment of the tactical aspects of the battle, but it also looks intently at the personalities involved on the military and political levels. On the Union side, a unseemly political witch hunt emerged in  the aftermath of the disaster. Its most notable victim, General Charles P. Stone, was scapegoated for the defeat, accused of treason, and imprisoned.  The author treats the officer sympathetically, and rightly so.

Morgan uncovered new source material (thoughtfully labeled with asterisks in the bibliography) for this edition, which is also the first in hardcover. Thus, an even more detailed picture of the Ball's Bluff and Edwards Ferry battles emerges in its pages. More accounts of the death of Col. Edward Baker serve to deepen the mystery surrounding its circumstances.  The new information available also allowed the author to incorporate more biographical features into the narrative.  While a few new photographs were added, the maps appear to be the same. In the period since the Ironclad Publishing edition appeared, the trails and onsite interpretation of the Ball's Bluff battlefield have been improved and the new tour appendix has been updated to reflect these changes. Finally, an entirely new appendix challenges previous interpretations of the battle and why it was fought. It is clear from Morgan's research that there was no Union plan to attack and capture Leesburg. It was a small demonstration gone tragically awry.

Both new readers and those already owning the 2004 paperback will want a copy of the revised and expanded edition of A Little Short of Boats, which takes a great book and makes it even better.