Smith: "CORINTH 1862: Siege, Battle, Occupation"

[ Corinth 1862: Siege, Battle, Occupation by Timothy B. Smith (University Press of Kansas, 2012). Hardcover, 8 maps, photos, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 472 pp. ISBN:978-0-7006-1852-1 $39.95 ]

Situated at the junction of two of the South's longest and most commercially and militarily vital railroads, the north-south running Mobile & Ohio and the east-west Memphis & Charleston (the "backbone" of the Confederacy), the small town of Corinth, Mississippi was a logistical hub of immense interest to both sides. Timothy Smith's groundbreaking Corinth 1862 examines events from the period when many considered the town the key to the entire western theater.

With rough estimates of over 100,000 Union soldiers and 80,000 Confederates, the April-May 1862 campaign (the Siege of Corinth) by General Henry Halleck's massive army group was one of the largest operations of the war, yet it has been badly neglected in the literature. Running around 100 pages and described primarily at the scale of the division, Smith's tight operational summary is inarguably the best published overview available, although some readers will be left hungry for more tactical detail pertaining to the Russell House, Double Log House, Serratt's Hill, Shelton House, and Farmington clashes. Also, with the book providing only a single area map of Corinth for the entire "siege", a close following of the action, even at the scale presented, is more difficult than desired.

Then and now, Halleck's deliberate pace of advance has been the subject of heaps of scorn, but Smith properly credits the general with the achievement of his object at small cost.  Critiques of the follow up strike one as more powerful.  On the Confederate side, the author does not take a determined stance on the controversies over the level of formidability offered by the Corinth defenses and the timing of Beauregard's withdrawal (although he does praise the general's success in saving most of the equipment and supplies accumulated in the town).

Smith's operational and tactical discussions of the campaign and October 3-4 battle for Corinth are excellent, although the latter has a bit of an imbalance of scale [tactical movements are at regimental level for the Union side, and brigade for the Confederates]. The author's grasp of how the natural landscape and Corinth's concentric lines of earthwork defenses drove the conduct of the battle is admirable all around. George Skoch's maps closely resemble those he created for The Darkest Days of the War, Peter Cozzens's superb 1997 rendering of the campaign and battle.  Smith's views on the mysteries and controversies of the battle (e.g. General Louis Hebert's enigmatic illness, Mansfield Lovell's failure to attack College Hill on the 4th, and the miscommunication between William Rosecrans and Charles Hamilton that derailed a potentially devastating Union flank attack on the 3rd) are generally similar to those presented by Cozzens.

The largest complaint raised by both Union and Confederate occupiers of swampy Corinth was the poor quality of water and the epidemic of sickness. These health issues, and the effect they had on the fighting effectiveness of the Confederate defenders during Halleck's advance, are worthy of their own study (perhaps in conjunction with a look at the "Chickahominy fevers" that similarly prostrated tens of thousands of Union soldiers during the concurrent Peninsula Campaign).

Unionism in Corinth and the rest of Tishomingo County is another issue examined by Smith. Many of the ladies of Corona College welcomed the arrival of Union troops, and with the departure of so many secessionists from Corinth following Beauregard's retreat, the town was essentially transformed into a unionist bastion. Beginning in late 1862, the Union general in charge of the Corinth district, Grenville Dodge, established a contraband camp whose population swelled into the thousands. In the next year, many of the able bodied men among them would be recruited into black combat units.

The body of research materials consulted by Smith is astounding, a testament to his many years of diligent digging through archive collections located across the entire breadth of the country. The listing of manuscript sources alone far exceeds in size the entire bibliographies of most Civil War works published today.

The first attempt at a comprehensive examination of a strategic point commonly acknowledged to be one of the continent's most important, with an emphasis on the year of most decisive action and change, Corinth 1862 is a terribly important and original contribution to the Civil War literature. While it's true that a definitive level study of the Battle of Corinth published during the time Smith was researching this volume takes a bit of steam out of that particular section, the parts covering the siege and occupation are truly unmatched.  Corinth 1862 is highly recommended reading for all students of the war, not just those with a primarily western outlook.


More CWBA reviews of UPK titles:
* Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union
* Punitive War: Confederate Guerrillas and Union Reprisals
* A Gallant Little Army: The Mexico City Campaign
* The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth
* Guide to the Atlanta Campaign: Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain
* Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla
* Civil War St. Louis
* The War Within the Union High Command: Politics and Generalship During the Civil War
* Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era

Hatfields and McCoys

After 30 minutes of History's 3-part Hatfield and McCoy saga, I decided I didn't want to sit through eleven more such periods.  I didn't hate it, just wasn't interested in seeing trees outdo Costner in expressing emotion and Paxton feverishly moaning "game over, man" when surrounded by a swarm of bloodthirsty Hatfields.  But on a serious note, this site has received hundreds of hits over the past couple days from those seeking more information on the feud.  With self interest in mind, I do not share Dimitri's concern about the frequency of blog posts being ranked high on new book Google searches.  However, in this case, I am afraid that these new visitors will find that I actually haven't written too much on the feud participants [ see: review of The Other Feud: William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield in the Civil War and a brief content rundown for the 1863 volume from the Virginia at War series of essay compilations].

Booknotes IV (May '12)

New Arrivals:

1. Corinth 1862: Siege, Battle, Occupation by Timothy B. Smith (UP of Kansas, 2012).

My review will be posted this week.

2. Civil War Battlefield Orders Gone Awry: The Written Word and Its Consequences in 13 Engagements by Donald R. Jermann (McFarland, 2012).

With our transportation signage overkill and ready communications, it is easy to forget how difficult it was for mid-nineteenth century armies to get where they needed to be. Jermann looks at Civil War FUBARs at Ball's Bluff, Winchester, Mechanicsville/Gaines' Mill, Malvern Hill, 2nd Bull Run, 1862 Maryland Campaign, Perryville, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Spring Hill and Five Forks.

3. Promotion or the Bottom of the River: The Blue and Gray Naval Careers of Alexander F. Warley, South Carolinian by John M. Stickney (USC Press, 2012).

Warley commanded significant vessels at the beginning (CSS Manassas below New Orleans) and end (CSS Albemarle at Plymouth, NC) of his Confederate naval career. In between, he served at Charleston, Galveston, and Savannah, covering most of the major CSN naval stations. Love the title.

Colorado in the Civil War

No single work adequately covers the role of Colorado in the Civil War.  Most of the attention centers on the epic march of the Pike's Peakers to New Mexico, the Battle of Glorieta, and, of course, Sand Creek.  However, there is much more to the story.  Northerners and southerners alike flocked to the gold fields in the years preceding the Civil War, and enough Confederate sympathizers remained behind to cause trouble in the territory.  In addition to internal strife and other home front issues, Coloradans fought a two front war, against Confederates in the Southwest, Kansas, and Missouri and against a variety of Indian bands threatening the overland trails.

Campaign and unit histories exploring the military role of Colorado's Union volunteers exist (some quite good, like Flint Whitlock's Distant Bugles, Distant Drums: The Union Response to the Confederate Invasion of New Mexico), and general works like Alvin Josephy's The Civil War in the American West and Ray Colton's The Civil War in the Western Territories: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah have some value, but nothing really puts it all together in a satisfying manner. Duane Smith's The Birth of Colorado: A Civil War Perspective serves as a standard reference in various bibliographies, but I found it disappointing in depth and breadth. Most recently, I came across a listing for a self-published work, The Pike's Peakers and the Rocky Mountain Rangers: A History of Colorado in the Civil War. However, the short description, which also doubles as an author bio, is so ill-conceived that I doubt adequate effort was made to present the manuscript in publishable form.

With a promising Nebraska study slated for the first of next year -- James Potter's Standing Firmly by the Flag: Nebraska Territory and the Civil War, 1861-1867--, perhaps someone will be inspired to do the same for Colorado.

Smith, ed. : "THE BATTLE OF SHILOH" Vol. III - Tennessee in the Civil War series

[ Tennessee in the Civil War: The Best of Tennessee Historical Quarterly  Vol. III - The Battle of Shiloh, edited by Timothy B. Smith (The Tennessee Historical Society). Softcover, maps, illustrations, notes, index. 208 pp. ISBN:978-0-9615966-5-1 $25 ]

Since 1942, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, the scholarly journal of the Tennessee Historical Society, has published close to 400 Civil War related articles. In commemoration of the conflict's sesquicentennial, the society, with series editor Carroll Van West, plan to republish the best of these in a dozen themed volumes. An expert scholar will select the essays and pen the introduction for each book. An excellent choice for Volume III - The Battle of Shiloh is historian Timothy B. Smith, the author and editor of numerous Shiloh studies.

Given its status as the state's preeminent battle, it is no surprise that Shiloh is the subject of more than a few THQ articles and Smith's selections comprise a mix of the expected and unexpected, both old and new.  As one might suppose, content quality and depth of research vary and many of the older writings espouse interpretations considered dated by many of today's scholars.  However, all have points of interest.

The first chapter, Peter Franklin Walker's 1957 assessment of Confederate command failure during the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign, outlines the now mainstream critiques of Confederate generals Johnston, Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner.  The most unconventional feature is Walker's criticism of Grant's failure to prevent the escape of the Fort Henry garrison. 

Every Shiloh compilation has to have a Hornet's Nest article and Donald Dosch's from 1978 is a clinical, step-by-step recreation of events.  Although he does not develop his own views on the relative importance of the sunken road fighting, his notes frequently defer to the judgments of David Reed, whose views on the primacy of the Hornet's Nest are well known to today's readers. 

Donald Clark's lengthy piece from 2009 takes a detailed look at Don Carlos Buell's march to the battlefield, as well as the controversial official and public opinions of Buell and lead division commander "Bull" Nelson on the state of the Army of the Tennessee upon their arrival.  Like most of today's historians, Clark does not believe that Buell's arrival on the afternoon of April 6 "saved" Grant's army.  A participant that certainly did believe in Buell as savior, and committed his thoughts on the matter to the pages of his fiction, was Ambrose Bierce. Christopher Kiernan Coleman's article recounts Bierce's participation in the campaign and battle and analyzes how the famous writer's experiences were represented in his later fiction.  A military and civilian 'human interest' article associated with the battle, similar in style to his book, can be found in James McDonough's offering from 1976.

A pair of chapters reproduce participant writings.  For the September 1958 issue, John Biel excerpted the Shiloh portions of the diary and letters of 38th Tennessee soldier Joseph Dimmit Thompson.  These pieces of primary source material provide convey to the reader the perspective of a common soldier belonging to Pond's Brigade of Ruggles's Division. Biel's contribution is also remarkable in that it is the most extensively annotated of the book's selections.   Artist Conrad Wise Chapman, best known for his Siege of Charleston paintings, also fought at Shiloh and was wounded on Day 2.  Wise's thoughts on the battle and his wounding are presented in Ben Bassham's well edited 1988 article.

An article assessing shifting interpretations of Shiloh by historians and another summarizing the formation of the park itself together offer a fitting conclusion to the volume. Editor Timothy Smith's 2003 article divides Shiloh scholarship into four schools of thought and lists the prominent adherents to each.  Most readers will have been exposed to Smith's thoughts on these matters through his many publications since so they need not be restated here.  However, one historian he does mention that most readers have probably not heard of is James Gentsch, whose Master's thesis "A Geographic Analysis of the Battle of Shiloh" (Memphis State University, 1994) sounds worthy of future publication in book form.

Although the definitive battle history has yet to be written, Shiloh students have been treated to a number of excellent books and essay compilations in recent decades.  While all of the articles in The Battle of Shiloh have been published before (obviously), their compilation in a new volume has merit with the hope that a new generation of reader can more easily access them and benefit from their content.

Mizzou Press closing

UM System President Tim Wolfe announced today that the University of Missouri Press will be shutting their doors (final date undetermined), with the winding down of operations beginning in July.   The Columbia Daily Tribune has a brief article discussing this unfortunate event.  As you may know, most university presses receive a subsidy from the parent school and a number have come under significant financial pressures in recent years, but, as far as I know, this is the first actual closure of a major academic publisher since I've been reviewing Civil War books. Hopefully, this is not a harbinger of doom for others involved in the printed dissemination of academic historical literature.

Snapshots from the Collection: "The Big Guns of Fayette"

Unsurprisingly, histories of Texas units that spent the entire war garrisoning their state's coastline are rare. Published way back in 1965, Paul C. Boethel's The Big Guns of Fayette (Von Boeckmann-Jones) is the history of just such a group of men, Creuzbaur's Battery [a.k.a. Fifth Texas Field Battery, Welhausen's Battery].  Although the literature focuses nearly all of its attention on the struggles and victimization of German unionists in the Lone Star State, it is clear from Creuzbaur's almost entirely ethnic company roster that many German-Texans supported the Confederate cause. Originally intended as a heavy artillery unit for coastal defense when it was organized in 1861, the lack of suitable ordnance meant conversion to a four-gun light field battery [2 12-lbers (presumably howitzers) and 2 6-lbers].

From 1861-64, the unit drew garrison duty the length of the Texas coast as places like Liberty, Virginia Point, Galveston Island, Sandy Point, and Fort Mannahassett (Sabine Pass). The only real combat experienced by the men was at Calcasieu Pass (LA) in 1864, where the guns came under heavy fire (disabling two) but were nevertheless instrumental in forcing a pair of powerful Union gunboats (Granite City and Wave, mounting 14 cannon) to surrender. At only 69 pages, Boethel's narrative, based on a variety of primary and secondary source materials (but primarily on official documents), is brief, but it is strong on organizational and roster data. The chapter on Calcasieu Pass is judiciously written and suitably detailed, although a battle map would have been helpful. A trio of drawings indicate geographical points significant to the unit's service history as well as the locales where it was organized and trained.  The roster at the back of the book contains a good number of sizable mini-biographies.

The Big Guns of Fayette has aged rather well and is worth picking up [unfortunately, used copies offered on the secondary market currently run in the $200 range so ILL is a better bet]. In addition to providing useful coverage of military affairs on relatively obscure coastal fronts in the Trans-Mississippi, the book's portrait of an unusual Confederate unit should also arouse the interest of social historians interested in the multi-ethnic makeup of Civil War armies.

Cullimore:"THE BOYS OF COMPANY K: Ohio Cavalry Soldiers in the West During the Civil War"

[ The Boys of Company K: Ohio Cavalry Soldiers in the West During the Civil War by Lee M. Cullimore (High Plains Press). Softcover, maps, photos, roster, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:324/354. ISBN:978-1-937147-01-3 $18.95 ]

The men of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry signed up to fight Confederates, but instead were sent out west to the plains of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas to fight Indians, primarily Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux. Raised piecemeal, the 11th never campaigned as a full regiment. Two companies were incorporated into the regiment in 1864, the last the subject of Lee Cullimore's The Boys of Company K: Ohio Cavalry Soldiers in the West During the Civil War. A useful regimental history already exists in Robert Huhn Jones' Guarding the Overland Trails: The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry in the Civil War (Aurthur H. Clark, 2005), but Cullimore's company study is a more intimate portrayal of frontier service.

The story of Company K is largely told through the writings of three soldiers, the journal of Lewis B. Hull [first published in 1938], and the letters of Franklin Tubbs and William F. Mooney. These three soldiers and others provide the reader with a wealth of detail about military service on the western plains 1864-66 and what life was like in a Civil War frontier fort. Insights into how the authorities and the soldiers dealt with the typical issues of isolated military service (e.g. boredom, loneliness, desertion, weather extremes, and alcoholism) are presented.

The company began active service in 1864 with an arduous march to Fort Laramie. That place and Fort Halleck constituted their primary area of operations.   Duties included protection of settlers as well as keeping open telegraph lines and clearing the main overland trails to mail, emigration, travel, and freight service. Sand Creek made already difficult problems in carrying out these tasks even more so, and the book describes several skirmishes between volunteers and Indian raiders.  The maps included in the book are quite good at tracing movements and locating places mentioned in the text. Cullimore does perhaps devote a bit to much space to men and events outside the direct experience of the men of Company K, and one might have wished for a more balanced portrait of Indian-White frontier relations.  Overall, though, his narrative supplements quite usefully other notable books on the subject of the Overland Trails during the Civil War like John McDermott's Circle of Fire and the excellent Massacre Along the Medicine Road by Ronald Becher.

The company's participation in the 1865 Powder River Expedition is also chronicled. For the most part, this is done well.  Unfortunately, much of today's western writing remains a definitionally muddled and ideologically inconsistent attempt to distinguish between battle and massacre, and The Boys of Company K's attempt to draw convincing parallels between the Tongue River fight and Sand Creek is similarly unedifying in this regard. Cullimore's interpretation of the fight at Black Bear's camp on the Tongue is also at odds with that presented in David Wagner's well regarded two-volume history of the expedition [Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865, The Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts (2009) and Patrick Connor's War: The 1865 Powder River Indian Expedition (2010)].

While Cullimore's notes do provide an enriching array of background and biographical material, I do wish he had included source notes in the traditional manner. Absent this, there is a bibliography listing the books, articles, newspapers, and archival materials consulted by the author.  Above concerns aside, those interested in the Civil War service of the 11th Ohio Cavalry and the last great Plains Indian Wars campaign conducted by Union volunteer units before their replacement by army regulars will find the book worthy of their attention.

Booknotes III (May '12)

New Arrivals:

1. Born to Battle: Grant and Forrest--Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga by Jack Hurst (Basic Books, 2012).

Hurst continues his series juxtaposing the personal backgrounds and military careers of Grant and Forrest. I still think it a bit odd to pair two guys with such a large gap in respective command responsibilities. 

2. Rhode Island's Civil War Hospital: Life and Death at Portsmouth Grove, 1862-1865 by Frank L. Grzyb (McFarland, 2012).

Portsmouth Grove Hospital served thousands of Union wounded and Confederate prisoners. This well researched and illustrated book examines the levels of care offered at the facility and the lives of patients, staff, and civilian benefactors. A roster of soldiers serving as hospital guards is included, as well as a burial register of those that died at the hospital.

Fixing warped boards

BookThink's editor Craig Stark frequently publishes useful Bookthinker articles on a variety of subjects of interest to collectors. A new piece, free to readers (you don't have to be a Gold subscriber), is an excellent primer on the causes and fixes of warped boards. I'm sure everyone's come across this problem at one time or another, especially maddening when not disclosed by the seller, and wondered what fix is most effective and safe. Check it out here.

Hartwig's Antietam

A reader comment reminded me of Scott Hartwig's upcoming 2-vol. history of the Maryland Campaign.  According to the new Johns Hopkins catalog, the title of the first book is To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, and it has an October release. At 800 pages, it's hefty.

"Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town"

Founded in 1845, Jefferson, Texas was a boom town positioned to exploit river trade along the Texas-Louisiana border.  It served as a frontier gateway for goods heading west after traveling up the Red River (Shreveport was 40 miles to the east). According to Jacques Bagur in his monumental local history Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town (University of North Texas Press, 2012), at its 1870 zenith, the town may have been the busiest steamboat port in the state.

As its large size (over 600 pages) suggests, Antebellum Jefferson is remarkably comprehensive.  It is not a traditional narrative history, but rather a bit of a hybrid between that and a data driven reference work.  Each chapter tackles a different theme and together they create a wide ranging social, political, economic, and cultural portrait of the town.  The material presented is both descriptive and quantitative in nature. Not surprisingly, economic activity (e.g. navigation, markets, manufacturing, warehousing, meat packing, railroads etc.)  is a major focus but the lives and experiences of citizens and slaves are also dealt with in similar depth.  Political life, social organizations, religion, education, entertainment, and public health are all covered, as well as darker subjects like vice and crime.

The absence of footnoting makes the book less helpful than it could have been for scholars, but the lengthy source discussion at the rear of the book, loosely organized by section, compensates to some degree for a lack of traditional notes and bibliography.  While the largest audience for Antebellum Jefferson will probably be local, students of western boom town development and Texas history in general should find the volume of significant use in their research.

Booknotes II (May '12)

New Arrival:

Placenames of the Civil War: Cities, Towns, Villages, Railroads Stations, Forts, Camps, Islands, Rivers, Creeks, Fords and Ferries by John D. Bennett (McFarland, 2012).

Title and subtitle pretty much tell you what you're going to get. The description mentions that around 1,600 entries are included. These are not categorized but rather listed together in a single alphabetized "gazetteer". The amount of information under each heading ranges from a sentence or two to several paragraphs, primarily mentioning origins, general location, and dates [generally by month rather than day(s)], names and events associated with the site. An appendix lists town populations from the 1860 census and another compiles a town list by state.

Another reminder that there are books yet to be written about the CW in California

Scuffle at California and Montgomery. Great "action" photos, too.