Booknotes: The 30th North Carolina Infantry in the Civil War

New Arrival:
• The 30th North Carolina Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster
by William Thomas Venner (McFarland, 2018).

Among a number of other Civil War related titles, Venner has authored regimental studies of the 7th Tennessee, 11th North Carolina, and 19th Indiana infantry regiments. His latest is The 30th North Carolina Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. "Drawing on letters, journals, memoirs and personnel records, this history follows the civilian-soldiers from their mustering-in to the war's final moments at Appomattox."

It looks like quite a full rendering of the 30th's eastern theater fighting career (most of it with the Army of Northern Virginia). There's a lot of reference data to go with the unit history. At every stage of the 30th's service, the author provides company leadership and strength tables. A great number of original maps pinpointing the regiment's location during all its battles is also provided. It's a large book. A bit more than half of its nearly 450 7x10 pages consists of regimental history narrative, with most of the balance dedicated to casualty lists and the unit roster.

Review of Mackowski & White, eds. - "TURNING POINTS OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR"

[Turning Points of the American Civil War edited by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, index. 270 pages. ISBN:978-0-8093-3621-0. $24.50]

Thomas Desjardin's foreword to Turning Points of the American Civil War claims that western culture generally hardwires us to view the course of extended historical conflicts as a continuous buildup of events that eventually reach a culmination point (or turning point if you will) after which the outcome becomes inevitable. At least when it comes to popular thinking about long wars, there certainly does seem to be more than a little truth in this. For World War Two, Stalingrad in the European theater and Midway in the Pacific would be good examples. In the past, the Battle of Gettysburg was popularly viewed as the American Civil War's great turning point, with non-military events like the Emancipation Proclamation becoming more recently in vogue.

However, today's enthusiastic readers and scholars perhaps more appropriately view great periods of history as consisting of an undulating series of momentum shifts associated with a great many turning points rather than a single one overshadowing all the rest. That seems to be the underlying philosophy behind the nine essays collected in this volume, edited by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White.

Robert Orrison's opening essays accords First Bull Run turning point status, not because of the startling Confederate triumph but rather for what occurred in its wake when General George McClellan was brought in to fix the mess. As essentially all previous scholars have done, Orrison values highly the quick turnaround and expansion orchestrated by the young general, who rapidly proceeded to create from scratch a massive and powerfully resilient instrument of war that would eventually achieve total victory in the eastern theater.

Another early Virginia battle serves as the foundation of the next turning point discussed in the book. Domestic politics will always feature prominently when democracies are at war, but James Morgan's chapter appropriately points to Ball's Bluff as the watershed moment (through the subsequent creation of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War) in the development of counterproductive antagonism and interference between the civilian government and the U.S. military. While the JCCW had its good moments in investigating soldier welfare and ferreting out corruption in war contracts, some modern observers have powerfully argued that the committee's demonstrated willingness to destroy careers on the flimsiest of politically-motivated contexts was responsible in great measure for the Army of the Potomac's seemingly risk-averse behavior.

Moving to the western theater, Gregory Mertz's essay has an interesting take on Albert Sidney Johnston's death at Shiloh, recognizing it not as a chance incident that robbed the Confederacy of victory at that particular battle (as some have argued in the past) but rather an event that robbed the country of a much-needed leader who demonstrated before his death some capability in managing the theater's famously dysfunctional high command. There's also little reason to think that Johnston, who was only four years older than Robert E. Lee, could not have grown further in the capacity of army leader, much as Lee did himself after a troubling baptism of fire.

The aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation is the subject of Kevin Pawlak's contribution. In the chapter, the now typical arguments made about the presidential edict's transformative effects on the war, either immediate or down the line, are reviewed. Also discussed are the many ideological and practical obstacles that were managed by the Lincoln administration and eventually overcome.

According to editor and contributor Kristopher White, Chancellorsville was a turning point in two contrasting ways. While the battle's result could be recognized as the crowning achievement of Robert E. Lee's generalship and showed an army operating at peak efficiency (to say nothing of the combined psychological and morale edge the victory provided), in White's estimation it also best represented the moment of realization that the Confederacy could not afford the kinds of losses incurred by Lee's aggressive style of army leadership. The latter suggestion is well taken, but it also is harsh criticism without the offer of a better winning alternative. Many of Lee's attacks and counterattacks were demonstrably ill-advised, but broad critiques of Lee's casualty rates often fail to take into account situational factors beyond the general's control. The eastern Confederacy faced a vastly superior opponent on a front that lacked depth. No great geographical barriers to Union advance existed, and with opposing capitals so close together there was no ability to trade space for time or to isolate the enemy in the interior. There was also the added disadvantage that Union forces could draw supply via land or sea from practically any point between capitals. Unless the Confederates were willing to accept a siege of Richmond right from the beginning, a politically unacceptable option, the enemy had to be driven back at some point. Given the weapons and tactics of the time, that process would inevitably be accompanied by heavy loss.

Returning to the western theater, Daniel Davis looks at Vicksburg both as an important military victory and as the turning point in launching U.S. Grant's military career and reputation into the stratosphere. The following chapter by Ryan Longfellow also deals with Grant, this time examining the famous moment after the bloody Battle of the Wilderness when the general opted to continue the advance south rather than pull back the army for refit and resupply as all previous commanders in the east had done. This was a clear message to both sides that there would be no turning back this time. On a related note, another scholar who has deeply researched the event recently determined that all accounts of the men in the ranks cheering Grant's pivotal choice were written postwar, casting some doubt on the popular view that the common soldiers immediately recognized and appreciated that a great turning point had come to pass.

Though a more nuanced appreciation of John Bell Hood as army commander has emerged in recent years, Jefferson Davis's July 1864 decision to relieve Joe Johnston mid-campaign in favor of Hood remains controversial. Stephen Davis's essay discusses that turning point using the contextual argument that the change in command resulted in the effective destruction of the Confederacy's primary western field army under Hood's leadership.

Finally, Rea Andrew Redd champions another popular turning point, Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1864 election, though the writer is clearly sympathetic to the view that the South's bid for independence would very likely have been crushed no matter who the next president turned out to be. In Redd's estimation, Lincoln's victory was really more of a killing blow to an already terminal cause than it was a true turning point. While advocates of the election's decisiveness often seem to forget that the inauguration date was in March and not the January of today, it's impossible to predict in what ways, if any, the demoralizing blow of a Lincoln defeat would have manifested itself in the Union war effort before the next president took office (or how a McClellan victory might have revitalized Confederate morale and determination).

In addition to being thoroughly documented, all of the book's chapters are preceded by an extensive editorial introduction that adds further context to what follows. The essay contributions are also generally well supported with illustrations and maps. There are even QR codes spaced throughout the volume that take to reader to "exclusive online material, additional photos and images, links to online resources," and more. 

Few will raise major objections to the turning point selections contained in the book. It is interesting that none of the contributing authors really went out on a limb. Indeed, the generally familiar nature of their choices means that Turning Points will probably appeal mostly, but certainly not exclusively, to the newer reader end of the audience spectrum. Even so, the book does effectively ask all readers to reconsider at least some of their preconceived notions, and it will undoubtedly prompt all to ponder which turning points they would choose if asked to contribute to a similar project.

Early look at "A Campaign of Giants"

Yesterday, I received in the mail a late galley of a highly anticipated 2018 title, A. Wilson Greene's A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 1 - From the Crossing of the James to the Crater (UNC). The first of a trilogy that when finished will comprise the first truly full-length military history treatment of the Petersburg Campaign, Volume One covers the first three major Union offensives in over 500 pages of text.

In the preface, Greene describes his narrative's goal as balancing small-unit tactical detail with a variety of campaign-level contexts. I've only been able to quickly glance through everything, but that looks like an accurate representation of what we'll get. The great focus will be on maneuver and battle, but there is a lengthy chapter describing civilian life in Petersburg during the summer of 1864.

The nearly 50-page bibliography contains the expected depth and range of sources, including a huge array of archival materials located in repositories all over the country. The maps are a bit of a pleasant surprise. In the realm of cartography, it almost feels like a return to university press books of the 1990s, with 34 attractive operational and tactical scale maps (the latter depicting action at the brigade and regimental levels).

The press describes the book as a 2018 "lead title," and it certainly does appear that they've put max effort into its content and presentation. Expect a June release.

Booknotes: The Generals of Shiloh

New Arrival:
• The Generals of Shiloh: Character in Leadership, April 6-7, 1862 by Larry Tagg
(Savas Beatie, 2018).

According to the description, Larry Tagg's The Generals of Shiloh is (as predicted) modeled after its predecessor, The Generals of Gettysburg: The Leaders of America's Greatest Battle (1998). Unfortunately, I've never read the earlier work so I can't offer any first impressions regarding new features or improvements.

Tagg's The Generals of Shiloh "presents detailed background information on each of his subjects, coupled with a thorough account of each man’s actions on the field of Shiloh and, if he survived that battle, his fate thereafter. Many of the great names tossed up by civil war are found here in this early battle, from U. S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Don Carlos Buell, to Albert S. Johnston, Braxton Bragg, and P.G.T. Beauregard. Many more men, whose names crossed the stage of furious combat only to disappear in the smoke on the far side, also populate these pages. Every one acted in his own unique fashion and in a manner worthy of study. This marriage of character (“the features and attributes of a man”) with his war record, offers new insights into how and why a particular soldier acted a certain way, in a certain situation, at a certain time."

Given that colonels led many brigades at Shiloh, the book also includes those lower ranking officers that were acting brigadier generals during the battle. The book eschews footnotes and traditional bibliography in favor of a Critical Bibliography, with the stated reason behind the decision being that the volume is "not intended as a new definitive battle or campaign history."

Be careful what you wish for

Book marketers often trumpet the importance to sales of online customer ratings. However, this "free" promotion strategy comes with its own set of pitfalls.

For example:

People who haven't even read your book will nevertheless feel impelled to post a negative review of it based on entirely false impressions

People absolutely will believe their own shortcomings are the fault of the author

People will convince themselves that they alone can identify false prophets

For too many people, coherent commentary (if it ever existed) will get lost between mind and keyboard

Some people will never understand the essential differences between narrative histories and essay collections

Some people take it personally when great books just aren't for them

Many, many people will insist that "boring" is legitimate criticism

Others think review sections are proper places to complain about the order fulfillment experience

Of course, any reasonable prospective buyer will ignore these gems, but extreme negative rating outliers probably do do some harm when the ratings total is very small and the unsuspecting viewer only sees the tainted overall score. On the other side of things, unwarranted five-star "reviews" are probably even more common, but they're just not as fun to read.

Booknotes: The 10 Biggest Civil War Blunders

New Arrival:
• The 10 Biggest Civil War Blunders by Edward H. Bonekemper III (Regnery History, 2018).

Discussing Civil War 'what-if' scenarios has always been a popular pastime, and many article and book authors have published their own personal lists of "moments when the outcome of the war (and therefore world history) hinged on a single small mistake or omission." The late Edward Bonekemper (he passed away during the production of this title) came up with his own set in The 10 Biggest Civil War Blunders. In it, he "shows how these ten blunders significantly affected the outcome of the war, and explores how history might easily have been very different if these blunders were avoided."

In numbers, the list is very weighted toward Union failures to destroy enemy armies and/or take key cities earlier than was achieved historically. Bonekemper criticizes Halleck for not capturing the Confederate army at Corinth in 1862 (and for dispersing his own forces after taking the town), McClellan for not destroying Lee at Antietam, the Union high command for not taking Mobile much earlier, Sherman (and presumably also McPherson) for flubbing the Snake Creek Gap opportunity, Grant and his crew for not seizing Petersburg in June '64, and finally Sherman for allowing enemy armies to escape his grasp at both Atlanta and Savannah.

The Confederates are damned on similar lines, with the author censuring Lee's conduct of the Gettysburg Campaign while also condemning the entire Confederate high command during the Chickamauga/Chattanooga campaign for not destroying the Army of the Cumberland and retaining control of Chattanooga. A pair of Confederate strategic mistakes—the cotton embargo and the unwillingness to enlist slaves in the army (hmm)—round out Bonekemper's list of ten.

Review of Wills - "INGLORIOUS PASSAGES: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War"

[Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War by Brian Steel Wills (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Cloth, photos, illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:313/415. ISBN:978-0-7006-2508-6. $34.95]

By traditional calculations, Civil War combat fatalities represent around one-third of the total figure of 620,000 deaths, with the rest succumbing to disease and a great host of other factors exclusive to enemy fire. Clearly, being a Union or Confederate soldier was incredibly dangerous at every stage of the military journey between enlistment and demobilization. Noncombatants also fatally suffered in large numbers, though the true scale remains completely open to debate. Through direct exposure to marauding armies, employment in often unsafe war industries, and general deprivation, civilians found the existing perils of mid-nineteenth century life both magnified and expanded in number during war. It is these lesser-heralded agents of death and their legions of military and civilian victims that are the subject of Brian Steel Wills's latest book Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War.

Inglorious Passages is organized into themed chapters, with a fair bit of overlap between them. The nature of the study is overwhelmingly descriptive, with introductory-level context and analysis mostly concentrated at the beginning and ends of each chapter. A typical page has multiple accounts of individual and/or group deaths, so it's conceivable that Wills has collected a thousand or more personal anecdotes in his survey. This is quite an impressive compilation. As the notes and bibliography indicate, these personal stories and group tragedies were primarily extracted from the existing literature.

The following paragraphs offer a general rundown of the book's contents. The volume begins with discussion of some of the war's earliest deaths. Railroad accidents were common, with soldiers dying from their own negligent riding practices as well as collisions and derailments beyond their personal control. In many cases, here and elsewhere, alcohol fueled poor decision-making. In camp, soldiers could die from a myriad of diseases and were the victims of accidents of all kinds (from firearm mishandling to drowning while bathing or doing laundry). Suicide and an extreme form of homesick depression they often called "nostalgia" (among other things) felled many individuals. The fighting men could also be their own worst enemies, killing their own comrades through murder, duels, picket line confusion, battlefield friendly fire, and incredibly dumb pranks like tossing live shells into a campfire. Far from the battlefields, disease and malnutrition killed POWs in large numbers, but others were shot by guards or killed by fellow prisoners. Military justice, summary executions, and deadly retaliation for perceived enemy violations of the rules of war also ended the lives of soldiers.

Non-human sources of mortal peril also had to be navigated by Civil War soldiers. Domesticated animals were essential to maintaining the armies but could also be deadly, with many officers and men killed by falls from their mounts or trampled underfoot during a variety of circumstances. As it has always been, the natural world was an unyielding foe to the fighting men of both sides. Wild animals, like snakes, killed men, and mother nature herself in the form of lightning, floods, roaring streams, burning sun, and freezing cold spelled doom for innumerable soldiers.

Naval service had its own particular dangers. Nautical mishaps (both inland and at sea) often proved to be the greatest of Civil War mass killers, with large groups of men lost in a single stroke during countless ship collisions, boiler explosions, swamped boats, and hurricane-level storms. In addition to those group tragedies, individuals were frequently swept off of heaving decks and rigging, and others were lost during careless disembarking or transfers between vessels.

In the civilian sphere, many deadly accidents were tied to the war's unprecedented scale of industrial expansion in combination with masses of inexperienced workers operating in unsafe conditions. The machinery itself in all kinds of industries could be deadly on an individual basis, but small mistakes by workers employed in powder mills and shell/bullet/percussion cap factories led to tremendous explosions and mass casualties. Many of these are described in the text in quite graphic detail. Innocent civilians also died at home from guerrilla attacks, regular soldier abuses, and Indian raids. Additionally, they could be collateral victims of battle, die from exposure as refugees, or succumb to disease epidemics spread by passing armies.

Though the book's conclusion does very briefly recognize the shortened lives of many survivors, those postwar psychological and physical casualties could easily have merited their own chapter in the study. Other readers might be disappointed with the book's overall lack of quantitative features and commentary. It would have been interesting to at least read the author's thoughts on James McPherson's oft-cited (but unvalidated) estimate that up to 50,000 civilians died during the war or Michael Fellman's similarly unsupported speculation that as many as 10,000 noncombatants were killed in Missouri alone.

Inglorious Passages is not an easy book to read all at once. It is an unrelenting encyclopedia of deadly woe, but Wills writes with such grace and pathos for the victims and their tragic circumstances that he eases the reader's own passage through such a dispiriting but important topic. It is a good thing that Civil War readers are frequently reminded of the full range of war's human cost, and Brian Steel Wills's sensitive, unique, and all-encompassing examination of noncombat deaths is a notable contribution to the literature. Highly recommended.

2017 - The CIVIL WAR BOOKS and AUTHORS Year in Review

BOOK OF THE YEAR:

Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 by Andrew E. Masich (Oklahoma).

MORE FAVORITES OF 2017 BY CATEGORY:

Battle/Campaign Histories:

Trans-Mississippi Theater: The Three Battles of Sand Creek: In Blood, in Court, and as the End of History by Gregory F. Michno (Savas Beatie).
Western Theater: The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta by Earl J. Hess (UNC).
Eastern Theater: Meade and Lee After Gettysburg: The Forgotten Final Stage of the Gettysburg Campaign, from Falling Waters to Culpeper Court House, July 14-31, 1863 by Jeffrey William Hunt (Savas Beatie).

General Military:

Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation by Earl J. Hess (LSU).

Naval History:

Joseph Brown and His Civil War Ironclads: The USS Chillicothe, Indianola and Tuscumbia by Myron J. Smith, Jr. (McFarland).

Home Front:

Occupied Vicksburg by Bradley R. Clampitt (LSU).

Society and Culture:

Psychological Consequences of the American Civil War by R. Gregory Lande (McFarland).

Politics and War:

The First Republican Army: The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War by John H. Matsui (Virginia).

Politics and Society:

A Union Indivisible: Secession and the Politics of Slavery in the Border South by Michael D. Robinson (UNC).

Industry and Technology:

Civil War Pharmacy: A History (Second Edition) by Michael A. Flannery (SIU).

Unit History:

The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History by Dennis W. Belcher (McFarland).

Essay Collection:

American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s edited by Don Doyle (UNC).

Biography:

Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 by Jerry Thompson (TCU).

Edited Letters/Memoir/Diary:

Recollections of a Civil War Medical Cadet: Burt Green Wilder edited by Richard M. Reid (KSU).

Local History:

The Battle of Lewisburg: May 23, 1862 by Richard L. Armstrong (35th Star).

Reference Book or Series:

The Army of Tennessee: Organization, Strength, Casualties, 1862-1865 by Darrell L. Collins (McFarland).

Wildcard Pick:

The Election of 1860: A Campaign Fraught with Consequences by Michael F. Holt (Kansas).

2017 book list coming soon

With some notable exceptions, it seems to be more and more the case now that publishers are leaving the middle part of the year comparatively open and end-loading their release schedules. Maybe the process has never been quite as evenly dispersed as I recall it to have been just a few years ago, but having so many of the best-sounding titles come out in late fall and early winter necessarily stresses my available reading time and delays my list. It also doesn't help that the time between release date and actual arrival of review copies keeps getting longer. Anyway, these are the reasons why it's nearly the end of January and my year-end book "awards" list still hasn't appeared on the site. However, this weekend I decided that enough was enough and it was time to just get the list out regardless of how many 2017 titles I still wanted to read.

Look for it tomorrow.

The Last Siege

The 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay and all the ironclad bashing and torpedo damning that went on there have always overshadowed the land campaign that led to the actual fall of the port city the following spring. For such a large-scale military operation, it remains a bit of a surprise that no truly meaty accounts exist yet. As far as I know, the most substantial study available is Sean Michael O'Brien's Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (2001). At the time I read it, I thought it was a fairly decent overview, although I seem to recall that it felt a bit too thin even for what it was and had terrible maps. I haven't revisited it since.

This summer, Casemate will publish The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 by Paul Brueske. If the page length indicated at the link above is accurate, then it's pretty much the same physical size as O'Brien's book. Hopefully, Brueske's work will prove more satisfactory in content and focus. The release date isn't too far off, so more information about it should emerge soon.

Review of Craig - "KENTUCKY'S REBEL PRESS: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis"

[Kentucky's Rebel Press: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis by Berry Craig (University Press of Kentucky, 2017). Hardcover, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:173/215. ISBN:978-0-8131-7459-4. $45]

The American press's participation in the antebellum sectional debates over slavery and the conduct of its partisan organs during the 1860 election and secession crisis have both been richly explored in the historical literature. However, Kentucky historian Berry Craig argues that Border State newspapers have been comparatively neglected in this otherwise rich body of scholarship in favor of those plying their trade in the northern and southern states. His new book Kentucky's Rebel Press: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis seeks to address this perceived deficiency.

According to Craig, there were around sixty Kentucky newspapers in operation at the time of Lincoln's election to the presidency and nearly half of them represented the views of the States Rights Party. For the most part, these twenty-eight papers editorially supported the candidacy of John C. Breckinridge in 1860, and many of them espoused outright secession for Kentucky (or at least expressed great sympathy for the revolutionary gestures of the Deep South) once it became clear that a dreaded "Black Republican" administration would run the federal government for the first time. With Kentucky's nationalism deeply ingrained through pride and long-standing tradition, the author is clearly cognizant of how incongruous it might seem to find so many of the state's newspapers willing to countenance disunion.

The study begins with a very brief survey of the state of newspaper journalism in Kentucky during the years leading up to the Civil War. Unsurprisingly, the Bluegrass press operated in much the same manner as elsewhere, with many papers working in close alignment with particular parties, political causes, and politicians. Its members wielded editorial prerogative to puff up favorites and blast enemies with equal aplomb and often demonstrated highly variable adherence to truth finding.

Apparently, it is the case that more than a few Kentucky newspapers have been completely lost to history, with no known surviving copies of any issue. However, that is certainly not generally the case, and the book usefully profiles a good number of important pro-Confederate newspapers from across Kentucky. Together, the Louisville Courier, Kentucky Statesman (Lexington), Columbus Crescent, Frankfort Yeoman, Hickman Courier, Paducah Herald, Cynthiana News and Covington Journal seem to offer today's reader a fairly representative sampling of the pro-secession rhetoric that Kentucky citizens were exposed to during the secession crisis and beyond. Many cities and towns had more than one paper, with local editors dueling from both ends of the ideological divide. Some readers subscribed only to those papers closest aligned with their own personal views while others took a wider approach. Given that Confederate sympathies ran deepest in the Jackson Purchase, it is no coincidence that many of the papers referenced in Craig's study were located in western Kentucky towns. Of course, it is often useful when studying a partisan press to juxtapose it with the opposition, and a large part of Kentucky' Rebel Press is devoted to following the fiery, and often entertaining, ink battles fought between the secession-sympathizing Louisville Courier and George Prentice's pro-Union Louisville Journal.

The contrasting political and social perspectives of both sides, as recounted in the book, will already be familiar to many Civil War readers. While secession and Union ranks in Kentucky were both populated with anti-Republican men sharing similar conservative pro-slavery views, they differed fundamentally on how best their perceived interests would be served. States Rights newspaper editors believed that the Lincoln administration posed a clear and present danger to slavery where it already existed, and only an alliance with the southern Confederacy would secure their slave property and prevent inevitable federal emancipation and imposition at gunpoint of black social and civil equality with white Kentuckians.

Kentucky's Unionist newspaper editors also held Lincoln and Republicans in low regard, but felt that slavery and white supremacy in society and politics were best preserved within the existing Union, where these vital interests would be sustained through existing laws, the court system, and the traditional separation of powers. The mere election of a Republican president was not sufficient grounds in their view for taking the drastic step of secession. The book's bent seems to suggest that Craig joins most modern scholars in elevating socio-political concerns over economic ties between Kentucky and the North as the predominant force behind Unionism in the Bluegrass State.

The book also provides a series of informative biographical sketches of some of the more compelling personalities behind the newspapers profiled inside. While the long-term duel and relationship between proslavery Unionist George Prentice and Courier publisher Walter N. Haldeman predominates, many other lesser-known figures associated with the pro-Confederate press in Kentucky are brought forward (among them Len Faxon, John Noble, Samuel Major, Thomas Monroe, A.J. Morey, and several others). After Union military authorities moved quickly to suppress the "rebel press" in September 1861, a few of the most notorious editors were jailed for a period of time, some went south to join the Confederate Army, and others either closed shop or changed their tone. Interestingly, some of their most bitter professional enemies in the Union press lobbied for their release from imprisonment on free speech grounds.

Craig's study effectively charts the operational lifespan of Kentucky's rebel press from its origins during the 1860 election through its fatal weakening upon neutrality's ending in September 1861 (though one might argue that its ultimate demise didn't occur until early 1862, when shielding Confederate forces were forced out of the state completely). Initially, the Breckinridge press did not support immediate secession, but this cautious stance gradually transformed when Deep South states started to leave the Union. After the shooting war began, the pro-Confederate press, still unable to convince Kentucky voters to embrace secession, reluctantly supported neutrality as the next best option. As the book demonstrates, the critical moment came in August when Kentucky voters again decisively rejected States Rights candidates. This air of finality was reinforced the following month, when both armies flooded into the state after the Confederates unilaterally occupied Columbus and the state legislature demanded that only the Confederates leave.

A consistent theme throughout the book is the secessionist press's continual misreading, either willfully or through delusion, of popular support for their cause. The author admits that useful Civil War era newspaper circulation numbers are folly to estimate (let alone pin down) and the impossibility of retroactively applying scientific polling will always render unattainable any really authoritative assessment of the level of support for secession in Kentucky during the critical 1861 period covered in the book. However, as the author repeats, the commonly cited series of 1861 state election results (all of which occurred before Kentucky came under federal occupation) and the great disparity in volunteers between sides (which certainly could have been affected by the presence of Union bayonets from late 1861 onward) remain strong arguments for the state's fundamental Unionism.

The author also adds an interesting coda to his narrative with a final chapter looking at the postwar resurgence of the rebel press. Kentucky's embrace of the "Lost Cause" has been well documented in the literature (most recently by historians Aaron Astor, Anne Marshall, Christopher Phillips, B.F. Cooling, and others), and Craig cites the commercial success of returning pro-Confederate press editors. Perhaps most striking was the case of Haldeman's reestablished Courier, which rapidly overtook its old foe the Journal in circulation and purchased the competition in 1868, launching the combined Louisville Courier-Journal.

Ultimately, Kentucky's Rebel Press cannot help answer the age-old question of whether an open press most often drives public opinion or is representative of it, nor does the volume really contribute any particularly fresh insights into the limits of free speech during wartime, but Craig's study certainly does serve a very useful purpose as a history of Kentucky's pro-Confederate press and its decidedly unsuccessful campaign to take the Bluegrass State out of the Union.

Booknotes: United States Revenue and Coast Guard Cutters in Naval Warfare, 1790-1918

New Arrival:
• United States Revenue and Coast Guard Cutters in Naval Warfare, 1790–1918
by Thomas B. Ostrom (McFarland, 2018).

Thomas Ostrom's United States Revenue and Coast Guard Cutters in Naval Warfare, 1790-1918 "covers the history of the U.S. Coast Guard from 1790 under Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, when the Service was called the U.S. Revenue Marine, to World War I, during which the naval agency, then called the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, was combined with the U.S. Life-Saving Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. The Coast Guard has historically served with or under the U.S. Navy in national defense missions. 

More from the description: The maritime conflicts in that time frame include a war with France; War of 1812-1815; clashes with pirates, slave ships, and the Seminole Indians; War with Mexico; the Civil War of 1861-1865; Spanish-American War (1898); and World War I (1914-1918). The Great War involved the USCG and USN in domestic and maritime missions across the Atlantic to Europe, merchant ship convoy escorts, and anti-submarine warfare. The naval period surveys the evolution of wooden hulled, wind powered sailing ships to fuel powered iron hulled vessels. The historical geography of the wars is illustrated with maps created by retired IBM engineer and military historian David H. Allen."

Desperately short of seaworthy ships and with no way to produce new ones in needed numbers, the Confederate Navy made U.S. revenue cutters a key target for capture and repurposing. Three chapters in the book cover the Civil War years. In around 35 pages, these sections discuss the opposing navies and the revenue cutter service during the Civil War. A historiographical assessment of the naval literature is also provided.

Warriors in Mr. Lincoln’s Army

I always encourage authors of self-published books to contact me directly, but in the great majority of cases I come across their work completely at random. An interesting-looking recent "discovery" is Quita Shier's Warriors in Mr. Lincoln’s Army: Native American Soldiers Who Fought in the Civil War (Author, 2017), a roster and document study of an unusual all-Indian unit, Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters. The 'Look Inside' tool found through the link above reveals quite a bit about the book's contents, which are apparently the culmination of 26 years of research on the part of the author.

Company K was composed almost entirely of Anishinabeck, the word meaning "People of the Three Fires" in reference to the three major Michigan Indian tribes (the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi). All but three members of the company were Anishinabeck. Of the 140 men that served in the unit, a total of 41 men and 1 officer died from all causes.

Warriors includes a very brief overview of the unit's enlistment and service history, but the central focus is on the company roster. That feature of the book comprises most of the page length and is far more expansive in nature than the kind typically found in other Civil War unit studies. In addition to the usual CSR information, the author presents biographical sketches of varying size and depth as well as full transcriptions of letters written by the men. The book is well over 500 pages, so this extra information of all kinds is quite substantial in volume. A pretty large photograph collection is also included, as are some facsimile reproductions of enlistment, oath, and discharge documents.

A Crooked River

Oklahoma may not know how to call plays very well in the waning moments of the CFB playoff, but they do continue to publish fascinating Civil War Southwest studies. The "dean" Jerry Thompson is still active, but it's nice to see a new generation of scholars interested in examining Civil War era South Texas. A sequel of sorts to his Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1846–1861 (2008), Michael Collins's upcoming A Crooked River: Rustlers, Rangers, and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1861–1877 (April, 2018) will look at Civil War and Reconstruction violence "through the Nueces Strip and the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas."

From the description: "Cattle rustlers, regular troops, and Texas Rangers, as well as Civil War deserters and other characters of questionable reputation, clashed with Mexicans, Germans, and Indians over unionism, race, livestock, land, and national sovereignty, among other issues. In A Crooked River, Michael L. Collins presents a rousing narrative of these events that reflects perspectives of people on both sides of the Rio Grande."

The author "brings a cross-cultural perspective to the role of the Texas Rangers in the continuing strife along the border during the late nineteenth century. He draws on many rare and obscure sources to chronicle the incidents of the period, bringing unprecedented depth and detail to such episodes as the “skinning wars,” the raids on El Remolino and Las Cuevas, and the attack on Nuecestown. Along the way, he dispels many entrenched legends of Texas history—in particular, the long-held belief that almost all of the era’s cattle thieves were Mexican."

"A balanced and thorough reevaluation, A Crooked River adds a new dimension to the history of the racial and cultural conflict that defined the border region and that still echoes today."