Review - "High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor" by Edwin Rutan

[High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent State University Press, 2024). Softcover, 7 maps, 32 tables, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,211/317. ISBN:978-1-60635-486-5. $39.95]

Mistrust, even outright disdain, forced upon fresh replacements by grizzled army veterans has probably been around as long as war itself, and during the Civil War strong tensions certainly emerged between the Union volunteers of 1861-62 and the new regiments and later enlisting volunteers of 1863-64. Though the depth of hostility held by the former against the latter has perhaps been exaggerated, it was nonetheless a very real phenomenon. Beginning during the war itself, further ingrained through the pages of contemporary memoirs and veteran-authored articles and unit histories, and commonly accepted by trained historians ever since, the idea that late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac were less patriotic, overwhelmingly motivated by monetary gain, and poor fighters in the field has gained widespread and lasting traction. But are those profoundly negative views and historical interpretations actually supported by the evidence? Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor reexamines those questions and more.

Rutan begins his study with a fine background overview of the evolution of economic incentives involved in Union Army recruitment. Though enlistment bounties offered by local, state, and federal governments reached $1,000 or more by the late-war period, it is correctly pointed out that economic inducements of varying kinds played a factor in recruitment from the very beginning, and direct bounties were around since 1862. In the end, the degree to which financial considerations drove enlistment choices remains, of course, up for debate. Perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else in the literature, William Marvel's Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (2006) and especially his Lincoln's Mercenaries (2018) persuasively argue that economic concerns have been greatly undervalued in the scholarship's attempts to explain what was behind early-war Union enlistment fervor. Rutan agrees and finds similar conclusions to be made, albeit reaching them from a different angle than that employed by Marvel.

Clearly, late-war enlistees were far more expensive to the country than their comrades of 1861-62, and Rutan is somewhat sympathetic to the notion that the largest bounties could be overly generous, but the author's assertion that the combination of high bounties with a conditional draft (the carrot and stick approach) was a societal necessity, one that productively balanced the priorities of both home and military fronts, forms a potent argument. In contrast to the Confederate South's economy, which was comprehensively wrecked over the course of the war, the North's economy boomed, and it needed to stay that way in order to close the deal during the conflict's second half. High-ranking Union officers, with the army's needs naturally foremost in their minds, urged the institution of a unconditional draft administered by the federal government. Civilian leadership recognized that such a draconian measure would be a political dead-end that additionally threatened flourishing local and state economies. With current wages several times their prewar levels, high bounties were necessary to pry workers from their jobs and incentivize late-war volunteerism enough to fill local and state draft quotas and forestall conscription on a scale disruptive to the work force. Readers are also reminded that the veteran volunteers, when reenlisting, also accepted not-insignificant economic incentives without being subjected to similar imputations against their patriotism. Broadly speaking, bounties represented cooperation at all levels of government toward a common goal, filling the ranks and defeating a faded yet still highly dangerous national enemy. With the alternative being divisive dictatorial measures handed down from Washington, high bounties undoubtedly assisted the war effort by helping secure continued broad-based home front support for the war. In the big picture, the benefits more than made up for the costs involved, and the negative fall out from desertion and bounty jumping proved manageable. Rutan's framing of high bounties in these ways is enlightening.

Self-gain certainly factored into the decision-making process, but a refreshingly nuanced picture of issues surrounding accusations that late-war recruits lacked patriotic motives is presented in the book. As other recent scholarship confirms, a number of factors impacted whether individuals enlisted in the army to do their part on the fighting front or stayed home and continued to contribute to the war economy. Rutan points out that contemporary evidence fully supports claims that family, work, and business obligations were socially acceptable (even desired) reasons for staying home and that local communities did not as a rule view that as being incompatible with patriotism. It should also not be forgotten that age also figured into the equation, with many late-war recruits willing enough to do their part but were simply underage up to that point.

Rutan does not gloss over the fact that the new regiments had higher rates of desertion than the old regiments, but his point that it never proved unmanageable is worthy of distinction. He also effectively reminds us that there were so many factors involved in desertion that more analytical work on the relative impact of each (including high bounties) is necessary in order to really draw sound conclusions. One interesting tidbit that emerged from Rutan's quantitative investigation is that desertion essentially ceased in late-war units once they reached the front, a quality that was not shared by old regiments restocked with large numbers of substitutes and later enlisting replacements.

Rutan's research suggests that rapid internalization of army culture (or as he puts it, the "normative influences of army life in the field") led these regiments to perform far better than their contemporary and modern critics have maintained. Indeed, as others have also noted, new units frequently offered the army a fresh injection of offensive elan, a much-needed trait that became tempered amongst many veteran units through their extensive records of high casualties, failed attacks, and past defeats. Traditional suggestions that the quality of manhood present in late-war recruits was somehow deficient in comparison to the early war volunteers are strongly disputed in the book. Recognizing that assessing soldier "quality" can be a highly nebulous process, Rutan selects a small number of quantifiable demographic traits that arguably correspond to soldier quality as felt at the time, and his number crunching reveals late-war and early-war recruits as being roughly comparable. It is also worthwhile to recall that these new late-war regiments were not entirely composed of rookies. The officers were typically experienced and it was also commonplace that a solid number of rank and file members previously served in short-time units.

In yet another body of strong writing and analysis, Rutan contests the common interpretation that the combat effectiveness of late-war regiments in 1864-65 was so poor by comparison with veteran regiments that they comprised an almost worthless addition to the army. Recognizing that rating effectiveness can be as ill-defined a process as grading quality, the author employs a modern two-step process that ties mission-based performance assessment to a set of seven readiness capability factors. Rutan persuasively argues that his sample sets of new late-war regiments and old regiments with more than half of their strength being late-war replacements fought generally well during both the Overland and Petersburg campaigns of 1864. Given how much the negativity directed against late-war recruits was based upon the outcomes of particular battles, specific attention is paid to the embarrassing Union defeat at Second Reams's Station. Contrary to the overgeneralized and self-serving claims of Winfield S. Hancock and other officers and generals, the late-war regiments did not as a group perform poorly during the battle or really that much different from the old regiments. At Reams's Station both groups suffered the consequences of remarkably poor command decisions and the debilitating effects of sustained combat attrition, but it would be the late-war regiments that would be scapegoated for the shortcomings of their leaders. Finally, though one might argue that the opposition was so run down by the spring of 1865 that demonstrating effectiveness on the attack was much easier than before, Rutan does clearly determine that late-war regiments [specifically six new regiments in Hartranft's Division at Ft. Stedman and five Fifth Corps regiments at Five Forks) could get the job done during the waning moments of the war and with noticeable merit.

Sure, the examples cited in the above-mentioned chapters are selective rather than comprehensive, but it was never the author's intention to try to argue that the fighting prowess and battlefield achievements of the late-war recruits and regiments were entirely on par with their longer serving predecessors. What he does powerfully show is that, without a doubt, a great many of these units proved highly capable in the field, more than enough in number to greatly complicate the oversimplified and vastly overgeneralized negative impression of their service as presented in most of the historiography.

Every chapter in the book reveals Rutan to be a meticulous researcher, skilled parameter setter, and effective sorter and presenter of data. Much of that quantitative approach is compiled in the volume's nearly three-dozen tables. As Rutan readily admits, this particular study, which employs limited sampling scope and no corresponding attention to late-war western theater replacements and new regiments, is far from the last word on the topic. From a reader's perspective, the work strikes one as being on the strong side of representative status, but there is more to be done and the author frequently offers insightful recommendations in regard to areas needing further research.

Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac is a thoughtful, compassionate, and convincing exploration of the perceptions and realities commonly attached to the men comprising the massive body of late-war Union recruits that not only sustained the fighting strength of the Army of the Potomac during the bloody months of 1864-65 but were indispensable in finally defeating Robert E. Lee's powerfully resilient Army of Northern Virginia. Logic already suggested that the late-war infusion of nearly three quarters of a million men into the Union Army was instrumental in sustaining the momentum toward victory that was dearly bought through the blood and sacrifices of the early-war volunteers, but Rutan's truly groundbreaking study successfully confirms that uncommon assumption with strong documentary research, compelling writing, and deft quantitative analysis. As its subtitle suggests, this exceptionally fine book truly allows the late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac to reclaim service honors unjustifiably withheld for far too long.

Booknotes: High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac

New Arrival:

• High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent St UP, 2024).

It is a common enough suggestion in both the popular and scholarly literature that the Union Army of the Potomac's late-war volunteers were highly mercenary in motive (taking advantage of the high enlistment bounties offered by local, state, and federal governments) and far more prone to shirking and deserting than their presumably more patriotically motivated veteran comrades. When they did go on the offensive against Lee's hardened veterans in 1864-65 they were so unreliable that they were next to useless—expensive to feed, clothe, and equip but through their bad conduct on the line were more dangerous to their comrades around them than they were to the enemy. What few seem to ask is whether all, some, or none of those longstanding assumptions and damning opinions (which began during the war itself) are actually supported by hard evidence. Edwin Rutan's fresh examination of the topic in High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor seeks to set the record straight on the matter.

In Rutan's view, perspective has been skewed by a number of factors. For instance, "historians have relied on the accounts of 1861 and 1862 veterans who resented these new recruits who had not yet suffered the hardships of war, and they were jealous of the higher bounties those recruits received. The result, he argues, is a long-standing mischaracterization of the service of 750,000 Union soldiers."

The author adopts a systematic approach to his reexamination of late-war Army of the Potomac recruits. More from the description: "Rutan argues, using combat-effectiveness methodology, that they were generally competent soldiers and indispensable in defeating the Army of Northern Virginia. He also examines the issue of financial motivation, concluding that the volunteers of 1862 may have been more driven by economic incentives than once thought, and 1864 recruits were less driven by this than typically described. Thus, Rutan concludes that the Union “high-bounty” men do not deserve the scorn heaped on them by early volunteers and subsequent generations of historians."

In the end, Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac "offers a much-needed correction to the historical record, providing a more balanced assessment of the “high-bounty” replacements in the Army of the Potomac." Looking forward to reading this.

"Late to the Fight" - Another late-war Union unit and soldier study

Though confident in the conclusions presented in his award-worthy book High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor, Edwin Rutan recognized that his study of late-war Union volunteers and new regiments raised during the late-war period was selective in scope and more work on the subject was needed. I don't know if he knew or anticipated that help would arrive so soon!

Among the Spring '25 crop of upcoming LSU Press titles is Alexandre Caillot's Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg (May). The challenging process involved in defining and measuring unit combat performance was a major part of Rutan's 2024 book, which employed modern tools for grading unit effectiveness. Like Rutan's earlier study, Caillot's investigation is restricted to the Army of the Potomac. Concentrating his own historical lens even further, Caillot's research is devoted to examining two regiments, the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine (why those two, I am curious to find out). Using those units to "to assess the record of late-arriving soldiers under fire," Caillot, like Rutan, helps demonstrate "that these forgotten boys in blue left behind a record of valor and sacrifice essential to achieving the destruction of the Confederacy."

2024 - The CIVIL WAR BOOKS and AUTHORS Top Ten Year in Review

BOOK OF THE YEAR

1. The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 by Robert D. Jenkins, Sr. (Mercer).

This book offers the most meticulously detailed and most thoroughly convincing interpretation of arguably the greatest enduring controversy that emerged during the event-filled interval between the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's onset and the dismissal of Johnston. What put it over the top for me was the profoundly enlightening manner in which author Robert Jenkins combined conventional battle narrative with forensic historical map analysis unlike anything I've ever encountered before in the Civil War literature [for more on this title, see the Site Review (5/8/24)].

The Rest of the Year's TOP TEN (in no particular order)

2. High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent St).

Rutan's study represents a groundbreaking reassessment of our understanding of the Union Army's late-war regiments and their contributions to final victory [see the full 10/22/24 site Review].

3. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel Masters (Savas Beatie).

One of the finest single-volume campaign studies of recent memory, this book deserves recognition as the new standard history of Stones River [12/23/24 Review].

4. Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America's Mineral Wealth by Neil P. Chatelain (McFarland).

An excellent multi-themed transnational history of the land and sea route utilized by the United States to securely transport the Far West's vital mineral wealth to where it could be integrated into the country's war economy [5/24/24 Review].

5. New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865 edited by M. Jane Johansson (Tennessee).

Combining coverage of uncommonly explored wartime topics, occupations, and settings with unusually descriptive prose, Bennett's writings are a dream resource for historians, the entire package enhanced through Johansson's expert editing [8/15/24 Review].

6. The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie).

Powell's latest multi-volume campaign history project is off to a rousing start. This book certainly exhibits the same exacting standards established through the author's previous works [9/18/24 Review].

7. Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North by Jack Furniss (LSU).

A fresh and convincing way of reconsidering the dynamics of party politics and political strategy in the United States during the Civil War [1/22/25 Review].

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

The most comprehensive treatment to date of a chaos-filled seminal event from the early-Civil War period in Missouri [10/3/24 Review].

9. Union General Daniel Butterfield: A Civil War Biography by James S. Pula (Savas Beatie).

In addition to painting a compellingly favorable picture of Butterfield's Civil War legacy, this study possesses that rare quality of fully meeting expectations in terms of depth while as the same time remaining relatively concise in page length [7/24/24 Review].

10. North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (NC Office Archives & Hist).

This is a great example of the supporting text in a roster history being both expansive enough and qualitatively strong enough to be worthy of publication on its own [7/17/24 Review].

Booknotes: Late to the Fight

New Arrival:

• Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg by Alexandre F. Caillot (LSU Press, 2025).

From the description: In Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg, historian Alexandre Caillot "explores the combat performance of the Union soldiers who filled newly raised regiments that fought through the Civil War’s final year. Historians have typically regarded these late enlistees as substandard to those who signed on at the war’s start. Using the experiences of the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiments to assess the record of late-arriving soldiers under fire, Caillot shows that these forgotten boys in blue left behind a record of valor and sacrifice essential to achieving the destruction of the Confederacy."

Focusing on late-war volunteer units that fought in the eastern theater, this looks like a strong companion work to pair with Edwin Rutan's excellent High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor (2024). In addition to the more specific insights offered through concentrating one's efforts on only two regiments, it'll be interesting to compare how Caillot defines and assesses combat performance/effectiveness with how Rutan did so in his broader examination.

So why the 17th Vermont and 31st Maine? According to the introduction, they were selected because both regiments were conventional infantry, their ranks were filled with new enlistees, no conscripts served in either, and they shared the same heavy combat record. With both assigned to the Second Brigade of the Ninth Corps's Second Division, they fought in the same eight battles that were part of the 1864-65 Overland and Richmond-Petersburg campaigns. Thus, the author feels that the two regiments were "ideal choices for a comparative study of combat performance because of their similar experiences" (pg. 5).

Coming Soon (September '24 Edition)

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

Comments: The Rutan title is already out.

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

Booknotes: If I Have Got to Go and Fight, I Am Willing

New Arrival:
• "If I Have Got to Go and Fight, I Am Willing:" A Union Regiment Forged in the Petersburg Campaign by Edwin P. Rutan II (RTD Publications-Author, 2015).

"Taking a broad view of the Union soldiers' experience in the Petersburg campaign, "If I Have Got to Go and Fight, I Am Willing" covers in depth not just the battles, but also subjects such as motivations for enlistment, ties with home, medical care, religious faith, citizen-soldiers, the 1864 election, prisoners of war, desertion, the post-war lives of the soldiers, and even the weather. A fighting regiment, the 179th New York Volunteers served in the Petersburg campaign from start to finish. The 179th New York was in the first wave at the Battle of the Crater and in the Ninth Corps' final assault on April 2, 1865. The 179th also fought at Petersburg in the June 17, 1864 assault and at Weldon Railroad, Poplar Spring Church and Burgess Mill."

Authorized late in the war in February 1864, the 179th was still a new regiment by the time of the Petersburg Campaign, where it fought in six major battles between the James crossing and Appomattox, suffering 40% casualties in its very first engagement and heavy losses at both the Crater attack and the April 2, 1865 breakthrough. The research looks solid, with the author mining manuscript archives located all across the country. The volume is also stuffed with photos, tables, illustrations, and numerous appendices. The project started out as an e-book and the author directs readers to his website (www.179thnyvolunteers.org) to view the 30 high-res maps absent from the print edition and over 100 additional images. Looks like yet another great resource for Petersburg Campaign students.

Review - "Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA" by McCaslin & Stewart

[Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA by Richard B. McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart (Texas State Historical Association, 2025). Paperback, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,119/189. ISBN:978-1-62511-090-9. $29.95]

While upwards of 70,000 men joined Confederate forces during the Civil War, an estimated 2,000 Texans volunteered instead to serve in the Union Army, the majority of those enlisting in the First and Second Texas Cavalry (U.S.). For a variety of reasons, both regiments struggled mightily to fill their ranks to regulation strength, and the First only reached its full complement after the Second was merged into it in September 1864. Though some of its activities are fairly well documented within a number of modern campaign studies, the First Texas Cavalry still lacks a dedicated regimental history of its own. Among prominent Texas Unionist leaders, Edmund J. Davis (the First's colonel and later a brigadier general) is the subject of a 2010 biography by Carl Moneyhon. Another general officer, Andrew Jackson Hamilton, was appointed military governor of Texas by President Lincoln. Authored by John Waller, Hamilton's only book-length biography was published way back in 1968 by Texas Western Press. Another noteworthy Texas Unionist military officer and political figure is Francis Asbury Vaughan. His life, Civil War service, and postwar political career are explored in Richard McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart's biography titled Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA.

The book opens with discussion of Vaughan's early life, and the migratory movements of his extended family are also surveyed, the common emphasis being on southern geographical and cultural roots. When the Civil War broke out, everything in Francis Vaughan's family background suggests that Confederate service was most likely to be in his immediate future, but that did not turn out to be the case. A record of antebellum voting patterns is absent (and it is not revealed in the book, if such information exists, who Francis voted for in the 1860 presidential election), but the slaveholding Vaughan family had a kinship network located across multiple southern states. As historian Charles Grear explains in his book Why Texans Fought in the Civil War (2010), it was that kind of extended geographical family network that bound a great many Texans to the Confederate movement and inspired them to defend not only Texas but other states on the other side of the Mississippi. Most pertinent to Francis were the twenty-one brothers and cousins spread between Texas and Mississippi who joined either state or Confederate units. According to the authors, the Texas branch seemed more lukewarm toward the Confederacy than the family's Mississippi branch, but Francis was the only open Unionist among them. Nevertheless, in regard to depth of commitment, excellent recent work from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot on late-war Union recruits usefully reminds us to exercise caution before making too many assumptions about the loyalties and motives of those who weren't early-war volunteers, and the same might be true for the other side. Echoing the views of a great many fellow Southern Unionists, Francis himself described joining the Union Army as a means to "defend our famlys and our homes & our country from the roothless hands of the Rebels who would sink the Country with the honest part of the Community to the deps of Pardision for the sake of establishing an Aristocratic government" (pg. 141).

Vaughan's early-war experiences consisted of a dangerous month-long (July 1862) journey across South Texas and northern Mexico, beginning at his home in Prairie Lea (northeast of Seguin) and ending at Matamoros, his arrival at the Mexican port preparatory to a voyage across the Gulf to New Orleans. Arriving in Union-occupied New Orleans, Vaughan enlisted in the First Texas Cavalry, drilling with the new regiment and getting promoted to Second Lieutenant. All of this is detailed in Vaughan's own account as written in his travel 'memorandum,' which was transcribed from the original document by Stewart and reproduced in this volume's appendix section for readers to peruse. Vaughan's escape from Confederate patrols and his travel group's harrowing experiences in Mexico (where their reception by local authorities was at all times uncertain and potentially life-threatening) are the lengthiest, and arguably most colorful and interesting, part of Vaughan's memorandum. Unfortunately for us, Vaughan's account abruptly ends with his regimental detachment's approach to Galveston by sea in January 1863, everyone onboard initial unaware that the city had been recaptured by the Confederates on New Year's Day. While Vaughan's wartime memorandum comes to a frustratingly early end, it is a precious document given the rarity of surviving firsthand accounts of any kind from Texas Unionists.

Other sources are brought on board to assist with the volume's chapter-length summary of the remaining war service of Vaughan and his regiment in Louisiana and Texas. Subsequent to the aborted landing at Galveston, members of the First participated in Louisiana operations against Camp Moore and other sites supporting the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson. The regiment also joined other Union forces for the Bayou Teche operation, Sabine Pass, the Fall 1863 Texas Overland Expedition, and Nathaniel Banks's Rio Grande Expedition. During the summer of 1864, the First was consolidated with the Second regiment, and Vaughan was promoted to captain. Remaining active service was largely spent conducting raids in Louisiana and Mississippi before being mustered out in November 1865 while on occupation duty in their home state. It is beyond the scope of McCaslin and Stewart's book to provide more than a brief overview of the First Texas Cavalry's activities, but the quality and extent of that service, along with status as the war's premier Texas Unionist military unit, mark the First as being sorely in need of a full regimental history.

The final two chapters trace Vaughan's postwar years, from Reconstruction through his 1896 passing. Those sections, plus the Afterword, compile an abundance of information regarding Vaughan's family relationships and activities of his descendants. They also fully explore Vaughan's postwar political engagement. For more than two decades, Vaughan was active in Republican Party politics. In addition to being a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, he held elective offices on a local level and secured a number of federal patronage appointments. He was also a lawyer and businessman. As noted in the book, trust and personal regard for Vaughan among his fellow Texans crossed party lines. This is evidenced by his cultivation of business partnerships with ex-Confederates and the fact that, after his death, newspapers across the political spectrum praised Vaughan's character in their eulogies.

With just a few individuals among the Civil War's Texas Unionist military and political leadership grabbing the lion's share of attention, this new biography is a breath of fresh air. While not holding the same lofty military rank or political clout of an Edmund Davis or Andrew Jackson Hamilton, Francis Asbury Vaughan, as documented in the pages of McCaslin and Stewart's Texan in Blue, nevertheless managed to establish a Texas historical footprint significant in its own right.

Review- "A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill" by A. Wilson Greene

[A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill by A. Wilson Greene (University of North Carolina Press, 2025). Hardcover, 34 maps, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,495/706. ISBN:978-1-4696-8481-9. $45]

Generations of avid followers of the Civil War campaigns fought in the eastern theater between the Union Army of the Potomac and Confederate Army of Northern Virginia have been enthralled by streams of books detailing the sweeping maneuvers, crushing flank attacks, and grand assaults that generated signature moments of enduring distinction among so many of the great field contests of 1862-63. However, when considering the campaigns fought in the theater from the spring of 1864 onward, a different popular impression of the style of warfare fought between those mighty foes emerged. For a long time, reader perception of the 1864 Overland Campaign was primarily that of a continuous series of brutal frontal slugging matches remarkable mostly for the unprecedented attritional bloodletting they produced amid extensive tactical reliance on fieldworks, and the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign was widely seen as a static "siege" operation. Over recent decades, though, those simplistic characterizations have been significantly overthrown by way of fresh scholarship and reassessment. Starting with Gordon Rhea's classic series of books, the Overland Campaign has come to be seen and appreciated with far more operational and tactical nuance than ever before. For the 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, a flood of new books has revealed that that long campaign, far from being anything truly siege-like, rather consisted of a series of mobile offensives that produced numerous battles with a great many features of interest to inquisitive military history students. A major contributor to that profound altering of perception is A. Wilson Greene, his latest project being a monumental three-volume history that began in 2018 with the release of A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 1: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater. Published earlier this year, the middle tome, A Campaign of Giants - The Battle for Petersburg, Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill, is the subject of this review. It comprehensively addresses events on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts from the beginning of August 1864 through the end of October, months that encompassed the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth of the campaign's nine distinct offensives.

The Fourth Offensive (August 12-25) marked further development of Union Army general in chief U.S. Grant's overall theater strategy of launching coordinated offensive movements against either end of the Richmond-Petersburg line. With the Confederates not knowing which of the two was the main effort, the hope was that good timing and local superiority in numbers would combine to score a major breakthrough. If outright capture of those cities could not be achieved, at the very least gains would be made in isolating them further. While the Battle of Second Deep Bottom, on the face of it, was poorly conducted and failed to either threaten Richmond or cut the Virginia Central Railroad, it did practically ensure that the Confederates couldn't provide further aid to Jubal Early's Shenandoah Valley operation. Regardless of how much that affected Lee's real plans, the resources that went into stopping the Union attack north of the James weakened Confederate forces south of the river and eased Union Fifth Corps' task of seizing the Weldon Railroad (a major lifeline into Petersburg). During the fighting on August 18-19, G.K. Warren's Fifth Corps successfully cut across the railroad, but the gap between its advance and the rest of the army was negligently spanned (the blame for which could be spread around). That hole in the front was exploited in devastating fashion by William Mahone's Confederate division, which launched a breakthrough attack that hauled in a massive load of prisoners before being halted by arriving Union Ninth Corps elements. The Confederates didn't have the numbers to fully exploit their initial breakthrough and were rather easily turned back with heavy losses of their own during the subsequent August 21 fighting against Fifth Corps's firmly entrenched position across the railroad. In the author's view, Mahone, as he had earlier in the campaign, "played the starring role" in the Fourth Offensive. Warren's grade, on the other hand, was decidedly mixed. The controversial Fifth Corps commander displayed little in the way of offensive-minded drive and initiative, and he shared responsibility for the open space in the front line that Mahone exploited. On a more positive note, Warren partially redeemed himself on the 21st (although, as Greene maintains, achieving that defensive victory did not require any great display of generalship, and Warren made no effort to take advantage of the enemy's newly vulnerable condition). The action did not end there, though, as Grant and Meade sought to expand their gains. By any measure, the resulting Battle of Second Reams Station (August 25) was poorly fought affair on the Union side. As Greene outlines, Second Corps lines were badly placed, cavalry reconnaissance completely missed the Confederate build-up nearby, and Meade inadequately supported Hancock. In addition to severely damaging Second Corps, adding 2,000 prisoners to the larger haul accumulated only days earlier, Lee's men halted further destruction of the Weldon Railroad, which kept at a manageable distance the logistical bypass that Warren's continued presence astride the railroad still forced upon them.

Upon concluding his meticulous description and analysis of the Fourth Offensive, Greene detours into an informative look into the ongoing development of federal siegecraft, especially in the context of how it was applied to consolidating the gains produced by the latest offensive. The author also explores side topics such as fraternization between the armies and the reactions of both sides to the fall of Atlanta. During this operational pause, Union forces also grasped the opportunity to reorganize their order of battle. The main military event of the period bridging the Fourth and Fifth offensives was the "Beefsteak Raid." While Greene's fine account of that celebrated Confederate cavalry operation concludes that success was primarily due to neglect and complacency among the Union leadership, it also offers strong accolades for the man who conceived and conducted it, Wade Hampton. Throughout Greene's narrative it is revealed that Hampton was a more than capable replacement for the late Jeb Stuart, the tactical skill displayed during his command's close cooperation with the infantry on multiple occasions playing an important part in limiting Union gains below Petersburg. Indeed, while the story of the final breakthrough at Petersburg and complete success of the Appomattox Campaign in 1865 is commonly attributed to the advanced development of Union combined arms deployment of infantry and cavalry, a strong argument could be made that the Confederates held the upper hand in that regard (though theirs was more defensive in nature) on the Petersburg front in 1864. A major theme developed early on and throughout the rest of the book is the profound effects Shenandoah Valley-related events and strategic considerations had on operational planning for both sides on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts. Involved with all of that was a mixture of opportunity and fear of enemy intentions (real and imagined).

In his assessment of Grant's Fifth Offensive (September 29-October 2), Greene gives Army of the James commander Benjamin Butler mixed marks. Though Butler's command seized New Market Heights and captured Fort Harrison, further attacks ultimately fell short against the Intermediate Line of Richmond's three-ringed system of defensive fortifications. The initial plan of operations was well-received and Grant approved it without revision, but the author feels that Butler accorded more weight than was needed against the thinly held heights, not leaving enough strength to push beyond Fort Harrison, breach the Intermediate Line, and push into Richmond. Greene is certainly persuasive in arguing that leadership failures (and inopportune high command casualties), played a major part in stalling what was, even by early morning, a very promising offensive. On the Confederate side, Lee balanced his forces on both sides of the James in judicious fashion yet again, and the Richmond front's collection of front-line, second-line, and reserve troops held on better than could reasonably be expected against long odds and did not widely panic after initial disaster. Forced to wait until the next day to respond, Lee, determined to recover the lost ground, launched a counterattack against Fort Harrison that failed in the face of poor coordination from his subordinates and a consolidated defense. Meanwhile, on the other end of the line below Petersburg, four divisions of Warren's Fifth and John Parke's Ninth Corps set out west to test the sector held by A.P. Hill's Confederates and make sure no more enemy reinforcements left for the Richmond or Shenandoah fronts. Their limited action was authorized to shift over into a major offensive if circumstances permitted. While Warren and Parke seized the lightly held Squirrel Level Line on September 30, only cautious advances followed, and Hill seized the initiative, smashing the federal advance at Pegram's Farm (taking in another large haul of prisoners). The following day, the Confederates, eager to reprise their devastating counterattack of August 19, instead bungled the assault against a better prepared enemy, leading to hundreds of ill-afforded casualties. Resumption of offensive action was urged by Grant and Meade, but Warren and Parke only inched forward with their innate caution, and the Fifth Offensive ended up petering out on both sides of the James after some ineffectual probing attacks.

As Greene convincingly demonstrates, both sides had reason to be alternatively pleased and disappointed with aspects of the Fifth Offensive. The Confederates lost Fort Harrison on the Richmond front and their Squirrel Level Line buffer southwest of Petersburg, but they inflicted better than two to one losses on their foes and maintained every critical point, sealing off the breakthrough at Fort Harrison and maintaining possession of the primary positions covering the Boydton Plank Road and South Side Railroad. Union forces, by seizing the Squirrel Level Line were able to use that new position to anchor yet another westward push across Petersburg's southern front. Butler's command captured Fort Harrison (though the long-term significance of that achievement proved minimal), and his USCT forces were able to earn valuable combat prestige and experience at New Market Heights. Throughout Greene's Fifth Offensive coverage, one gains an appreciation for how adeptly the Confederate defenders employed interior lines and tactical flexibility to counter Meade and Butler's more plodding subordinates and superior numbers.

The significance of the Confederate attack down Darbytown Road on October 7, which brushed aside Butler's right flank cavalry before being stopped cold by the refused line of fortifications held by David Birney's Tenth Corps, is recognized as marking the final attempt by Lee to eliminate the Union threat to Richmond north of the James (or at least limit it to a small bridgehead at Deep Bottom). Greene also conjectures that the failure led Lee to finally accept that his army could no longer risk heavy casualties through large-scale counterattacks. But that realization did not mean the end of activity on the Richmond front. The period between the end of the Fifth Offensive and the beginning of the Sixth Offensive witnessed both a major extension of Confederate entrenchments east of Richmond (the "Alexander Line") and a major testing of those new positions by Butler's command, which was repulsed with significant loss in the Second Battle of Darbytown Road. On the other end of the line, near Squirrel Level Road, more clashes erupted across no man's land.

For his Sixth Offensive (October 27-28), Grant continued to hit upon his promising strategy of employing simultaneous attacks on both ends of the long Richmond-Petersburg line. North of the James, Butler's two corps (Tenth and Eighteenth) sought to outflank the newly extended Confederate front before Richmond but instead engaged the Confederate defenders, who used lateral flexibility to meet them head on, through a series of poorly conducted attacks that produced no results noteworthy enough to justify the casualties incurred. Meanwhile, strong elements of Second, Fifth, and Ninth corps plus Gregg's cavalry swung around the far Confederate right below Petersburg and attempted to seize the grail objectives of Boydton Plank Road and the South Side Railroad. Neither of those lofty goals would be met, as Parke and Warren became immediately bogged down, leaving Hancock to fight off a fierce counterattack at Burgess Mill. Their rebuff left the Confederate spearheads, especially Mahone's men, isolated and vulnerable, and it was with great difficulty that they were able to disengage and withdraw without disaster. In the end, both sides suffered roughly equal casualties overall and Second Corps fell back rather than risk staying in an isolated position. With that fizzle went any hope of achieving a signal success on the Richmond and Petersburg fronts that might have helped clinch Lincoln's prospects for reelection. For the eastern theater at least, that honor would go to Philip Sheridan's series of victories in the Shenandoah Valley.

In conveying to readers an understanding as to why this series of Union offensives, like those that preceded them, failed to achieve greater results, Greene focuses mostly closely on controllable factors. At a number of places in the narrative, Grant's frustration is felt deeply, as his innate aggressiveness could not be fully transmitted to the tip of the spear on either side of the James. If Grant was a jolt of electricity from the top, and Meade duly carried out his superior's wishes while also offering sage advisement, the charge steadily diminished as it moved down the Union order of battle, which acted like a poorly insulated conducting wire. Even the usually reliable cavalry division commander David Gregg significantly underperformed during this period. In ways that attempted to cover up their own shortcomings, Union leaders frequently blamed their own men for defeats. At numerous points in the book, the author reveals damning quotes, originating from high-ranking Union generals and lesser lights alike, that routinely blamed the new men in the army for the most lopsided mishaps suffered at the hands of Lee's veterans. Directly confronting those claims might be beyond the scope of Greene's investigation, but one hopes that the third volume can reserve some space for addressing the most recent scholarship on the topic. Completed around the same time as Greene's Volume 2 are major works from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot that strongly challenge the most persistently hidebound negative assessments of the fighting capabilities of the Army of the Potomac's late-war enlistees and regiments.

As revealed in the book, the Confederates were not without their own accumulation of operational misjudgments and tactical mistakes. Lee is reasonably second-guessed on occasion, one example being his determination to go forward with a delayed counterattack to try to recover Fort Harrison, but the record remains clear that the Confederate leadership overall performed commendably in limiting federal gains to manageable losses in the near term. Of Lee's subordinates, hard-hitting William Mahone emerges as his commander's chief fireman on many battlefields described in both volumes, and Greene's narrative also offers renewed appreciation for Henry Heth, who is typically regarded as a fairly middling major general. With the ailing A.P. Hill leaving a bit of a higher leadership void along his overstretched and highly vulnerable Third Corps front, Heth stepped up effectively in some key moments.

Though Greene prominently pays homage to those who have covered this material before, singling out for special recognition Hampton Newsome, John Horn, and the late Richard Sommers, and refers his readers to the relevant works from that trio to find even more micro-level detail, his own narrative offers impressive levels of tactical depth and sage analysis. Indeed, Greene ranks high in his ability to transform a vast amount of primary and secondary source research into a complex yet readily comprehensible campaign and battlefield narrative. Supplementing Green's text is a set of very fine operational and tactical-scale maps (34 in total) from Edward Alexander that cover the action without leaving any notable gaps.

Judging from the content and tone of this review, one might correctly surmise that this volume receives the site's highest possible recommendation. If V3 meets the same standards set by V1-2, and there is no reason to suppose otherwise, then the finished trilogy will unquestionably become a lasting standard on the same order as other top-flight book series such as David Powell's Chickamauga, Timothy Smith's Vicksburg, and Gordon Rhea's aforementioned Overland Campaign work.