Book Reviews

Book Reviews — March 2016

Originally published March 2016 · pp. 28–35

– Reviews of Civil War Books –

Essays Examine ‘Gone With The Wind’ Shakespeare’s Plays New Approaches To Gone With the Wind. Edited by James A. Crank. Notes, index, 210 pp., 2015, LSU Press, www.lsupress.org, $42.50. Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel Gone With the Wind and its cinematic adaptation by David Selznick have become America’s iconic story of the transformational effect of the Civil War on antebellum Southern society and culture. Perhaps the best example of this is Scarlett O’Hara who, due to the vicissitudes of war, transformed herself from a typically dominated white woman into an independent, calculating and resourceful figure. Indeed, Mitchell probably never intended that her story be anything more than that. But, over time and with its staying power, Gone With the Wind has been scrutinized and analyzed to see if it reflects true history and how it has defined us in terms of race relationships. This volume presents yet another attempt to make certain parallels and generalizations in a series of essays that view the novel in such disparate contexts as rape, birthing customs and a source of artistic expression and material culture today. In one essay the marital rape of Scarlett is viewed as a response to changing Southern mores marked by frustration and anxiety as the old order fell apart. Scarlett, as a new economic competitor in what was formerly a male-dominated enterprise, becomes a target of this frustration. A more dubious comparison is made in another essay suggesting that Scarlett and Rhett Butler exhibit black emotional characteristics. The author endows them with traits based on racial stereotypes. Scarlett becomes the matriarchal figure akin to Mammy. As a survivalist, she is viewed no differently than any black slave woman who had to endure labor and fatigue uncharacteristic of Southern white women. In another interpretation, Rhett’s rape of Scarlett, induced by heavy drinking, supposedly represents the stereotype of the beastly black virile male. By making such comparisons, the author reinforces the same racist black stereotypes that so many have criticized in “The Birth of a Nation.” The topic of sexuality is not ignored here either. Rhett represents simple carnal love while Ashley Wilkes’s asexual philosophical love creates conflict for Scarlett who, while seeing Ashley’s love as pure, finds him more complex than Rhett.

Kansas Racial Violence Lasted Decades This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927. By Brent M.S. Campney. Maps, notes, bibliography, index, 296 pp., 2015, Illinois, www.press.uillinois.edu, $50. On Aug. 1, 1865, the 31st anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies, a menacing white mob pounded into an AfricanAmerican neighborhood. As the blacks prepared to observe a day long celebrated on their civic calendars, the whites plundered and swept the town. The rioters attacked two cornerstones of the community — the Colored Baptist Church and recently returned black veterans. Tragically, episodes like this one became axiomatic of the immediate postwar years in the former Confederate South. Yet this particular instance of racist violence — one chronicled in Brent Campney’s stunning new book — occurred in Leavenworth, Kan. This Is Not Dixie offers an important and often persuasive analysis of that violence in late 19thand early 20th-century Kansas. Brimming with historiographic interventions, the book argues that we should expand our definition of racist violence and reconsider its chronology, geography and meaning. Campney’s catchall category, “racist violence,” reminds us that lynching was only one technique used to brace white supremacy. Intimidation and threats of violence served the same vile purpose, prompting a spirited and largely understudied black resistance. As the author points out, black Civil War veterans frequently took a leading role in jailhouse defenses.

This is a significant finding, for scholars have often implied that the emergence of Jim Crow spelled doom for black resistance. Campney challenges both the orthodox periodization of the Civil Rights movement and those who have argued for a “long civil rights movement” originating in the 1930s. Likewise, his sophisticated approach makes clear that lynchings were not, as historian Philip Dray once characterized them, a “finely tuned spring-released trap.” Yet the book’s chief target is the so-called “Free State” narrative that, invoking the memory of John Brown, hails Kansas as a bastion of broadmindedness. Peddled by Civil War-era Kansans and their historians alike, the narrative romanticized a past riddled by racism. Taking to task the work of Nichole Etcheson, Campney reveals that racial conservatives waged a steady effort to seize control of public opinion in Kansas, muzzling racial liberals and moderates. As the nation recoiled from Reconstruction, so too did whites in Kansas abandon whatever idealism they once espoused. Campney contends that racial conservatives had carried the day by the 1880s. They were well prepared to counter the new black migrations to Kansas in that decade. Though this book is, at heart, a state-based case study, its conclusions have manifold implications for historians of Reconstruction, race, lynching, the South and historical memory in the late 19th century. A short review can capture neither the full range of challenges that Campney issues to previous scholars nor the important questions he places on future historians’ agendas. While the book too often reads like a dissertation and at times may reach beyond the evidence (the author leans perhaps too heavily on newspapers as a reliable register of public opinion), This Is Not Dixie is an indispensable addition to the sprawling literature on the ugly violence that menaced the results of Union victory. Brian Matthew Jordan, assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, is author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War. He is at work on a biography of Ben Butler.

Another essay addresses Irish cultural influences personified by the O’Hara family, who exhibit reverence for land, suffer through famine and overcome obstacles. Irish people generally have encountered the same life experiences. The essayist suggests that Mitchell took the Irish experience, repackaged it in the Southern idiom, and sold it back to Ireland for consumption. The book ends with an examination of the popularity of the novel and film in Great Britain during World War II. These essays are academic with extensive explanatory endnotes. They are also uneven, some more difficult to read and their thrust obscured by rhetoric. At times the writing is pretentious, but those who cannot get enough of Gone With the Wind will find this book presents a unique perspective. Frank J. Piatek graduated from Geneva College with a B.A. in history and received his J.D. from Duquesne University in 1972. He is past president of the Mahoning Valley Civil War Round Table and author of Cannoneers, To Your Posts!, the story of Cooper’s Battery B, 1st Pennsylvania Artillery at Gettysburg.

Ulysses Grant: Youth to Uniform by Joe Krom This historical novel illustrates Grant’s boyhood in southern Ohio up to his entry into the army as a lieutenant. Ulysses shaped his country. What events shaped him? What early influences molded his character? $14, paperback, 209 pages Eel River Traders, Publisher www.eelrivertraders.com

Favorites of Lincoln Lincoln and Shakespeare. By Michael Anderegg. Illustrated, photos, notes, bibliography, index, 222 pp., 2015, Kansas, www.kansaspress.edu, $29.95. Although his formal schooling lasted no more than a year, Abraham Lincoln made up for this deficiency by following a vigorous selfimprovement regimen. He virtually read his way out of the primitive environment of his youth by seeking out books on biography, history and poetry. In his youth he developed a love for poetry, becoming an avid reader and an occasional writer of verse. Among his favorite poets were Robert Burns, Lord Byron, William Knox, Alexander Pope and William Shakespeare. Numerous friends and associates of Lincoln spoke of his profound admiration for the Bard. For example, his long-time law partner and later biographer, William Herndon, claimed that Lincoln carried a worn copy of Shakespeare with him at all times. Michael Anderegg’s book provides a first modern examination of Lincoln’s life-long fascination with Shakespeare, explores how he was introduced to the plays, which editions he would have read, and which plays he would have seen. From this well-written study, readers learn not only about Lincoln’s love and understanding of Shakespeare but how Shakespeare’s works were circulated and interpreted in 19th-century America. Specifically, Lincoln and Shakespeare examines how Shakespeare’s plays were received and understood in the United States in Lincoln’s time, which Shakespeare plays Lincoln would have seen before he became president, his responses to the plays he attended, and President Lincoln’s relationship with and reactions to the leading Shakespearean actors. In terms of Shakespeare’s reception in 19th-century America, Anderegg points out that the Bard’s works — or parts thereof — were familiar to many Americans. By mid-century, several of the plays were becoming standard fare in theaters across the country and were popular with lowand high-brow audiences alike. What many audiences may not have known is that the Shakespeare they heard and saw in the theater was in actuality a Shakespeare reshaped for the stage.

According to Anderegg, Shakespeare’s plays presented on the American stage were really 18thcentury adaptations that differed, sometimes extensively, from printed texts read by Lincoln and other devotees. It is not clear how often Lincoln attended Shakespeare performances before he assumed the presidency. We do know that as president, Lincoln saw several Shakespeare plays in Washington, including his favorites, King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth, featuring some of the period’s leading actors. They included James H. Hackett, with whom Lincoln corresponded and whom he invited to the White House. What Anderegg makes clear is that Lincoln, because of his knowledge of the printed Shakespeare plays, could be critical of performances based on edited play texts or actor interpretations. He knew which parts had been cut and which lines had been omitted. In other words, Lincoln knew certain Shakespeare plays well and, in many cases, preferred to read them rather than see the adaptations performed on the stage. Anderegg’s Lincoln and Shakespeare is an excellent study of Lincoln and the Bard, as well as of Shakespeare on the 19th-century American stage. I highly recommend this work. Thomas A. Horrocks is an independent scholar and author and editor of seven books, including The Living Lincoln (2011), Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies (2014), and The Annotated Lincoln (2016).

Skimpy Book About Artillery Officer Capt. Almont Barnes, 1st New York Light Artillery, Battery C, Civil War. By Peter V. Andrews. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, index, 97 pp., 2015, CreateSpace, www.createspace.com, $7.95 softcover. Peter Andrews says this book is both a biography of Almont Barnes and a history of Battery C of the 1st New York Light Artillery. In reality, it’s neither. Andrews did not find enough information to write a full-length book. Thus, his book reads like a collection of genealogical notes and has no real narrative. The Civil War section, especially, needs to be fleshed out and placed in context. He attempts to do this when writing about the Battle of Gettysburg, but he does little more than quote a few paragraphs of Gettysburg — The Second Day by Harry W. Pfanz. The best part of the book takes place after Almont Barnes is discharged in September 1864. His successor, Capt. David F. Ritchie, offers some quotable information in several reports that bring some life to the book. Forty-some pages are devoted to Barnes’s life after the war. These pages will prove a treasure trove to anyone researching Captain Barnes. Unfortunately, they will be the only individuals who might find this volume useful. More information about the battery than found in the pages of this book can be discovered in a simple Web search. The subject of this book deserves a much fuller treatment with some real research. Robert L. Durham is a computer specialist. A longtime Civil War buff, he is also interested in Old West history and has written articles and book reviews for Alamo Journal, True West, Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association, and Alamo de Parras web site at www.flash.net/~alamo3

Family, Soldier Letters Nat Turner Revolt & From Connecticut Ryans Slavery’s Complexities Inside the Ryan Papers: George Ryan. Edited by Susan Betts. Illustrated, photos, 180 pp., 2015, Dementi Milestone Publishing, www.dementibooks.com, $12.

The Civil War produced an amazing number of letters, most of them written by Union and Confederate soldiers experiencing battle and providing their families at home with information on their experiences. The families responded to their soldier relatives and often realized the historical importance of preserving these communications. The result has been that archives throughout the nation have preserved this correspondence for the edification of descendants and for insights by historians. Sometimes, these letters have been not only preserved in the original or in transcriptions, but they are also published in books, articles and increasingly in online digitized editions. This slim book contains copies of original letters, transcriptions, photographs and facsimiles of official documents. Some 1,200 letters and documents, most of which cover the Civil War years, are preserved in the archives of the Catholic University of America as the Ryan Family Papers. The book includes only a small percentage of these letters and it concentrates on George Ryan, an 1857 West Point graduate, a colonel of the 140th New York Infantry Regimnet and an 1864 casualty of the Civil War. George Ryan, his father John, his mother Johanna Boomer Reed, and many of his 12 siblings in Norfolk, Conn., composed these letters. They tell of George’s application to and acceptance into West Point, years there, graduation, service on the American frontier, capture by Texas insurgents, exchange during the

Civil War, service in the Army of the Potomac, and death from gunfire at the battle of Spotsylvania on May 8, 1864. The printing of these letters is the work of Ryan descendants. The resulting book has a loose quality about it. There is no explanation why individual letters were chosen or what the editor believes this publication tells readers about the Civil War in general or George Ryan and his family in particular. It would also have been helpful if the editor or her publisher had indicated what is contained in the Ryan correspondence but not included in this book. Strangely, too, the book has no title page; the book’s title appears only on the book’s spine. The editor’s name, Susan Betts, is listed only on the technical information page and on the back of the book jacket, which itself does not include the title. Ironically, although this is never mentioned, the book jacket is an exact copy of George Ryan’s acceptance into West Point and is signed by the then United States Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. The correspondence produced during the Civil War is indeed important for the history of that conflict. However, the format of this book makes it difficult for readers to understand the significance of these particular letters. Anyone interested in utilizing them to their fullest will not be satisfied with this brief publication; fortunately the entire body of correspondence is available at the Catholic University archives, along with a transcription written by Ryan descendant Jerry Goebel. John F. Marszalek is Executive Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association’s Grant Presidential Library, Mississippi State University. His latest publication is The Best Writings of Ulysses S. Grant.

The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt. By Patrick H. Breen. Chronology, map, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 316 pp., 2015, Oxford, www.oup.com, $29.95. Forty-six years after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, W.E.B. DuBois delivered an address there. Among a litany of iconic names DuBois invoked to “reconsecrate” those present to the unfinished task of realizing full emancipation was Nat Turner — a slave whose 1831 failed uprising in Southampton County, Virginia, sent shockwaves throughout the South. Despite the importance of Turner’s uprising as a step on the pathway to African-American equality, it has received scant attention from scholars. There have been no serious treatments of it since the appearance of Stephen Oates’s The Fires of Jubilee in 1975. Now Patrick Breen has added a fresh perspective on Turner’s uprising. Breen provides a superb narrative of the events surrounding Turner’s insurrection: planning, attacks, capture of Turner and his followers, trials and executions. Throughout this exhaustively researched book, the narrative is brisk and well organized. While this study offers a compelling story about Turner’s revolt, it is much more than a mere update. Breen gives tremendous insight into the broader complexities of life in the slaveholding South. He relates that, as news of Turner’s revolt spread, some whites sought revenge against any African American they could locate whether connected with Turner or not. A very small number of whites considered arming their slaves to preclude further attacks. Breen illustrates that slaves and free blacks reacted in a variety of ways to the news. While some used the opportunity to flee, others decided to “lay low” and hide.

But whites who found slaves “lying low” sometimes interpreted that as “proof ” that they had some involvement with the insurrection. Those suspicions led to the murder of at least one innocent free black man. These complex reactions that Breen highlights throughout his study provide important context for Civil War-era historians wishing to understand African Americans’ varying reactions to the presence of Union soldiers in Southern communities during the Civil War. Additionally, Breen’s study examines a serious debate that occurred among slaveholders whenever a slave insurrection took place: Did the benefits of maintaining slavery outweigh the potential instability it brought with it? Beyond offering additional ways for historians to understand the complexities of slavery, Breen uses his study to validate the essential piece of primary evidence for anyone studying Turner’s revolt, The Confessions of Nat Turner compiled by Thomas R. Gray. At first blush those interested in the Civil War might ignore Breen’s volume since it examines an event that occurred three decades prior to the war. Nonetheless, those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of “an important milestone for a nation that was on a path toward its greatest political crisis” and additional insight into slaves’ complex world will find Breen’s study essential reading. Jonathan A. Noyalas is assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Civil War History at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Va., and is the author or editor of 11 books on Civil War history, including the recently released Civil War Legacy in the Shenandoah: Remembrance, Reunion, and Reconciliation.

Book-Length Memoir is Demonization Of Yankees Popular In South A First For Signal Corps Service with the Signal Corps: The Civil War Memoir of Captain Louis R. Fortescue. Edited by J. Gregory Acken. Illustrated, photos, notes, index, 412 pp., 2015, Tennessee, www.utpress.org, $48.50. Civil War historians have estimated that over 70,000 books have been published pertaining to the “the late unpleasantness” since the rebellion commenced 155 years ago. That output equates to at least 1.25 books per day since the war began, making the Civil War one of the most written-about topics in American history, second only to religion. Given that staggering volume, the casual reader might easily conclude that every possible topic relating to the conflict has been written about endlessly. Yet with Service with the Signal Corps, editor J. Gregory Acken shows that is not the case, for this work represents the first-ever, book-length published memoir from a soldier who served in the Union army’s elite Signal Corps. The Corps was the brainchild of Albert J. Myer, an antebellum army surgeon. Myer had a deep interest in sign language. When he entered the army in 1854 he used those principles to create a flag-based system to transmit information. Though his ideas were initially rebuffed by the War Department in the mid-1850s, he was given approval to create his corps shortly after the Civil War started. An added impetus was the realization that a former subordinate had used Myer’s system at the battle of First Manassas to help the South achieve victory. The Signal Corps’s fundamental wartime missions were to observe and communicate intelligence regarding enemy movements and positions, as well as to relay information among its own various army commands. Its members had to possess above-average intelligence. Despite early doubts regarding the corps’s value, by the end of the war the Union high command held the signalmen’s work in high regard. An important part of the book is the editor’s detailed commentary with illustrations as to the logic behind the signals and their creation. This memoir was written by Capt. Louis R. Fortescue, who was a 23-year-old first lieutenant with the 29th Pennsylvania Infantry when he accepted an offer to join the nascent Signal Corps in mid-1861. His wartime journey took him from the Upper Potomac to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in spring 1862 and then into eastern Virginia. Fortescue saw signal duty at the battles of Cedar Mountain, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, all of which are described in detail. This published version of his manuscript ends 10 days after the July 1863 battle at Gettysburg — following Fortescue’s capture by Confederates. He spent the war’s remaining 20 months in five separate Rebel prisons before being exchanged on March 1, 1865. Though Fortescue’s manuscript also covers his time as a prisoner of war, those months are not included in this volume. Fortescue’s comments on the war years’ key issues are peppered throughout the text. They reveal him to be a reasonably well-educated, staunch pro-Lincoln Republican who favored a hard war against the Confederacy. Consequently, he had little use for Democratic Gen. George McClellan, whom Fortescue referred to as “the idol of Rebel sympathizers in the North.” Though anti-slavery, Fortescue used common racist slurs to describe blacks. His real vitriol, however, was reserved for Southerners and their region’s purported hospitality, which he claimed was “a myth and deception” repeated so often that “its reiteration creates a nausea.” Fortescue penned his memoir about 30 years after the war. Once finished, he had it typed and bound in five volumes. The typescript memoir was donated to Philadelphia’s Civil War Museum and Library in 1923, eight years after Fortescue’s death in 1915. The author based his memoir on his wartime diary and notes, rendering it of greater value to scholars than one written solely from memory. Six helpful maps and 20 photographs and sketches supplement this important new memoir. Civil War veterans’ recollections abound. However, its heretofore unseen and fresh perspective on the great conflict makes this book a significant addition to any Civil War bookshelf. Paul Taylor is the author of six Civil War era books. His latest is the award-winning Old Slow Town”: Detroit during the Civil War, published by Wayne State University Press. His website is www.paulrtaylor.com.

Damn Yankees! Demonization & Defiance in the Confederate South. By George C. Rable. Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 212 pp., 2015, LSU, www.lsupress.org, $38.

You can’t have war without hatred of the enemy, as George C. Rable reminds us in Damn Yankees! Drawing on sociological and psychological aphorisms — e.g., “emotional distance between our side and theirs is essential” — Rable surveys the breadth of Confederate literature to show how Southerners expressed their hatred of, well, damn Yankees. “The words deployed against the other side help cement or establish national identity,” Rable begins. He draws on newspapers, speeches, letters and diaries for Confederates’ denunciations of the enemy. The longer the war dragged on, the more poisonous and pervasive the anti-Yankee invective became. Soldiers and citizens, politicians, preachers and editors all spoke the same language, using surprisingly similar themes and terms. The author casts a wide net, quoting 200 soldiers, 140 civilians, a score of political leaders and two dozen ministers and essayists. I am impressed by his exhaustive use of 64 Confederate newspapers, especially the Richmond Dispatch. He also quotes from the Southern Illustrated News and Southern Literary Messenger. “Taken altogether,” Rable concludes, “these disparate sources reveal much about how Yankees were defined, defamed, and decried.” This process of describing “a distinctive Yankee character,” of course, began well before the war. Actual armed conflict only highlighted the enemy’s “cowardice, vulgarity, or general depravity.”

They were a “mercenary, lowclass” bunch. They killed and raped, robbed and burned, according to contemporary writers. “How poorly does the thieving, burning, murdering Yankee compare with the generous, chivalrous Southerner,” wrote Ida Powell Dulaney in her journal. “This race of sharpers…have less fight in them than any white race now on the globe,” declared the Charleston Mercury in August 1861 (inaccurately, as Southerners would learn). Three years of war only intensified these feelings. “When I come in sight of their blue yankee uniforms,” wrote Lt. Col. Barrington King in July 1864, “I only feel an intense desire to kill.” Even as they faced defeat, Confederates refused to acknowledge anything positive about the Yankees. “These worthless fellows whom we have so often whipped, whose cowardly backs we have so often seen,” wrote North Carolina captain Henry Chambers, had only conquered brave Southrons “by sheer force of numbers.”

Rable’s research is demonstrated by his voluminous endnotes, which he offers in lieu of a bibliography. I count over 350 notes in nearly 50 pages, about a quarter of the book. Some may say that Rable’s work, a product of the Walter Lynwood Fleming lectures he delivered at LSU, is primarily cumulative since he assembles so many written references to the hated enemy. I don’t think so. A hundred fifty years afterward, we in the Civil War remembrance community continue to discuss why Americans went to war against one another. Recalling how wartime Southerners demonized “the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race” — Edmund Ruffin’s words before he blew his brains out after Lee’s surrender — serve us well as we continue to scratch our heads. Stephen Davis’ What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta was published in 2012. He’s working on a study of John Bell Hood for Savas Beatie.

Suppliers to the Confederacy: More British Imported Arms & Accoutrements Volume II By Craig L. Barry & David C. Burt

Available in 2016 from Schiffer Publishing www.schifferbooks.com Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble editors also present a foreword from Ed Linenthal, a significant voice in the study of historical memory. A few of the essays are either novel in approach or reach compelling conclusions. Franco contributes a thought-provoking essay about the converging aims of public history and public theology. Pamela CooperWhite offers an analysis of ghosthunting at Gettysburg, connecting the industry to historical memory and a paradoxical search for authenticity. Susan Colestock Hill reintroduces Elsie Singmaster, whose fiction and non-fiction about the battle have not yet commanded enough scholarly attention. Leonard Hummel’s piece alters our gaze by considering how students at the Lutheran Seminary engage the battle. Other contributions, such as those on Lincoln’s religious beliefs, the Lost Cause myth, and Gettysburg as a place of secular pilgrimage, are less inventive. These pieces largely echo the findings of other scholars. Furthermore, though each contribution illuminates an aspect of Seminary Ridge’s rich history, several essays do not live up to the subtitle. Overall, the book manages to come at Civil War memory from some oblique angles. Read it, but visit the fabulous museum that inspired it first. Brian Matthew Jordan, assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, is author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War. He is at work on a biography of Ben Butler.

Excellent CS Tennessee Regimental “Forward My Brave Boys!”: A History of the 11th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, C.S.A. 1861-1865. By M. Todd Cathey and Gary W. Waddey. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, index, 516 pp., 2015, Mercer, www.mupress.org, $35. The Confederate 11th Tennessee served from November 1861 through May 1865 and saw action at Cumberland Gap, Rockcastle (Ky.), Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw, Franklin, Nashville and Atlanta. Their wartime experiences typify the hardships and disadvantages of serving in the Western Confederate army. The 11th, for instance, carried flintlock muskets through the first year or so of their enlistment. These weapons proved very ineffective against better-armed Federal troops. This regimental history, however, is so much more than a dull recitation of tactics and battles. I have never read such a thoroughly documented Army of Tennessee regimental history. It is loaded with newspaper articles, wartime letters and anecdotes, which flesh out the lives of the officers and men and their personal experiences. Anecdotes include “loyal” Tennessee ladies showing the rebels the “backs of their hands” or “French salute” as they passed through east Tennessee. In another incident, a lieutenant yelled at a soldier who was fleeing with two stolen chickens, “What the hell are you doing?” — at which the private turned around to see the officer with his own captured birds. Then there is a letter home from a private to his family informing them of the deaths of several friends but not knowing that he would never pen another letter to them. About half of this excellent work is more than 100 wartime and civilian photographs of regiment members followed by a thoroughly descriptive annotated roster of the regiment. The appendices consist of the names of those who suffered casualties, men in Federal prisons, and officer rosters. The maps, while very well done, are in the front of the book, making it difficult to use them while reading the battle accounts. That is my only criticism of the work. “Forward My Brave Boys!” is an excellent regimental. I would put it right alongside Steven Stubbs’s history of the 11th Mississippi and Craig L. Dunn’s Harvestfields of Death (20th Indiana) as a book that readers interested in the daily lives of common soldiers should have in their libraries. John Michael Priest retired from teaching in 2011 after serving 30.5 years. He is a guide at Antietam. He has published four Civil War books and is an avid 54mm wargamer — French and Indian War through the U. S. Civil War.

Gettysburg: The Quest for Meaning: Essays on How We Remember the Battle and Understand Its Consequences. Edited by Gerald Christianson, Barbara Franco and Leonard Hummel. Illustrations, bibliography, index, 224 pp., 2015, Seminary Ridge Press, www.ltsg.edu/srp, $18.95. Perched atop Gettysburg’s Seminary Ridge, “Old Dorm” is perhaps best known for its sturdy cupola, which afforded cavalryman John Buford a view of the battle as it unfolded to the west on July 1, 1863. Once inaccessible to visitors and later the headquarters of the local historical society, the elegant building is now host to one of the finest Civil War museums in the nation. Dedicated in 2013, the Seminary Ridge Museum invites its visitors to wrestle with big ideas. Exhibits narrate the events of July 1 but insist that its horrors persisted long after the roar of battle subsided. Recalling the building’s use as a field hospital, galleries lined with crutches and prostheses meditate on the human costs of the war. Finally, reminding that the war’s horrors visited a place of peace, the museum challenges visitors to think about religion and reconciliation. The museum has inspired some powerful conversations in its short existence — and now this book of essays edited by founding director Barbara Franco and two faculty members (one emeritus) from the Lutheran Theological Seminary. The

Shop at C. Clayton Thompson - Bookseller 584 Briarwood Lane, Boone, N.C. 28607

A full-time bookseller with an open shop - In business for over 20 years! Offering the largest selection of Civil War and military books on the Internet! Visit our Civil War and World War II unit history pages. Maps, DVDs, Repro Swords, Hats, Pistols & Belt Buckles. Find your ancestors - Over 15,000 genealogy books & CDs

Find us on Google Earth and come visit! Call us for directions or to order by phone. Shop online at:

www.civilwarmall.com/bookseller/main.htm (828) 265-4970 • E-mail: [email protected]

STOP PAYING FULL PRICE FOR MILITARY BOOKS

Essays On Battles, Leaders in Tennessee & Kentucky Border Wars: The Civil War in Tennessee and Kentucky. Edited by Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson. Photos, maps, notes, index, 320 pp., 2015, Kent State, www.kentstateuniversitypress.com, $39.95. From 1861 to 1865, Kentucky and Tennessee were saturated by violence at all levels. Armies fought armies, armies fought citizens, and citizens fought each other. Editors Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson bring the stories of these multilayered conflicts to life. They created their book to “help fill a niche in the historiography” of the Civil War. Kentucky and Tennes-

Detailed Study Of Junior Officer Corps Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. By Andrew S. Bledsoe. Photographs, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index, 352 pp., 2015, LSU, www.lsupress.org, $47.50. It is no surprise that the Union army was made up of 90 percent “volunteers” and the Confederate army was virtually all-“volunteer.” These numbers include draftees. The 10 percent of Union nonvolunteers were mostly United States Regular Army personnel. This book is a study of the volunteer officer corps and the challenges they faced. The volunteer captains and lieutenants who commanded the company-size units were vital to their units’ performance. Andrew Bledsoe amassed volumes of primary source material to carefully evaluate the wartime experiences of nearly 2,600 Union and Confederate companygrade junior officers in all theaters. His research included letters, diaries, census records, and company and regimental papers. The 37-page bibliography confirms the depth of his research. Since the American Revolution junior officers usually had been elected by volunteers in their units in the American democratic tradition. When the Civil War began, the Union army grew to a staggering 27 times its prewar size. By 1865 it had grown to over one million men and cost a billion dollars per year. Two million men served in Union army at various times in the war. The Confederate Army did not even exist in 1861. However, it grew during the course of the war to nearly one million men. Providing effective junior officer leadership proved to be a challenging task on both sides. Volunteers and their junior officers were inexperienced in the ways of war — except possibly for some hometown militia training. There were just not enough experienced officers to lead the hundreds of thousands of green volunteers. Also, there was a natural resistance to authority by men who were usually their own bosses in civilian life. Volunteer officers were looked down upon by career officers. Gen. George Gordon Meade in 1861 remarked, “I fear no amount of personal energy or efforts to do what is right will ever make these volunteers into soldiers.”

see are too often ignored, they say, and the conjoined history of these two states forms “a vital part of the larger story of the Civil War.” Although Kentucky and Tennessee took different political pathways — Kentucky stayed in the Union and Tennessee joined the Confederacy — both states endured similar experiences. Due to their geographic location, the war visited Kentucky and Tennessee “early and often.” The editors point out that several distinct, significant conflicts erupted. Not only did Union and Confederate troops fight each other, but Union troops waged a counterinsurgency campaign against Confederate irregular units.

Robert E. Lee expressed the same fears: “The best troops are ineffectual without good officers.” Most high-ranking officers thought the volunteers were too undisciplined and would not do well in a fight. After the first year of the war, most men in the nine-month units were not reenlisting. Conscription became necessary (by the Confederacy in April 1862 and the Union in March 1863). The ranks swelled with men who did not want to be there. Desertion on both sides became a serious problem. Also, many officers resigned to tend to business or personal affairs at home. In a chapter entitled “Maturation of the Volunteer Junior Officer Corps,” Bledsoe notes that on-the-job training and aggressive weeding-out of incompetents improved the junior officer corps’ quality. Resignations and casualties also played a large role. The Union cavalry’s improvement is a good example of maturation. The author skillfully interjects first-person accounts to bolster his points. For me, the most interesting section of this book is the appendixes. They begin with three pie-charts entitled “Antebellum Professions and Slaveholding of Junior Officers, Union and Confederate.” The first chart shows that Union junior officers had been employed in a variety of occupations. The second shows that 48 percent of Confederate junior officers, but only 19 percent Union, had been engaged in agriculture. The third chart, “Slaveholding of Confederate Junior Officers,” shows that 60 percent had no slaves, 20 percent had one to three slaves, 10 percent had three to 10, and 10 percent had 10 or more slaves. The following charts are equally revealing. In “Defining Characteristics of Junior Officers,” one shows that junior officers were slightly older than volunteers. Confederate officers’ household wealth was nearly double their Union counterparts’. Marital status and number of children are also tallied. The remaining charts list the Union and Confederate wartime casualties of selected regiments. This book is a very important addition to the history of leadership in the Civil War. It sheds new light on the lower-echelon volunteer officers in the Union and Confederate armies. It is highly recommended. Michael A. Cavanaugh is the former editor and publisher of the Civil War Book Exchange, now Civil War News. He has authored and co-authored five books on the war.

Further, Union commanders bickered with local Unionists over occupation issues, and Confederate generals squabbled among themselves. In short, Kentucky and Tennessee’s Civil War was not a single, easily identifiable struggle, but a kaleidoscope of tumultuous action, fought along ever-changing lines of loyalty. The editors have assembled 13 contributors to address “Battles, Skirmishes, and Soldiers,” and “Leadership.” As these section headings imply, the stories offered by Border Wars are distinctly filled with traditional military history. Readers get a healthy dose of biography, including details about such commanders as Nathan Bedford

Michael A. Cavanaugh is the former editor and publisher of the Civil War Book Exchange, now Civil War News. He has authored and co-authored five books on the war.

Forrest, Ulysses S. Grant, Don Carlos Buell, Braxton Bragg, Felix Zollicoffer, Frank Cheatham and Gov. Isham G. Harris. Readers also get a quantity of battlefield history and revisit famous engagements at Stones River and Franklin. Perhaps the most innovative essays are those that discuss Union occupation, stressing the struggles of high command to cultivate loyalty and quell the murderous intrigues of Confederate guerrillas. Noteworthy are Michael Toomey’s essay about the lackluster Union invasion of Eastern Tennessee in 1861 and Derek Frisby’s essay on Union occupation and recruitment of Unionist regiments in Western Tennessee. However, the most intriguing essays are those written by Scott Tarnowieckyi and Patricia Hoskins, who analyze irregular warfare in Kentucky. They discuss different regions — the Green River Valley and the Jackson Purchase — and come to opposite conclusions. Tarnowieckyi emphasizes Confederate overreactions to emancipation and the recruitment of U.S. Colored Troops. He identifies those factors as the primary source of guerrilla activity. To him, the Green River Country’s descent into anarchy was a matter of course. Hoskins, meanwhile, argues that unprepared or ill-informed Union commanders created guerrilla conflict in the Jackson Purchase through their inconsistent and seemingly iniquitous occupation policies. These two case studies suggest that there is much to be gained by analyzing the untold story of Union counterinsurgency efforts. Beyond the stories of battles, guerrillas, occupation and leaders, Border Wars does not offer much.

Readers should not expect a comprehensive history of Civil War-era Kentucky and Tennessee because the selection of essays leaves out quite a bit. For instance, there are no chapters on the collapse of slavery or on women, death, religion, political behavior, medical practices, family life, economics, the aftermath of the war, or other social topics. The editors might have improved their collection if they had selected a more diverse array of themes instead of dealing just with biographical and military history. Border Wars contains a solid afterword written by Benjamin F. Cooling who reminds readers that, like the rest of the nation, Kentucky’s and Tennessee’s pathways to true nationhood were paved in bloodshed, suffering and misery. It underlines the fact that desolation profoundly shaped the lives of citizens within the Bluegrass and Volunteer states. The book contains the final published essay of the late Wiley Sword, one of the best-known historians of the Western Theater, who died on Nov. 9, 2015. Sword’s optimistic final lines in his essay on the Battle of Franklin are worth quoting. The soldiers who fought, he says, “knew above all else that our destiny extends only as far as our inner values. Thus, today we have their enduring testimony that it is mankind’s indomitable spirit that counts the most. It is their investment in us, and this is both their legacy and our promise for a better tomorrow.” Timothy J. Orr is an assistant professor of history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. For eight years, he worked as a ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Obituaries Describe North Carolina’s Soldiers 11th Michigan Fought In Many Western Battles The 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. By Eric R. Faust. Illustrated, photos, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 241 pp., 2015, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com, $39.95 softcover. The 11th Michigan was formed in the southwestern counties of Michigan shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. As part of the Army of the Cumberland, it fought in the Battle of Stones River. It lost more men there than it would lose in any other engagement of the war. Its next fight, Chickamauga, was probably its greatest moment. The 11th was one of the regiments that helped Gen. George H. Thomas defend the Horseshoe (Snodgrass Hill) and save Rosecrans’s army. It was attacked by men from Gracie’s Brigade of Confederate rookies. Demonstrating the value of experience, the Michiganders inflicted a casualty rate of six to one although outnumbered three to one. After a hard day’s combat, the wolverines of the 11th Michigan may have been the last Union regiment to leave the field that night when the battle ended. After enduring the siege of Chattanooga, the 11th Michigan took part in the storming of Missionary Ridge. Their longest campaign was the operation to take Atlanta. Ironically, its last battle, Utoy Creek, was also its second bloodiest. In addition to the 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry history, this book also has a section of statistics and a complete roster. Well-written, with exceptional maps, this is a book I’m delighted to add to my library. For those with an interest in Michigan regimentals or the Civil War in the West, I highly recommend this volume. Robert L. Durham has a long-held interest in the American Civil War and Western Americana. He has written articles for Alamo de Parras and Civil War St. Louis websites, Alamo Journal, Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association, and Old West and Military Heritage magazines.

North Carolina Civil War Obituaries, Regiments 1-46: A Collection of Tributes to the War Dead and Veterans. Edited by E.B. Munson. Index, bibliography, notes, 252 pp., 2015, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com. $39.95 softcover.

In the historic Blandford Church in Petersburg, Va., the North Carolina stained glass window is inscribed “May God Bless North Carolina, R.E. Lee.” The Tar Heel State supplied more manpower to the Confederacy than any other state. They suffered the highest casualties: over 33,500 were killed in action, mortally wounded or died of disease. Also, Fort Fisher in Wilmington, N.C., was the last port closed to blockade runners. The state was the last to surrender to Union forces when Gen. William T. Sherman accepted Gen. Joe Johnston’s surrender at Bennett Place, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. E.B. Munson’s book pays tribute to the Old North State by taking a new approach to its soldiers’ ultimate sacrifices. Many of the obituaries are of officers, NCOs or men who were the sons of prominent families back home. Also, those who gained social status and successes long after the war are well represented. But when I sat down and did some serious reading, I found that there are many interesting stories on the rank and file. Although I am limited by space, let me provide some examples. James Briggs, 4th Regiment, was killed when a landslide collapsed a platform he was standing on and trapped him between two rail cars. Pvt. James King, also of the 4th regiment, was executed for desertion in June 1864. Two minutes before he was to die, his only request was that his body be sent to his friends for a proper burial. First Lt. Archibald McGregor, 18th North Carolina, quit a lucrative business that would have exempted him from military service. Entering the first company to organize in his area, he was elected corporal. On July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, he was part of Maj. Gen. Isaac Trimble’s attacking force when the line began to falter. With sword raised, McGregor rushed to the front and was said to have exclaimed, “Hurrah for Dixie! Follow me boys.” Going only a short distance, he was shot in the chest and died shortly after. Nathan Brewer, 26th Regiment, survived a serious wound at Gettysburg and was captured near Petersburg in March 1865. He was confined at Point Lookout Prison Camp until June 1865. Surviving the war, he was doomed to die a horrible death on his own farm. While threshing wheat, he caught his pant leg in the machinery, and the revolving rods pulled him in before the device could be shut down. One leg was broken in several places and the other ripped completely off. Suffering other wounds to his body, Nathan Brewer lay in agony for three hours before dying. Another soul who did not have to be in harm’s way was Lt. Robert

Small. As a tutor in the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Raleigh, he was honorably exempt from military service. He, however, would not allow his comrades to endure the hardships and dangers of a soldier’s life while he “remained at home in luxury and ease.” He volunteered as a private in Co. G, 46th North Carolina. The enthusiastic and zealous Small was soon promoted to lieutenant. In June 1864 he was mortally wounded in a skirmish near White Oak Swamp, Virginia. He died in a Richmond hospital. On page after page there are heart-rending stories. Munson did an excellent job researching newspapers and other primary sources. His work will be welcomed by professional genealogists and amateur researchers alike. Many of the entries are long paragraphs containing useful personal information. I wonder, however, why the book ends with the 46th North Carolina. North Carolina regiments were numbered 1 to 68, and there were several special units. Is another volume coming? I hope so because Munson’s achievement is a valuable addition to the historiography of the State of North Carolina in the Civil War.

Tale Of CSA-Funded Essayists Ponder War’s Broad Impact British Shipbuilding In the Shadow of the Alabama: The British Foreign Office and the American Civil War. By Renata Eley Long. Illustrated, photos, notes, bibliography, index, 270 pp., 2015, Naval Institute, www.nip.org, $37.95. This is an entertaining and informative tale of Confederatefunded shipbuilding in England during the Civil War. An English native, Renata Long has a familiarity with events in both Britain and America that enables her to tie them together in a meaningful way. Confederate agents designing, funding and overseeing ship construction, Union diplomats and spies trying to obtain convincing evidence of Confederate involvement and nefarious intentions, British aristocrats lending financial and legislative support to the Confederates, and British politicians and diplomats playing their disparate cards all combine to make this a wonderful cloak-and-dagger tale. Its whodunit aspects add to the intrigue. Long explains the fine points of international and British law that defined the nature of the furtive shipbuilding operations. Before the British government fully comprehended the nature and long-term ramifications of allowing these operations in a nominally neutral country, they resulted in the completion and escape of vessels, such as the CSS Alabama and CSS Florida that would wreak havoc upon Union shipping. The author provides insights into many related issues, such as the Confederacy’s King Cotton diplomacy. Southerners withheld most of their large surplus of cotton from export to Britain and France in an attempt to compel European recognition of the Confederacy.

Although this action caused massive textile mill shutdowns, unemployment and hunger in the textile-producing areas, the plan backfired, according to Long, because the hardships only strengthened the working class’s bitter opposition to the Confederacy and its slavery. She notes that when Abraham Lincoln sent three ships of grain to their aid, one of them was captured and burned by the Alabama. A running theme of the book is the search to identify the persons directly responsible for sounding the warning that the British Government was about to seize the vessel that would become the Alabama. Clearly, someone with inside information tipped off the Confederate agents just in time to facilitate that vessel’s escape from England. The book’s final portions describe the postwar negotiations that led to British indemnities paid to the United States for the depredations carried out by the clandestinely built vessels, the ultimate fates of the protagonists, and some Arthur Conan Doyle-related speculations by Long. A scattering of purely British phrases and some almost overwhelming biographical details about the players slow down readers. The latter, however, are necessary to an understanding of the insiderdominated, class-based British government and society of the times. This book will appeal to those interested in maritime, diplomatic, international, or clandestine aspects of the Civil War. Civil War News Book Review Editor Ed Bonekemper is the author of six Civil War books. The latest is The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.

The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. Photos, map, notes, index, 392 pp., 2015, North Carolina, www.uncpress.unc.edu, $29.95 softcover. At the Civil War Centennial’s outset Robert Penn Warren observed that the “War made us a new nation.” Fifty years after Warren’s observation historians are still in agreement about the conflict’s transformative influence but are searching for a deeper understanding of the ways the Civil War left an indelible impression on society. This drive to gain a deeper understanding “of the ways the Civil War echoed beyond 1865” is the focus of this splendid collection of 12 essays compiled under the keen editorial guidance of Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. This anthology is largely based on the premise that scholars need to move away from the traditional lens of Reconstruction as a means of understanding the conflict’s immediate impact if historians are to gain a deeper understanding of the Civil War’s impact then. In Downs and Masur’s estimation, Reconstruction “alludes to everything and nothing” because Reconstruction narratives focus only on the South. It ignores other parts of the country and affords no opportunity to examine the conflict’s international influence. Among the many historical voids this anthology addresses is the conflict’s impact on Native Americans — the subject of three essays. Stephen Kantrowitz’s cogently crafted essay and C. Joseph GenetinPilawa’s contribution respectively offer thoughtful commentary on the meanings and limits of NativeAmerican citizenship and how the conflict simultaneously brought hope and pessimism to them. Barbara Krauthamer’s study of the abolition of slavery in Indian Territory in 1866 reminds us about the complex relationship between the federal government and the “quasi-sovereign Indian nations.” It also forces historians to rethink the emancipation timeline since slaves in Indian Territory were not freed until one year after the Civil War’s guns fell silent. Another theme examined throughout two essays is the changed perception of the federal government’s power after the conflict. Laura Edwards offers an insightful chapter on how the war raised “expectations about the federal government’s role in maintaining a just social order.” Amanda Claybaugh suggests a new mode of analysis to gain a deeper understanding of how people perceived the federal government in the postwar era — a critical survey of postwar literary works about Washington, D.C. Two of the volume’s essays deal with violence perpetrated against African Americans. Kidada Williams, making use of transcripts from Ku Klux Klan hearings, illustrates how a more careful reading of that testimony can provide more than “documentation of political or physical injury.” It also offers a greater understanding of how the federal government failed to protect African Americans and how those who survived attacks coped with the trauma. Crystal Feimster’s convincingly argued essay on African-American women’s resistance to sexual violence after the conflict illustrates how that effort, although initially unsuccessful, laid the cornerstone for Ida Wells’s anti-rape movement of the 1890s. Other essays in the collection focus on how the Supplementary Civil Rights Act became a turning point in the emergence of human rights, how white Protestants continued to cultivate pro-slavery attitudes after the conflict, the myriad ways in which wartime ruins can be interpreted, and how revolutionary figures such as Karl Marx viewed the Civil War as “an extraordinarily successful instance of revolutionary politicaleconomic change.” This finely-crafted volume does indeed, as Steven Hahn notes in the afterword, raise “further questions” — the mark of any good anthology. Individuals seeking a deeper understanding of the Civil War’s complex influences or historians seeking new avenues for inquiry will find this essential collection refreshing and thought-provoking. Jonathan A. Noyalas is assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Civil War History at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Va., and is the author or editor of 11 books on Civil War history, including the recently released Civil War Legacy in the Shenandoah: Remembrance, Reunion, and Reconciliation.

Good Fiction Story About Woman Spy in Civil War The Crescent Spy. By Michael Wallace. Novel. Map, 332 pp., 2015, Lake Union Publishing, www.apub.com, $24.95. I have had the privilege of reviewing several other novels for Civil War News. I admit the sampling is small, but I found this one to be far better than any of the others. It is wellwritten and has excellent characters. The story moves rapidly. Author Michael Wallace, who should not be confused with the late CBS TV newsman Mike Wallace, has carved a niche in the fiction world by focusing on action/adventure stories. Many of them are historical as is this one, which deals with the first years of the Civil War, culminating in the Union navy’s capture of New Orleans. The protagonist is Josephine Breaux, a 20-year-old beauty who wanted to be a writer. She had spent most of her life on a river boat, where her mother was a dancer who sometimes gave “private time” to especially generous gentlemen. While her mother worked, Josephine would be in another cabin devouring the classics and other books. There are a number of flashbacks to her younger prewar years, including appearances of a mystery man, the Colonel. A riverboat gambler, he came in and out of the lives of Josephine and her mother, usually when he needed money. The Colonel may or may not have been Josephine’s father, but readers are led to believe he was. In an especially dramatic flashback, the boiler on their Mississippi steam boat exploded, killing hundreds and knocking others unconscious. Josephine was a strong swimmer and able to rescue another passenger. She met up with the Colonel on the shore but refused to have anything more to do with him. Her mother was never found and was believed to be dead. Josephine knew she was a good writer and made her way to Washington where she was hired by a major daily newspaper. When the first battle of Bull Run/Manassas took place, she reported in detail the rout of the Union troops leading some on both sides to believe she was a Southern sympathizer. In reality she was anti-slavery and a strong supporter of the Lincoln administration. One of Lincoln’s Pinkerton agents took her into custody until she convinced him she was a loyalist. He then took her to the White House where President Lincoln offered her a job — as a spy in New Orleans, the militarily important town nicknamed the Crescent City. Josephine was assumed to be a Southern supporter and quickly earned a job on one of the New Orleans dailies. As the papers competed for big stories, Josephine traveled up and down the lower Mississippi visiting Confederate facilities and becoming friends with Rebel officers. She wrote great stories for her paper and also gained valuable information she fed back to Washington through a confidential delivery system developed by the Pinkertons. After a Union fleet under Adm. David Farragut overwhelmed the two forts protecting New Orleans, the city was taken without a shot and Federal authorities gave Josephine the credit she deserved. Wallace’s details about that battle and other military actions during the months the writer/spy was in the Crescent City give an aura of reality to this book and hold the reader’s interest. Soon, Josephine received a telegram ordering her “to return to Washington with the outgoing steamer Newport. Upon arrival, you will be given honors at the Executive Mansion (White House) before receiving new orders.” It appears Wallace is leaving the door open for a sequel. I anxiously await it. Emmy award-winning journalist Lee Bailey is trying his hand at fiction himself, working on a novel about Gen. John Hunt Morgan, C.S.A.

Impressive Statistics About Army Of Northern Virginia Manpower The Army of Northern Virginia: Organization, Strength, Casualties, 1861-1865. By Darrell L. Collins. Tables, notes, bibliography, indices, 396 pp., 2015, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com, $49.95 softcover. Math seems not to have been the long suit of many Americans in 1861-65 (except for artillerymen, but they were a breed apart) because nothing so maddens the modern reader as the all-over-the-place numbers presented in book after book for the Army of Northern Virginia. Partly, this muddle was the result of inadequate administrative tools in the 19th century for counting heads. Partly, too, it was the absence of agreement about whom to count as what. The universal phrase “present for duty” covered a number of possibilities apart from actual combat service. And partly again, the Army of Northern Virginia’s numbers jump around because, after the war, its veterans and admirers wanted to minimize the army’s numbers as much as possible to emphasize what terrible odds these happy Southern few were up against. All of that makes Darrell Collins’s labor in compiling this record of the Army of Northern Virginia’s organizational structure, effective numbers, and casualties a painstaking as well as risky endeavor. Collins divides his work into three sections, the first of which tracks the evolution of the army from its original six-brigade formation in June 1861, through divisional reorganization in 1862, and then to its corps structure from 1862 to 1865. Every regiment and battery in the ANV, along with their commanding officers, is carefully sorted, as they were brigaded, swapped around, consolidated, and ultimately surrendered.

The second section provides numbers on “effectives,” both officers and ranks, at the division levels at two-to-six month intervals The last section breaks out casualty figures (killed, wounded, missing) on a regiment-by-regiment basis for each campaign of the army. Having these sorts of tabulations at the fingertips is a godsend — provided one bears in mind several caveats. One is the assumption that these numbers were accurate in the first place. Second, Collins has derived almost all of his statistics from the Official Records — unlike Alfred C. Young, who dug into the minutiae of the Compiled Service Records (CSRs) for his reckoning of the army’s 1864 numbers in Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign (2013). The thought of trying to replicate Young’s research for all of the army’s campaign is enough to make one grateful for Collins’s OR numbers. But it does mean that Collins’s compilation is not so much new data, as it is more efficiently organized data and saves someone trying to pore through the numerous report abstracts in the 128 volumes of the OR. Still, this does not prevent anomalies from cropping up. In his accounting of the ANV’s “effectives” during the Peninsula Campaign, Collins first cites a “grand total” of 55,633. But in the following section, where he breaks out the casualties, he shows as “present” 44,567 for Seven Pines and “c. 95,000” for the Seven Days. Granted, military numbers change on a day-to-day basis; but changes of 11,000 or 40,000 require some explanation. I have often been puzzled at the size of the army during the Seven Days compared to the diminutive numbers it claims to have deployed in Maryland only three months later.

Collins sustains this puzzle by listing 53,318 present from Sept. 5 to 20, 1862, in the section on casualties but then citing 78,891 for July 20, 1862, and 41,520 for Sept. 22, 1862, in the section on “present for duty” reports. Usually, I have tried to understand the precipitate drop in the army’s strength from “c. 95,000” on the Peninsula to less-than-half that number in Maryland as the release by Lee of borrowed units to their original theaters once the Peninsula threat had passed. But Collins’s careful record of unit organization in the first section shows that the same units that fought on the Peninsula were also in Maryland with Lee. In fact, Lee appropriated the units that in June had fought under John Magruder and Benjamin Huger and redistributed them to James Longstreet’s command. So what explains the great falloff in numbers in the ANV between June and September? It’s certainly not casualties, even after Second Bull Run, South Mountain and Antietam, and if it’s explained as straggling, then the proportions look more like the run-up to Appomattox than Antietam. I am not sure that these numerical mysteries are ever going to be solved, given the unevenness of the original record-keeping, the categories employed then to organize it, and the destruction of Confederate records at the end of the war. Collins greatly simplifies the task of accessing the Army of Northern Virginia’s numbers as reported in the OR. But apart from following Young’s path into the CSRs, we are still left with puzzles. Allen C. Guelzo is the Luce Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College and the author of the New York Times best-seller Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.