Book Reviews

Book Reviews — November 2019

Originally published November 2019 · pp. 34–45

North Carolina’s War in “Present Tense” Compelling The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina. By Philip Gerard. Selected sources, bibliographical references, illustrations, photographs, index, 327 pp., 2019. University of North Carolina Press. www.uncpress.org $28 cloth. Reviewed by Joan Wenner, J.D.

This book is billed as “the story of the Civil War in North Carolina, through the eyes of those who lived it”—meaning, through their letters and diaries, along with communications of commanders on both sides. And that it is. War is personal on many levels, and it is not an easy task to write as if events were happening at the present moment, as accomplished by this North Carolina author. The Last Battleground is composed in 43 clear and concise vignettes as the long journey from secession to surrender. For those of us who have visited battlefields in Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and elsewhere, where Tar Heel regiments fought, it can’t help but leave an indelible impression. This overview of Civil War North Carolina is told by inhabitants, soldiers, military commanders, blockaders and blockade runners, politicians, deserters and the deserted, bummers and the bummed out, planters and farmers, and “contraband” (General Butler’s word), fort defenders and attackers, news reporters and editors, medical and religious people, tradesmen and railroaders. It also involves the Old North State’s band of Unionists that the author calls “Jefferson Davis’s worst nightmare come true”—the enemy from within. There is sufficient depth to make for an ideal read, particularly for North Carolinians in these 327 captivating pages. Joan Wenner, J.D. is a longtime contributor to Civil War News. She has a special interest in Civil War naval operations and is presently based in eastern North Carolina. [email protected].

Saving the American Experiment New Perspectives on the Civil War. Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon. Illustrations, notes, index, bibliography, 260 pp., 2019. Fordham University Press, www.fordhampress.com. $35 paperback. Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf Contact Stephen Davis, Civil War News Book Review Editor. Email: [email protected].

Gary W. Gallagher’s excellent book The Union War clearly defined the importance and meaning of Union to Civil War participants. He now unites with Elizabeth Varon to present eight essays by noted historians that explain how the fight for the Union and the destruction of the domestic aristocracy of the South, along with the institution of slavery, took on a myriad of opinions among individuals. While seeking to preserve the Union, they exhibited widely diverse political, economic, religious and cultural differences. Two of these essays stand out for their treatment of individuals beset by internal conflicts over the meaning of Union, the support for democracy, and the means used to achieve victory. In the first, “Edward Bates and the Disunionist Dangers of Radical Rhetoric,” Jesse GeorgeNichol cogently details how Bates, the conservative icon of Lincoln’s cabinet, tried to moderate Lincoln’s use of inflammatory phrases which he felt only fueled the fears of Southern secessionists and made compromise more difficult. He was continuously trying to keep Lincoln out of the radical abolitionist camp and pushing toward a compromise that was the hallmark of antebellum political strategy. He desired to preserve the Union the Founding Fathers designed and avert a fratricidal war. While he was ultimately unsuccessful, his quest illustrated the division in the Republican Party and the nation as a whole on what a united Union should look like. Should Bates have been the Republican nominee in 1860 would Civil War been averted and another compromise fashioned to preserve the Union? Michael T. Caires’ essay on Salmon P. Chase sheds new light on Chase’s vision for the creation of a national banking system to bind the states together into a stronger, more interdependent Union. National banking became a step toward not only centralizing political and economic control in Washington, but also fostering a sense of nationalism that would be stronger than prewar states’ rights allowed. Thus the drive to preserve the Union set the rhythm and pulse of political, economic and cultural thought in the United States until the present. The remaining essays illustrate a wide continuum of perspectives that vividly point out that not all Americans shared in the Lincoln administration’s view on how or why the Civil War was necessary. Political parties were divided on the reasons, methods and values the country should stand for. These differences are manifest today in the states’ rights vs. federalism concept of the Constitution’s meaning, the definition of citizenship, and the judicial battles over civil rights. Each essay contributes to a better understanding of the wide differences of opinion during the Civil War and in the decades that followed. Each essay included is thought-provoking, well written, and comprehensively annotated. New perspectives from the common soldier, the press, religious leaders, social reformers and politicians add to the understanding of the role each played in saving the Union and forging a lasting reconciliation. Thus it is easy to recommend this volume to the intellectual historian seeking a fresh look at patriotism and sentiment during the Civil War. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College in Illinois and past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He has written numerous books and articles on the Civil War and is currently seeking diaries and letters of common soldiers for a better understanding of the ordeal they faced during the conflict.

Feel the Passion in Their Stories Lone Star Valor: Texans of the Blue & Gray at Gettysburg. By Joe Owen. Bibliography, index, 155 pp., 2019. Gettysburg Publishing. www.Gettysburgpublishing.com. $21.95 softcover.

Reviewed by Mike Shovlin It is strange to start a review by recalling a running skit done by the late great Steve Allen, but it dawned on me about a third into this book how appropriately it fits. Steve would grab a copy of the newspaper and read the letters to the editor with the passion and anger in which they were written. He would pound the desk and get the audience involved. Once I recalled this running skit, I then started reading the first third again. It seemed to me a whole new experience. I was now visualizing the veterans as they told or wrote these stories. The words jumped out at me with their pain, confusion and feeling of disrespect for their time in uniform. The key in this book is that Mr.

Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. Author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War, he is currently searching for unpublished material on the common soldier to bring their stories to light.

Owen includes men who fought for the North or South in numerous regiments. What ties these men together is that they all settled in Texas after the war. Owen also allows the reader to decide on the validity of the stories on their own, with only a few exceptions. One example is the story told by Howard Diven; the author found no record of his service. Readers will find amazing recollections of the pain of prisoner of war camps, the loss of comrades, and Confederates’ need to figure out why their actions failed at Gettysburg. One can read in their own words the confusion they felt about why they lost the battle. Many “lost cause” items are

The Northern Homefront Reexamined A Great Sacrifice: Northern Black Soldiers, Their Families, and the Experience of Civil War. By James G. Mendez. Notes, index, appendix, 304 pp., 2019. Fordham University Press, www.fordhampress.com. $35 softbound. Reviewed by Meg Groeling

As the topic of the American Civil War opens up to a wider variety of scholarship, more books like James Mendez’s A Great Sacrifice are becoming available. This book is part of the Fordham University Press series “The North’s Civil War.” This collection encompasses the antebellum development and postbellum effects of the war as it affected the homefront and the armies of the North. A Great Sacrifice examines how black soldiers and their families viewed participation in the Civil War. As his sources, Mendez has used letters written primarily by or for northern black women and addressed to both Union military and political officials, including President Lincoln. These women were the mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, and family friends of black men serving in the Union army. This collective voice of those left behind gives readers a look at the issues faced by black families. Most families were small, including a mother, father, and two children. The male parent was the primary breadwinner, and the loss of his earning power often sent his family into crisis. The options available to white families—money saved, other wage earners, available family members to help provide care and support—were rarely available to black families. Dependence on charities, often begun within the black community itself, and state agencies which served all Union soldier families were often the only buffers between a decent existence and starvation. Black families attempted to have access to the rightful wages of their men, but this was difficult. The frustration and humiliation felt in the letters are evident in the pleading and apologizing of the letter-writers. Service as a Union soldier was hard on everyone, but black families left behind faced an almost impossible situation. Their soldiers had little or no pay to send home, battlefield conditions were more lethal for black soldiers due to Confederate policies, camp conditions were particularly onerous as white officers routinely assigned the worst camp chores to black soldiers, and there was no chance of any significant promotion opportunity. Most of the letters sent to the army and the government from those left behind asked the same question: “where is my soldier?” There was a variety of answers. The constant movement of armies made finding any specific soldier challenging, even though USCT units were often the subjects of newspaper articles. Another common issue was illness and hospitalization. When a soldier was injured and sent to the army hospital, he often became lost in the red tape of the medical system. His fellow soldiers might not know what had happened to their comrade, the soldier might be listed under an incorrect name—a common occurrence when the man had formerly been enslaved and did not care to be found by his owner, or the soldier’s unit might leave the area permanently without information concerning those left behind. The Union army had difficulty finding “missing” men. Incorrect information often delayed bonuses due, money owed, or pensions for a widow or child, regardless of the soldier’s race. Another issue affecting black families more than white ones was the enlistment periods of many men. Since black soldiers did not enlist until 1863, their tour of duty often did not end when the war itself ended. Many black soldiers were kept in the army to serve as occupation troops in the South. Others were sent west to deal with the implementation of policies concerning Native Americans. Many ended up in Texas doing a little bit of both. It was remarkably difficult for black families to see white soldiers returning home in significant numbers while their men still served. By the end of 1865, however, all twenty-six northern black regiments were mustered out of service and could return home. This period of sacrifice by black families deserves inclusion when the story of the Union war effort is told. The soldiers’ story is only one part of the narrative. The efforts of those left behind, often to fend for themselves and their families, is very much a part of the history of the Civil War. Author James G. Mendez, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has allowed his readers an enlightening ear to the voices of black families left at home during the Civil War. They are an essential part of the northern homefront and deserve this attention. A Great Sacrifice goes a long way toward this effort. Meg Groeling received her Master’s Degree in Military History, with a Civil War emphasis, in 2016 from American Public University. Savas Beatie published her first book, The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead, in the fall of 2015. She has been working on the manuscript for First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, since 2011. She is a regular contributor to the blog Emerging Civil War.

Forgotten Voices Now Heard An We Ob Jubilee: The First South Carolina Volunteers. By John Saucer. Images, notes, bibliography, 320 pp., 2019. Arcadia Publishing, www.arcadiapublishing.com. $22.95 paperback. Reviewed by Patrick McCawley

The 180,000 African Americans who served in the Union Army in the Civil War played an important role in the war effort and a more crucial role in the struggle for freedom and citizenship for black Americans. The first of those many soldiers were the men of the First South Carolina Volunteers. Organized in the spring and summer of 1862 from the freed slaves concentrating around the recently established Union stronghold of Port Royal Sound, S.C., their story serves to illustrate the early political struggle to arm African Americans and the larger fight to prove their worth as fighting men. Despite published firsthand accounts of the regiment, its lack of combat service in major campaigns has limited the unit’s exposure to the general Civil War public—a problem this book seeks to correct. John Saucer recounts in detail the first year of the regiment; its early recruitment, its organization and training around Beaufort and its initial combat during raids along the Georgia and Florida coast. An early component of Saucer’s story is the struggle of abolitionist General David Hunter to get official recognition of the unit amidst Lincoln’s resistance to black participation in the war in order to keep the loyalty of border slave states. Saucer credibly provides the context for the creation of the unit in his early chapters. The story of the First South Carolina is vividly told through Saucer’s use of first-hand accounts. From Army Life in a Black Regiment, the memoir of the unit commander, Thomas W. Higginson, to the unpublished letters of the unit surgeon, Seth

Rogers, and the numerous firsthand accounts of soldiers and civilians stationed in the Port Royal area, Saucer has done an outstanding job of assembling a variety of sources to tell this story. He ably includes accounts from the Official Records and Confederate soldiers who fought against the unit—no small feat given the minor raids described. The reader does get a full account of the unit through training and its early combat campaigns. What is missing is a real sense of the enlisted men who made up the unit, except as presented through the eyes of the white officers and civilians who interacted with the unit around Beaufort. Susie King Taylor’s (the unit’s laundress) Reminiscences of My Life in Camp is listed only five times as a specific source. A lack of letters and postwar writings from freed slaves would be expected, but he does cite two pension applications connected to the unit. Is it possible there might be more to be uncovered? The significance of the regiment cannot be denied, but its limited combat role raises the question of why the complete history of this regiment could not be told in one volume. One of the roles of a historian is to make choices. Saucer includes plenty of details and lots of quotes from his sources, but a more thoughtful use of the material would have improved the narrative. While he could be commended for his effort to discuss the strategic and tactical problems of the Battle of the Hundred Pine, the eleven pages devoted to what amounted to a couple of quick volleys in the dark seems overdone even to one who enjoys the mundane. Most readers would also trade the chapter-by-chapter alphabetical list of sources and the thirty pages of explanatory end notes for specific source citations (especially with the quoted material), some nice maps and a good index. This book would have benefited from a good and judicious editor, but I still applaud the author for bringing the regiment back to the attention of the Civil War community. Patrick McCawley, Supervisor of Record Services for the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, oversees the agency’s archival collection and records management functions. He has more recently coordinated the department’s present exhibit on Reconstruction in South Carolina and is currently working on a new exhibit focused on South Carolina’s Revolution of 1719.

Resistance, Resources & Race Alabamians in Blue: Freedmen, Unionists, and the Civil War in the Cotton State. By Christopher M. Rein. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 298 pp., 2019. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress.org. $47.50 cloth. Reviewed by Katelyn Brown

The ongoing discussion over Southern Unionists is wellknown, due to books such as Victoria Bynum’s The Free State of Jones. Yet many of these works tell only a small piece of the story, leaving space for scholars like Christopher Rein to expand beyond single communities of dissenters to encompass entire Confederate states. In Alabamians in Blue, Rein adopts a unique perspective to tell the story of the many Alabamians, both black and white, who demonstrated their undying support for the Union by joining the Federal army. Rein’s argument is complex and multi-faceted, asserting first that the contributions of anti-Confederate Alabamians within the Federal army were important but largely overlooked. Second, he demonstrates that those men who joined the Union army did so largely in response to practical concerns (rather than ideological ones), motivated by the competition over resources that has shaped all of Alabama’s history. And third, Rein shows that Alabama Unionists’ efforts present a unique example of racial cooperation. In support of these assertions, the book begins with a description of Alabama’s settlement, using an environmental history framework to demonstrate the ways in which the state’s antebellum history was shaped by an ongoing battle over resources. It then moves into the Civil War, beginning with the presence of Unionist sentiment in the state and how those dissenters resisted Confederate policy. The second half of the book focuses on the military engagements and campaigns in which Alabamians in blue uniforms participated, and the “tangible service” that these men provided to the Union in defeating well-known Confederate commanders, particularly Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Bell Hood. The book concludes with an analysis of Unionists’ lives following the war’s end throughout Reconstruction. With so many goals and points of focus, it is easy for the reader to lose the thread within the book; however, it becomes easier to follow once placed alongside Margaret Storey’s Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction, which explores the guerrilla warfare that Unionist Alabamians experienced on the homefront. Rein’s book appears to be an answer to Storey’s title, building off her argument for Alabama’s significance and uniqueness while addressing gaps he perceived in her work. Rein’s work seeks in part to address the “false dichotomy” between the conventional and unconventional methods of warfare that he believes scholars like Storey have created, asserting the importance of military campaigns as well as guerrilla warfare. Storey’s work also offers a map that is useful for readers of Alabamians in Blue, as Rein references counties, cities, and regions both within Alabama and in the surrounding states that can be hard to follow if the reader does not know the geography of the area. With his unique use of environmental history, Rein’s use of resources as a lens for understanding slavery is particularly effective, as he presents labor as a resource worth fighting over. This lens is also a crucial part of the second prong of his argument, as it illustrates the many ways in which the Union Army provided relief for Unionists who had been cut off from resources by Confederate authorities. The most effective application of this lens is the conclusion, however, which extends the timeline of the book to modern Alabama. By showing how the political landscape of Alabama has changed in response to the continued fight over resources (now defined as votes and labor) since the Civil War, he provides a compelling image of the issues facing both the Yellowhammer State and the United States as a whole. Katelyn Brown is the Digital Project Specialist for the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. She has published articles in Ohio Valley History and Military Images and is currently working on her first book.

Selling Slaves and Stuff

Marketing the Blue & Gray: Newspaper Advertising and the American Civil War. By Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr. Notes, bibliography, index, 239 pp., 2019. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress.org. $47 cloth.

Reviewed by Stephen Davis

“Newspapers were the primary means of advertising during the mid-nineteenth century,” Lawrence Kreiser reminds us in the opening pages of his new and welcome work, Marketing the Blue & Gray. The author further contends that “Civil War historians, in turn, have long cited newspapers but have ignored the advertisements.” I’ll go further: that’s because scholarly writing about Civil War newspapers, both Northern and Southern, has really only hit its stride in, say, the last twenty years. Examples of recent, notable works are Ford Risley, Civil War Journalism (2012); Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll and Henry H. Schulte, eds., Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting (2010) and Debra Reddin van Tuyll, The Confederate Press in the Crucible of the American Civil War (2012). Professor Kreiser, who teaches at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, makes the point that businesses advertising in their local newspapers seized upon the public’s (again, whether Northern or Southern) war fervor and used propagandistic war themes in their ads to better market their products. The author looked at 550 newspapers to form his conclusions. War-related ad headlines were employed to sell goods, such as the notice blaring “Sundries and Southern Rights.” Kreiser discerns what may be called nationwide advertising; “publishing companies and patent medicine makers were the most prolific in advertising across the Union and Confederacy.” The author also examines how advertising themes related—or did not relate—to the war’s shifting fortunes. I was struck by Kreiser’s conclusion that “in Confederate newspapers, the phrasing of slave announcements remained slick and self-assured, even while the slaveholders’ republic crumbled.” …struck the more so because that’s what Bill Hendrick and I are seeing in the wartime pages of the Atlanta Intelligencer. For our book, tentatively titled The War Comes Home: The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer and the Civil War, we are reading every copy of the newspaper we can find (Atlanta History Center microfilm, thank you). On May 15, 1863, Crawford, Frazer & Co., “Auctioneers and Dealers in Negroes” located at 8 Whitehall Street downtown, took out an advertisement that prominently declared, “Our NEGRO YARD AND LOCK-UP, at No. 8, are SAFE AND COMFORTABLE.” The point was that Crawford and Frazer took good care of “our stock” with capabilities to “feed and lodge [them] well.” As we write in our manuscript, the merchants made clear that they took good care of their merchandise: “sleeping apartments and cook house” were “closely looked after,” so that “our stock is thereby kept in health.” Not only were slave traders advertising vigorously in the spring of 1863, but their “stock” continued to fetch high prices. In mid-April 1863—note, this was four months after Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation, arguably the deathknell of the South’s peculiar institution—the Intelligencer reported that Crawford and Frazer had auctioned “a likely waiter” for $3,500 and “a likely maid servant” for $3,000. The high prices that white people were willing to pay, as we point out, attested as much to their confidence in the future of Southern slavery as to their need for labor. Southern traders’ advertising of slaves and Southern purchasers’ buying of them (in the midst of a war ostensibly aimed at destroying slavery) illustrates one of Lawrence Kreiser’s conclusions. Civil War newspaper advertising tells us a whole lot more about contemporary attitudes and emotions than we have previously thought about. Steve Davis is Book Review Editor for Civil War News. His and Bill’s book on the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer is under contract with the University of Tennessee Press.

Booth’s Confederate Connections Re-

Booth’s Confederate Connections. By Sandy Pringle. Illustrations, notes, index, 256 pp., 2019. Pelican Publishing Co., www.pelicanpub.com. $24.95 hardcover.

Reviewed by Joan Chaconas

Having worked at the Surratt House Museum, I have read many books about the Lincoln assassination. The standard story heard in school is that Booth, a staunch Southerner, felt Lincoln must be done away with and only he was up to doing it. On the morning of April 14, Booth finds out Lincoln will be going to Ford’s Theater, and he decides this is his perfect opportunity. He gets his band of cohorts together for a meeting and assigns them their jobs. Booth shoots Lincoln and then the various questions develop. Did Booth act alone? Did he have help from the Confederates? Were the Confederates the ones leading the murder plot and using Booth as the marksman? Was the Catholic Church behind it? There are many avenues to travel in these directions, but travel no more: Judge Sandy Prindle feels he has found the answers in his new book, Booth’s Confederate Connections. In the recently discovered “lost confession” of conspirator George Atzerodt, he makes mention of the fact that Booth had to hurry to accomplish his plan or the New York group would beat him to it. They had a plan to blow up the White House. Fortunately, this was discovered and stopped. But by using some of Atzerodt’s comments in this discovered “lost confession” and following the various trips of John Surratt, Jr. and his alluring traveling companion Sarah Slater, Prindle believes strongly that John and his mother were keys to John Wilkes Booth’s murder plans through the messages given to John by Judah Benjamin. He argues that even though the messages were secret, Surratt must have known what was in them. Thus, he knew murder was the aim, and he took measures to remove himself from the area of Ford’s Theatre when it would happen, and made sure people saw him at those other locations. As for John’s lengthy escape, he talked too much for his own good. One person he talked to was Henri Beaumont de Sainte Marie. Surratt told Marie that the assassins had “acted under the orders” of persons under Davis and strongly pointed to Judah Benjamin. All this information had been passed on to the government in 1866. Our author thinks this 1866 statement of Marie is pertinent and is evidence that points directly to the Confederacy and to those responsible. The South was losing the war at this point. Richmond had been evacuated and Davis was on the run. Did Jefferson Davis condone murder or was Benjamin the real mastermind? Did he tell Davis of his plan? When it appeared that Richmond was going to be evacuated, kidnapping Lincoln was no longer viable. Now enters the New York group and their plan to blow up the White House. There is strong evidence that Judah Benjamin withdrew fifteen hundred dollars from Confederate funds for this project and gave it to demolition expert Thomas Harney. This plan obviously failed. On this same day, John Surratt was paid for his courier service. John Jr. made many trips and carried many messages for Benjamin; he was very welcome at his office. It was the last ditch for the Confederacy. The Dahlgren Raid had pushed them over the edge. No more “mister nice guy.”

Whether true or not, Confederate higher-ups believed the raid aimed for their deaths, with Benjamin first on the death-list. Benjamin kept a low profile while working on the murder plan that Booth carried out. After the war Judah Benjamin left the country and never came back. After a very arduous trip to England he eventually led a very good life, earning more than eighty thousand dollars a year. When John came back from his last trip for Benjamin, he arrived in Washington and had a brief stopover at his mother’s house. A few words were spoken and he left. Was Booth a late visitor at the Surratt house and did Mrs. Surratt give him a message? Our author believes it was Mrs. Surratt who gave the message to Booth—not to capture Lincoln, and but to kill him—and it was given by way of Judah Benjamin’s messages to her son John. Case closed. Or is it? Judge Prindle has presented a strong line of evidence that leads to the top Confederate leadership. By following the various stops of John and Sarah Slater, using the various clues in the newly discovered Atzerodt statement, and connecting them to Booth’s movements, he has given us a logical trail. They lead to Judah Benjamin and his plans. It seems that the Confederacy was behind Booth’s assassination all along. The Judge’s book belongs in your library. Get it! Joan is historian at the Surratt House museum and has been consultant for several television productions on the Lincoln assassination story. She was the one who found the missing Atzerodt statement in the mid-seventies.

This informative book tells the story of General Lewis Armistead’s brigade from its formation by units enlisted from the Pittsylvania County area of southeastern Virginia in 1861, to its surrender with General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865. A number of books have looked at General Armistead’s brigade but have focused on its involvement in the Pickett-PettigrewTrimble charge on July 3 at Gettysburg. General Armistead himself, of course, famously fell at the climax of this charge. This book is unique in that it looks at the entire history of the brigade and hence relates, as the subtitle of the book indicates, the untold story of Armistead’s brigade. The author has obviously done a tremendous amount of research, as a glance at the extensive bibliography will show. He also has gone beyond published works and has researched unpublished manuscripts. This research provided the author with a wealth of information on Armistead’s brigade and its component regiments. To a large extent, the history of Armistead’s brigade is intertwined with the history of Pittsylvania County, as seventy percent of all infantry from this county served in the brigade. The author explains how the county was guided in its growth by members of Virginia’s “First Families of Virginia,” while the bulk of the white population (55% of the county; the rest was black) consisted of farmers descended from settlers. Many of the settlers were descendents of colonial dissidents, outcasts and non-English immigrants. Despite this disparate background, the inhabitants of Pittsylvania County (watered by the Dan River) proved through the course of the war that they were “Lions of the Dan.” The campaigns and battles of Armistead’s brigade are covered in much detail in this book. Its one serious shortcoming is the complete absence of maps detailing this fighting, or depicting Pittsylvania County itself. The author does include enough detail to make it possible to follow the course of the brigade’s combat. But the brigade spent a considerable amount of time on detached duty from the Army of Northern Virginia, and these areas are not as familiar to most readers as those where the Army’s main battles occurred, so the absence of maps is particularly unfortunate when the history of this detached service is recited.

The Young Lions of Pittsylvania County, Virginia Lions Of The Dan The Untold Story Of Armistead’s Brigade. By J. K. Brandau. Photos, endnotes, bibliography, index, 282 pp., 2020. Morgan James Publishing, www. MorganJamesPublishing.com. $18.95 softbound. Reviewed by Joe Bordonaro

When the brigade did serve with the army, it suffered considerably more than it did during its various detached services, as in the disastrous charges at Malvern Hill in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863. The famous charge that the brigade made at Gettysburg is covered in much detail, as is the heroic death of its leader, Lewis Armistead. Ironically, Armistead was not looked upon favorably by the army’s command prior to the battle of Gettysburg for a variety of reasons. His death, however, has forever enshrined him as the epitome of a heroic combat leader. The brigade continued on under other leaders and the author relates this “untold story.” The story has been “untold” because most interest in the brigade has heretofore terminated upon reading of its charge at Gettysburg. Its hardest fighting actually occurred after that battle and is of considerable interest to a student of the war. Every combat in which the brigade, or its component regiments, fought is covered in some detail. Included in this detail are references to various members of the brigade and how they fared in these battles. This personalization of the account makes it possible for the reader to make a connection to these soldiers and so brings them to life in a way that standard regimental histories often do not. This history is recommended to those readers interested in the soldiers who fought for, and were from, Virginia. Much can be learned from the book about Pittsylvania County, pre-war Virginia, economic and race relations in the county, Virginia’s secession from the Union, and, of course, the fighting that the “Lions of the Dan” were involved in during their long and bloody struggle. Joe Bordonaro is a veteran of the USAF (1973–77), taught for 25 years in elementary and middle schools, and has been reenacting the Civil War for the past 20 years. He has been writing articles for Civil War News for the past several years, focusing on the reenacting and living history communities.

The End of a Great Life’s Patrol The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln: A Day-by-Day Account of his Personal, Political, and Military Challenges. By David Alan Johnson. 384 pp., 2018. Prometheus Books, prometheusbooks.com. $28 hardcover. Reviewed by Frank J. Williams

David Alan Johnson’s The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln: A Day-by-Day Account of his Personal, Political, and Military

Lincoln’s Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks. By Wayne C. Temple. Notes, Index, photos, 283pp., 2019. University of Illinois Press, www.press.uillinois.edu. $34.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Joseph Truglio

Noah Brooks was born in Castine, Maine in 1830. He was educated locally and upon finishing high school promptly left to find his fame and fortune. From an early age he exhibited a wanderlust. He tried his hand at many occupations and endeavors. For example, he was a painter, artist, writer, reporter, editor, novelist, prospector, political spy, confidant to a President and naval officer, amongst other occupations. He travelled from coast to coast, never staying long in any one place. He met Lincoln for the first time in 1856 in Dixon, Illinois. It was a brief encounter but made an impression on Lincoln. After getting elected president, they met again with Brooks now a reporter for a local newspaper. They seemed to get on famously. Lincoln liked Brooks’ easygoing style and the fact that he never asked for favors. (This was a rarity in that era of lobbyists.) Gradually, Brooks began to write political articles in favor of Lincoln under the name “Castine”—the nom de plume was a popular device of the era. He began to spend much time with Lincoln and started attending political rallies, reporting back to the president about the events. Lincoln found this valuable information. Brooks’ relaxed demeanor made him welcome in all circles and this placed him in an advantageous position. In fact, Lincoln asked him to replace John Hay at the beginning of his second term as his personal secretary. Unfortunately, the assassination ended that opportunity and Brooks was never to hold that office. Soon after this tragedy he left Washington City for greener pastures. He wrote a few histories for young readers and achieved a modicum of success. Unfortunately he never achieved the financial success he had always strived for. He eventually went to Pasadena for his health, which slowly deteriorated. Brooks died in 1903. I found this book a difficult read. For whatever reason it had no flow to the story. Every page is filled with information, yet most it is piecemeal. I was looking for depth and I received snippets. I never really understood just what the author was trying to tell me. I was most disappointed in Temple’s explanation of Brooks’ relationship with Lincoln. This subject takes up about a third of the book, and it too is just one-sentence snippets, reading like modern-day sound bites. I realize that this is a biography of Noah Brooks and that Lincoln was only a small part of his life. I expected more. For those of you interested in Noah Brooks, it will be a worthy read. For Lincoln students, not so much. Joseph Truglio, of Manchester, N.J., is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table.

Challenges is the tale of the last six weeks of President Abraham Lincoln’s life. Those six weeks were an extraordinary time not only for the president, but also for the nation that reverberates to this day. During those six weeks, Lincoln gave his celebrated Second Inaugural Address. He worked with his generals and supervised the battles that led to the end of the Civil War. He learned of General Ulysses S. Grant’s acceptance of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia. And he was felled by assassin John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre. Interestingly and carefully, the author describes Lincoln’s daily routine as he guided our nation during the end of the war. These small but important events shed light on how President Lincoln commanded the loyalty of so many during this time. His inauguration is described in detail from Mrs. Lincoln’s ball gown to the inaugural ball attendees. During this time, Lincoln greeted visitors to his ball. He asked the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass what he thought about his Inaugural Address. He spoke often with Generals Grant and Sherman regarding the battles taking place in Virginia and the battles’ potential for ending the war. He visited a field hospital outside of City Point, Virginia. He read the press reviews and accounts of his Inaugural Address. All the while, he worked diligently to calm his wife, who at that time appeared to be suffering mental health issues that he feared would lead to a nervous collapse. There is a great account of how Washington City and the country celebrated when the end of the war was announced. This book finds strength in its vivid descriptions of Lincoln’s last six weeks. It describes what many may consider the most important period this country has ever seen. The author’s description of the assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre is masterful, describing the incident from the viewpoint of audience members before transporting the reader to Lincoln’s box and that fateful shot. Frank J. Williams is the founding Chairman of The Lincoln Forum.

A Friend, Indeed!

A Misnamed Review of the Civil War in Missouri A Burned Land: The TransMississippi in the Civil War. By Robert R. Laven. Photos, maps, endnotes, bibliography, index, 194 pp, 2019. McFarland & Company, www.mcfarlandpub. com. $35 softcover. Reviewed by Lawrence K. Peterson

This work appeared to be just what I was looking for: a review of the Civil War in the TransMississippi West. Turns out it wasn’t. Robert Laven indicates in his Preface that he has had an interest in Missouri’s role in the Civil War for many years. He has studied that role and has written an easy-to-read description of it. While he briefly mentions a few actions in the Trans-Mississippi, this is all about Missouri’s specific role, and, as such, is mistitled. Laven takes the reader through the Civil War in Missouri in a fairly easy style, giving enough detail to make sense of the various actions conducted by both sides during that conflict. There is some inconsistency in spelling. The book abounds with photos. In describing many of the actions, I would have greatly appreciated more maps to help me follow many of the events described. Though familiar with some of them, maps would nonetheless have greatly enhanced this book. Laven soundly documents his narrative, and provides an index as well. The author briefly mentions the battle of Pea Ridge or Elkhorn Tavern and covers the battle of Mine Creek in Kansas. He essentially does not describe any of the other actions which took place within the Trans-Mississippi other than those in conjunction with Missouri, such as Fort Scott and the sack of Lawrence, Kansas. My suggestion is that this work be retitled into a history of Missouri in the Civil War. The occasional references to other actions within the Trans-Mississippi help to place Missouri within the context of this area. As it stands, the reader looking for a definitive description of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi will not find it here. Laven has obviously conducted extensive research on the war in the state of Missouri. For those interested in how the Civil War was conducted by both sides within and around Missouri, and that state’s fate in the Civil War, will find that this book provides a good description and reference of those events. Lawrence K. (Larry) Peterson is President of the Rocky Mountain Civil War Round Table. He has had published three books on the critical decisions of the battle of Chattanooga, and the Kentucky and Atlanta Campaigns in the University of Tennessee Press’ Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series. He is working on the critical decisions of the battle of Perryville.

War is Hell, but the Surrender Option Makes it Less Hellish

Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the Civil War. By David Silkenat. Endnotes, index, bibliography, 368 pp., 2019. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress. org. $39.95 cloth.

Singly and in small groups, soldiers on the battlefield would realize that they faced a choice: surrender or die. So they dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Garrisons in fortified places and units in the field, forces ranging in size from the very small up to thousands of men, could find themselves in a no-win situation. Their commanders raised the white flag and negotiated terms as best they could. Sometimes the men would be paroled on the field. Sometimes surrender meant a short time in prison before exchange. Other times prisoners suffered for long periods as they awaited release, and for tens of thousands release came only with death. Some capitulations were considered by all to be honorable, bringing no shame on the officers who made the decisions or their men. In other cases giving up was condemned as disgraceful and cowardly. Men surrendered by their officers might object vehemently—as at Harpers Ferry in September 1862 – and suffer ridicule for decisions made not by them but for them. In other cases, especially in the Trans-Mississippi in the war’s last spring, it was the common Confederate soldiers who forced their officers to yield. They knew the jig was up even if the brass refused to face facts. Raising the White Flag covers in detail events that are usually mere codas to the narrative, a couple of paragraphs before the next chapter takes up the next battle. Except for a few surrenders—Appomattox, of course, and some others that are sometimes treated as stories in their own right—we read that the surrenders occurred, we get a prisoner count, and we move on. Silkenat’s work fills a gap. When is a surrender honorable and manly? When is giving up a craven and despicable act? What are the mores and protocols that governed during this war? How did they change as the war progressed? What effect did practices in America’s previous wars have on the war between North and South? How did practices in the Civil War affect rules in subsequent conflicts? How did the termination of the Dix-Hill exchange cartel influence soldiers’ willingness to capitulate? These questions and more are addressed by Silkenat’s carefully researched and thoroughly documented work. Readers may question some of Silkenat’s analysis and interpretations. To pick one small example, this reviewer does not accept that the “widespread condemnation” of Bowe Bergdahl was due to his “capture,” but rather to his desertion. The author also makes contradictory statements about the fate of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. On one page we read of “his surrender.” On the next page he is beaten unconscious but does not voluntarily give up. Then on the same page he “believed that surrender entitled him and his men to certain protections and rights.” So Brown surrendered. Then he didn’t. Then he did. The best parts of the book are the excellent descriptions of numerous surrenders that we have all heard of but few (I suspect) know very much about. These are solid narratives that help tell the story of the war. My favorites are the episodes in the Trans-Mississippi after Lee, Johnston and Taylor surrendered all the Confederate forces east of the river. Get the book and learn more about conditions in the west and the goings on with E. Kirby Smith, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jo Shelby and a character named Meriwether Jeff Thompson. My marginal notes on pages describing his actions read “kookie” and “Baghdad Bob.” Silkenat, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh who has previously written two books and several articles on the Civil War, poses in his concluding chapter a counterfactual. He asks us to consider “what the Civil War would have looked like if the option to surrender had been taken off the table.” It is easy to imagine a hard war made all the harder, a cruel time made utterly barbarous, a long war made longer and peace and reconciliation made impossible. Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta and the author Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different aspects of the Civil War and has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at [email protected].

Iconic War Writings Civil War Writing: New Perspectives on Iconic Texts. Ed. by Gary W. Gallagher and Stephen Cushman. Photos, notes, index, 296 pp., 2019. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress.org. $48 cloth. Reviewed by Brian S. Wills

The first of an intended series, this volume includes nine essays on “iconic” texts of the American Civil War under Louisiana State University Press’ series Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. Editors Gary W. Gallagher and Stephen Cushman turn to fellow academics, largely from college or university departments of history, to rediscover works related to the great conflict of the mid-Nineteenth Century. The editors explain that no communication composed by the human hand, presumably including this one, is devoid of messaging, although the degree to which such viewpoints have become subject to evolving audiences and readerships is a critical part of their evolution into “iconic” status. The current volume is a logical addition to the earlier writings of both scholars, particularly Cushman’s Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War (North Carolina, 2014), which also included a foreword by Gallagher. That volume took the reader through samples of the well-known work of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and William T. Sherman. As such, it should not surprise readers of this work to see similar evaluations of Civil War-era authors and their writings by Cushman, Gallagher and the other contributors. Selection of the texts/topics and those tasked with examining them always indicates a great deal. Readers of Gallagher’s edited volumes will find many familiar collaborators from his previous works and associations. The arrangement of the essays based upon “an editorial sense of rhythm and equilibrium” makes sense, allowing for less restriction to conform to a “chronological arrangement” that would be artificial in this instance, particularly when many of the writings appeared over a span of time and in different forms. What emerges here is the sense that each author is a product of his or her time and conventions. Selfinterest in various forms served as catalysts for the original texts, ranging from attempts at raising awareness (Joseph T. Wilson’s The Black Phalanx) and shaping historical interpretations (Jubal A. Early and John B. Gordon) to generating income and notoriety (“Loreta Velasquez”). The “commercial pragmatism” demonstrated by the same publishing house of the two works by Joseph E. Johnston and Sherman also reminds us that all of these publications fit into a larger contextual or competitive framework in the hopes of reaching wide-ranging audiences and potential consumers. Even so, readers will learn about the contexts in which diarists Charlotte Forten and Mary Chesnut composed their thoughts and experiences, including their interactions with high-profile figures, although they will ascertain considerably less about the ways in which the Louisa May Alcott novel Little Women informed anyone concerning the Northern “home front.” The William C. Davis and Gallagher essays are among the most engaging of the compilation. Whether or not one wishes to dispute the characterization of Edward Porter Alexander as “the best Confederate memoirist,” or the proposition that “Loreta Velasquez” was an earlier version of the modern self-made “celebrity,” those individuals certainly produced fascinating, and in Alexander’s case, articulate windows into their worlds. While each of the other essays is enlightening in its own fashion, undoubtedly, it will prove difficult to determine the degree to which this volume or any of its successors can appeal to general readers, outside of those familiar with the individual text or texts under examination. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, Civil War Writing demonstrates that such assessments and re-evaluations will continue to add to our understanding of the conflict that inspired them. Brian S. Wills of Kennesaw State University is the author of award-winning studies of Union general George Thomas and Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the Civil War (Kansas).

This Ship’s Story Is as Murky as the Water It Sank In Going Home: The Secret Life and Sudden Death of the U.S. Army Transport Steamer General Lyon. By Peter Holman. Illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, chapter notes, 256 pp., 2018. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. $15.99 softcover. Reviewed by Richard J. Blumberg

Army Transport Steamer General Lyon, built in 1864, not the captured Confederate vessel of the same name. The General Lyon likely carried invalid soldiers, former prisoners of war, women and children on its final voyage from Wilmington, N.C., to Fort Monroe, Va. Since remains of the vessel have yet to be recovered, and no drawings or original plans for the ship still exist, its demise is hard to determine. Some think an explosion occurred as a result of a bomb. Others presume that a kerosene oil can turned over near a main boiler during a bad storm. Reports simply claim it inexplicably caught fire and sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras. Holman’s extensive research over three years enables him to vividly tell stories of the individuals lost, and the families impacted, when the General Lyon sank. He uses Combined Military Service Records (CMSRs), located at the National Archives, along with various passenger lists to resurrect the names of some six hundred lives lost on March 31, 1865. The narrative, while interesting, becomes confusing with apparent flashbacks to different years in the war in order to introduce new characters. This, coupled with the Navy’s reconfigured vessel of the same name (which served in several Civil War battles), makes it difficult to follow various parts of the story. This work underscores problems historians and researchers still face today: determining what is newsworthy, and dealing with facts that contradict each other. In March 1865, the Civil War was all but over. The sinking of the General Lyon was the worst maritime disaster up to that time. However, reviewing our history from April 1-April 27, 1865, we encounter General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox; the assassination of President Lincoln and the explosion of the Sultana. These events caused much of the expected hype about the General Lyon’s loss to never materialize. News reporters of the mid-1800s focused on what was the most sensational and attention-getting at that moment, and then moved on to new topics. This is very similar to how our reporters conduct their work today. As one might also expect, misspellings of names and changed recollections of family members resulted in confusion regarding whether certain individuals lost on this vessel were even on it in the first place. Similarities and differences when compared to the Sultana disaster of April 27th also muddy the water. Holman’s book creates a good foundation for further research, but by his own admission, much work still needs to be done. The factual content and controversies covered in this work are compelling and make it well worth the price.

Many varieties of steamboats served as floating hospitals, as well as transports for military cargo and troops throughout the Civil War. The U.S. Army Transport General Lyon, a side-wheeled steamer, was one of them. The U.S. Navy also rebuilt a captured Confederate side-wheeled steamer named the USS General Lyon. Let the confusion begin! Peter Holman is a retired British-born postal worker who also worked in the United States marketing, selling and shipping various medical diagnostic equipment and radioactive materials. Holman’s work focuses on the

Jefferson Davis: Traitor or Patriot? Treason on Trial: The United Sates vs. Jefferson Davis. By Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez. Notes, illustrations, index, bibliography, 356 pp., 2019. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress. org. $55 cloth. Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf

Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez does a remarkably thorough job of tracing the nuances, ambiguities, Constitutional arguments, and political theatre that contributed to the eventual dismissal of treason charges against Jefferson Davis. It was this convergence of events, personalities and skills of the prosecution and defense teams, many little known before Davis’ indictment, that resulted in four years of delay before bringing Davis to trial. The reader will be introduced to these characters one by one. Lucius Chandler, the U.S. Attorney for Virginia, doubted his own legal skills, and cognizant of the trial’s effect on his own political ambitions, bears a major responsibility for the endless delays. But his actions do not exonerate Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who did not want to offend

Richard is a retired Army veteran with more than 26 years of service. Seventeen of those were spent in assignments dealing with Corps and Theater Army level multi-functional logistics. Transportation, Ordnance and Quartermaster functions had the most emphasis. He is entering his eighteenth year as a book reviewer and his current research focuses on the contributions of music during the war.

Southern states whose votes he might need as he quietly sought the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination. Likewise, James Speed, President Johnson’s first Attorney General, was reluctant to prosecute such a nationally divisive case. His successor, Henry Stanbery, personally did not believe Davis committed treason. Finally, Andrew Johnson, while believing Davis should be tried, allowed his legal team full control of the trial process, thus sanctioning the numerous delays. Further complicating the prosecution were the vindictive attitudes of presiding District Court Judge John C. Underwood, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and William M. Everts, chief prosecutor and later Attorney General. The delays and outward vindictiveness gave time for Davis’ defense team, led by Charles O’Conor, Robert

Not Redcoats, but Bluecoats

Williamsburg. By Carson O. Hudson, Jr. Maps, photos, notes, appendixes, index. 238 pp., 2019. The History Press, www. arcadiapublishing.com. $21.99 paperback.

Reviewed by Jonathan W. White

For most Americans, Williamsburg, Va., evokes thoughts of women in bonnets, British Redcoats, the Union Jack, children playing hoop and stick, fireworks on the Fourth of July, and costumed interpreters portraying Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and the Marquis de Lafayette. And there is good reason for these associations. Colonial Williamsburg is a tourist destination that draws thousands of visitors each year to step back into history as they walk through the Governor’s Palace, the Capitol, Bruton Parish Church, or any number of historic homes and shops. Just beneath the surface is another history that is just as interesting, but receives far less attention. In Hidden History of Civil War Williamsburg, Carson O. Hudson, Jr., uncovers the 1860s history of the colonial capital in vivid and dramatic style. Hudson’s narrative begins at the secession crisis and takes readers through various incidents of the war years, concluding in

Ould, and Thomas Bayard, to alter the nation’s negative views of Jefferson Davis, allow for the formation of the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and portray Davis as a martyr for the original Constitution rather than a traitor. This book is an essential volume for the historian interested not only in the trial of President Davis, but also in the passions, doubts and competencies of the men who led Reconstruction, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and postwar policies toward the defeated South. The voluminous use of excellent primary source material, legal proceedings, and personal observations make this book a wonderful read. The $55 price will probably reduce purchases to those readers who concentrate on postwar legal issues. A less expensive paper addition would be a welcome addition.

As a leader in the Williamsburg Battlefield Association and a longtime employee of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, he knows this material as well as anybody. Hudson’s lively prose introduces many new stories to the historic village. In early 1862, for example, Louisiana troops led a Mardi Gras parade in the town. Hudson also describes the plight of white refugees from Hampton who made their way to Williamsburg early in the war. As one resident wrote, “Poor creatures they arrived here in the night with not even their clothing & many of them slept on the Courthouse Green but I can assure as soon as morning came & we knew of their distress every door was opened to them.” The heart of the book deals with the Battle of Williamsburg (May 5, 1862) and its aftermath. Many familiar names appear on these pages, such as Sarah Emma Edmonds, Winfield Scott Hancock, George Armstrong Custer, James Longstreet, and Jubal Early, who was wounded twice in the engagement. Four thousand soldiers were killed or wounded in the battle, and many buildings became temporary hospitals. Bruton Parish Church overflowed with dead and wounded. “This church had been occupied as a hospital,” wrote a clergyman in the Union army, “the seats torn up, and beds, cots, and stretchers extended over the whole building; and across the floor in every direction had run streams of blood.” One local woman wrote, “I shall never forget the scene of horror that met my eye when I entered that Church.” On May 6, writes Hudson, “Williamsburg became an occupied town” and “life changed in the city.” Union general George B. McClellan posted sentinels outside private homes to protect those inside, although that did not stop some Union soldiers from stealing prized possessions from local residents. In response to the occupation, several women openly insulted the U.S. flag.

scowls of the women and children” he encountered, but he also seemed to relish “the delighted faces of the Negroes.” Those delighted faces would soon participate in a massive celebration, singing and dancing with all their might when word reached Williamsburg that Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The proclamation freed the slaves in areas of the Confederacy that were not under Union control; counties under Union occupation were exempted from its provisions. Strangely enough, Williamsburg was divided between two counties in 1863—York County, which was exempted, and James City County, which was not. The dividing line between these two counties was the Duke of Gloucester Street, the main eastwest road in town. Thus, in a technical sense the slaves on one side of the street were declared free, while the slaves on the other were not. Since the town was under martial law, however, the proclamation had the effect of making all the slaves in Williamsburg free. Hudson’s book contains stories of murder, romance, suicide, and other lesser-known aspects of the war. Readers of this book will be inspired to visit Colonial Williamsburg with new historical perspectives, as old, familiar sites take on new meaning. The only thing lacking is a modern map that would help readers locate sites of interest. Those interested in a walking tour should consult Hudson’s earlier book, Civil War Williamsburg (1997).

Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and is the author or editor of nine books, including Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017) and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway. Visit his website at www.jonathanwhite.org.

How the Union Army Tried and Failed to Take Charleston, S.C.

Morris Island and the Civil War-Strategy and Influence. By C. Russell Horres, Jr. Maps, photos, notes, index, 144 pp., 2019. The History Press, www.arcadiapublishing.com/The-HistoryPress. $21.99 paper. Reviewed by Tom Elmore

The capture of Charleston, S.C. was always a major Northern military objective. For many in the Union army, capturing Morris Island, located just south of the city, was the key to taking the city. Consequently, Morris Island was subjected to numerous Union army attacks led by Maj. Gen. Quincy Gillmore, who focused his attention on the island’s earthen fort, Battery Wagner (which became famous for the charge upon it by the African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, immortalized in the 1989 film Glory.) Despite Gillmore’s constant efforts, he never captured the fort, thanks to the engineering skill of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard and Gillmore’s inability to work with his Union Navy counterparts. By the time the Confederates evacuated Wagner on September 6, 1863, Union forces over the two previous months had lost more than 2,300 men in their several failed attempts versus 1,174 Confederate casualties. Many casualties on both sides were due to excessive heat, insect-borne diseases, bad water, and poor sanitary conditions. Yet despite the capture of

Morris Island, the Northerners were no closer to taking Charleston than when they began their operations on the island. An attempt in May 1864 to attack adjoining James Island ended in disaster, and was the only time the Union army tried to capitalize on their capture of Morris Island, which proved to be an empty and expensive prize. When Charleston fell in February 1865, it was because the Confederate forces evacuated it in advance of Maj. Gen. W.T. Sherman’s army into South Carolina. Sadly, very little of the land where some of the war’s fiercest fighting survives, as much of wartime Morris Island now lies under the Atlantic Ocean. The author, Dr. Russell Horres, a former cell biologist at Duke University, is a volunteer for the National Park Service and a founder of the African American Historical Alliance. While he is clearly passionate about this subject, his writing leaves something to be desired. He starts the book with a rambling seventeen-page introduction that swings from political correctness to “whiskey tango foxtrot.” He ends the book with a chapter dealing almost entirely with the 54th Massachusetts while presenting weak arguments that the events on Morris Island have been forgotten due to racism. Though the book contains some excellent period maps and images, there is nothing between the opening and closing sections that has not been covered before. For those who want to study the Union’s efforts to take Charleston, this reviewer recommends E. Milby Burton’s The Siege of Charleston 1861–1865 or Stephen R. Wise’s Gate of Hell: Campaign for Charleston Harbor, 1863. Both of these books tell the same story and put it in better context than Horres does in his well-intentioned, but flawed book. Tom Elmore has lived in South Carolina almost all his life and has written numerous books and magazine articles about the Civil War in his home state.

A Compilation of Southern History Approaching Civil War and Southern History. By William J. Cooper. Notes, index, 185 pp., 2019. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress.org. $38 hardcover. Reviewed by Shelby Shrader

It is often said that history is written by the victors. It is therefore unsurprising that the prevailing narrative surrounding the Civil War tends to be presented with a pro-Northern bent. Nevertheless, it would be fallacious to assert that the factors leading to the postwar angst of the South is not, at the very least, a valid point of discussion. Approaching Civil

War and Southern History discusses Southern history in the context of the Civil War, in some passages dispelling myths both Northern and Southern and in others simply relating interesting stories of individuals that have not survived the test of time in the public mind. Approaching Civil War and Southern History is written by William J. Cooper, a historian widely known for his expertise on Jefferson Davis and the history of the American South. Cooper is a graduate of Princeton and Johns Hopkins. He spent his academic career as a professor at Louisiana State University and has written several books on the history of the South. His latest is a compilation of ten essays regarding the South during the Civil War. In two of these essays, Cooper examines Davis as a war leader before, during and after the war. “Reassessment of Jefferson Davis as a War Leader” challenges the conventional view of Davis’s acumen as a commander-in-chief, while “Jefferson Davis Confronts a Changed World” describes Davis’s life after the war. In both essays, Davis is depicted in a more apologetic light than is traditional, but the latter essay particularly relates interesting stories about Davis postwar and how he had to cope with losing the conflict as well as his livelihood. In some of Cooper’s other essays—“Economics or Race,” “The Politics of Slavery Affirmed,” “The Only Door” and “The Critical Signpost on the Journey toward Secession”—he takes a more political and economical approach in evaluating the South during the time of the Civil War and the road to secession. At times, a casual reader may detect controversial opinions about historical events and figures both beloved and reviled, but it is important to note that Cooper conveys the prevailing interpretation of the facts presented in the South during the Civil War; thus, Cooper encapsulates the attitudes driving the unrest in the Southern states, even if the interpretations tend to have changed through the generations. An essay about the Cotton Crisis, titled “The Cotton Crisis in the Antebellum South, contains tables showing statistics of cotton production in four southern states. Cooper examines how production of cotton varied from 1850-1890. I found these tables to be quite useful. In “Daniel R. Hundley, Interpreter of the Antebellum South,” Cooper gives a brief glimpse of the life of a man who studied the South, but hardly got any recognition for his studies–-particularly his book Social Relations. I found this to be a very interesting chapter, for I had never heard of this man and found his life to be intriguing. Another essay that was splendidly written and very fascinating, titled “Edwin Forbes and the Civil War,” gives a view of the war through the eyes of an artist. Forbes mostly traveled with the Army of the Potomac as a pictorial reporter. He witnessed soldiers risking their lives, and he was subject to the same dangers while on the field painting and sketching history. This chapter gave a very interesting perspective of the war. Cooper’s last essay, titled “Where was Henry Clay?,” offers unconventional views on Lincoln and secession. Again, it is worth noting that regardless of the reader’s preconceived notions surrounding the subjects, one should be willing to consider those opinions shaping the culture of the South during the Civil War up to today. Because some interpretations that run contrary to many of today’s common notions, this book would be best for someone with a good grasp of the conventional narrative against which Cooper pushes back. It offers information on a wide range of topics important to Southern history during the Civil War, so it would be especially useful for someone interested or studying the politics that surrounded the South during the conflict. Shelby Shrader graduated magna cum laude from Shenandoah University in 2017 with a Bachelors of Science in History. She is a member of the McCormick Civil War Institute, and is also the Volunteer Coordinator at the Cool Spring Battlefield in Berryville, Va. She has a strong interest in slavery and women during the Civil War, and highly enjoys preparing Civil War book reviews.

A Look into the Voyages of a Slave Ship in the Middle Passage The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina. By Sean M. Kelley. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 304 pp., 2016. University of North Carolina Press, www. uncpress.unc.edu. $30 Cloth. Reviewed by David Marshall

The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare explores the journey of one ship that traveled from Newport, Rhode Island to Sierra Leone, Africa, and its transport of enslaved Africans to South Carolina. Sean Kelley attempts to tell a story that explains who the captives were, what life in captivity meant to slaves, how they made it to the New World, and what their life was like in the United States. The author tries to determine the identities and culture of the people brought to North America. He makes numerous arguments that the slave trade was an organized commerce with intricate networks. It was extremely difficult for the author to identify the prisoners, since slave-ship papers such as logbooks, commercial records and mercantile communication do not offer such information. However, Kelley found records located in the New York Historical Society of voyages made between 1754–1755. In the Hare’s crew records he learned of twenty-four individuals along the New Guinea coast who sold people to the Hare and sales records with the names of the twenty-six individuals who purchased them in South Carolina. He thus does an excellent job in detailing the structure of slave sales, shipmate relationships and the geographic distribution of enslaved people. Throughout this volume, Kelley illuminates how the Hare connected people from North America, Africa, and Caribbean, including Barbados. A crucial point concerns New England’s involvement in the slave trade and the middle passage. The author details the workings of the colonial Rhode Island slave or triangular trade. Bondage in these colonies shared many features with systems elsewhere, including ferocity, manipulation, and a growing emphasis on the differences between whites and people of color. While many historians view this trade as minimal, Northerners at the time viewed it as a driving force of their area’s economy in the eighteenth century. The slave trade in New England contributed as much to the region’s economy as timber and whale product exports, and perhaps as much as cattle and meat exports. The author’s findings on the significance of the slave trade to Rhode Island and New England will surprise many readers and historians. A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina addresses how slave trades took place and details who the buyers, sellers and slaves were. The first two chapters on “The Port” and “The Crew” concentrate on Rhode Island and evaluate the structure of the Hare’s voyages. Chapters 3 and 4 on “Long Knives” and “Traders and Captives” center on the Upper Guinea coast of Africa and the Hare’s undertakings in that location. The journeys to the Caribbean and the ship’s stops in Barbados are the main concerns of chapter 5, titled “Passage.” The sale and compulsory diaspora of human cargo are the topics of chapters 6-8, titled “The Sale,” “Town and Country,” and “Shipmates and Countrymen.” This is an interesting, well-written and well-researched behindthe-scenes look at the voyages of the Hare and how the slave trade was carried out. It offers a lucid, readable narrative that allows readers to understand the transatlantic venture on a small sloop. The book is greatly enhanced by three appendices, and eleven illustrations, three maps and twelve tables. This reviewer highly recommends it.

David Marshall has been a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-three years. A life-long Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Round Table Book Club.

in their passages, passed down over time. Men like Alf H. H. Taylor reported his feelings very candidly. This lack of respect was felt by many Texans who took part in the charge of Pickett, Pettigrew and Trimble on the third day. Many felt that their actions were overlooked as historians focused only the men from Virginia. F. P. O’Brien still felt the anger 47 years later. One point mentioned by several of the veterans was the care they got from the civilians of Gettysburg. Nicholas Weeks of the 3rd Alabama Infantry still called these women “Angels of Mercy” in 1909. Their care for his wounds touched him deeply. He returned to Gettysburg in the 1870’s seeking to find this kind woman; he had no luck. These stories touched me deeply, showing the need for more stories and writings about the civilians who took care of the wounded. Owen included several stories with no comment, allowing the readers the fun of looking up what may be wrong with the recollections. The wildest to me is the claim by Thomas Riddle of the 12th Tennessee that only 13 people were killed at Gettysburg and he helped bury them. The 12th Tennessee was not at Gettysburg. Any book I read that gives me the urge to do research will be a welcome addition to my bookshelf. I highly recommend this book for those who love the stories of the average men who served. I applaud Joe Owen for expanding his research to include those who did not fight just in the Texas regiments. This is not a book for everyone, but for those who still feel the need to see what it was like for their ancestors who bravely wore the Blue & Gray.

Mike Shovlin is a graduate of Westminster College and is the Lead Assistant at the Gettysburg Foundation’s Rupp House History Center. Mike is a Certified Tourism Ambassador for the Journey Through Hallowed Ground and has written articles for Civil War News.