DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN LEE’S LIEUTENANTS: A STUDY IN COMMAND
Originally published September-October 2024 · pp. 63–70
CIVIL WAR
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Lincoln and Immigration: Was Lincoln a WINO? Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration. By Harold Holzer, notes, bibliography, index, 464 p., 2024. ISBN 978-0-451-48901-2. Penguin Random House, penguinrandomhouse.com, Hardcover, $35. Reviewed by Salvatore Cilella
In a timely and remarkably relevant examination, Harold Holzer has crafted a new and important narrative of our 16th President and his relation to immigrants and immigration. Originally a Whig,
Lincoln was able to fend off the increasingly important role the Know-Nothings played in the party’s politics in preCivil War America. Eventually, Lincoln spoke out forcefully against the growing anti-immigrant wave sweeping across the nation. He perceived the need to cultivate the new citizens as potential supporters at the ballot box. The Whigs championed a strong central (but legislative) government and a weak executive. They favored subsidized national infrastructure projects such as roads, canals, a protective tariff, and a national bank. Many Whigs were staunchly anti-immigrant. During the 1840s, the Whig party pushed an ill-fated bill to limit, monitor, and tighten immigration policies, but new immigrants, including Catholics, aware of the Know-Nothing odor in the Whig party, tended to vote Democrat. Ironically, building infrastructure projects required manpower that was filled by Irish, German, Chinese, and other immigrants. As Holzer forcefully argues, after the 1844 anti-Irish riot in Philadelphia, Lincoln issued a statement in favor of lenient immigration policies. By 1852, Lincoln supported both European immigration and African emigration. He saw the political potential in these new citizens. In 1858, German American Heinrich Theodore Canisius, editor and publisher of Freie Presse in Alton, Illinois, supported Lincoln’s bid for senate. Moving to Springfield, he launched the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger and began running articles favorable to Lincoln. In return, when Canisius needed capital to keep the paper running, Lincoln secretly advanced him $500 to become a silent partner in a German newspaper. The paper eventually folded and Lincoln lost his investment. Lincoln rejected, as Holzer writes, “hostility to foreigners and Catholics.” He favored an easy path to naturalization stating that it should be “as convenient, cheap and as expeditious as possible.” He noted that the Constitution belonged “no less to the Catholic, than to the Protestant” and went on to insist that the Constitution “reprobate(s) and condemn(s) each and every thing in the Philadelphia riots, and the causes which led to them, from whatever quarter they may have come.” Holzer concludes “Lincoln (was) out of step with his own increasingly nativist base, perhaps even destined to become what might today be called a WINO (Whig in Name Only).” Throughout Holzer’s excellent treatment he argues that Lincoln depended on the immigrant vote, especially German support. It and the Irish vote were complicated and vacillated according to events on the battlefield and the national scene. Both populations were affected by the 1848 Revolutions in Europe and the potato famine in Ireland. Holzer goes to great lengths to show Lincoln’s dealings with the German American population in Illinois and the necessity of German American support there and during the Civil War. Colorful figures such as Franz Sigel, Carl Schurz, and Alexander Shimmelfennig are constantly on and off the scene with plans, schemes, negotiations and deals. When the Union XI Corps, originally recruited by Sigel, folded at Chancellorsville under Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack, the anti-German attitude increased substantially. Holzer outlines the rocky road Lincoln walked with such characters including General Thomas Francis Meagher, commander of the Irish Brigade. Meagher originally supported the Confederacy; the fall of Fort Sumter changed his mind. The Irish support of the democratic party was related to emancipation which Irish working men despised. Although they supported the war effort to restore the union, Lincoln alienated them with the proclamation. The 1863 New York draft riots were the bloody manifestation of their rage. Yet in 1864, they voted for Lincoln. Perhaps the most outrageous figure drawn by Holzer is Dr. Issachar Zacharie, a British-born Jewish podiatrist. Possibly a fraud, Zacharie treated Lincoln’s foot corns and “designed comfortable boots to cushion the President’s enormous feet.” In gratitude, Lincoln wrote three endorsements of the good doctor’s work, to which the New York Herald snarked “The President has been greatly blamed for not resisting the [emancipation] demands of the radicals, but how could the President put his foot down firmly when he was troubled with corns?” In return, Lincoln sent Zacharie to New Orleans to rebuild loyalty to the Union. He traveled extensively garnering support for Lincoln’s re-election, while showering the President with “edible gifts,” hominy, bananas, and apples. Zacharie failed to convince the war department that he should be hired to treat the foot sore armies of the Union. That didn’t stop him from adopting the title: “Late Chiropodist-General, United States Army.” Lost in the flood of events of 1863, Lincoln’s annual message to Congress in December proposed an enlightened immigration bill to ease the path to naturalization for prospective new citizens. With that progressive step was an obligation for military duty. As Lincoln saw it, rights came with responsibility. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the bill come to fruition. Andrew Johnson signed it into law in June 1865. In coming full circle, Holzer points out it would be the last generous federal legislation until 1965 when Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Naturalization act. What’s that cliché about history not rhyming, but repeating itself?
Salvatore Cilella is the retired CEO of the Atlanta History Center. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars, (Univ. of Kansas Press, 2009). He has edited The Selected Correspondence of General Emory Upton, 2 Volumes. (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2017). A recipient of the 2019 Founder’s Award, American Civil War Museum. He has edited “Till Death do us Part,” the love letters of Emory and Emily Upton documenting their brief and tragic twoyear marriage (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and the Memoirs of Dewitt Clinton Beckwith, of Upton’s Regulars, (McFarland Publications) Spring 2023.
A Kids’ Picture Book About A Woman Soldier Guts for Glory: The Story of Civil War Soldier Rosetta Wakeman. Written and illustrated by Joanna Lapati. Drawings, glossaries, author’s note, 56 pp., 2024. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, https://www.eerdmans.com, $19.99. Reviewed by Jonathan W. White As a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2000, J o an n a Lapati began “randomly pulling books off the shelf” at her university library when she came across An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 1862–1864 (1994). Lapati became fascinated with Rosetta’s story and began earnestly researching the Civil War—attending reenactments, reading books, and painting miniatures. Knowing that several hundred women dressed as soldiers and fought for the Union and the Confederacy, Lapati attempted to join a reenactment group. “Sorry, women soldiers are not authentic to the history of our regiment,” was the reply. But the second unit she approached, the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteers, permitted her to enlist. For six years Lapati learned about soldier life as a living historian, and she incorporated her experiences into the artwork in her first book, Guts for Glory. Guts for Glory tells the story of Rosetta Wakeman, a young woman living in upstate New York while the Civil War was raging. Bored by farm work and family responsibilities, writes Lapati, Rosetta “wanted something … different. She wanted something more.” So one night the nineteen-year-old dressed in her father’s old clothes, bound her chest, cut her hair, and ran away, now calling herself Lyons Wakeman. For a time she found work transporting coal on the Chenango Canal, but she soon joined the 153rd New York Volunteer Infantry disguised as a man. On November 24, 1862, she wrote home, “I got $152 in money. I enlisted for 3 years or soon discharged. All the money I send you to spend it for the family in clothing or something to eat.” For two years Rosetta served in the Union army, first in Virginia and later in Louisiana. She participated in the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads on April 8, 1864. As Lapati describes it, Rosetta “stood shoulder to shoulder with her comrades, ready to face the enemy,” and she “did not falter under a storm of fire and lead. She held her position, pushing Confederates back.” A week after the battle, Rosetta wrote home, “I feel thankful to God that he spared my life… . I pray to him that he will lead me safe through the field of battle and that I may return safe home.” Lapati concludes the book, “The war was not over, nor the risk of many more lives. But Lyons remained in the ranks, a place where she longed to be—supporting her family and serving her country.” Readers will find more details about Rosetta’s life in a note at the end of the book, such as that she died of dysentery at the marine hospital at New Orleans on June 19, 1864. The note, two glossaries, and a timeline also provide more information and context about the Civil War and the experiences of women—both civilians and soldiers—during that period of national upheaval. Lapati created the artwork using scratchboards, which she hoped would “convey a gritty and difficult time in American history.” It is beautifully done and quite evocative. Taken together, Guts for Glory is a compelling picture book that will introduce young readers to an historical figure who is not typically be found in the textbooks. Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and the author or editor of 17 books, including My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024), an early reader chapter book about Abraham Lincoln’s youth.
Irish Immigrant Farmers Personal Accounts The Boys of Diamond Hill- The Lives and Civil War Letter of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina. J. Keith Jones, ed. Notes, Photos, Bibliography, Index. 243 pgs. McFarland & Company, Inc., www. macfarlandpub.com. $39.95 Reviewed by Tom Elmore This book is a collection of letters written from 1857 until 1871, primarily during the Civil War years of 1861– 1865. The patriarch of the family was Richard Boyd, an Irish immigrant who was a farmer in northwestern South Carolina. This book shares the letters home from his sons Andrew, Daniel, Presesley, Thomas, and William, and his son-in-law, Fenton Hall, who all served in the Confederate army.
The six young men, whose ages ranged from 14 to 25 in 1860, saw action in Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, giving a unique, holistic view of the war from different theatres. Accounts include the Battle of Fredericksburg and some personal experiences from some of the war’s most significant and lesser-known battles. One notable passage comes from Daniel, writing from Virginia in1861, refers to the conflict as a “civil war.” This is the only time this reviewer has seen the war being called that by a Confederate soldier. Those looking for a heroic, glory-filled account of the war will be disappointed. Most of the letters are sad and tragic or have depressing undertones. Their biggest enemy was not the Union army but illness, boredom, inflation, and deprivation. Death is a constant theme, for good reasons: Daniel was the lone letter writer to survive the war. Sadly, he did not live long after war, dying in 1871, presumably from cholera. William was mortally wounded at Gaines Mill, Robert was killed at the Battle of Maryland Heights, and Thomas at the Second Battle of Murfreesboro, all in 1862. Andrew died from measles in 1864. Fenton Hall was listed by Confederate army as captured by Union forces near Charleston in 1863, but his wife never heard anything about or from him again. Richard outlived all his sons, dying in 1875 at the age of 70. Editor Jones kept the original spelling and grammar of the letters, which can make it difficult to read since some of the writers were semi-literate. But the biggest problem is that too much annotation is added to each letter. A summary is given before each letter along with some background information, which on occasion runs several pages. This slows the flow of the text and would have been better as endnotes. Also, maps of the places and battles mentioned would have been helpful. This is the second edition of the book, the first having come out in 2011. In this version some factual errors have been corrected and newly discovered information and letters are presented. Especially welcomed are photographs believed to have been of Daniel and Pressely.
This is a raw, gritty, and occasionally graphic, firsthand account of the war that tears down any romanticized “moonlight and magnolias” notions that anyone may have of the Civil War. Tom Elmore has written five books and numerous articles about South Carolina in the Civil War.
James and Thirza David, farmers in northern Georgia, cherished the correspondence they received from family members during our nation’s most tumultuous era. As the Davids grew older they hoped the letters would be preserved as a family heirloom and passed from one generation to the next. From the moment the Davids entrusted the letters to the care of their daughter, Pillona, descendants have honored the Davids’s wish. While heirs always acknowledged the value of the letters to the family’s history, Edward Pulliam, the editor of this superb collection and the latest in the line entrusted with stewardship of these treasured family documents, recognized the value of making these letters available to a broader audience. While the volume contains letters from 1847 into the early 1900s, the Civil War’s four years form the book’s core. Unsurprisingly the letters are filled with content one would expect from this era, weather, illness, the everyday difficulties confronted by soldiers, and hardships endured by family at home. Although historians will always find that content useful, the real value of these letters stems from the insight they offer into a variety of topics that illustrate the era’s complexities and how ordinary people coped with them. Particularly interesting are letters between Pillona Alexander, the Davids’s daughter, and her husband Manning. The couple, married in 1857, like all husbands and wives during the conflict, sought ways to relieve the loneliness that war produced. Their letters reveal much about the role dreams played. For example, on April 14, 1862, Pillona wrote Manning, serving in the 43rd Georgia, that she dreamt about Manning “nearly every night.” While the dreams oftentimes brought Pillona comfort, they occasionally caused a sense of dread as she thought they portended something horrible might happen to Manning. Additionally, the letters disclose much about how the war weighed on Confederate soldiers’ commitment to the war effort. Letters written in the war’s early days, as was typically the case, are filled with sentiments of invincibility and excitement. Those expressions waned as the war continued. Letters became brutally honest about the Confederacy’s fortunes in the war’s final months. For example in midSeptember 1864, Manning Alexander wrote gloomily to Pillona about the Confederacy’s prospects in Georgia. Manning believed that without sufficient reinforcements, something he acknowledged the Confederacy did not possess, “so many noble and brave men should be sacrificed without any advantage.” Those seeking to better understand how the presence of Union troops impacted enslaved people will find much worth in this collection. For instance, on August 2, 1864, Horatio David, the Davids’s youngest child and an officer in the 16th Georgia, offered advice to his mother, Thirza, about how the family should respond to the unruliness some of the family’s enslaved people exhibited when they learned of the presence of Major General William T. Sherman’s command. Horatio suggested that if the “rascality” did not cease immediately “blood” should “flow.” Military historians focused on the conflict in Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia will find much value in these letters. The letters are peppered with information about various campaigns, battles, and areas through which Confederate troops passed. On December 5, 1862, for example, Simeon David, a member of Georgia’s legislature before the conflict and a captain in the 14th Georgia, offered a compelling description of the Shenandoah Valley as his regiment made its way to Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the autumn of 1862. “I think the Valley of Virginia is the eden of the whole earth,” Simeon explained to his parents. The letters, exhaustively contextualized by the edior, also provide a sobering reminder about the conflict’s tragic consequences. The section of postwar writings bares much about the Civil War’s economic impact and how human loss suffered during the conflict caused unquantifiable anguish for those left behind. Documents in the postwar section also provide useful details about the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
The richness of this collection marks this volume as arguably one of the most important assemblages of Civil War era correspondence in recent years. Social and military historians owe a debt of gratitude to the editor for making these letters available to all. Jonathan A. Noyalas is director of Shenandoah U niversity ’ s M c C ormick C ivil W ar I nstitute in Winchester, Virginia, a professor in Civil War Era Studies at Shenandoah University, and founding editor of Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era. He is the author or editor of fifteen books including most recently Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era, published by the University
Press of Florida.
Great Tactical Analysis of a Little-Studied Battle Contrasts in Command: The Battle of Fair Oaks, May 31-June 1, 1862. By Victor Vignola. Photos, maps, footnotes, appendices, bibliography, index. 269 pp., 2023. Savas Beatie. www.savasbeatie.com. Hardcover.. $34.95. Reviewed by Robert L. Durham
Victor’s focus is on the various leaders and a comparison of their command styles. Although the major commanders, Generals Johnston, James Longstreet, and Edwin V. “Bull” Sumner, get their fair share in Vignola’s study, he does not forget lower grade officers. At Fair Oaks, Col. William Dorsey Pender of the 6th North Carolina, commanded a brigade and pressed the attack on the Federal guns until the fruitlessness of taking them became obvious. Driving his men forward through knee-deep mud, his actions were observed by President Jefferson Davis. After the battle, Davis sought him out and promoted him to Brig. Gen., on the field. Pender later rose to division command. Lieutenant Edward “Ned” Kirby commanded one of the Union artillery batteries assaulted by Pender and other Confederates forces. Each discharge of his guns drove them backward into the muck, and soldiers of the infantry regiments in support volunteered to help push them back into position. Kirby kept up the fire of his battery even when running low on ammunition. When he ran out of cannister, he fired shot with the fuses cut to explode as soon as they left the mouths of the cannon, like giant shotguns. Vignola found it difficult to write of the Confederate side; few officers filed official reports. He had to fill in the blanks with research into letters, diaries, and journals. The result is a masterful tactical study of the battle, down to the regimental level. I highly recommend this book; it should be on the bookshelf of every Civil War buff. I placed my copy right next to my Sears volume. Robert L. Durham, retired from the Defense Logistics Agency, is a freelance writer who has written articles and reviews for numerous historical publications. A lifelong history buff, he recently went back to college for a history degree.
A Confederate Hero Rediscovered Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall. By William C. Harris. 6 halftones, notes, index, 200 pp., Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress.org, hardcover, $45.00. Reviewed by Paul Taylor
Until now, little has been written on the Battle of Seven Pines/Fair Oaks. Contrasts in Command concentrates on Fair Oaks, a portion of the battle even less has been written on. Stephen W. Sears, in his excellent To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign devotes only four pages to Fair Oaks. For many Civil War students, the main interest in the battle is the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, which led to placing Gen. Robert E. Lee in command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Vignola has written a detailed, tactical study of the battle, going a lot further than that.
John Yates Beall was a colorful Confederate who was well-known, feared, and considered to be nothing more than a pirate in the northern states during the last two years of the Civil War. He is virtually unknown today except by the rebellion’s most ardent students. In this traditional biography based significantly on Beall’s diary and letters, historian William C. Harris gives readers a full account of Beall’s relatively short life, from his birth in 1835 to his death on the gallows at Governor’s Island, New York, on Feb. 24, 1865. Beall was born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), to well off planter parents who owned twentynine slaves. He developed an unshakeable Old Testament religious faith as well strong “states rights” political convictions. His early adult militia duty saw him serving as a guard at John Brown’s 1859 execution. When civil war came just over sixteen months later, Beall quickly enlisted as a private in the 2nd Virginia Infantry. After he was shot through the shoulder and lung during an Oct. 1861 skirmish at Bolivar Heights, Beall began a lengthy convalescence in the Deep South, though he would never completely recover from his battle wounds. He was a fervent Confederate, convinced that President Abraham Lincoln and his Republicans had created a military despotism determined to crush the South. His papers, however, reveal that he usually found Lincoln himself to be unworthy of comment. Still yearning to do something for the Southern cause, Beall traveled to Toronto, where he and Rebel sympathizers hatched two plans for Confederate operations on the Great Lakes. Beall’s favorite was a commando-style operation to free Confederate prisonersof-war at the Johnson’s Island prison camp on Lake Erie in Sandusky Bay, Ohio. The second was to take a small flotilla of privateers and attack Union merchant vessels in Chesapeake Bay. After traveling back to Richmond, Beall outlined his plans before Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory. Not wanting to endanger the Confederacy’s neutral relations with Canada, Mallory rejected the Johnson’s Island raid; however, he did approve Beall’s Chesapeake Bay plan. Beall was officially given an acting master’s commission in the Confederate States Navy and within months, his small boats sunk or damaged several Union merchant ships in the Bay. Beall was captured and eventually freed in a prisoner exchange. He returned to the South where he learned that Mallory had now sanctioned a Johnson’s Island raid. Harris covers the semi-famous and often written about waterborne raid in depth. The planned attack on Johnson’s Island emanated from the Detroit docks on Sept. 19, 1864; it was aborted in failure within eyesight of Johnson’s Island. Beall and his men retreated to Detroit. From there they dispersed with Beall ending up in Toronto. There, the young Confederate concocted a plan to hijack a passenger train on Dec. 15, 1864, in western New York that was supposedly transporting seven Confederate generals who were prisoners of war. Beall was later captured by local police in a train station as he dozed. The Union army charged Beall with being a spy and acting as a “guerrillero.” Using trial transcripts, Harris presents in vast detail a military commission trial that was every bit as much political as legal and whose guilty verdict seemed preordained in retrospect. Beall’s supporters were adamant that he was not an irregular guerrilla but in fact a legitimate Confederate soldier engaging in lawful military activity. Their evidence was such that in the days to follow, eighty-six U.S. Congressmen and six U.S. senators petitioned Lincoln to commute Beall’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Despite those efforts, Beall met his fate on Feb. 24, 1865, after Lincoln declined to overturn the commission’s ruling. Harris’s work digs deep into primary sources with ample analysis that places Beall’s beliefs and actions within the larger context of Confederate paramilitary activity. It represents the first full-length scholarly biography of Beall. Perhaps ironically, another excellent book on Beall and his exploits was published almost simultaneously in 2023. That work is Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes by Ralph Lindeman (reviewed elsewhere in this issue). Beall is the central player in Lindeman’s work but is presented more within the broader scope of Confederate Canadian paramilitary operations. While each book has some obvious similarity with the other, there is significant complimentary discussion as well. One notable difference is that Harris’s biography contains no maps, the book’s only shortcoming. Beall’s exploits generated wartime admiration for him in the South every bit as much as infamy in the North. Legend had it that his renown among Southerners was so great that John Wilkes Booth purportedly added Beall’s execution to his list of reasons for assassinating Lincoln, though the author doubts the veracity of such a tale. Thanks to Harris’s fine biography, general readers and scholars alike may now gain a better understanding of the man who was once known as “The Terror of the Chesapeake.” Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of nine books pertaining to the American Civil War era. His newest book is titled ’Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the
Civil War North and is recently published by Stackpole Books.
Rebel Commandos on Lake Erie Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes. By Ralph Lindeman. 20 photographs, seven maps, notes, index, 240 pp., McFarland & Co. Publishers, www.mcfarlandbooks.com, papgerback, $39.95. Reviewed by Paul Taylor By early 1863, Confederate authorities yearned to take the war into the North and, from their perspective, give the Yankee invader a taste of his own medicine. In this absorbing and smoothly written new book, Ralph Lindeman details the story of how Confederate agents sequestered in Canada sought to initiate commando-style military raids throughout the southern Great Lakes region with the overall goal of inflaming an increasingly war-weary populace. Such growing anti-war sentiments would result in Abraham Lincoln’s defeat in the Nov. 1864 election, thereby bringing a peaceand negotiationf o c u s e d Democratic administration into power that would somehow preserve the Confederacy and slavery, or so these agents hoped. Throughout the book, Lindeman presents Virginian John Yates Beall as the link connecting the larger issues. Beall had in fact, as explained by the author, first earned his military bona fides on the Chesapeake Bay in 1863 when at the age of twenty-eight, his successful plans to damage Union merchant shipping using small privateers had earned him the sobriquet, “the terror of the Chesapeake.” Lindeman explains how, throughout the war, an overarching Confederate concern (as well as that of the Lincoln administration) was observing the treaty agreements and stated neutrality of the Canadian/British governments. Such concerns diminished in 1864 as the likelihood of Confederate victory and British diplomatic recognition also fell. The author also aptly discusses all known Confederate plots that emanated from Canada. These included the affairs outside the southern Great Lakes region such as the 1864 plot to burn down New York City using “Greek fire” and the bank raid into St. Albans, Vermont. The core of the book, however, focuses on the several 1863-64 Beall-led ideas using passenger steamers to capture the warship USS Michigan docked in Sandusky Bay, Ohio, and then free Confederate prisoners held at the nearby Johnson’s Island prisoner-of-war camp, just off Lake Erie’s southern shore. The first 1863 embryonic plan was rejected by Richmond; a second was foiled in the planning stages, though the final Sept. 19, 1864, plot did get underway from Detroit. In a plan with a seemingly unwieldy number of moving parts, the plot initially got off to a good start as Beall and his thirty men clad in civilian clothes hijacked a Sandusky-bound passenger steamer shortly after it left Detroit. Meanwhile, another Beall cohort named Charles Cole had befriended the Michigan’s officers. Cole planned to incapacitate the ship’s officers with drugged wine during a dinner he was hosting so that Beall’s men could then overpower the Michigan’s crew. All this daring action was to be coordinated with a prisoner-of-war uprising to seize control of Johnson’s
Island. The shore-based flares Cole was supposed to launch, signaling his success, were never fired, prompting Beall to abort the mission and return to Detroit, a Confederate flag flying defiantly from the captured steamer’s masthead. The author relates in precise detail all the how’s and whys of the mission’s failure. With more than a whiff of Confederate desperation hanging in the air, Beall and his cohorts concocted one last plot, this time planning to hijack a New York passenger train said to be carrying seven Confederate general officer prisoners between Sandusky and Buffalo on Dec. 16, 1864. The plot fizzled when the prisoners were not on the train. Beall was later arrested in Niagara, New York, by local police who first thought he was merely an escaped Rebel prisoner-of-war. He was later officially identified and charged by the Union army with being a spy and guerrilla, tried before a military commission, found guilty, and hanged on Feb. 24, 1865, at Governors Island, New York, despite scores of appeals to Lincoln from both Union civilians and politicians petitioning the president to show leniency. John Yates Beall is, coincidentally, the subject of a new biography by William C. Harris titled Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) and published almost simultaneously with Lindeman’s new book. As might be expected, Harris’s traditional biography seems to focus more on the life of Beall the man. On the other hand, Lindeman’s new work offers more expansive details pertaining to the various Confederate Great Lakes plots. In addition, Lindeman added twenty period photos and seven maps; the latter being crucial for the reader to better visualize where all the action was occurring. Confederates from Canada is much more than a traditional “battle” narrative focusing on military-oriented movements. Lindeman provides ample analysis and meticulous detail in showing how political intrigue, diplomatic pressure, government detectives, and secret agents impacted the Confederacy’s clandestine Canadian plans. The author claims it is the first comprehensive account of the Johnson’s Island raid and the major events and issues that surrounded it. Methodically researched and written in the engaging style of a good spy novel, Confederates from Canada is a worthy addition to anyone’s Civil War bookshelf. Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of nine books pertaining to the American Civil War era. His newest book is titled ’Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the
Civil War North and is recently published by Stackpole Books.
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A Forgotten Battle, Its Leadup and Its Aftermath Dranesville: A Northern Virginia Town in the Crossfire of a Forgotten Battle, December 20, 1861. By Ryan T. Quint. Maps, photographs, bibliography, footnotes, index, appendices. 288 pp., 2024. Savas Beatie. www.savasbeatie. com. hardback, $32.95. Reviewed by Gould Hagler
The History Guy has a YouTube channel on which he presents short lectures on lesser-known events which, he says, “deserve to be remembered.” Ryan Quint, the author of Dranesville, has explained why a small battle fought late in the war’s first year deserves to be remembered. Quint is a public historian whose career has included positions at the George Washington Foundation, Colonial Williamsburg, and the National Park Service. His previous book, a 2017 work on the Battle of Monocacy, was published by Savas Beatie as part of its Emerging Civil War Series. The account of the battle itself is a relatively small part of Dranesville and is covered in only two of the 14 chapters. The chapters on the two-hour clash are well-done and make an interesting read, but Quint’s aim is to do far more than present a tactical narrative. The chapters that come before and after tell a much wider story many readers will find to be a more engaging story. Dranesville provides an insightful view of the war’s impact on this part of Northern Virginia during the leadup to Virginia’s secession and the remainder of 1861. Unionists were harassed by their pro-Confederate neighbors. The Unionists, in turn, provided intelligence to Federal forces based across the Potomac and served as guides when the Federals probed into Confederate territory. Several members of Dranesville’s Home Guard ambushed the Federals on one of these forays, killing some and wounding and capturing others. There were allegations of atrocities which the author dismisses as false. Later, during a raid, several of these men were captured and imprisoned by the Federal army. Slaves (or “enslaved people,” as the author prefers) sought freedom inside Federal lines. Not knowing what to do with the escapees, Federal officers sometimes turned them over to their owners (or “enslavers,” another preferred label). In these pre-battle chapters, Quint also provides much information on the units that would meet in the December battle, along with some detail about many soldiers and civilians. Some of the soldiers were destined for fame, notably J.E.B. Stuart and Edward O.C. Ord, brigadier generals who commanded the opposing forces. It is interesting to read about what they did before they became well-known. In a chapter after the battle narrative the reader learns about the imprisonment, trial and ultimate fate of the arrested members of the Home Guard who participated in the ambush. This story is one of the book’s highlights. The appendices provide the Federal and Confederate orders of battle, a casualty list and, for some soldiers and civilians, their fates after Dranesville. The battle was a meeting engagement. Both sides sent parties to forage in the area; to the surprise of everyone they met up. The force Ord commanded numbered about 4500. The Confederates, under Stuart, numbered between 1600 and 2500. The Federals prevailed, largely because of Ord’s skillful handling of his artillery. The Federals suffered 74 casualties, including 10 who were killed in action or died soon after. Stuart lost about three times this number, and left the dead and many wounded when he abandoned the field. This toll pales in comparison to the bloodletting in the conflict’s major battles, of course, but a wounded man’s suffering isn’t diminished if he is one of 25 instead of 250 or 1,000, and a loved-one’s grief is little assuaged by the knowledge that many others also grieve. The extensive bibliography and notes show that a huge amount of research underpins this excellent book. The author tells much of the story via the participants’ own words, relying on letters, diaries and newspaper accounts. The notes are where they are most useful, at the foot of each page. Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at [email protected].