Animal Histories of the Civil War Era ed. by Earl J. Hess

Abstract

Reviewed by: Animal Histories of the Civil War Era ed. by Earl J. Hess Marcy S. Sacks (bio) Animal Histories of the Civil War Era. Edited by Earl J. Hess. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-0807176917. 288 pp., cloth, $45.00. In his provocative contribution about the late nineteenth century sectional debate over the National Zoo, Daniel Vandersommers notes that laughter often erupted on the floor of the US House of Representatives when members considered whether to fund the proposed park. Animals, Vandersommers explains, “were not considered subjects worthy of discussion” and therefore provoked disparaging outbursts when they were mentioned in the chamber (235). Fortunately for us, historians are increasingly taking a different view of animals, as Earl J. Hess’s wonderful edited volume, Animal Histories of the Civil War, ably highlights. Indeed, the anthology answers the call that Vandersommers makes for scholars to “think about [animals] as parts of larger systems while we simultaneously consider them as individual beings” (236). The thirteen entries of this volume collectively do just that. Spanning a chronology from the antebellum era into the early twentieth century (though mostly focused on the Civil War period), the essays explore the importance of animals both as omnipresent living beings and as creatures instrumental in shaping the human experience. While Hess asserts that the “fundamental objective of the book is to raise the awareness of Civil War scholars to the presence of nonhuman animals in the story of the war,” the contributors valuably do far more than this, demonstrating how profoundly influenced humans are by other living beings (2). Many of the essays feature ways people exploit animals to fulfill myriad needs. Antebellum Southern whites relied on dogs and camels for their utility in buttressing white supremacy and cotton profits. Lorien Foote demonstrates the importance of bloodhounds to the creation of a carceral landscape that ensnared Black people within the system of slavery. And in telling a story about the introduction of camels to the American South in the decade prior to the Civil War, Michael Woods exposes proslavery advocates’ dreams of creating an expansive hemispheric empire. Humans’ dependence on animals uncovered vulnerabilities during the war, as some of the collection’s most valuable chapters highlight. Abraham Gibson’s work on warhorses makes the surprising connection between environmental conditions in the South and challenges to Confederate military capabilities. A dearth of high-nutrient pastureland in much of the Cotton Kingdom meant that many [End Page 92] Southerners imported horses from west of the Appalachians. As the war dragged on, the Confederacy found itself at a substantial equine disadvantage, made worse by the further degradation of forage land caused by the conflict itself. By 1865, Gibson tells us, “Grant had more horses than his opponent had soldiers” (94). This imbalance strategically benefitted the US army, helping to explain the war’s eventual outcome. And in perhaps the collection’s standout work, for the way it obligates us to reimagine numerous aspects of Southern ideology and the war, Jason Phillips analyzes hogs not only as an exploitable food source but for their connection to “slavery, western expansion, sectionalism, secession, Civil War, emancipation, memorialization, and Reconstruction” (135–36). Emblematic of cultural and economic differences between the North and South, hogs were inscribed with sectional symbolism. Expecting them to fend for themselves, Southerners released hogs onto the open commons. The booming population offered proof, Southerners insisted, of their society’s harmony and superiority. Northerners, however, eschewed the fierce independence represented by such reliance on the land and instead penned their animals. Trusting in the public and the government, they viewed their own livestock husbandry as demonstrative of Northern ingenuity and enterprise. These differences, Phillips informs us, had real-world consequences in some unexpected ways. The dependence on open commons in the South contributed to expansionist pressure—the root of the sectional conflict altogether. Not only were Southerners seeking more cotton land as they looked westward, but they also needed pastureland. And while the South boasted more swine per capita at the start of the war, the North raised fatter hogs and already had systems in place for packaging the meat. The United States was therefore more able...