Cemetery Ridge Research Articles

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State by David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell

Reviewed by: The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State by David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell Glenn Longacre Archivist The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State. By David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Pp. 354.) It is not an understatement to say that David W. Mellott's and Mark A. Snell's regimental history marks a seminal turning point in West Virginia's Civil War historiography. A century-long drought existed between when the few regimental histories produced by the veterans themselves, along with Theodore Lang's admirable but imperfect Loyal West Virginia (1895), were published and the appearance of Mellott's and Snell's history. It can be argued that The Seventh West Virginia Infantry represents the first scholarly, book-length account of a West Virginia regiment ever written. The authors tap a number of primary sources compiled from military service and pension records at the National Archives, research Mellott conducted on his own family connections to the Seventh West Virginia, statistical data compiled under Snell's directorship at the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University, manuscript [End Page 78] collections, the Official Records, and contemporary newspapers such as the venerable Wheeling Intelligencer. The first two chapters, presented against the backdrop of western Virginia's separation from Virginia, largely concentrate on the regiment's recruitment, organization, and early skirmishes from 1861 until mid-1862. One of the characteristics unique to many Loyal Virginia (later West Virginia) regiments was that not only did Virginians enlist, but Ohioans from Monroe County largely made up Companies D and G, while Pennsylvanians from Greene County, filled the ranks of Companies E and F. These men, along with a fair number of immigrants, rounded out the regiment's complement. Through Mellott's and Snell's documentation of the Seventh's recruitment, they offer a tantalizing glimpse into a question that Civil War historians, to a large degree, have ignored: why did hundreds of men from Ohio and Pennsylvania willingly serve in Loyal Virginia regiments? Generally, the simple answer given is that Ohio and Pennsylvania had filled their quotas and turned these men away, but did regional identity and socioeconomic relationships play a larger role than historians have ventured to say? Mellott's and Snell's research doesn't come to any conclusions on this point, but their work does provide the foundations for further inquiry. The bulk of Mellott's and Snell's book, however, is rightfully devoted to the Seventh's esteemed combat record. Assigned early in 1862 to guard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in western Virginia, the Seventh engaged in skirmishes with regular Confederate forces and guerillas. Subsequently, as part of General James Shields's division, the regiment fought against Stonewall Jackson's forces in the Shenandoah Valley. In July 1862, the Seventh West Virginia Infantry was permanently transferred to the Army of the Potomac. It participated in the waning stages of McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Day's Battles. At the Sunken Road at Antietam, on September 17, 1862, it suffered its largest number of casualties: thirty killed in action, seven mortally wounded, and seventy-seven wounded. After Antietam, the Seventh fought in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and perhaps, its finest hour, at Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg. The following year the Seventh fought in the battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and at Petersburg. Along with the rest of the Army of the Potomac, the regiment found itself at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, when General Lee's forces surrendered. By the war's end, the regiment had become the fledgling state's most storied regiment. Its participation in some of the most hard-fought battles of the war ensured that it lived up to its self-proclaimed sobriquet, The Bloody Seventh. [End Page 79] The book's epilogue discusses the Seventh West Virginia Infantry in history and memory. It focuses on the regiment's veterans and their attempt to assimilate into civilian life after...

"Our Aim Was Man": Andrew's Sharpshooters in the American Civil War ed. by Roberta Senechal de la Roche

Reviewed by: "Our Aim Was Man": Andrew's Sharpshooters in the American Civil War ed. by Roberta Senechal de la Roche Zachery A. Fry "Our Aim Was Man": Andrew's Sharpshooters in the American Civil War. Edited by Roberta Senechal de la Roche. (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 321. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-62534-248-5; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-62534-247-8.) Given editor Roberta Senechal de la Roche's background as an expert in collective violence, a reader of "Our Aim Was Man": Andrew's Sharpshooters in the American Civil War might anticipate a reinterpretation of the sniper's role in mid-nineteenth-century death and killing. The editor acknowledges such issues—addressed elsewhere in Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York, 2008), Earl J. Hess's The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence, Kans., 1997), and Dave Grossman's On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston, 1995)—but instead she lets the soldiers themselves do the talking. The result is an edited collection of primary sources from Andrew's Sharpshooters, a company of Massachusetts marksmen attached to the Union Army of the Potomac. Senechal de la Roche's volume, annotated with insight and narrative, allows the reader to follow a handful of unique soldiers through the war's bloody eastern theater. Senechal de la Roche offers many useful points in her commentary. She highlights, for instance, how ineffectively Civil War infantry commanders utilized snipers. By the end of 1862, Andrew's Sharpshooters had received orders to dispense with their specialized target rifles to adopt the more mundane Sharps for use in skirmish detail, an order that wounded the sharpshooters' pride and individuality. Two men in particular carry the weight of the story in illustrating such points. The first, Moses Hill, was a stonecutter in his late thirties who left behind a substantial letter collection documenting his service up to his return home and subsequent death in late 1862. The second, Luke Emerson Bicknell, left a promising academic career in Boston to fight with the company. He later penned a postwar memoir that Senechal de la Roche mines extensively. Hill's letters, despite coming from a specialized marksman, are rather typical of an Army of the Potomac soldier in 1861 and 1862. He loves General George B. McClellan and hates the army's "Black Republickan" tormentors (p. 186). [End Page 1008] Hill gripes about food, illness, weather, and homesickness, and he expresses jealousy at the newspaper attention that Hiram Berdan's more celebrated sharpshooters receive. But Hill's account is also rich with the occasional insight into the world of the Civil War sniper, including his frequent target practice and exploits in combat during the Peninsula campaign. Bicknell is another matter entirely. His wartime letters frequently sidestep military matters to offer lugubrious romance for his sweetheart back home. His 1880s memoir has eluded publication until now, and a glance at his postwar assertions might demonstrate why. The sharpshooter constantly strains credulity, claiming to have rebuked General McClellan about ineffective infantry tactics and Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew about state manpower policy, both face-to-face. And Bicknell's Gettysburg recollections are even more incredible; he supposedly marched up to General George G. Meade and convinced the army commander not to counterattack off Cemetery Ridge before accepting the personal effects of Confederate general Lewis A. Armistead after Pickett's Charge. This is not to dismiss Bicknell's writings entirely, as his description of fighting in the West Woods at Antietam is downright gripping. But historians would do well to acknowledge, as Senechal de la Roche wisely does, that many of his claims are "embellishment" (p. 202). Fortunately, then, "Our Aim Was Man" relies on more than Bicknell's account alone. Zachery A. Fry U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Extreme latest Cretaceous–Paleogene low-angle subduction: Zircon ages from Orocopia Schist at Cemetery Ridge, southwestern Arizona, USA

Extreme latest Cretaceous–Paleogene low-angle subduction: Zircon ages from Orocopia Schist at Cemetery Ridge, southwestern Arizona, USA

Too much meat to lose

Too much meat to lose

"A Shell and What Became of It": Missile Narratives and Commemorative Trajectories at Gettysburg

"A Shell and What Became of It":Missile Narratives and Commemorative Trajectories at Gettysburg Kristen Treen [On] Friday, my mother said she would take the feather bed to the garret where the others were neatly packed away. She went up to get the place ready for it and came down to get some one to help carry it up; while she was down there was a loud crash and a shell came tearing through a fifteen inch brick wall, striking a beam that supported the roof, split it in two, broke out a rung from the crib in which we had slept when children, and having spent its force rolled down the stairs to the first landing. —Elizabeth McClean, Gettysburg Compiler Gettysburg's missiles have notoriously long trajectories. in July 1908, Elizabeth McClean helped the Gettysburg Compiler mark the battle's forty-fifth anniversary with her remembrance of a shell that had traveled from the fray into her family's home ("The Rebels Are Coming!"). The intrusion took place in the midst of the intense push that marked the battle's final day. Until that moment the McCleans, tucked away on central Baltimore Street, had seen little of the action, although stray bullets flattened themselves against their wall. The shell was another matter altogether, for its impact lasted far beyond its moment of collision. Elizabeth didn't just preserve the story of that day: her family, who had initially been too afraid to handle the shell, decided to keep it. They preserved the damage it had done, too. Writing for the same newspaper a year later, her brother Robert recalled how "a broken piece of timber struck out by the shell on its course through the garret was driven through the side of a crib standing there, leaving an opening unrepaired to this day, as a memorial of the battle" ("A Boy in Gettysburg—1863" 2). The impulse to memorialize seized others. The next owner of the McClean house had "another shell put in the wall where the first one came though" (E. McClean 2). Another family embedded a three-inch Reed shell in their shot-riddled wall alongside a cluster of bullet holes. At least nine buildings in Gettysburg remain studded with traces (authentic or makeshift) of the battle's impact— [End Page 453] traces that visitors still seek out, intent on an engagement with the past that monuments up at the Soldiers' National Cemetery don't seem to yield.1 Indeed, these vernacular memorials explode the workings of public monuments altogether, and I want to take that explosion as a starting point for a reevaluation of the commemorative practice that emerged at Gettysburg. It seems inevitable now that the Soldiers' National Cemetery, Abraham Lincoln's brief remarks at its dedication, and the unveiling, in 1869, of the Soldiers' National Monument should have become mythical points of origin for the war's commemorative inheritance. In 1863, the battle represented an important geographical turning point in the war's progress; coinciding with the Federal triumph at Vicksburg a day later, on July 4, Gettysburg appeared to reaffirm the consonance between the Republican cause and the foundational aims of the Declaration of Independence. And while the battle's appalling casualty rate alarmed those who flocked to Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, and Devil's Den, the battle hastened on a commemorative endeavor that, in its urgent need to honor the fallen, would set the standard for commemorative acts to come. With time, Lincoln's words became a blueprint for the nation that would arise from the rubble; we know that story. But its inexorable narrative trajectory, bolstered by symbolism and shored-up by hindsight, obscures this project's messy beginnings. Commemoration, I want to suggest, started with souvenir gatherers like the McCleans who, with thousands of civilians and soldiers, collected objects that helped them to tell this event. Historical accounts of the battle's aftermath and Gettysburg's commemorative endeavor have generally cast this popular activity as a fundamentally separate, "unofficial" act of remembering.2 At the very least, souvenir gathering provides background noise to the official commemorative efforts of state officials and federal agents. At most, it is...

Don’t Give an Inch: The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863—From Little Round Top to Cemetery Ridge by Chris Mackowski, Kristopher D. White, and Daniel T. Davis

Don’t Give an Inch: The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863—From Little Round Top to Cemetery Ridge by Chris Mackowski, Kristopher D. White, and Daniel T. Davis

The Second Day at Gettysburg: The Attack and Defense of Cemetery Ridge, July 2, 1863 by David L. Shultz and Scott L. Mingus

The Second Day at Gettysburg: The Attack and Defense of Cemetery Ridge, July 2, 1863 by David L. Shultz and Scott L. Mingus

Bitwy pod Fredericksburgiem i Gettysburgiem w świetle Sztuki Wojny Sun Tzu

<p>Można zadać pytanie, co bitwy wojny secesyjnej pod Gettysburgiem i Fredericksburgiem mają wspólnego z traktatem strategii wojskowej napisanym przez starożytnego chińskiego generała Sun Tzu (ca. 544 – ca. 496 p.n.e.). Okazuje się, że bardzo dużo. Dzieło to zawiera ponadczasowe porady, dzięki którym można wyjaśnić wyniki bitew i wojen w każdym okresie historycznym, łącznie z XIX w. Ze względu na brak tłumaczenia na język angielski do 1910 r. traktat ten był nieznany dla świata zachodniego, w tym dla generałów Ambrose’a Burnside’a i Roberta Lee. Dowódcy ci, nie znając jego porad, doświadczyli katastrofalnych porażek militarnych. Burnside próbował szybkiego przekraczania rzeki Rappahannock pod Fredericksburgiem, ponieważ we właściwym czasie nie zostały dostarczone dla armii mosty pontonowe. Zamiar się nie powiódł i element zaskoczenia został utracony. Generał Lee niewiele się nauczył na błędach przeciwnika i powtórzył je pod Gettysburgiem w lipcu 1863 r.</p>

Stand to It and Give Them Hell: Gettysburg as the Soldiers Experienced It from Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top, July 2, 1863 by John Michael Priest (review)

Stand to It and Give Them Hell: Gettysburg as the Soldiers Experienced It from Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top, July 2, 1863 by John Michael Priest (review)

Mantle peridotite in newly discovered far-inland subduction complex, southwest Arizona: initial report

The latest Cretaceous to early Palaeogene Orocopia Schist and related units are generally considered a low-angle subduction complex that underlies much of southern California and Arizona. A recently discovered exposure of Orocopia Schist at Cemetery Ridge west of Phoenix, Arizona, lies exceptionally far inland from the continental margin. Unexpectedly, this body of Orocopia Schist contains numerous blocks, as large as ~300 m, of variably serpentinized mantle peridotite. These are unique; elsewhere in the Orocopia and related schists, peridotite is rare and completely serpentinized. Peridotite and metaperidotite at Cemetery Ridge are of three principal types: (1) serpentinite and tremolite serpentinite, derived from dunite; (2) partially serpentinized harzburgite and olivine orthopyroxenite (collectively, harzburgite); and (3) granoblastic or schistose metasomatic rocks, derived from serpentinite, made largely of actinolite, calcic plagioclase, hercynite, and chlorite. In the serpentinite, paucity of relict olivine, relatively abundant magnetite (5%), and elevated Fe3+/Fe indicate advanced serpentinization. Harzburgite contains abundant orthopyroxene, only slightly serpentinized, and minor to moderate (1–15%) relict olivine. Mantle tectonite fabric is locally preserved. Several petrographic and geochemical characteristics of the peridotite at Cemetery Ridge are ambiguously similar to either abyssal or mantle-wedge (suprasubduction) peridotites and serpentinites. Least ambiguous are orthopyroxene compositions. Orthopyroxene is distinctively depleted in Al2O3, Cr2O3, and CaO, indicating mantle-wedge affinities. Initial interpretation of field and petrologic data suggests that the peridotite blocks in the Orocopia Schist subduction complex at Cemetery Ridge may be derived from the leading corner or edge of a mantle wedge, presumably in (pre-San Andreas fault) southwest California. However, derivation from a subducting plate is not precluded.

'These Great and Beautiful Republics of the Dead': Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery

“Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery” joins the growing literature on public constitutionalism by focusing on the seventy addresses given at cemetery dedications from Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s address at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831, through the addresses of Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in November 1863. The addresses were part of a vibrant public discussion of constitutional principles, which spanned such diverse occasions as July Fourth celebrations, arguments in great constitutional cases (like Daniel Webster’s Dartmouth College argument), dedication of public monuments (like Daniel Webster’s speech at the placement of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1824), lyceum addresses, and college literary society lectures. For Americans, especially those of the Whig Party, the Constitution was a key component of culture and a key unifier of the nation. Rural cemeteries provided support for such constitutional values. They brought beauty and order to the landscape; they served to mediate an impersonal, commercial world and brought uplift through the lessons of morality and patriotism that people learned when they visited the cemeteries. The cemetery supported constitutional values of Union, respect for property, and obedience to the rule of law. For visitors to the cemetery learned about the importance of each of those values at the cemetery. It was an instructor of values; its ordered lanes and graves also served as a sign of the health of the Christian republic. For the cemetery fulfilled duties owed the past. The cemetery inspired sentiments of love of family and country. People would leave the cemetery inspired to preserve the United States as a Christian republic. Finally, these abstract ideas were promoted through private charitable corporations. Those private organizations brought the community together to promote the republic. The cemeteries were, thus, one important institution – along with the schools, churches, civic associations, and businesses – that helped create and preserve the Union. The cemetery dedication addresses, like other addresses designed to promulgate constitutional ideas, mixed appeals to economics, morality, religion, and political theory with legal and constitutional ideas. Rural cemeteries promoted Whig constitutional ideals about order, patriotism, and Union. Those values were at the center of the debate over the response to secession and they were put into practice by soldiers along Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg in 1863. Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, thus, reflects the appeals to sentiment and Constitution that were so frequently invoked in the thirty years before the War. This article reveals an important and neglected role of oratory in disseminating constitutional ideas, as well as the significance of rural cemeteries to public constitutional thought. This hidden history reveals how those ideas mobilized support for Union and, thus, how public constitutional thought affects the actions of voters, jurists, and politicians.

Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign

Of all the places and events in this nation's history, Gettysburg may well be the name best known to Americans. Millions flock each year to the little town in south-central Pennsylvania where 140 years ago the largest, bloodiest, and most dramatic battle of the Civil War raged across the now-peaceful hills and meadows. The subject of an epic movie and a best-selling work of fiction, the battle continues to fascinate Americans. Indeed, for most Americans, Gettysburg is the Civil War. In Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign, eminent Civil War historian Steven Woodworth offers a balanced and thorough overview of the entire battle, its drama, and its meaning. From Lee's decision to take his heretofore successful Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac and into Pennsylvania to the withdrawal of the battle-battered Confederates back across the river into Virginia, Woodworth paints a vivid picture of this pivotal campaign. In this day-by-day account, he describes the fierce fighting that left 48,000 men dead or wounded at sites that have now become famous: Little Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, and Devil's Den. This new book provides a realistic sequence of events surrounding the legendary Pickett's Charge, detailing the Confederates' magnificent display of courage and the Union's stalwart, rockhard defense. Woodworth describes the strategic and tactical decision making and shows how infighting and disagreements among the leaders on both sides impacted the campaign. He details the mind set and morale of the soldiers, revealing how - surprisingly - Union leaders did not take advantage of their troops' high spirits after their victory to finish off the retreating Confederates. Instead of focusing on only one aspect of the Gettysburg Campaign as most other books do, Beneath a Northern Sky tells the tale of the entire battle in a richly detailed but swiftly moving narrative. This new approach to a defining battle is sure to fascinate students of the Civil War and United States history.

Effects of vehicle disturbance and soil compaction on Arctic collembolan abundance and diversity on Igloolik Island, Nunavut, Canada

Collembolan abundance and diversity in the Arctic are adversely affected by soil compaction and disturbance (vehicle tracks). In comparisons made with undisturbed soil (adjacent to the tracks) at two sites on polar semi-desert Arctic tundra: 1) Cemetery Ridge and 2) Arnaqquaksaat Point, on Igloolik island, Nunavut, Canada (69°22ˈN, 81°47ˈW), there were significantly fewer Collembola extracted from disturbed and compacted soils on the tracks (2 and 11 at sites 1 and 2, respectively) than from undisturbed soils (236 and 301 at sites 1 and 2, respectively). Collembolan species diversity was also lower on the vehicle tracks than off the tracks at both sites (2 and 5 versus 11 and 10, respectively). Values of Shannon–Weaver’s index for sites 1 and 2 were 0.70 and 1.30 on the tracks, but 1.54 and 1.44 off the tracks, and Simpson’s index also showed a similar pattern at 2.00 and 2.81 versus 3.47 and 2.95, respectively.

General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend (review)

272CIVIL WAR HISTORY the literature, the author concludes that Lee was wrong, but based on what the Confederate commander knew and intended his decisions were "reasonable." In the end, Gallagher's Lee is believable. And his argument is persuasive that— through both success and aggressiveness—Lee became a significant factor in prolonging the life of the Confederacy. The second theme, the command structure of the Army ofNorthern Virginia, is pursued through seven essays that center on Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Powell Hill, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and somewhat bathetically, John Magruder. Except for Jackson, whose career is viewed entire, the others are captured in moments ofcrisis at Seven Days, Second Manassas, Gettysburg, Wilderness, and the Valley campaigns of 1 862 and 1 864. In each case Gallagher approaches the individual and the event discretely and as a part of the larger picture of the war, in contemporary context and historical interpretation, and with crisp criticism and sympathy for obstacles and obfuscations. The third theme, the perception of the war by participants and their descendants , is central to five of the essays. Gallagher examines the attempt by former Confederates (from Jubal Early to LaSaIIe Picket) to control the war's legacy through the creation of the Myth of the Lost Cause, telling the story in a way that usually exaggerated the truth and sometimes flatly deceived. In the final two essays the author takes to task modern academics who have allowed political correctness—a term Gallagher does not use—to carry them so far astray as to obscure the fact that the Civil War was indeed a war. He concludes with a lucid and powerful argument for the preservation of the battlefield sites and demonstrates for the less imaginative their effective use in teaching social, diplomatic , and intellectual history. It is trite to note ofcertain books that not everyone will agree with all of their conclusions. In this case such an outcome was preordained, because Gallagher chose to confront such controversial topics. Yet is thorough research, his judicious arguments, and his balanced conclusions should advance understanding even with those not ultimately persuaded. It is easy to predict that this book, in addition to bringing pleasurable hours to the general public, will be added to the reading lists of many graduate seminars. Joseph L. Harsh George Mason University General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend. By Lesley J. Gordon. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. x, 269. $29.95.) Richard M. McMurry observed several years ago, writing about the fame ofthe Army ofNorthern Virginia, that it would be difficult to find an educated American who has never heard of Pickett's Charge. But what does the average Civil War enthusiast know about Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett himself? Perhaps that the Virginian graduated last in his class at West Point and saw his first BOOK REVIEWS273 combat during the Mexican War, perhaps that as a Confederate General, he was promoted beyond his capabilities and was known almost as much for his dandified manner and romance with a much younger woman as for his generalship; certainly that on the third day at Gettysburg a disastrous assault by his Virginia division and other units against the Federal lines on Cemetery Ridge made Pickett's Charge one of the most famous episodes in American military history. "Great God, where, Oh! Where is my Division?" a distraught Pickett sobbed after the repulse (i 16). While an 1870 exchange between Pickett and John S. Mosby may be apocryphal, it still has the ring of truth about it. Pickett said of Robert E. Lee, "He had my division massacred at Gettysburg." Mosby replied, "Well, it made you immortal" (163). As this illuminating new study demonstrates, however, such immortality has been more the product ofhis widow's portrait of "her soldier" as the ideal Southem gentleman and Confederate hero than the result of any significant assessment of Pickett's life and career. LaSaIIe Corbell Pickett, who outlived her husband by more than fifty years, spent most of that time writing or giving lectures about him, their marriage, the Old South, or the Lost Cause, and helped create the popular image of Pickett as the tragic...

Resisting the Pickett T-Shirt

To the popular romantic imagination, great disasters have an irresistible appeal. Before the Titanic came Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee; before that, the Alamo and Valley Forge. Professional historians may argue all they like that Custer was an arrogant incompetent, or that the battle of the Alamo was a tactical blunder, but to most people this is like arguing that Betsy Ross did not sew the first flag. It may be true, but so what? Charge is one such disaster. The attack of two Confederate divisions plus elements of two others-between 10,500 and 13,000 men all-across an open field between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, has earned a permanent place American folklore. As Carol Reardon repeatedly points out this lively and informative history, the affair doesn't really deserve to be called Pickett's Charge at all, since the regiments of several states (notably James Johnston Pettigrew's North Carolinians) had an equal hand it. But as Reardon also shows, what actually happened on the day of the charge was subsumed almost immediately a tsunami of Virginia patriotism, white veteran reunionism, and touristic reenactment. A pointless attack on an immovable position one day after the battle's outcome had been settled at Little Round Top somehow became the central event of the three days' fighting, and even the turning point of the Civil War. Charge has become so central to the meaning of Gettysburg that souvenir shops at the battlefield park now offer T-shirts commemorating leaders such as Lewis Armistead and Richard B. Garnett, and park rangers must regulate the charges of impromptu re-enactors across the field east of the Emmitsburg Road. Reardon begins by laying out the few things we know with any certainty about the charge: the artillery bombardment that preceded it, the disposition of the attacking and defending armies, and the approximate size of each force. Yet from the first shot, the roads of remembrance diverge. From the very start, writes Reardon, in its efforts to answer questions about the formation

Gettysburg: The Second Day (review)

BOOK REVIEWS355 Pennsylvania to the Republican column because of the tariff campaign borders on common knowledge. Nevertheless, Huston constructs the account with great clarity, and he adds information about the precise timing and means for implementing the tariff issue. Further, the book has useful insights into the perceived tariff benefits for labor as well as business owners. Historiographically, Huston provides an excellent guide not only for the older dispute between Beardian Progressives and Revisionists, but also for the more current maze of republicanism, modernization , and even "Celtic fringe" theories of Civil War causation. Indeed, the last chapter qualifies as the best, most current Civil War historiographical essay available. John V. M ering University of Arizona Gettysburg: The Second Day. By Harry W. Pfanz. (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Pp. xxii, 601. $34.95.) In two ways, this book is reminiscent of Richard J. Sommers's Richmond Redeemed: The SiegeatPetersburg (1981). First, the title ofeach book is misleading. Sommers did not cover the entire siege, but only Grant's Fifth Offensive, which lasted less than a month. Similarly, Pfanz does not describe all the action on July 2 at Gettysburg, but concentrates exclusively on the Confederate attack against the Union left, thereby omitting the fighting on the Union right at Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. Second, both authors demonstrate extraordinary knowledge about their subject. A friend of mine at the Army Command and General Staff College, Dr. Philip J. Brookes, has a knack for coining neologisms. One of his most recent is "overstanding," which goes beyond mere understanding . In regard to historians, it would connote an almost superhuman grasp of the details and issues surrounding an event. All historians overstand their subjects in the eyes of the lay public, but occasionally a historian achieves a degree of overstanding that truly impresses even experts in the field. Sommers did it, and so has Pfanz. Pfanz's overstanding of the Confederate attack and its repulse comes from a massiveresearch effort and an intensive study of the terrain. The 108 pages ofnotes and bibliography attest to his mastery for the relevant sources, and his career in the National Park Service—including ten years at Gettysburg—allowed him to examine the terrain in minute detail. In spite of Pfanz's magnificent scholarship, many questions about the battle at the tactical level remain unanswered. The book abounds with educated guesses, conjectures, and outright admissions that some things cannot be known. For instance, before maturing his plan for July 2, Lee sent three scouting parties to investigate the Union left. The area they 356CIVIL WAR HISTORY reconnoitered was a beehive of Union activity, yet the parties reported seeing only a few enemy cavalrymen. Not even Pfanz can explain how this happened. Still, despite such mysteries, the author's description ofthe fighting at the Devil's Den, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and the slope of Cemetery Ridge is as complete as any historian could ever expect. It surpasses that of Edwin B. Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968), which has long been the standard account. The latter devoted approximately 100 pages to these events; Pfanz exceeds this by 220 pages. Although quite detailed, the book is never tedious because of riveting anecdotes, sparkling writing style, and excellent analysis woven into the narrative. Pfanz offers astute interpretations concerning the leadership on both sides. He praises Meade for his "aggressive decision" (p. 54) to fight at Gettysburg even after part of his army had been defeated there on July 1, and for his generalship on July 2. Lee does not fare so well. He was overconfident, based his attack on faulty intelligence, and erred in not using Ewell's corps to strengthen the assaulting force. Hence, eleven Confederate brigades assailed twenty-two Union brigades. Longstreet said these eleven brigades did the finest three hours of fighting done by any troops anywhere—which may be true—but they should not have had to fight so well against such uneven odds. Moreover, in contrast to Meade's direct role in orchestrating the defense, Lee played an excessively passive role after giving the attack order. Both commanding generals...

Conflict in East Tennessee: Generals Law, Jenkins, and Longstreet

CONFLICT IN EAST TENNESSEE: GENERALS LAW, JENKINS, AND LONGSTREET Guy R. Swanson Timothy D. Johnson WARTIME RIVALRIES AMONG American military commanders are familiar. During the Revolutionary War Generals George Washington and Horatio Gates had their differences, while during World War II cliques surrounded Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. The Civil War is no exception. Officers on both sides were often at odds, and this circumstance was especially unfortunate for the Confederate army. Throughout the war the Confederacy faced an enemy of superior numbers and strength, and internal disunity in its military forces undoubtedly contributed to defeat. The career of General Evander Mclvor Law, a capable and vigorous brigade commander, illustrates these difficulties faced by the Southern army. Law was born on August 7, 1836, in Darlington, South Carolina, attended public schools, and graduated from the South Carolina Military Academy in 1856. During the next five years Law was a teacher and helped found a military high school in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1860. After hostilities between North and South began in spring 1861, Law raised troops and served as colonel of the Fourth Alabama Regiment. He was wounded at First Manassas, but recovered to fight in the major battles through Sharpsburg. Promoted to brigadier general on October 3, 1862, Law served with Lieutenant General John Bell Hood's division (in General James Longstreet's corps) at Gettysburg. In late summer 1863 Longstreet's corps was detached from the Army of Northern Virginia for service with General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee. Longstreet's corps participated in the September victory at Chickamauga and remained in and near East Tennessee until spring 1864. Strangely, the Army of Tennessee failed to capitalize on the Chickamauga victory and, as military advantages shifted to the Union army, tension developed between Bragg and Longstreet. In December 1863 the command disrupThe authors thank Professor Grady McWhiney of Texas Christian University and Pamela Franklin of The University of Alabama for their assistance during the preparation of this article. 102CIVIL WAR HISTORY tion, coupled with military setbacks, prompted Longstreet to bring charges against Law and two other subordinates.1 The dissention in East Tennessee began to take root in July 1863 during the Battle of Gettysburg. Early on July 2, General Robert E. Lee and his officers were discussing a battle plan with emphasis on the two Round Tops. The plan called for an oblique assault north of the Round Tops to ensure access to Cemetery Ridge from its lowest point, with the Confederates hoping to drive the Federals off the slope. Longstreet interrupted and suggested an alternative action. Lee tactfully dismissed the idea. Longstreet became angry and later that morning was slow in coordinating the troops he used in the attack. Lee chided Longstreet for the delay but knew that his subordinate was always well prepared for battle. Longstreet had also requested additional troop support and was waiting for General Law's brigade to arrive from the Pennsylvania countryside . Law received his marching orders at three o'clock that morning and his troops traveled twenty-eight miles before reaching the battlefield just after noon.2 As the battle raged, Law temporarily became division commander when Hood received a severe arm wound and was taken from the field. During the remainder of the Gettysburg campaign Law gained valuable command experience, and Hood's division fought superbly. Longstreet, however, criticized Law's efforts and remarked that Hood's "wellseasoned troops were not in need of a close guiding hand."3 After the Gettysburg defeat Confederate leaders reorganized their armies, sending Longstreet's corps to support Bragg's army in Tennessee. Longstreet wartted additional and capable troops to accompany him and arranged to transfer General Micah Jenkins's brigade, which had a reputation for aggressive fighting. As Longstreet conferred with President Jefferson Davis and Lee, the convalescing John Bell Hood volunteered to assume active division command and avert a potential struggle between Law and Jenkins. Law had commanded Hood's division at Get- 'For biographical sketches of Evander Mclvor Law and James Longstreet, see Ezra J. Warner, ed., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1959), 174-75, 192-93; Jon L...

The Iron Brigade (review)

216CIVIL WA R HISTORY pendence, and poverty of great masses of fellow whites. Both men, in short, had spotted weaknesses in the American dream; both were aware of a rising plutocracy and a declining agriculture fully a generation before these became major nationalproblems. Yet their solutions were fantastic. Fitzhugh believed that the North's answer to the conflict between labor and capital would have to be the adoption of slavery, which alone could identify the interests of the two. And Helper held that all the woes of the farming South would vanish with the immediate abolition of slavery, which lay "at the root of all the shame, poverty, ignorance, tyranny and imbecility of the South." Both writers, otherwise shrewd, defended these gross oversimplifications with angry energy . Their intelligence failed to show them the infinite subdety, complexity, tragedy, and paradox of man's struggle to create just institutions. Mavericks though they were, in a sense, Fitzhugh and Helper shared these absolutes with thousands of their fellow nineteenth-century Americans. Thereby , civil war was brought closer. The crisis of the fifties became the war of the sixties, and this book will help readers to understand how the one grew inexorably into the other. Bernard A. Weisberger University of Chicago The Iron Brigade. By Alan Nolan. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961. Pp. xvi, 412. $6.95.) With the opening guns of Sumter, the cry of "On to Richmond!" rang through the North and sent the Army of the Potomac on an ordeal of bloody heartbreak and frustration. One of the brigades in the Union army which vainly tried to break through the lines of Robert E. Lee was composed of four regiments which came from the old Northwest Territory. The 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Volunteers, together with the 19th Indiana, first made up what came to be known as "Iron Brigade." With the addition of Battery B of the 4th U.S. Artillery, the Westerners became part of the Federal forces which headed into northern Virginia. John Gibbon took over the brigadewhen its first brigadier, Rufus King, was moved up to division commander. A professional army officer whose North Carolina origins almost lost him his promotion, Gibbon worked hard to instill a hearty spirit and a rigorous discipline into his brigade. As part of his program he outfitted his men with the tall black hats which soon became a well-known mark of the Western troops. After its baptism of fire at Brawner Farm on August 28, 1862, where it successfully fought off a surprise attack by Stonewall Jackson's troops, the brigade was involved in every major engagement between Washington and Richmond. At Second Bull Run Gibbon's men were assigned to cover the retreat of the Union forces. When Lee struck across the Potomac, it was the Western Brigade which was sent slashing across Turner's Gap to strike at Lee's exposed position. Despite the fact that a powerful Confederate force Book Reviews217 had set up almost impregnable defenses along both sides of the National Road, Gibbon's troops smashed their way through and here won themselves the title of the "Iron Brigade." At Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and then at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863, the Iron Brigade, now commanded by Solomon Meredith, played a prominent role. At Antietam they suffered such heavy losses that their thin ranks had to be filled out with the men of the 24th Michigan, which now became part of the Iron Brigade. When Lee once again broke loose and sent his forces swinging northward into Pennsylvania, it was the Iron Brigade which helped to plug the gap. Moving up the Emmitsburg Road, the Westerners heard the sounds of battle and moved off to their left toward Seminary Ridge, where they ran head on into Archer's Tennessee and Alabama regiments. Against overwhelming odds the Iron Brigade held its position as the Confederate force grew larger every hour and threatened at any moment to completely envelope their dwindling lines. When the main Union force had taken up defensive positions along Cemetery Ridge the Iron Brigade was at last ordered to withdraw, after having suffered casualties of from 65 to 80 per centi For...

The Continuing War

The Continuing War EDITED BY JAMES I. ROBERTSON, JR. Department of History, Emory University Atlanta, Georgia A native of Danville, Virginia, James I. Robertson, Jr., is currently writing afull-scale historyof the Stonewall Brigade, a sketch of which recently appeared in crvTL WAB msTOBY. In the following, his first contribution to the continuing WAB, of which he has now assumed the regular editorship. Mr. Robertson more than demonstrates his grasp of recent literature on the Civil War and his critical abuity to interpret it meaningfully for our readers . ninety-seven YEABS have elapsed since a christening of carnage guaranteed the future of our nation. Many of the battle-scarred terrains, once witnesses to American's bloodiest struggle, now are clothed in a quietness broken only by the sounds of Nature's family or the wanderings of a growing number of the interested—or the occasional but determined quest of an avid war student for some earth-yielding relic. Yet the serenity ofthe battlefields is misleading; the war lives on with vitality through many pens and presses. The discovery and publication of personal memoirs, the evaluation of campaigns and leaders in the light of modern scholarship, and the reissue of scarce and "classic" narratives, have been and are keeping us increasingly mindful of that ail-American test of union, the Civil War. Two commendable works open the fall season. Richard B. Harwell's The Union Reader begins with the fall of Fort Sumter and closes with the reinvestment of the Stars and Stripes over the crumbled debris of that onceproud stronghold. Like Mr. Harwell's well-received The Confederate Reader this Union counterpart is filled with excerpts from relatively unknown but contemporary works. It "is a work by many hands," writes its compiler. "In every case the writers were eyewitnesses to the most eventful days of American history. . . . The words of those who participated in our Civil War run with blood as well as with ink. In these words, hot from the heart, that the Americans of another day wrote for each other their day remains alive." Collectors of personal memoirs will find here the best cuts 338 Continuing War339 of several rare literary gems. Here is pictured war as only those who saw that war could present it Earl Schenck Miers has written a thoroughly intriguing work, The Great Rebellion, which Worldreleased earlythis month. This," Mr. Miers states, "is a book about the American people and what happened to them during one Christmas week, as a result of a tragic Thursday, and on a Palm Sunday ." Three of the war's most crucial seven-day periods have been recreated : Christmas week, 1860, which heralded the beginning of the Southern Confederacy; the balmy seven days of April, 1861, when Sumter felt the fury of Southern batteries; and the week of Palm Sunday, 1865, when Lee and Grant met at Wilmer McLean's farmhouse and restored Unity to her rightful place beside Freedom. Mr. Miers has sought to recount the struggle that raged in American minds by describing only one per cent of that four-year period. It is a remarkable achievement. Both above-mentioned authors have re-edited civilian accounts from within the Confederacy. Last month the University of Illinois Press released Fitzgerald Ross's Cities and Camps of the Confederates States, edited by Mr. Harwell. These reminiscences of a keen-sighted Englishman were originally published in installments in Blackwood's Magazine, and were issued in book form in 1865. J. B. Jones's A Rebel War Clerk's Diary was first published in 1866 and reprinted in 1935. Now Mr. Miers has prepared a new and comprehensively annotated edition of these daily entries by a gossipy Pennsylvanian who surveyed the struggle from a Richmond war office. Cemetery Ridge is again alive with action as new studies examine Lee's ill-fated Pennsylvania campaign. Fairfax Downey's The Guns at Gettysburg is a graphic account of the role played there by artillery. The campaign from the Southern standpoint is presented by Clifford Dowdey in Death of a Nation. Bruce Catton has edited a new edition of Frank Haskell 's eyewitness account, The Battle of Gettysburg. (At last report several new copies...