Confederate Command Research Articles

“We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford

Reviewed by: “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford Andrew Fialka “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas. By William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford. (Springfield: Ozarks Studies Institute of Missouri State University, 2021. Pp. xiv, 343. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-7346290-1-9; cloth, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-7321222-3-9.) “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas is a refreshing take on traditional military history. Grounded in up-to-date secondary literature and straightforward about slavery’s role in causing the Civil War, this monograph brings modern scholarship to its intended audience—“descendants” in Missouri and Arkansas to whom Marmaduke’s Raid still matters (p. 2). William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford note how simultaneous events in the western theater, such as the battle of Stones River, overshadowed the raid’s importance and how the larger and better-preserved site of the battle of Wilson’s Creek still dominates Civil War memory in southwest Missouri. The raid has not fared much better in academia—no other monograph-length treatment exists, and the raid receives scant coverage in applicable syntheses, including James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones’s How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, 1983), and Jay Monaghan’s Civil War on the Western Border, 1854–1865 (Boston, 1955). In addition to bringing the raid’s larger story to light, Piston and Rutherford illustrate the logistical chess game played by Union and Confederate commanders attempting to control the St. Louis–Fort Smith corridor—a possible “back door” for Confederates to capture St. Louis and turn the tide in the trans-Mississippi theater—while constantly having their troops siphoned off to larger battlefields in the East (p. 22). Military matters take up the bulk of the book. Piston and Rutherford expertly summarize Missouri’s unique, and often confusing, position both on the American frontier and as a border state. Chapters 1–2 explain Missouri’s multiple governors—the ousted secessionist Claiborne Fox Jackson and provisional Unionist Hamilton Rowan Gamble. They also detail the state’s many fighting forces, including volunteer regiments, which focused on opening the Missouri River to the Union navy and controlling the aforementioned St. Louis–Fort Smith corridor; the Missouri State Militia, a homegrown state security and counterguerrilla force; and the Enrolled Missouri Militia, which called all able-bodied and loyal men into emergency service (without making a particularly good distinction between those who were loyal and disloyal). The narrative peaks in chapters 6 and 8, which offer blow-by-blow accounts of the battles of Springfield and Hartville, complete with corresponding battle maps. Union forces held off fierce attacks in Springfield thanks to hastily constructed fort defenses and a clever use of cavalry units to buy additional time for preparation. In Hartville, outnumbered Union forces again held off Confederate raiders, this time thanks to securing the high ground northwest of the town and utilizing brush to hide their lack of strength. The attention to detail in this book’s presentation makes it particularly enjoyable to read. The maps, created by Jim Coombs, a maps and GIS librarian at Missouri State University, are very helpful. The numerous color images [End Page 367] are vivid and will be appreciated by anyone enthusiastic about material culture. The lack of academic jargon in the prose makes even lengthy tactical passages easy to follow. This is accessible scholarship. “We Gave Them Thunder” has few shortcomings. I took issue with how Piston and Rutherford justify not including more stories of women and children, white or Black. The authors assert that “very few sources detail their experiences” (p. 2). Yet there are nearly three thousand records from Missouri’s Union Provost Marshal Papers for Greene, Webster, and Wright Counties alone (an area that includes Springfield, Hartville, and their connecting road). Civil War historians focused on Missouri have utilized the Provost Marshal Papers to uncover the histories...

Rebel Salvation: Pardon and Amnesty of Confederates in Tennessee by Kathleen Zebley Liulevicius

Reviewed by: Rebel Salvation: Pardon and Amnesty of Confederates in Tennessee by Kathleen Zebley Liulevicius Katharine Dahlstrand (bio) Rebel Salvation: Pardon and Amnesty of Confederates in Tennessee. By Kathleen Zebley Liulevicius. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. 368. Cloth, $50.00.) In a time when the very idea of pardon and amnesty makes national headlines, Kathleen Zebley Liulevicius has offered readers a specialized history on the topic with Rebel Salvation. As the first two Reconstruction presidents navigated the complexities of stitching back together a fractured nation, Liulevicius illuminates that the "'healing' came too fast" (6). The author examines Andrew Johnson's program of pardon and amnesty announced on May 29, 1865, in which he exonerated most white southerners and then outlined fourteen classes of people who would require individual pardon via application to the president. After providing a clear definition of who required direct solicitation of amnesty, Liulevicius offers [End Page 131] a broad history of antebellum Tennessee, the focus of her study, and sets the stage for an application process that demanded acknowledgment of wrongdoing, promises of future loyalty, and recollections of previous instances of allegiance to the United States. As Liulevicius tackles the means by which white southerners found absolution for treason, her more limited examination of the presidential ideologies that informed the process takes a backseat to an exploration of the power of community. She provides overwhelming evidence of the supplemental letters of support sent alongside applicants' oaths of loyalty and formal applications for amnesty and pardon. While the letters were never formally required, the author points out that the sheer volume of them suggests that their inclusion helped secure presidential pardons. There is irony in the title of chapter 3, "Confederate Panjandrums," and Liulevicius makes it clear that the political godheads of Tennessee's brief attempt at secession claimed to be victims of popular opinion, easily swayed by the fever of treason. Offices were filled out of a sense of obligation to the communities in which these men lived, reluctantly and without any real dedication to the secessionist cause. This reluctance never quite translated to a firm commitment to the principles of preserving the Union; nevertheless, many of the men who applied for pardon felt entitled to total forgiveness. Reading through this chapter, readers will surely lament that this ragged war seemed to spring into existence at the fault of no specific white southern man, but rather out of a general sense of the white southern will of anonymous others. Applicants simultaneously claimed to be men of powerful authority and toothless supplicants to secessionist passions. Local officeholders seeking amnesty and pardon portrayed their service as one of continuing necessary community functions. As with the political power brokers, these men focused on the influence of neighbors when accepting a position in the Rebel government. Strikingly, however, these former Rebel functionaries highlighted how their service as postmasters and civil servants often also served the interests of the U.S. government and Federal armies. Youthful indiscretion seemed to play a large role in choosing disunion, but Liulevicius aptly highlights the rare application that relied on a defense of slavery. Harder to defend were the actions of former Rebel officers. Former senior military officers, U.S. soldiers and sailors who had defected to fight for the Confederacy, and Rebels educated and trained at the expense of U.S. military service academies had to provide compelling narratives defending their secession and wartime actions. Former Confederate commanders appealed to the president by highlighting their "civilized, gentlemanly warfare" and "benevolent treatment of Unionists," ignoring the moments they ordered their troops to fire [End Page 132] deadly weapons at U.S. soldiers and sailors (127). In the last chapter, the author examines the pardon applications of the planter elite, but there seems to be a tendency to accept the answers provided in the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaire at face value with little scrutiny of social and cultural signposts under which the questionnaire was created. Still, Liulevicius reveals an amnesty system that erred on the side of forgiveness for a majority of the applicants, in which toothless former Rebels were washed free of their traitorous sins, given sharpened teeth, and allowed renewed...

The Federal Invasion of Pickens County, April 5-7, 1865: The Burning of the Courthouse and Skirmish at King's Store

The Federal Invasion of Pickens County, April 5-7, 1865The Burning of the Courthouse and Skirmish at King's Store Scott W. Owens (bio) April 6, 1865, proved to be a tumultuous day in the waning life of the Confederacy. What remained of the Confederate government, President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, had moved by rail from Richmond to Danville, Virginia. In the Trans-Mississippi Department, Major General John A. Wharton discussed military affairs in his district with Colonel George W. Baylor, commanding the Second Texas Cavalry, in Wharton's hotel room in Houston, Texas; a sharp disagreement arose, and in the ensuing argument, Colonel Baylor shot and mortally wounded the general. Engagements between Confederate and Union forces erupted at Natural Bridge, Florida, and at Flat Creek and High Bridge, Virginia. In the latter fight, Confederate Brigadier General James Dearing and Union Brigadier General Theodore Read engaged in a rare pistol duel between opposing mounted general officers; Read was killed and Dearing mortally wounded.1 [End Page 3] Elsewhere in the Virginia theater, at Saylor's Creek, southwest of Petersburg, Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia clashed with the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac under major generals Phillip Sheridan and Horatio Wright. Wright's corps took some eight thousand Confederates as prisoners of war, including Ewell, in this calamitous Confederate defeat, the last meeting between elements of these two armies.2 In Pickens County, Alabama, nearly two thousand combatants fought for hours in driving rain, lightning and thunder, and deepening mud on the southern boundary of the county at Sipsey Bridge, Sipsey Swamp, and King's Bridge. The Union cavalry brigade of Brigadier General John T. Croxton and the Confederate command of Brigadier General Wirt Adams clashed in this series of encounters, with dozens of casualties on both sides. Miles away to the west, in the heart of the county, a Federal cavalry detachment burned the county courthouse in Carrollton and took many citizens prisoner in skirmishes south of the town. Though the destruction of the Pickens County seat of government by the Union mounted detachment is well-known, the details of this episode have not been elaborated, nor has the confusion of the dates of these incidents found correction.3 Two weeks earlier, Major General James H. Wilson and his command had embarked from Union-occupied northwest Alabama on a mounted invasion into the heart of the Confederacy. Wilson marched southward with three divisions of cavalry, 13,500 sabers [End Page 4] armed to a man with Spencer repeating carbines. The largest mounted raiding force of the war, which set out in conjunction with the Union campaign for Mobile, drove into central Alabama to lay waste to the military-industrial sites in the Deep South, the foundries and arsenals of Selma on the Alabama River with the iron works, depots, and mines which supplied arms, ordnance, quartermaster equipment, and ammunition for the armies and navy of the Confederate States. When the Federal horsemen reached Elyton (now Birmingham) on March 30, 1865, Wilson ordered Brigadier General John T. Croxton, commanding First Brigade of the First Division, Cavalry Corps, Department of the Mississippi, to detach his brigade from the invading Union cavalry corps.4 Major General Wilson directed Croxton to march his brigade, composed of the Second Michigan Cavalry, Eighth Iowa Cavalry, Sixth Kentucky Cavalry, and Fourth Kentucky Mounted Infantry, to Tuscaloosa. There the First Brigade would destroy the University of Alabama, which was now a military college training officers for the Confederate army, as well as the warehouses, factories, foundry, and other facilities of war at that place. After marching southwest from Elyton, Croxton found his direct approach to Tuscaloosa blocked by a division of Confederate cavalry nearly double his numbers. The rear guard of the Federal brigade fought a delaying action against this overwhelming Rebel force under Brigadier General William "Red" Jackson on April 1. Croxton then retreated northeastward and crossed the Warrior River forty miles above the Druid City. By [End Page 5] the night of April 3, the Federal cavalry had entered Northport, the village across the Warrior River opposite Tuscaloosa, assaulted the bridge guards...

Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi. Volume 3: Essays on America’s Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott

Reviewed by: Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi. Volume 3: Essays on America’s Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott Matthew M. Stith Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi. Volume 3: Essays on America’s Civil War. Edited by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott. Foreword by Daniel E. Sutherland. The Western Theater in the Civil War. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv, 374. $64.95, ISBN 978-1-62190-454-0.) Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott have produced a third and final volume in their excellent series on Confederate generalship in the trans-Mississippi theater. The first two volumes—published in 2013 and 2015 and spearheaded by the late Arthur W. Bergeron—explore the lives of a host of Confederate generals who have collectively attracted as much criticism from some modern historians as they did from their contemporaries. Some of this critique was quite warranted indeed, but at the heart of these volumes lies a more nuanced and careful appraisal. Among the greatest strengths of all three volumes of Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi is how rebel commanders on the western edge of the Confederate South are carefully placed in proper situational and political contexts. This latest installment reflects the strengths of the first two volumes splendidly by bringing eight fine essays about both well-known and obscure generals who plied their trade west of the Mississippi River. Taken as a whole, these volumes serve as yet more evidence that underscores the reality that the trans-Mississippi West, though on the geographical edge of the Confederacy, fits squarely and deservedly in the center of Civil War historiography. The volume’s first contributions examine the motivations and careers of two examples of inept Confederate leadership west of the Mississippi River. First, General Earl Van Dorn was among the most maligned commanders of the war, [End Page 485] especially in the trans-Mississippi theater. His wartime career path from capable administrator and effective cavalry commander in 1861 to dismal performer as army commander in 1862 reflects the complexity inherent in even the most troubled commands. Ultimately, however, Joseph G. Dawson III shows that Van Dorn’s loss at the battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, coupled by other failures, relegates the commander into the “lower one-quarter” of Confederate generals in the Confederate South (p. 25). Much like Van Dorn, General Hamilton Prioleau Bee earned an exceedingly poor reputation due to command ineptitude, albeit on a less publicized stage. As Richard H. Holloway makes clear, Bee’s poor performance in the Red River campaign—namely, his panic and retreat at Monett’s Ferry—stained his wartime career and sentenced him to years of postwar fighting to mend his status. In sharp contrast to Van Dorn and Bee, General James Fleming Fagan, as Stuart W. Sanders contends, was among the finest Confederate generals in the trans-Mississippi. Sanders’s essay helps clarify and revive Fagan’s leadership ability. Sanders places Fagan’s missteps at Pilot Knob, Missouri, and Marks’ Mills, Arkansas, during the war—and his Republican scalawagery after it—in context of his otherwise solid leadership. Jeffery S. Prushankin similarly gives General Edmund Kirby Smith his proper due. Prushankin illuminates the corrosive nature of command politics in the trans-Mississippi by the second half of the war by examining the high hopes and ultimate despondency of one of the more promising Confederate generals. Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department was falling to pieces by 1863. Indeed, Prushankin makes clear, the “constant demands of politicians and the carping of his subordinates,” atop gloomy prospects against the enemy, proved too much for Kirby Smith to handle and reflected the complications inherent in the Confederate command structure west of the Mississippi (p. 116). Holloway’s second essay provides a look into the stymied career of William Robertson Boggs and his actions in Louisiana. Boggs had a great deal of potential and an impressive resume before 1861, but, as Holloway shows, the general was attached to Kirby Smith’s staff and never saw significant direct leadership until the very end of the war in Louisiana. Thomas Green had a quite different career. Curtis Milbourn...

Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War, Volume 3 ed. by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott

Reviewed by: Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War, Volume 3 ed. by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott Christopher Bean Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War, Volume 3. Edited By Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Pp. 374. Illustrations, appendix, bibliography index.) Neglected by Confederate officials in Richmond, unknown by the public at large, and considered a backwater by historians, the Trans-Mississippi Theater generally gets scant treatment in examinations of the Civil War. Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War highlights the region's importance not only to the war but also to the Confederate defeat. This volume, the third and final in a series, follows the same template as the previous two by highlighting prominent Rebel generals in the theater. Some of them, such as Earl Van Dorn, Edmund Kirby Smith, and Richard Taylor, should be familiar even to novice students of the war. Others, such as William Boggs, James Fagan, and John Wharton are largely unknown. Hamilton Bee, if not altogether forgotten, tends to be mistaken for his more prominent brother. Most of these men lacked meaningful talent or were unable to overcome political and [End Page 368] military circumstances beyond their control. Yet, as the work shows, the familiar problems that plagued the Confederacy—paucity of talent at the highest levels, lack of infrastructure, and infighting—were certainly present in the Trans-Mississippi. With one exception, each of the essays examines the Civil War experience of its subject in one of three ways: a short, yet useful biography, an examination of generalship, or a combination of the two. The first, second, and third essays are biography; the fourth and fifth fall into the second category; the sixth and seventh combine the two approaches. In the final, unique, essay, Richard H. Holloway, who penned three of the eight essays, examines Richard Taylor's famous post-war memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction (D. Appleton, 1879). Holloway highlights the "subtle inconsistencies" in Taylor's post-war version of war-time events, noting the omission of his "Herculean effort" (262) to get Confederate troops secretly across the Mississippi River to continue the fight. The manuscript begins with quite possibly the most chronicled of all the region's generals, Earl Van Dorn. Historian Joseph G. Dawson III, while parroting past conclusions of Van Dorn as "out of his depth as an army commander" (24), still makes a deeper point about the Confederate war effort: President Jefferson Davis "too often chose or re-appointed high-ranking officers from a limited pool of generals unsuited or unfit for their assignment" (24). Further highlighting a deficiency of the Confederacy as a whole is Stuart W. Sanders's essay on James Fagan. Born in Kentucky but calling Arkansas home, Fagan was an infantryman turned cavalryman. More than capable, especially when compared to many Trans-Mississippi contemporaries, Fagan struggled to get out from under the pall of his incompetent superior. Sanders notes that this "over-shadowing" during the war and obscurity afterwards was in part due to his post-war politics (he supported Reconstruction and converted to the Republican party) and to his superior, Sterling Price. All combined to cast "a shadow of questionable repute that continues to obscure Fagan's true capabilities." (81). Similar to Fagan in obscurity and ability is John Wharton. Paul R. Scott, currently researching a much-needed update on Terry's Texas Rangers, examines this "citizen soldier." Wharton quickly rose through the cavalry ranks in the Western Theater. Personality conflicts with his superior, Joseph Wheeler, however, caused his transfer west of the Mississippi, where he was killed in April 1865 by John R. Baylor in "an affair of honor." Scott argues that Wharton "remains one of the least known Confederate cavalry generals," in part because he lacked the cavalryman's "dash and flair" and in part because he lacked acolytes to protect his memory (218). This work is a fitting end to an already superb series. Well-written and researched, and including a very helpful appendix detailing the often confusing and convoluted Confederate command structure in the...

Allegiance, Ability, and Achievement in the American Civil War: Commander Traits and Battlefield Military Effectiveness

Abstract How do the characteristics of military leaders relate to battlefield outcomes? To answer this question, we employ original battle-level data and biographical information on hundreds of commanders in more than 250 battles in the American Civil War. We examine the relationship between two common measures of battlefield success (victory and casualties) and two latent features of commanders—competence and loyalty—that have long been seen as important in the broader study of executive appointments. We find that competent commanders are associated with more successful battlefield outcomes, as are more loyal Confederate commanders. More broadly, our analysis suggests that focusing on the relationship between military appointments and battlefield outcomes—with the latter's relatively clear definition of “success”—allows for direct examination of the relationship between appointee traits and organizational performance. As such, our results have implications for the study of conflict as well as bureaucratic politics.

Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 by Gary Ecelbarger, and: The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta by Earl J. Hess

Reviewed by: Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 by Gary Ecelbarger, and: The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta by Earl J. Hess Christopher M. Rein Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864. Gary Ecelbarger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0-8061-5499-2, 275 pp., cloth, $26.95. The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta. Earl J. Hess. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-4696-3419-7, 344 pp., cloth, $37.50. Comparative reviews provide a unique challenge for the reviewer—in addition to discovering similarities in coverage and contrasting differences in approach, style, and content, the reviewer can find it difficult to avoid developing a preference for one work over the other and then using the review to justify that opinion. While Gary Ecelbarger's Slaughter at the Chapel and Earl Hess's The Battle of Peach Tree Creek continue both authors' investigations into the pivotal Atlanta campaign of 1864, providing detailed, traditional accounts of Confederate general John Bell Hood's series of wasteful, attritional assaults in the last weeks July 1864, which eventually cost the Confederacy control of the city, there are subtle differences in approach, argument, and conclusions. Both books could be described as traditional military history, but Hess includes detailed information on women soldiers in the battle (202), while Ecelbarger provides extensive descriptions of leaders on both sides and command arrangements and, more accurately, dysfunction that will appeal to military professionals and students, demonstrating that both scholars have their eyes on a scholarly, or, at least, professional, as well as a popular audience. Though both accounts are deeply grounded in solid academic research and both read exceptionally well, a comparative analysis reveals Hess's scholarly approach and highlights Ecelbarger's popular appeal, betraying their respective occupations as a distinguished professor of history and as a public historian and battlefield tour expert. One hopes that Earl Hess does not run out of energy before he runs out of Civil War topics to write about. An established dean of the military and social history of the conflict, the prolific author has contributed studies on tactics, battles, individual commanders, theaters of the war, soldiers, and campaigns, including his own work on the Battle of Ezra Church published in 2015, making possible a true "apples to apples" comparison. But his goal here is to set the stage for the later actions by exploring the incredible challenges Gen. William T. Sherman faced in tightening the noose around Hood's still dangerous forces coiled like a snake inside Atlanta's formidable defenses. To untrained observers, Civil War battles appear to be decided before they begin in favor of whichever side can marshal greater combat power on the field, but this ignores the incredible complexity that reveals Sherman's military genius. Hess details how the Union commander had to constantly maneuver his forces toward and around the fortress city and shows that doing so exposed portions of his command to a sortie by the Confederate garrison. [End Page 304] Hess focuses on Hood's first opportunity to inflict a potentially decisive blow on a portion of Sherman's command as it straggled across Peach Tree Creek, leaving parts of Gen. George Thomas's Army of the Cumberland isolated and beyond supporting distance from the other two Union armies under Sherman's command. Fortunately, Confederate errors in deployment and stalwart Union resistance frustrated Hood's elaborate plans on that day, holding the position and inflicting irreplaceable casualties on the Confederate commanders. Hess's narrative unfolds geographically, as the echeloned attack hit sections of the Union line sequentially, pushing some portions back but failing to roll it up in the decisive action that commanders on both sides sought but rarely achieved. Befitting his exhaustive knowledge of Civil War tactics, Hess highlights the Union's superiority in artillery, a testament to the attention paid to both technology and logistics, but Ecelbarger's detailing of the almost complete absence of Union artillery at Ezra Church reveals there was more to the Sherman's army than just superior technology and...

The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign by Timothy B. Smith

Reviewed by: The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaignby Timothy B. Smith Robert W. Sidwell The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign. By Timothy B. Smith. The World of Ulysses S. Grant. ( Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 249. $34.50, ISBN 978-0-8093-3666-1.) In this volume, Timothy B. Smith examines the multiple social, familial, political, and military factors that shaped Ulysses S. Grant's decisions during [End Page 705]the Vicksburg campaign of 1862–1863. While traditional accounts of the Civil War in Mississippi have focused purely on military and political considerations, Smith's work examines the more intimate aspects of Grant's life in order to better understand why and when he made the choices that he did. Smith argues that the Vicksburg campaign determined the outcome of the Civil War and that Grant's decisions determined the course of that campaign. To demonstrate its thesis, the book is divided into eight chapters, each of which centers on one of the eight major choices that Smith argues Grant made during the campaign. The book makes extensive use of Grant's memoirs, the recollections of the general's colleagues, and the Official Recordsto reconstruct Grant's thought processes during the Vicksburg operations. The book also relies heavily on Grant's personal papers and the memoirs of his eldest son, Frederick, to reveal the general's less-studied familial life and concerns for his family. The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaignconvincingly portrays the complexity of Grant's life as he attempted to command a major military operation while simultaneously coping with political considerations and the cares and duties of a husband and father. Smith shows how the general deftly handled difficult subordinates, family members, and logistical problems. By viewing operations entirely from Grant's perspective, Smith maintains the fog of war, providing readers with only the information Grant himself possessed, and thus avoids charging the general with oversights and errors for which he could not have accounted. Smith's analysis of the negotiations for the surrender and subsequent parole of the Army of Vicksburg exhibits Grant's delicate position. The book summarizes Grant's anxiety over a possible Confederate effort to relieve the beleaguered garrison, the Confederate commander at Vicksburg's attempts to stall the surrender proceedings, and the political backlash that followed Grant's decision to parole the Confederates he captured rather than shipping them elsewhere to be formally exchanged. Such details are often considered anticlimactic in the aftermath of the battles and sieges of the Civil War, but Smith shows how complicated they actually were. Despite the above strengths, The Decision Was Always My Ownsuffers from several shortcomings. By focusing so heavily on Grant's eight major decisions as the decisive factors in the campaign, the work leaves little agency to the Confederate commanders in Mississippi and Louisiana. Generals Joseph E. Johnston, John C. Pemberton, Theophilus H. Holmes, and Richard Taylor either are never mentioned in the text or appear as merely passive subjects waiting for Grant's next brilliant decision to leave them stunned and their forces defeated. Acknowledging the military ineptitude of Grant's opponents would allow the general's decisions to be placed in better context. The book does not maintain its emphasis on Grant's decision making. Most glaringly, at several points Smith departs from General Grant entirely to recall the misadventures of his son Frederick, whose antics put him in personal danger but occurred largely without his father's knowledge. The book reads in many places like a biography of Ulysses Grant, overlooking the general's failings while relating every aspect of his life, no matter how relevant to the campaign. Finally, while this work claims that Grant's decisions were crucial to capturing Vicksburg, it seldom enumerates the alternative choices the general faced at any [End Page 706]point during his army's operations, leaving the reader with the impression that Grant's choices were not only correct but also obvious. Overall, while this book reveals the complexity of Civil War command, it does...

Battle of Wills: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and the Last Year of the Civil War by David Alan Johnson

Reviewed by: Battle of Wills: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and the Last Year of the Civil War by David Alan Johnson Steven E. Woodworth Battle of Wills: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and the Last Year of the Civil War. By David Alan Johnson. ( Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2016. Pp. 317. $28.00, ISBN 978–1-63388–245-4.) David Alan Johnson, the author of several popular works on the Civil War and World War II, has written a highly readable account of the contest between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in Virginia in 1864 and 1865. Each chapter begins with an ongoing vignette about events surrounding the surrender at Appomattox before shifting back to the main narrative. Chapter 1 presents the formative factors in Grant's and Lee's prewar lives. Both did well in the U.S.-Mexican War, but Lee's achievements as a member of General Winfield Scott's personal staff were more prominent. Though Lee never lost his devotion to Virginia, which he learned from his father, Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, he was anxious to avoid imitating his father's undisciplined life and was eager to emulate the brilliance and bearing of General Scott. Grant inherited his [End Page 177] determination from his father and patterned his military persona after the methods and manners of Scott and Zachary Taylor, his commanders in the U.S.-Mexican War. During the war, both Grant and Lee learned that wars were won with offensive campaigns. Grant's arrival in the East, though heralded in Washington, D.C., did not impress the cynical veterans of the Army of the Potomac, but Abraham Lincoln trusted Grant. Lee, however, never fully understood Grant. In chapter 3, Johnson plunges into a straightforward account of the battle of the Wilderness from Lee's perspective. At the end of the battle, Lee reacted to reports that Grant was moving toward Spotsylvania Court House by moving his own army toward Spotsylvania. Only then did Lee begin to realize that Grant was unlike previous Union generals in the East. Johnson then tells the story of the battle of the Wilderness from Grant's perspective and concludes the chapter with the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac realizing that a very different type of general was in control of their movements. Lincoln was happily reassured that he had indeed found a general who would fight and not turn back. Through each successive phase of the struggle between Grant and Lee—at Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Appomattox—Johnson uses the same device, first telling the story from one general's perspective and then from his opponent's. It works surprisingly well. The author also emphasizes the important influence of Lee's and Grant's fathers. Grant kept up his dogged advance in large part because of the determination that Jesse Root Grant taught him. In two famous incidents when Lee was ordered to "'go to the rear,'" the Confederate commander showed the "boldness and brashness" of Light-Horse Harry Lee (p. 136). By remaining on the defensive behind breastworks at Petersburg, Lee made Grant pay a high price for the ground gained, but it cost Lee both the offensive and the advantages of maneuvers that he and Grant had learned under Winfield Scott. By Cold Harbor, Grant firmly held the offensive position, and "Lee had to base his plans on what Grant was going to do" (p. 197). Johnson covers the Petersburg siege in less detail than the Overland campaign. The book concludes with an assessment of popular attitudes toward Grant and Lee since the end of the war. Johnson relies heavily on a half dozen or so well-known published primary sources along with secondary works such as Geoffrey Perret's biography of Grant and Douglas Southall Freeman's works on Lee. Battle of Wills: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and the Last Year of the Civil War is a highly readable, popular account of two great generals during the last years of the Civil War. Steven E. Woodworth Texas Christian University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War by Williamson Murray and Wayne Weisiang Hsieh

Reviewed by: A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War by Williamson Murray and Wayne Weisiang Hsieh John M. Belohlavek A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War. By Williamson Murray and Wayne Weisiang Hsieh. ( Princeton and Oxford, Eng.: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 602. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978–0-691–18109-8; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 978–0-691–16940-8.) For those wondering why we might need another lengthy military or political account of the Civil War, Williamson Murray and Wayne Weisiang Hsieh pull no punches in offering readers a candid appraisal of leadership, resources, strategy, and tactics. The authors summarily reject the primacy of technology in controlling events during the war and argue that it was one of many factors that determined historical changes in "military practice" during the conflict (p. 2). Secession and a war that lasted an unanticipated four years were, certainly in part, the product of failed leaders, including several abysmal U.S. presidents. Millard Fillmore was "a New York political hack," Franklin Pierce was "insipid [and] weak," and James Buchanan, not unlike his predecessors, was intellectually dishonest and politically inept (pp. 21, 24). The generals were worse. A "nasty, arrogant" Henry W. Halleck was basically "an over promoted clerk who simply did not understand the war" (pp. 138, 403). A "pusillanimous" and arrogant George B. McClellan appeared "hesitant, cautious, [and] fearful" (p. 247). Braxton Bragg was a "racist, vicious incompetent" who somehow has a prominent federal military installation named after him (p. 547). The authors contend, importantly, that the war's outcome was not a foregone conclusion. The Confederacy possessed a number of advantages that could have led to victory, especially in an abbreviated conflict where both sides were unprepared. Although the Union did possess the bulk of the tools for war, including manpower, transportation, and industry, Union leaders initially lacked the imagination and creativity to utilize those resources. The development and implementation of logistical systems of support and supply over great distances were critical to Yankee success. The South's river system, extended coastline, swamps, forests, and primitive roads posed a unique set of problems for invading forces. The road to victory in 1861 was potholed by massive untrained armies, inexperienced officers, and corruption. The result, as the authors pointedly state, was "amateur hour" (p. 8). By 1864, Abraham Lincoln's administration had the plans, resources, and proactive military leadership to launch a war-ending campaign. In 1862 and 1863, however, the casualties mounted on both sides as the conflict played out in the East, where the inspirational, risk-taking, and brilliant tactician and strategist Robert E. Lee repeatedly bested a series of reticent, outmatched opponents. The war was won, however, in the West, where an energetic Ulysses S. Grant hammered away at lackluster Confederate commanders. Critically, the authors contend, Grant inculcated an aggressive mind-set and culture in his western forces that he found lacking and difficult to duplicate when he assumed [End Page 180] command of the eastern armies in 1864. The culture of the Army of the Potomac and its leaden officers had been by 1862 molded in McClellan's inert image. Grant, the interloper, found it impossible to quickly change that culture, which negatively affected his ability to challenge Lee in the Overland campaign. Grant discovered that fine soldiers who were led by substandard officers were not a formula for victory. Political leadership was equally critical to success or failure. The authors' enthusiasm for Lincoln is given full measure. They portray him as "a hard man" who made mistakes but was always learning and could make tough decisions (p. 59). Lincoln finessed a fractious cabinet and Congress while trying to emancipate the slaves, endure political generals, find a winning commander, and unify a divided North. Jefferson Davis, in contrast, demonstrated none of his counterpart's positive personality traits. He was rigid and indecisive, his ego bruised easily, and his loyalty was too often misplaced. Critically, Davis failed to see the importance of the West to Confederate victory. At its core, this work is a first-rate analysis of command, command structure, and the behavior of officers and men in combat. Those interested...

Armies in Gray: The Organizational History of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War by Dan C. Fullerton

Reviewed by: Armies in Gray: The Organizational History of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War by Dan C. Fullerton Andrew S. Bledsoe Armies in Gray: The Organizational History of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War. By Dan C. Fullerton. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 1338. $199.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6598-0.) Reference works on Civil War armies are not generally light reading. From Ezra J. Warner's classics, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge, 1964) and Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge, 1959), to more recent works like John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher's Civil War High Commands (Redwood City, Calif., 2001), data-driven studies of Civil War armies sometimes lack broad public appeal. Nevertheless, these studies provide valuable contributions for specialists and scholars seeking hard statistics on the military forces of that conflict. Military historian Dan C. Fullerton's ambitious Armies in Gray: The Organizational History of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War falls squarely within that tradition. Armies in Gray is an enormous book, and even devoted students of the Civil War's military history may find it daunting to purchase and digest. Weighing in at over 1,300 pages, Fullerton's book presents the Confederate armies' structure and configuration and his best estimates of troop strength in detail. Fullerton organizes this material into three-month quarters spanning the entire course of the Civil War. His snapshot approach permits readers to chart the Confederate military's creation, development, deployment, and composition. Fullerton's study contains very little actual narrative, instead relying on data for its structural integrity and overall utility. The insights readers may glean from it are potentially quite valuable. For instance, Fullerton disentangles the complex and bewildering institutional history of Confederate departments, theaters, areas of operation, and organization with admirable precision. This alone is a great service to historians, given the byzantine nature of the Confederate military bureaucracy. Armies in Gray also provides important insights into the Confederate army's command structure and unit composition. Fullerton provides orders of battle by quarter, down to the regimental, battery, and, occasionally, battalion level, by army and department. Students of specific units or commands will no doubt rely on his work to track their subjects' location and deployment throughout the war. Fullerton's troop strength estimates, the product of his immersion in Confederate army records, promise to be very useful for students of specific campaigns and battles. These estimates, while drawn from an exhaustive analysis of army records, should still be tempered by a measure of skepticism given the confusion within Confederate forces late in the war. Still, Fullerton presents scholars with the statistics necessary to chart the rise, fall, and evolution of Confederate forces across time and space, reducing or eliminating one of historians' more tedious chores in studying these organizations. The book's only real drawbacks are its specialized nature and its high price point, both understandable given its focus and length. Fullerton's purpose in Armies in Gray is not to analyze or interpret the figures but to present them in an organized and accessible manner that will be useful for scholars and students in their own work. He succeeds admirably in that aim, and Armies in Gray should prove to be an essential reference for serious historians of the Confederate armies. [End Page 476] Andrew S. Bledsoe Lee University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Carbonate rocks and American Civil War infantry tactics

The most studied battleground from the American Civil War, from a geological perspective, is the rolling terrain surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here, the mixture of harder diabase and softer sedimentary rocks produced famous geomorphic features such as Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top that provided strong defensive positions for the Union Army. Another even more common type of rock—carbonates—provided similarly formidable defensive positions at numerous other battlefields in both the eastern and western theaters of conflict. Limestones and dolostones shaped the terrain of multiple important battle sites, including Antietam, Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, Nashville, and Monocacy, and these rock types proved consequential with respect to the tactics employed by both Union and Confederate commanders. On many battlefields, outcropping limestone proved beneficial for attacking troops; differential weathering within carbonate formations produced rolling terrain that limited the range and effectiveness of both artillery and small arms (e.g., “Sunken Road” at Antietam). Thin regoliths above limestone also prevented tillage, and the resulting forests provided concealment and cover for advancing troops (e.g., Stones River). From a defensive perspective, on a larger geographic scale, carbonates provided natural high ground from chert-enriched limestones and dolostones (e.g., Missionary Ridge, Chickamauga, Franklin, and Nashville). On a smaller scale, erosion of these same rocks produced karrens that provided natural rock-lined trenches for defending troops (e.g., “Slaughter Pen” at Stones River). Analysis of casualty figures (killed and wounded only) indicates similar losses (∼15% of troops engaged) whether soldiers were attacking across carbonate rock, non-carbonate rock, or unconsolidated sediments. Soldiers defending ground underlain by limestones and dolostones had a slightly higher casualty rate (14%) than those defending terrain above non-carbonate rocks or unconsolidated sediments (12%). This suggests, in a limited manner, that the local smaller-scale defensive advantages provided by limestone, such as karrens, were not as important as the regional-scale advantages for attacking troops, including rolling terrain or forest cover.

The Sulphur Creek Trestle Preservation Project

The Sulphur Creek Trestle Preservation Project Carolyn Barske (bio), Sunhui Sim (bio), Frances Osborn Robb (bio), and Jonathan Steadman (bio) On september 25, 1864, confederate troops under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked Union forces guarding the Sulphur Creek Trestle Bridge, located one mile south of Elkmont, Alabama, in Limestone County. The ensuing battle was the bloodiest in north Alabama, with more than 200 Union and forty Confederate troops killed. Forrest took as prisoners the remaining 820 Union soldiers. The Confederates burned Sulphur Creek Trestle Bridge, the tallest bridge on the Nashville & Decatur line, making rail travel from Nashville to Decatur impossible. The previous day, September 24, Forrest and his men defeated Union forces at Athens, Alabama, and destroyed an additional section of the Nashville & Decatur railroad line. Both engagements were part of a campaign to destroy Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s supply lines, which were necessary for his movement east through Georgia. The Nashville & Decatur railroad line connected in Decatur with the Memphis & Charleston Railroad which led directly to Chattanooga, Tennessee. These rail lines were essential for moving supplies for Union forces from Nashville to Chattanooga during Sherman’s [End Page 287] Atlanta Campaign. The Confederate victories at Athens and Sulphur Creek Trestle had less effect upon Sherman’s Georgia campaign than if they had been carried out earlier in the year, as Forrest had urged, when disarray and disagreement over the attacks’ necessity within the Confederate command structure resulted in delay. Nevertheless, the Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle resulted in a welcome victory for the Confederacy. It also represents the first major engagement involving United States Colored Infantry (USCI) in north Alabama, as black federal soldiers serving in the 110th and 111th USCI regiments fought in close proximity to the plantations where they had previously been enslaved. In the fall of 2013, the Departments of History and Geography at the University of North Alabama received a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program to expand and update a 1973 National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle. That 1973 nomination, submitted by the Alabama Historical Commission, resembles many National Register nominations from the early phase of the National Register process. After the National Register was created in 1966, preservationists hurried to nominate as many properties of historic significance as possible to begin the process of documenting the American cultural landscape. These early nominations were often very brief and lacked sufficient context, and sometimes they included only a fraction of the significant landscape. The 1973 Sulphur Creek Trestle Fort National Register nomination is a case in point. It encompassed only the fort site itself and protected just 0.787 acres. The expanded boundaries of the recent nomination, submitted in 2015, covers 317.018 acres, including the former location of the Sulphur Creek Trestle Bridge, the Union rifle pits located outside the fort site, the Confederate artillery positions, and the probable location of Forrest’s campsite the night before the attack on the fort. The expanded historic context helps to place the events of the battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle within the larger narrative of the Civil War in north Alabama and middle Tennessee. Through the development of battlefield maps, story maps, and a [End Page 288] website, the research team has made significant contributions to the documentation of the battle and the dissemination of this information to the public. The expanded National Register nomination helps historians understand how the landscape and topography of the battle site contributed to a Confederate victory. The original 1973 nomination does not explain how and why the Union troops were overwhelmed during the battle. What the original nomination tells us is that in 1864, the fort sat on a hilltop that is extremely steep on the north, east, and west sides, which would have made it difficult for enemy troops to launch a linear attack from any of these directions. The southern edge of the fort faced an open field on a plateau, which would have given Union forces a clear line of fire on advancing enemy troops. Rifle pits surrounded the fort’s perimeter, approximately 400 yards of which remain intact. Additional rifle pits were...

Book Review: Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and Their Civil War Reporting

Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents Their Civil War Reporting. Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, Henry H. Schulte. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2010. 729 pp. $150 hbk.One hundred fifty years ago, the Confederate states seceded, two huge armies began a long bloody struggle from the East Coast to the trans-Mississippi West. Thousands of Americans on both sides were killed wounded at places such as Shiloh Manassas. The Battle of Sharpsburg (or Antietam) resulted in an astounding 23,000 casualties, the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.The Southern journalists who covered the biggest story in US history have never been widely recognized or celebrated. Knights of the Quill goes a long way toward changing that, fleshing out the lives reporting of twenty-eight correspondents from eight Southern states, including two women writers known only as Joan Virginia. These profiles, written by the three editors fourteen other historians, are well researched, well written, remarkably consistent.Editors Patricia McNeely Henry Schulte are former journalists former journalism professors at the University of South Carolina; Debra Reddin van Tuyll teaches at Augusta State University in Georgia.The title of the book is an allusion to the class identification of Southern correspondents of the period, many of whom were well-educated patricians, different from the working-class bohemians who reported for the Northern press. As van Tuyll notes in the book's introduction, Southern journalists were also heavily invested in Southern life; as a group, she notes, they owned more slaves than the average Southerner.The urgency of the Civil War brought changes to Southern journalism, shifting its focus from opinion to news. For example, John S. Thrasher, superintendent of the most successful of the Confederate news services, pushed his correspondents to write dispatches that were timely free of opinion or comment. Be careful . . . , Thrasher wrote, and see that you do not send unfounded rumors as news.Given their various backgrounds, personalities, talents, the Southern correspondents offer a number of distinctive views of the war. Many were fervent Southern patriots, defending the need for slavery sharply denouncing the Lincoln administration's perceived suppression of individual liberties states' rights. One enterprising propagandist, Henry Hotze, established a pro-Confederate newspaper in London in an effort to secure European support for the South.The best of these chapters include the wider story of the war: context that helps the reader evaluate the quality impact of each correspondent. Mark Dolan's chapter on Alabama correspondent Samuel Chester Reid Jr., for example, reveals a man fully suited to the many hardships occasional joys of war reporting. Reid was so dedicated to truth-telling that his reports angered Confederate commanders caused his editor in Mobile to screen his reports carefully. …

Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War

Andrew McIlwaine Bell's study of mosquito-borne illness during the war offers a fresh approach to Civil War scholarship by suggesting that the incidence of yellow fever and malaria helped shape the events of the war. The need for such studies is great since the trend in Civil War historiography has been practically to ignore the impact of disease altogether. Adopting a natural-realist approach, Bell forges a connection between epidemiology and military history in exploring the impact of malaria and yellow fever and argues that these diseases made a crucial difference in the outcome of several campaigns. In McIlwaine's view “mosquitoes have done more to shape our history than most people realize” (116). The book is divided into seven chapters plus useful appendices. The geographical scope of the study is limited mainly to the South. The first two chapters set the stage by considering the distinctiveness of the region, including endemic southern diseases, typical remedies, and how southern diseases were understood. Both North and South, armies exploited and were vulnerable to the ravages of these diseases. There was fear among some northern commanders about fighting in the “unhealthy” south while this bolstered the confidence of Confederate commanders that the sickly season would help to disrupt their opponent's operations. But Anopheles and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes did not discriminate and southern soldiers proved equally vulnerable to the “southern diseases” challenging ideas about immunity (20). Chapter 2 examines the hazards of disease for the Civil War soldier. Soldiers on both sides frequently commented on their frustration with the mosquitoes in the south, but neither soldiers nor physicians realized that these “gallinippers” were transmitting malaria and yellow fever. In the attempt to manage yellow fever, physicians experimented with various remedies including lead, creosote, calomel, and carbolic acid which generally “did more harm than good” (32). Mosquito nets or quinine, however, proved effective against malaria. Rebel troops had difficulty procuring quinine and were forced to rely on local remedies such as turpentine plasters and various indigenous barks. As Bell demonstrates, the availability of medicine greatly affected the experience of these diseases. Owing to the effectiveness of the Union naval blockade, “Confederate soldiers and civilians suffered immensely” (112).

A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi (review)

A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi (review)

Duffy's War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I (review)

Reviewed by: Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I Francis M. Carroll Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I, by Stephen L. Harris , pp. 434. Washington: Potomac Books, 2006. $29.95 (cloth). No American state militia or National Guard unit is so well known, or has had such a role in the national consciousness, as the old 69th New York Regiment. No doubt, the 1940 movie starring James Cagney and Pat O'Brien about the regiment's service in World War I, or the membership of the poet Joyce Kilmer, and the fact that it served as the home of the 1913 Armoury Show, partially explain its prominence. However, the reason the movie was made in the first place was the fame and stature achieved by the regiment and by its chaplain, Father Francis Patrick Duffy, and its leading officer, Colonel William J. Donovan. Part of its distinctiveness was also the long history of the regiment, and part was its Irishness. During the Civil War the 69th, including Thomas Francis Meagher, served gallantly in the famous Irish Brigade, distinguishing itself at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Indeed, the regiment earned its nickname, the "Fighting Sixty-ninth," from the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee. So there is something special about the 69th. Father Duffy and William Donovan were instrumental in sustaining the Irish aura of the regiment in World War I. Stephen L. Harris, a military historian, begins with a powerful description of the funeral of Father Duffy at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1932. Although ostensibly a simple parish priest, Father Duffy became a national figure through his heroic actions as chaplain to the regiment during the war; the priest himself acknowledged, "The war was the making of me." It certainly brought into public awareness his qualities as a pastor and shepherd of his flock, and that flock—the regiment—was completely devoted to him. But Duffy was also an intellectual, a reformer, a soldier, and something of a politician. The regiment went through eight colonels between 1917 and 1919; it was Father Duffy and the middle-rank officers who worked the regiment into an effective fighting unit, maintained its morale, and looked after its dead and wounded. Father Duffy was the sort of chaplain who could hold his own with generals over dinner and also give comfort to his men on the front line under fire. His men—Catholics, Protestants, and Jews—loved him for it and never forgot him. St. Patrick's was packed for his funeral, and 25,000 people filled Fifth Avenue outside. The 69th became the 165th United States Infantry Regiment when it was placed in the newly formed 42nd Division—the so-called "Rainbow Division," made up of National Guard regiments from across the country. The division was sent to France in late 1917, and went into the line during the winter, first in [End Page 159] the Champagne region, then in major battles at the Ourcq River, at St. Mihiel, and finally in the last days of the war, on the Romagne Heights in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. The regiment again distinguished itself, suffering 3,501 casualties—about as many as made up the unit in 1917—and losing 844, the highest proportion of any of the units in the division. Harris, working from a wealth of army records and private manuscripts, pieces together the operations of the three battalions. He traces the struggles to achieve their objectives and the costs involved in exact detail. Harris never loses track of the strategic problems of command, nor does he lose touch with the struggle in the trenches. And he does not forget the Irish connections of many of the members. Harris ends with the newly promoted Colonel Donovan taking command of the 69th in March of 1919, the culmination of the efforts of Father Duffy and the choice of the regiment. Donovan—a football hero at Columbia and a successful lawyer—had served in the National Guard on the Mexican border in 1916 and came to the 69th the following...

Don't Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812 (review)

Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812. By Donald R. Hickey. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Pp. 376. Cloth, $34.95.)Reviewed by Gene Allen SmithThe War of 1812 does not play a central role in the national creation story, nor does it currently garner much attention in the collective American memory. In fact, the conflict has been greatly overshadowed by the War for Independence, the American Civil War, and most recendy by World War II. While students of the American past might remember that George Washington's army crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776, or that Confederate commander Robert E. Lee's home sat just south of the Potomac River overlooking the capital city, they most likely remember little about the War of 1812.Some may acknowledge that the national anthem and the iconic Fort McHenry Flag (the Star-Spangled Banner) both relate to the September 1814 British attack against Baltimore. Others may recognize that also in that year British forces burned public buildings in Washington, including the capitol and the president's house. But few realize that the nation's oldest active warship, the USS Constitution, secured its nickname, Old Ironsides, during the war. Fewer still know that the motto of the U.S. Navy, Don't give up the ship!, supposedly came from Captain James Lawrence's dying words when the British captured his frigate the Chesapeake in June 1813. In fact, most of what people think they understand about the war are mydis perpetuated in the years after the conflict. Moreover, other important episodes of this war have failed to be cemented in the American memory, despite their obvious importance.Most of what we believe we know about the War of 1812 has been generated by the post-War of 1812 selective memory. In the aftermath of the conflict Americans carefully chose to embellish the positives of the war while discounting the negatives. A new pantheon of American heroes-including Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Richard M. Johnson, Oliver Hazard Perry, Stephen Decatur, and Thomas McDonough-emerged and focused attentions on the postwar era and future rather than on the past. As a country, the United States had stood up to Great Britain once again and had not suffered defeat as had Napoleon and the French. In fact, the Treaty of Ghent did not declare a winner, prompting Americans to believe that since they had not lost the war, they had won. Thereafter the selective memory melded with an emergent nationalism to give Americans the psychological and cultural independence that had eluded them since 1783. Finally, since the United States was no longer a de facto British colony, nationalistic American accounts of the conflict held sway, perpetuating a host of myths that have lasted until the present.Donald R. Hickey's unique study Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812 addresses the myths, half truths, and realities of the forgotten last Anglo-American conflict. Organized into six broad sections-(1) The Causes of the War; (2) Battles and Campaigns; (3) The Maritime War; (4) Soldiers, Sailors, and Civilians; (5) The Mechanics of Waging War; (6) The End of War-along with a prologue that features a summary and overview of the war and an epilogue that assesses the war's legacy, this book successfully combines history, memory, and myth. …

Using Wargames In The Classroom To Teach Historical Thought

The brigade moved stealthily along the trees preparing to enter the broad span of pastoral fields that separated them from two entire corps of Union infantry. There was not too much to see as the artillery barrage had left the field almost entirely enveloped in a shroud of smoke. Yet, as occasional puffs of wind blew columns of haze so that a brief glimpse of the opposing ridge could be seen, the commanders were having second thoughts. The Confederate commander expressed her opinion: "Perhaps General Longstreet was correct and we would have been better off attacking around their left flank. Move the army towards Little Round Top as we did on the 2nd and let's try our luck there." Thus, the Battle of Gettysburg changed entirely on that fateful day in March 2006.

A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi

A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi