Peninsula Campaign Research Articles

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom by Glenn David Brasher (review)

Reviewed by: The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom by Glenn David Brasher Wesley Moody The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom. By Glenn David Brasher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 296 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-8078-3544-9 In the spring of 1862, General George McClellan was defeated in his campaign to capture the Confederate Capital during what is called the Peninsula Campaign. The failure of the campaign seriously diminished the reputation of McClellan as the “Young Napoleon” and ended with Robert E. Lee firmly in command of the Army of Northern Virginia. In The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom Glenn David Brasher makes the argument that the campaign had a much larger impact on the American Civil War than what generals commanded what armies. Brasher effectively shows that the Peninsula Campaign laid the groundwork for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most revolutionary acts of the Civil War. According to Brasher it was during the campaign that the Union began to realize that the South’s slaves were a serious benefit to the Confederacy. The Confederate Army used local slaves to build [End Page 78] the fortifications that would have to be overrun in order to capture Richmond. Brasher also examines the very controversial issue of African Americans fighting for the Confederacy. Most historians shy away from the issue or outright dismiss it as a possibility under the mistaken argument that if African Americans took up arms for the Confederacy than the Civil War was not about slavery or that the slaves liked their position under the slave system. Slavery and war are two institutions as old as civilization itself. Slaves have fought in wars from the beginning. Sometimes slaves are forced to fight and sometime they fight willingly hoping that their loyalty will result in their ultimate reward, freedom. This had occurred in America’s earlier two wars in Virginia, it should not be so unbelievable that it happened in the third. Brasher offers pretty solid evidence that there were African–American units in the Confederate army in Virginia during the first year of the war. How many were used is a nearly impossible question to answer, especially since northern abolitionists may have exaggerated these stories. Abolitionists saw the fact that slaves were serving, and serving in the Confederate army, as the strongest argument that emancipation was needed. Brasher very successfully argues that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not happen in a vacuum. Abolitionists led a propaganda campaign arguing that ending slavery was a necessity for winning the war. Without this campaign, the Emancipation Proclamation would not been accepted as well as it was in the North. Soldiers had come to appreciate the desirability of having African–Americans working as freedmen for the Union army as opposed to working as slaves for the Confederate army. The battle of Antietam has always been given credit as the battlefield victory that brought emancipation, but without the experience of the Peninsula Campaign it seems highly unlikely that Lincoln could have gained support for the emancipation. Brasher’s book is extremely well researched and fills a void in Civil War literature. He traces the evolution of American thought on slavery and emancipation during the Civil War. Had the Peninsula [End Page 79] Campaign ended differently the effects of the Civil War might have been very different. Whether he intended to or not, Brasher also shows the importance of battles, campaigns and leaders to the history of the period. [End Page 80] Wesley Moody Florida State College at Jacksonville Copyright © 2013 Alabama Historical Association

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

The Peninsula Campaign & the necessity of emancipation: African Americans & the fight for freedom

The Peninsula Campaign & the necessity of emancipation: African Americans & the fight for freedom

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (review)

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (review)

The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans & the Fight for Freedom

The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans & the Fight for Freedom

Richard Yates: An Appraisal of his Value as the Civil War Governor of Illinois

The general public mostly remembers George Armstrong Custer for his fatal action at Little Big Horn. Richard Yates is, to some extent, remembered for his periodic drunken behavior while he was Illinois Governor during the Civil War. Both public conceptions follow the old maxim, A half-truth is worse than a whole lie, because it obscures the positive attributes, contributions, and actions of each of these notable characters in American history. Custer actively participated in the Battle of 1st Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Overland Campaign, the Wilderness, Yellow Tavern, Shenandoah Valley Campaigns of 1864, the siege of Petersburg, and the Appomattox Campaign. He was present at the Appomattox surrender. After the Civil War, Brevet Major General Custer returned to the Regular Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. 7th Cavalry. On June 25, 1876, Custer and his entire command were killed at Little Big Horn. Custer's wife, Libbie, published books on his life, which contributed greatly to his image as a tragic military hero, and so, Custer's very distinguished Civil War record has been overshadowed by his fate at Little Big Horn. Richard Yates was elected Governor of Illinois in the 1860 election that put his friend, Abraham Lincoln, into the White House. Yates was an outspoken opponent of slavery. He was personally and actively involved in raising volunteer soldiers for Illinois and became known as the Soldiers' Friend, a title he both earned and welcomed. When the war began, Illinois Governor Yates sent more troops to aid the Union than any other state. As early as April 19, 1861, Yates sent armed troops to Cairo and other locations in order to save and secure the arms stored there, so that this essential equipment would not fall into the hands of southern sympathizers. Yates gave U.S. Grant his first recognition as a soldier in the Civil War by appointing him as mustering officer for the state and afterward, Colonel of the 21st Illinois Regiment. He gave Lincoln much-needed support for his Emancipation Proclamation. He set up a training camp which later became Camp Douglas, the prisoner of war encampment in Chicago. Yet, when Yates was elected U.S. Senator in January of 1865, he served only one term. The reason, in part, for his not gaining a second term was his reputation - rightly or wrongly - for being an ineffectual drunkard. We will attempt to determine if this classification is justified as we explore the value of Governor Yates in the Civil War. Richard Yates was born in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kentucky, on January 18, 1815. He moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1831, and graduated from Illinois College in 1835. He studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and was admitted to the bar in 1837, when he then opened his law practice at Jacksonville, Illinois. In July of 1839, he married Catherine Geers of Lexington, Kentucky.' An intimate friend of Yates, William Pitt Kellogg, described him as Striking in appearance, with bright auburn hair and bright blue eyes. Yates was elected to the Illinois State House of Representatives and served from 1842 to 1845, and again from 1848 to 1849. As a Whig candidate, he was elected to the United States Congress from 1851 to 1855, but was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election. He served as Illinois Governor from 1861 through 1865, when he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from 1865 to 1871. He was not a candidate for re-election. President Grant then appointed Yates as a United States commissioner to inspect a land-subsidy railroad. While on this assignment, Yates died suddenly of a stroke caused by a brain hemorrhage in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 27, 1873. He is buried in Diamond Grove Cemetery, Jacksonville, Illinois.2 Richard Yates was a veteran politician by the fall of 1860 when he attended the Republican Convention in Chicago as a candidate for Governor of Illinois. …

Civil War to the Bloody End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman (review)

Reviewed by: Civil War to the Bloody End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman Ethan S. Rafuse Civil War to the Bloody End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman. By Jerry Thompson. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 443. Cloth, $35.00). Although he never achieved the fame of a Winfield Scott Hancock or Dan Sickles, Samuel P. Heintzelman is a familiar name to students of the Civil War, for in addition to his having been one of the Army of the Potomac’s original corps commanders and played a significant role in two major campaigns in Virginia in 1862, his journals have long been valuable sources of information for researchers. Unfortunately, as is the case with nearly all of the Army of the Potomac’s original corps commanders, for over 140 years no historian deemed Heintzelman worthy of study in his own right. Jerry Thompson’s thorough and impressive Civil War to the Bloody End not only effectively fills this void in Civil War military history but offers much of value to students of the antebellum army and Reconstruction as well. Of course, it was the Civil War that made Heintzelman a subject worthy of a major biography. After a solid performance as a division commander at First Manassas, Heintzelman found himself subordinate to George McClellan, who had not even been born when Heintzelman graduated from West Point, and outside the clique of officers the “Young Napoleon” relied on as he built the Army of the Potomac and formulated strategy. That Heintzelman resented this is understandable. Not only was he senior to McClellan in the antebellum army, but, as Thompson ably documents, he [End Page 427] had compiled a fairly impressive record of service prior to 1861. Although he missed the major campaigns of the Mexican War, Heintzelman performed important duties in southern California afterward and provided notable leadership to U.S. operations during the Cortina War of 1859–60. Utilizing the general’s journals, as well as an impressive range of other primary and secondary sources, Thompson effectively chronicles these activities, as well as Heintzelman’s ambition for an independent command and his resentment of McClellan during the Civil War, the ways Radical Republicans tried to use him in their efforts to undermine “Little Mac,” and the emergence of divisions within the Army of the Potomac that would plague its history. After being imposed on McClellan as commander of the Third Corps, Heintzelman led that unit through the Peninsula campaign, turning in solid performances at Yorktown, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, and in the Seven Days Battles while doing little to hinder the emergence of his corps as a bastion of anti-McClellan sentiment within the Army of the Potomac. After his corps took a severe beating during the Second Manassas campaign, it was retained within the Washington defenses during the Maryland campaign, at which point Heintzelman faded from center stage. As he does with Heintzelman’s active military career, Thompson provides exceptionally informative accounts of the general’s activities after he was kicked upstairs to command the Department of Washington and of his later service as commander of the Northern Department, where his duties mainly consisted of keeping watch over prison camps and monitoring Copperhead activity in the Midwest. Thompson then follows Heintzelman through his postwar military career, in which his most notable service came in Texas, where he had the opportunity to see and deal firsthand with the problems of Reconstruction. Given the range and importance of his experiences before, during, and after the Civil War, and the fact that his journals provide plenty of material to work with, it is a bit surprising that it has taken so long for Heintzelman to be the subject of a full-scale biography. Thompson, however, has made it worth the wait. His research is thorough and careful, his arguments are persuasive, his prose is clear and compelling, and the text is effectively supplemented with maps, photos, and other images that are clear and useful. The past decade has been an enjoyable one for anyone with an interest in the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac. Long...

The "Fighting Fifth": The Fifth Michigan Infantry Regiment in the Civil War's Peninsula Campaign

The "Fighting Fifth":The Fifth Michigan Infantry Regiment in the Civil War's Peninsula Campaign by Thomas E. Sebrell II Every regiment that fought in the Civil War, whether Union or Confederate, has a story to tell.Unfortunately, too many of these units' histories, like that of the FifthMichigan Infantry,were not recorded and are thus not available tomodern-day scholars and others who might be interested in such accounts. This article draws material from the diaries and lettersof the FifthMichigan's soldiers and surgeons, aswell as those of members of the unit's "sister" regiments: the Second and Third Michigan and theThirty-seventh New York. Some of these sources are held in private collections. These documents not only make clear the roles the FifthMichigan played in the batdes inwhich it fought, but also emphasize the effects these batdes had on members of the unit and their responses to slavery in Virginia. I have also consulted Detroit-area newspapers of the time, as well as the Regimental Descriptive Books and the Order Books.1 Using these sources, this article will detail the formation and the firstmajor campaign of a unit that frequendy led charges against enemy lines throughout the Civil War and suffered the fifth-highest casualty rate of allUnion regiments during that conflict.2 On April 13, 1861, news spread across theNorth of theConfederate bombardment of Fort Sumter. The headlines of theDetroitDaily Advertiser included: "THE CRISIS REACHED!" and "The Rebels Attack Fort Sumter."3 Four days laterGovernor Austin Blair ofMichigan proclaimed in Detroit that he would immediately respond to Lincoln's call for volunteers and organize regiments to fight for the preservation 1 The Regimental Descriptive Books and the Order Books provide detailed information about officers and enlistees in the various regiments, including the Fifth Michigan. Descriptive Books provide names, birthplaces, and occupations, while Order Books include most, ifnot all, of each unit's officers' orders. These sources are housed at theNational Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), Washington, D.C. 2 George S. May, Michigan and theCivil War Years, 1860-1865: A Wartime Chronicle (Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission, 1966), 84. 3 "THE CRISIS REACHED!" "The Rebels Attack Fort Sumter," Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 13,1861. Michigan Historical Review 35:2 (Fall 2009): 27-51 ?2009 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 28 MichiganHistoricalReview of the Union.4 An article in the Detroit Daily Tribune, titled "Military Movements inMichigan," declared: "We cannot doubt thatMichigan will prove equal to any other State in devotion to the Union."5 Not surprisingly,Michigan citizens rushed to enlist. In fact, too many rallied around the flag, resulting in some volunteers being turned away.6 On May 3, 1861, in order to create a regimental company of the United States Army called the Fifth Michigan Infantry Regiment, the Adjutant General of the United States Military Department of Michigan ordered the following state militia companies to combine: the "Sherlock Guards," "Mount Clemens Rifle Guard," "Saginaw City Light Infantry," "Pontiac Volunteers," "Huron Rangers," "Governor's Guard," "Washington Guard," "Ingersoll Rifles," "Livingston Volunteers," and "East Saginaw Volunteers."7 On June 10, Governor Blair appointed Colonel Henry D. Terry of Detroit as commander of the newly created regiment.8 Eleven days later the regiment was officially formed at Fort Wayne inDetroit, which would be the Fifth Michigan's home as itprepared for service inVirginia. Early in July, Governor Blair named Dr. Robert A. Everett of Hillsdale, Michigan, as the unit's permanent assistant surgeon.9 It was not until September 1 that a thirty-nine-year-old doctor from Detroit named Moses Gunn became the senior regimental surgeon.10 The men who comprised the Fifth Michigan came from diverse backgrounds. The ages of the approximately nine hundred enlisted men ranged from sixteen to fifty-four. Michigan did not become a state until 1837, and prior to that date itwas a relatively underpopulated territory. Therefore, a large number of its citizens were not native to the region and themembers of the FifthMichigan were no exception to this rule: A bit more than one-quarter of itsmen (230) were born inMichigan. The FifthMichigan had almost as many men (206) who were New York...

Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience (review)

Reviewed by Timothy D. Johnson Lipscomb University Nashville, Tennessee Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience. By Kevin Dougherty. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. ISBN 978-1-57806-968-2. Photographs. Illustrations. Appendixes. Works cited. Index. Pp. xi, 207. $50.00. With over three hundred Mexican War veterans going on to become Civil War generals, a link between the two conflicts seems a foregone conclusion. One might assume that experience in the former would demonstrably influence leadership in the latter. However, the connections, as Kevin Dougherty explains in the preface to his book, are not so obvious. He begins his study by pointing out what the reviewer discovered years ago while writing on this topic, which is that historians can make few concrete and provable links between the two wars. That is not to say that the earlier conflict did not influence the latter one, but that drawing a direct line showing how previous experiences influenced later actions is often difficult and sometimes hypothetical. Acknowledging this, Dougherty tells the reader that in "many cases there is insufficient evidence" to conclusively demonstrate a Mexican War influence on the Civil War. He further contends that even though "not all [of his conclusions] would necessarily 'stand up in court,'" they are "certainly plausible" (pp. viii-ix). The most obvious missing link is a lack of personal statements by Civil War generals, who rarely referred back to the earlier conflict. Few of them are as blatant as Gen. George McClellan in 1861 when, in a letter to Gen. Winfield Scott, his former commander in Mexico, he wrote that he had "learned my first lessons in War" from the older general. And later, while preparing to move against Confederate forces in western Virginia, McClellan informed Scott of his tactical plan: "If possible I will repeat the manoeuvre of Cerro Gordo." With a dearth of such straightforward testimonials, the historian must use conjecture and inference, which can be convincing if supported with adequate primary research. Unfortunately, this study lists less than a dozen primary sources in the bibliography. After an introductory chapter on weaponry, tactics, and leadership, Dougherty offers the reader twenty-six chapters; each being a case study of a Civil War leader. There is no attempt at a cover-to-cover narrative, rather each chapter is a short, individual vignette that stands alone. The author chose to evaluate thirteen Federals and thirteen Confederates, and his evaluation of each is largely a synthesis of selected secondary sources. While many of his comparisons are not new, they are thought provoking as they remind the reader of a myriad of possible Mexican War influences that must have helped shape later generalship. Among the comparisons that Dougherty makes on the Union side are George McClellan, whose 1862 Peninsula Campaign was merely an attempt to replicate Scott's 1847 Mexico City Campaign. The author also asserts that McClellan learned contempt for civil authority from his observations of Scott's relationship with President James K. Polk. Ulysses S. Grant's bold decision to abandon his [End Page 573] supply line during the Vicksburg Campaign in 1863 was, according to Dougherty, a lesson learned from Scott who did likewise in 1847. Other comparisons: George G. Meade developed into a careful and competent commander due in part to his tutelage as a staff officer under Zachary Taylor; Joseph Hooker became known for his organizational skills in the Civil War largely because in Mexico he served as staff officer to superiors like Gideon Pillow whose limited knowledge required that they rely heavily on him; Samuel DuPont learned lessons in Mexico about coastal blockading that would serve him well during the Civil War. On the Confederate side Dougherty not surprisingly asserts that Robert E. Lee learned the value of reconnaissance, flank attacks, and battlefield audacity from Scott in Mexico. It was the latter quality, audacity, that differentiated Scott from Taylor and later differentiated Lee from Meade, and thus it was the key ingredient that separated...

The Social and Cultural Dynamics of Soldiering in Hood's Texas Brigade

JUST BEFORE THE START OF THE BLOODY PENINSULA CAMPAIGN OF JUNE 1862, the soldiers of the Fourth Texas Infantry Regiment purchased a horse for General John Bell Hood, commander of what came to be known as Hood's Texas Brigade. Later, as the regiment assembled at dress parade, First Sergeant J. M. Bookman presented the horse to General Hood. Sir: In behalf of the non-commissioned officers and privates ..., I present you this war-horse. He selected and purchased by us for this purpose, not that we hoped by so doing to court your favor, but simply because we, as freemen and Texans, claim the ability to discern, and the right to reward, merit wherever it may be found. In you, sir, we recognize the soldier and the gentleman. In you we have found a leader whom we are proud to follow--a commander whom it is a pleasure to obey; and this horse we tender as a slight testimonial of our admiration. Moved by this gesture of deference and respect from his men, General Hood sprang into the saddle and promised to act as their rallying point when the struggle came.(1) These Texas soldiers--who soon earned a reputation as the toughest combat troops in Robert E. Lee's fabled Army of Northern Virginia--did not always behave so deferentially toward officers. In fact, when the Texas regiments came to Virginia, they clashed frequently with the Confederate government over the authority to select their own regimental and staff officers. men of the Texas regiments claimed the right to veto any appointment that proved unacceptable to them. Fourth Texas Regiment, for instance, refused to accept the assignment of Colonel R. T. P. Allen to lead their unit. He had been in camp for only a short while when several soldiers hoisted Allen onto his horse, and using switches, drove him out of the regimental grounds amid the hoots and jeers of the boys; and he was never seen again.(2) This study examines the social and cultural dynamics of leadership, command, and soldiering in Hood's Texas Brigade for clues to unravel the broader enigma of the antebellum southern social structure, particularly with regard to the place and status of plain folk, yeoman farmers, and other non-elite whites. Much of the literature about the antebellum South hinges on the long-standing debate over whether the Old South an elitist slaveholding aristocracy or an agrarian plain-folk democracy.(3) drift of many recent studies has been toward synthesis, arguing that antebellum society represented a hybrid of hierarchy and equality.(4) However, even studies that recognize the complexity and paradoxes of this society fall short as social history, because the class dynamic that they advance to link elite and commoner, rich and poor, is too one-sided. planters' hegemony is a given. The nonslaveholder, according to one historian, was in a very passive, dependent position vis-a-vis the planter.(5) Studies based on the so-called republican synthesis also tend to infer yeoman values and ideas from the language and behavior of political elites; consequently, the social relation is seen from the top down, the capacity of plain folk to form their own lives is shortchanged, and thus the truly dynamic, interactive, and relational nature of power in the antebellum South has not been fully understood.(6) common soldiers of Hood's Texas Brigade fought the Civil War mainly on their own terms, defending and justifying their right to do so by drawing on a unique mix of ideological and cultural resources. Their conduct as soldiers combined beliefs about popular sovereignty and natural liberty with backcountry shaming rituals of social control, like the charivari, that were used to hold privates and officers alike to particular standards of conduct defined by the volunteer soldiers themselves. This essay examines how popular constitutional ideas and traditional forms of community action affected the performance of one of the elite fighting units in the Army of Northern Virginia. …

"A Gentleman and an Officer": A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War

In 1861, James B. Griffin left Edgefield, South Carolina and rode off to Virginia to take up duty with the Confederate Army in a style that befitted a Southern gentleman: on a fine-blooded horse, with two slaves to wait on him, two trunks, and his favorite hunting dog. He was thirty-five years old, a wealthy planter, and the owner of sixty-one slaves when he joined Wade Hampton's elite Legion as a major of cavalry. He left behind seven children, the eldest only twelve, and a wife who was eight and a half months pregnant. As a field officer in a prestigious unit, the opportunities for fame and glory seemed limitless. Griffin, however, performed no daring acts, nor did he inspire great loyalty in his men. Instead, he unknowingly provided a unique and invaluable portrait of the Confederate officers who formed the core of Southern political, military, and business leadership. In A Gentleman and an Officer, Judith N. McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton have collected eighty of Griffin's letters written at the Virginia front, and during later postings on the South Carolina coast, to his wife Leila Burt Griffin. Extraordinary in their breadth and volume, the letters encompass Griffin's entire Civil War service, detailing living conditions and military maneuvers, the jockeying for position among officers, and the different ways officers and enlisted men interacted during the Civil War. Unlike the reminiscences and biographies of high-ranking, well-known Confederate officers or studies and edited collections of letters of members of the rank and file, this collection sheds light on the life of a middle officer--a life turned upside down by extreme military hardship and complicated further by the continuing need for reassurance about personal valor and status common to men of the southern gentry. In these letters, Griffin describes secret troop movements in various military actions such as the Hampton Legion's role in the Peninsula Campaign (details that would certainly have been censored in more recent wars). Here he relates the march from Manassas to Fredricksburg, the siege of Yorktown and the retreat to Richmond, and the fighting at Eltham's landing and Seven Pines, where Griffin commanded the legion after Hampton was wounded. Throughout, as Griffin recounts these most extraordinary of times, he illuminates the most ordinary of day-to-day issues. One might expect to find a Confederate officer meditating on slavery, emancipation, or Lincoln. Instead, we are confronted by simple humanity and simple concerns, from the weather to gossip. Monumental historical events intruded on Griffin's life and sent him off to war, but his heartfelt considerations were about his family, his community, and his own personal pride. Ultimately, Griffin's letters present the Civil War as the refinery, the ordeal by fire, that tested and verified--or modified--Southern upperclass values. With a fascinating combination of military and social history, A Gentleman and an Officer moves from the beginning of the Civil War at Fort Sumter through the end of the war and Reconstruction, vividly illustrating how the issues of the Civil War were at once devastatingly national and revealingly local.

Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse, and Spy: A Woman's Adventures in the Union Army

Among the hundreds of women who, in disguise, enlisted to serve as men in the Union army, only Sarah Edmonds is known to have written a memoir recounting her experiences. As Franklin Thompson she joined the 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment in 1861, then fought in and witnessed some of the bloodiest struggles of the Civil War - from Blackburn's Ford and First Bull Run, through the Peninsula campaign with McClellan's Army of the Potomac, the battle of Fredericksburg, and then to the Kentucky campaign in 1863. When need arose, this woman embarked upon dangerous missions into Confederate territory to gather information and to survey enemy positions, sometimes in the guise of an Irish washerwoman or slave. As an infantry soldier and male nurse, Sarah Edmonds chronicles the horrors of Civil War hospitals and the simple pastimes of camp life. Throughout her memoirs, this storyteller reveals her courage, dedication to the Union, and resourcefulness in sustaining her complicated masquerade.

Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond.

Joseph E. Johnston and Defense of Richmond. By Steven H. Newton. Modern War Studies. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 1998, Pp. xiv, 278. $29.95, ISBN 0-7006-0921-0.) Few of his contemporaries ever questioned Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's abilities as a soldier. After Civil War, James Longstreet characterized him as the most accomplished and capable of southern generals (p. 4). Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson regarded his fellow Virginian with great respect. A number of officers who served with Johnston considered him equal of any including Robert E. Lee, in art of warfare. Yet man never has been regarded as one of war's great captains. He was forced to share credit for victory at First Manassas, and subsequently he won no great battles of his own. Lee, not Johnston, is credited with ultimate success of southern arms in Peninsula campaign. Johnston oversaw Confederate debacle at Vicksburg, and his policy of retreat to Atlanta resulted in his removal from command. Almost from beginning of war to end, he quarreled with President Jefferson Davis and other government officials over issues both trivial and important. In many respects, he resembled one of his chief opponents, George B. McClellan, who held such promise but produced so little. Steven H. Newton concedes faults attributed to Johnston, but he argues that general's performance in months prior to his near fatal wounding at Seven Pines deserves reexamination. For example, historians such as Douglas Southall Freeman, Clifford Dowdey, and Robert G. Tanner have overlooked and misinterpreted significance of early stages of campaign for Richmond in 1862 and concentrated more on emergence of Lee and dramatic Seven Days battles. As a result, he contends, scholars have not given Johnston credit that he deserves for contributing to a significant strategic victory for South and saving Confederate capital. The Rebel commander's achievement is all more remarkable considering difficult circumstances under which he worked. As Newton points out, Johnston had to contend with constant meddling from Davis and Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin. His relationship with Lee, who held title of commanding general, was complex and often confusing as it related to chain of command. More than once, Johnston received mixed messages from Lee and president, making it difficult to determine his next course of action. The army that he led had not developed a solid command structure of divisions and corps, and many of his unit commanders were incompetent. …

Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS263 "Ugie" Allen, a young, prosperous planter from west-central Georgia, volunteered for Confederate service in spring 1861 and was appointed second lieutenant in a company that became part of the 21st Georgia Infantry. Until his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, Allen served in Virginia and wrote more than 130 letters home, mostly to his wife, Susie. Though capably edited by Randall Allen and Keith Bohannon, it must be said that the writings offer more than enough dull commentary on routine or personal matters. The author himself was aware of this, either because he lacked epistolary talent ("you know my facilities for writing are frequently very poor" [153-54]), or because he was often rushed ("who can write anything more than mere generalities when everything is in a figit" [134]), or because he just lacked vim ("too lazy to write, too lazy to even think, too lazy to do anything but eat and scratch" [170]). When Allen rises above these shortcomings, though, the result is truly noteworthy . In camp he writes of the prevalence of lice, shortage of shoes, and shocking manners at mess ("it is quite common to see a person wipe his knife on his boot and commence eating" [91]). There is a glimpse or two of Stonewall Jackson, ajudgement of Gen. Dick Ewell as "one of these crabed dispeptic kind of fellows" (145), and a fine story of D. H. Hill, who punished a soldier for duplicitously capturing a Yankee (and released theYank). He confessed his feelings , too: fear under first fire in March 1862; longing to be home (amid dreams of lovemaking with his wife), and remorselessly shooting Yankees like ducks, but showing compassion to a wounded enemy. Promoted to captain in May 1862, Allen fought under Jackson at Cross Keys, Gaines'Mill, CedarMountain, Sharpsburg, andFredericksburg, buthis limited observations onthese battles arenotvery illuminating. More memorablearehis commentaries on the humbuggery of military glory which was, he sniffed, "the dream of the enthusiast, fit only to be disapated by a simple night march or bomb" (180). On the whole, however, these glints of insight and interest are far too infrequent to rescue Ugie Allen's letters from a dreary blandness. Of course, it is a matter of taste whether this correspondence would have profited from publication in a shorter, more excerpted format. One should not go so far as to generalize from Allen's own criticism of his missive of September 23, 1862: "You will find this a remarkably stupid epistle" (166). When he added, "but I hope it is better than none," he conceived a rather bleak but not altogether unfitting characterization of his letters home. Stephen Davis Oglethorpe University Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson. Edited by J. Gregory Acken. Forward by Edwin C. Bearss. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1998. Pp. xii, 500. $34.95.) Upon hearing of Fort Sumter's surrender, twenty-one-year-old Francis Adams Donaldson left his job as a Philadelphia shipping clerk to help raise what 264CIVIL WAR HISTORY became the ist California (later 71st Pennsylvania) Volunteer Infantry. In that regiment's first engagement, the ignominious Union defeat at Ball's Bluff, he was captured and spent the next three and a half months as a prisoner of war in Richmond. Exchanged in early 1 862, Donaldson returned to his regiment and received two promotions, to sergeant major and then to second lieutenant. Assigned to the 2d Corps, the California Regiment served throughout the Peninsula Campaign, but Lt. Donaldson took a minié ball in the arm at Fair Oaks and was sent home to recover. During his convalescence, the 71st Pennsylvania dropped five of its fifteen original companies; having recovered from his wound, Donaldson unhappily became a casualty of that reorganization. When directors ofthe Philadelphia Corn Exchange raised a new regiment, the 1 1 8th Pennsylvania , the boyish-looking combat veteran became one of its company commanders . Assigned to the 5th Corps, the 11 8th Pennsylvania was blooded at Shepherdstown, Virginia, during Lee's retreat from Antietam and remained with theArmy ofthe Potomac until war's end. Donaldson saw action at Shepherdstown, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Rappahannock Station, and Mine Run...

The United States Marine Corps. in the Civil War—The Second Year (review)

324civil war history until more than two hundred pages of stories later, in the epilogue, does Lowry address this "most remarkable finding" (222) of the study. Because a full regiment had roughly 900 privates and one colonel, he says, there ought to have been about 18 colonels court-martialed in a study of 16,044 privates of the courts-martial under study. Instead, 105 colonels and 71 lieutenant colonels were court-martialed. Lowry offers several explanations for this excess ofcourtmartialed colonels. One, a "statistical problem" (224) stemming from the theoretical size of a regiment and the steady decline in actual size, undermines the "finding." So, colonels might not have more misbehaving at all, but investigating regimental sizes is beyond the scope of his study. This kind of speculation instead of analysis characterizes the book. It does, however, complement Lowry's interest in human nature and human foibles— the metapurpose. There are thirty-two pages of introduction, epilogue, and appendices and 207 pages of descriptive stories. The discrepancy suggests that this study of courts-martial might have been better presented as a speculative article posing hypotheses with samples from the first cases. The "findings" could then emerge as a book after detailed analysis of the completed index. Lowry asserts that this study of "military discipline" opens a "whole new avenue into our understanding of that great war" (8). That remains to be seen. Francis N. Stites San Diego State University The UnitedStates Marine Corps, in the Civil War—The Second Year. By David M. Sullivan. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing, 1997. Pp. xii,373. $40.00.) The second volume of Sullivan's account of the U.S. Marine Corps during the Civil War describes the activities of Marines from the beginning of 1861 to the middle of 1862. Sullivan covers their role in the Peninsula Campaign, the Mississippi Campaign, and in river and blockade actions. He also devotes chapters to the court martial of one of the Corps' senior officers, the problems created by wartime expansion, enlisted life, and musicians. This is an extremely detailed chronological narrative. During the Civil War the Marine Corps was small, expanding from less than two thousand to just over three thousand men. They served in small detachments on board ships and guarding naval bases. This meant that there were no real Marine operations during the war; instead, Marines played a minor, secondary role in navy and, occasionally, army operations. This is reflected in Sullivan's account, which is mainly achronicleofskirmishes andthe actions ofMarine detachments in larger battles. Sullivan makes no effort to draw conclusions from his material and does not include either an introduction or a conclusion. This is not a major drawback in the sections covering military operations, but the other chapters would have benefitted from some analysis. The chapter on music, for instance, largely consists of a list ofconcerts and casualties. Still, a picture ofthe Marine Corps does book reviews325 emerge. While small, the Corps provided useful service. The ability of ship's guards to maintain order was important to the rapidly expanding U.S. Navy. Marines seem to have been particularly useful for countering snipers and forming small landing parties during the river and coastal blockade operations which formed the bulk of the navy's activities. Marine officers were quick to take offense and prone to petty squabbles. Sullivan includes nearly two hundred illustrations, photographs, and maps. Most ofthese consist ofpictures from contemporary popular histories and posed studio photographs.All ofthe maps are reproductions ofcontemporary sketches and maps. While of historical interest, the maps are not linked to the text and do little to clarify the often confusing descriptions of operations. This is an exhaustively researched book. Sullivan seems to have read every letter, diary, and report written by or about Marines, and quoted most at length. This is a boon to the researcher, but it makes for a plodding, repetitive narrative. Sullivan also assumes that his reader is intimately familiar with the Marine Corps during this period. For example, on the first page and numerous subsequent pages Sullivan refers to "Harris" but does not mention that this was Col. John Harris, the Commandant ofthe Marine Corps, until page 49. It would...

Bridge Building in Wartime: Colonel Wesley Brainerd's Memoir of the 50 th New York Volunteer Engineers (review)

book reviews245 persuasively the theory that Texas had lost its statehood by its act of secession. His last years were spent working for the Masons. Walter L. Brown's dissertation, nearly fifty years old and hard to find, has long been the standard source for studying all of the angles of Pike's career. An old-fashioned, life and times study, it offers few psychological insights into the career of man much given to 1 80 degree shifts. An enthusiastic Confederate who was arrested for treason, a Know-Nothing who abandoned the party on the eve of the 1 856 election, and a Whig who left them at a critical time, Pike was a large, morose, brooding, and often unhappy person whose devoted friends were matched by those for whom his name was anathema. This volume will not settle the issue of who Albert Pike was, but it will, for the first time, detail what and where he was, which, because he happened to be on the main stage ofAmerican history at some very critical times, is an event of considerable importance. The book is illustrated by pictures of Pike and his contemporaries and contains a list of related publications that appeared in book or pamphlet form. Michael B. Dougan Arkansas State University Bridge Building in Wartime: Colonel Wesley Brainerd's Memoir ofthe50fh New York Volunteer Engineers. Edited by Ed Malles. (Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press, 1997. Pp. xxii, 415. $45.00.) Wesley Brainerd's memoir is a vivid narrative by an engineering officer in the Volunteer Engineering Brigade of the Army of the Potomac, covering his service from the Peninsula campaign to the eve of Petersburg. Brainerd began his memoir in 1 870 for the purpose of leaving a record for his son, which may in part account for the moral parables around which the author reveals himself as a représentative nineteenth century moralist on issues of character, honor and duty. At one level his story is a record of how these virtues combined with hard work and common sense turned a volunteer regiment into an efficient unit capable of heroic acts. Along the way Brainerd holds the reader with some of the more absorbing stories of flawed character to be found in any Civil War memoir. More significantly, the memoir, which was written from diaries, is rich in detail ranging over many facets ofthe war. Though accounts of bridge building are but a limited part ofthe story, they provide a good sense both of engineering detail and the living experience of bridge building during military operations. There is a rivetting account of the near suicidal effort to build the pontoon bridge atFredericksburg while exposed to the fire ofsharpshooters.And Brainerd eventually would contribute an essay, "The Pontoniers of Fredericksburg" to the Century Magazine series later published as Battles and Leaders ofthe Civil War. Brainerd's observation on theory was that the military engineer needed only Mahan's Fortification and Duane's Manual for Engineer Troops. Regrettably 246CIVIL WAR HISTORY there is little discussion of his involvement in entrenching activity, though there is good observation of trench warfare. With respect to the changing nature of warfare there also is passing reference without detail to the introduction ofAlfred Myer's new signals system. Brianerd's unit also fell victim to the Confederate use of landmines to obstruct the approach to Yorktown and had the task of cleaning them out. His description ofthe fighting from theWildnemess through Spotsylvania and the horror of Cold Harbor is a worthy addition to eye witness accounts ofthese brutal episodes in the history ofwar. The reader leaves Brainerd with regret when his memoir abruptly ends as the Army of the Potomac approaches Petersburg. Brainerd's description of battle is complemented by vivid description of the army as a mass of men, animals, and equipment breaking camp and on the march. There is an especially good description of the camp at Rappahannock Station in 1 864. Brainerd also had some contact with the generals who led the Army of the Potomac, and in one useful observation projects a sense of the charisma surrounding George B. McClellan.The military accounts are enhanced by vignettes on the social life...

The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Trials 1871-1872 (review)

book reviews269 portant region. Through eleven chapters Mills recounts such familiar stories as the 1 86 1 Baltimore riots, the clash between the Monitor and Merrimack, and McClellan's Peninsula campaign. But many lesser-known events are also included , and Mills's work provides a sense of the intrigue that surrounded the Bay. There are many accounts of Confederate spies, smugglers, and blockade runners, and Mills seems to include nearly all the major naval engagements that occurred on the waters of the Chesapeake. This is a colorful and somewhat romanticized history. The simple question Mills addresses is "What happened on the Chesapeake?" This is unfortunate, as this book thus misses an opportunity to provide a deeper understanding of the Bay's significance to both sides. While the region was clearly a tricky area for the Union, since Southern sympathizers dominated the Chesapeake, Mills's narrative never indicates just how Northern strategists planned to pacify the Bay. And while the book is richly illustrated with photos and sketches, the frequent references to geographical locations begs for the inclusion of maps far more detailed than those provided. The colorful narrative is also the strength of this book. The popular audience should enjoy the engaging, albeit somewhat melodramatic, prose. While Mills sticks close to military and naval events, he still gives a good sense of the civilian experience. As in other border states, the Chesapeake region was dangerous territory for both sides. Mills aptly conveys this aspect of the war, particularly in bitterly divided Baltimore. This lively account can provide an introduction to the Chesapeake in the war years. A fuller understanding, however, will have to come from somewhere else. The source material is drawn from too narrow a pool, consisting mostly of older pieces from popular magazines, and does not include some important recent scholarship. Barbara Fields's seminal work on slavery in Maryland, for example, includes descriptions of the region during the war that could have made this a far more insightful account of this important theater of the war. Richard D. Loosbrock University of New Mexico The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Trials 1871-1872. By Lou Falkner Williams. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Pp. xiii, 197. $35.00.) In November 1 870, after economic coercion, political campaigning, and localized violence had failed to derail Reconstruction, upcountry South Carolina whites turned to the Ku Klux Klan. Night riders drew upon the antebellum slave patrol experience as well as wartime lessons to terrify white and black Republicans, including women as well as men, for nearly a year. Klansmen burned, whipped, raped, and killed with the widespread support of most whites and the local authorities as well. Unable to stop Klan violence at the local level, Governor Robert K. Scott called on the federal government for help. Congress 270CIVIL WAR HISTORY responded with the EnforcementActs; empowered by the third act, President U. S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the region and sent in troops. Mass arrests followed. Although most Klan leaders had fled, Attorney General Amos T. Akerman was determined to prosecute the rest. Between November 1 87 1 andApril 1872, several Klansmen were convicted ofcrimes and dozens of others pleaded guilty. The Klan was broken in South Carolina. Lou Falkner Williams, in this first monograph on the trials, views those federal convictions as hollow victories in a lost war. At the beginning, she maintains , the Justice Department was determined not only to root out the Klan, but also "to establish a broad nationalization ofblack civil and political rights" (60) by establishing the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment had nationalized the Bill of Rights, especially the Second and Fourth Amendments. So empowered , the federal government could actively protect the civil rights offreedpeople. Akerman and prosecutor David T. Corbin, however, were thwarted at every turn. Conservative and crippling rulings were handed down by the Fourth Federal Circuit Court. Attempts to obtain favorable Supreme Court decisions were frustrated by Akerman's replacement, Grant crony George H. Williams, who also halted prosecutions in 1873. Despite dozens of convictions, "the federal government's most sustained effort to provide positive civil and political rights for black citizens ended with no substantial constitutional gains...

"Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!" The Safety of Washington and the Peninsula Campaign

"Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!" The Safety of Washington and the Peninsula Campaign

In the Shadows of Grant and Sherman: George B. McClellan Revisited

In the Shadows of Grant and Sherman: George B. McClellan Revisited Thomas J. Rowland It stands in metallic silence, impassive to the decades of commercial and residential growth that engulfs it. The statue, like the person it honors, presents a host of perplexing paradoxes. Although visible, the equestrian model remains difficult, almost hazardous, to approach, its access constrained by two major District of Columbia arteries. Much like the man, the memorial rests on an island awash in a sea of confusion. It stands aloof and distant from most other prominent Civil War statuary. Curiously, it marks testimony to a leader who "shielded" the Union from collapse, yet it adorns no rotary circle , graces no park or mall, commands no prominent city square as more and less heralded contemporaries do. Almost by accident will tourists chance to notice it. Its peculiar location reinforces the ambiguity besetting the one who created and first led the Army of the Potomac. And in a final touch of irony, the statue is flanked by such an irregular grid of street construction as to give rise to the amusing, if not judgmental, chestnut that the general was provided three avenues of retreat but only one for advance. Fittingly, both the statue and the man, George Brinton McClellan, strike an enigmatic pose.' Turning to the McClellan historiography, one finds little to dispel the riddle . Early McClellan biographies are generally tainted with either panegyric or vitriol. Alternately vilified as traitor and coward by some or praised as patriot and genius by others, a sober and objective assessment becomes impossible . Recent scholarship focusing on his contemporaries, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and even Abraham Lincoln, has tended to sweep ' The McClellan memorial is situated two miles north of the Mali and is framed by the convergence ofConnecticut Avenue, Columbia Road, and California Street. By comparison. Grant's memorial rests immediately west of the Capitol, while Sherman 's is just behind the Treasury Building, flanked by the White House. For details on the McClellan statuary, see Mildred Baruch and Ellen Eckman, CiVi/ War Monuments (Washington, D.C.: Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1978), 24. Civil War History, Vol. XL, No. 3, © 1994 by The Kent State University Press GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN REVISITED203 McClellan into the background. In suppressing the controversy, historians of the second half of the twentieth century have forged a characteristic figure of the man. In finding McClellan's military career essentially an unsuccessful one, they have tended to agree with T. Harry Williams's verdict that McClellan was "not a good general, was even a bad one." Bruce Catton found him to have "all of the virtues necessary in a war except one—he did not like to fight." Kenneth P. Williams blithely dismissed McClellan as the antithesis of a military leader by refusing to consider him a "real general." And while his judgment of McClellan as a "vain and unstable man who sat a horse well" rings somewhat truthfully, Williams distorts McClellan's active military ambitions in claiming he "wanted to be President."2 McClellan remains the "problem child" of the Civil War because his military performance still invites debate. If not a winner, he was not exactly a loser. He is admitted by nearly all historians to be the competent organizer and administrator of an army that had been shattered at First Bull Run. Some point out that, unlike Grant, McClellan had taken on the Confederacy when it was young and strong. Others have seized upon Robert E. Lee's verdict that of all Federal commanders he faced, McClellan was his most difficult adversary . Warren Hassler and James G. Randall speculated that had McClellan's efforts in the Peninsula campaign not been undercut by an antagonistic administration , he might have taken Richmond and convinced the Confederacy of the futility of a protracted war. All of this might have been accomplished nearly three years before Grant finally cornered Lee in about the same location.3 There are formidable obstacles to surmount in approaching McClellan objectively . Joseph Harsh has astutely observed that the more negative appraisals of McClellan became increasingly solidified in the face of a growing acceptance of what he termed the...

For Country, Cause and Leader: The Civil War Journal of Charles B. Haydon (review)

I76CIVIL WAR HISTORY as William J. Cooper, Jr. , points out in an informative introduction, the artist took pains to express "the universality of the soldier's experience." Actually, Thirty Years After is less a memoir than an account, set down in eighty short vignettes, of how a major army functioned in the field. In "Army Bread," "The Army Herd," and "Roadside Refreshment" Forbes details the daunting task of providing bread, beef, and water for tens of thousands on the march, while in "The Drummer Boy," "The Army Blacksmith," "Crossing the Pontoons ," and "The Supply Trains" he pays his sincere respect to the ranks of specialized support personnel who helped keep the fighting man on the move. Forbes's text is always interesting and often witty, as in his characterization of the always-hungry Union soldier as "a kind of traveling human locust dressed in faded blue." One appreciates also the humorous description in both word and picture of the steps involved in shoeing a spirited mule by trussing it up and holding its ears to the ground. There are chillier moments as well: in "Re-forming the Line" infantrymen in a straight line stretching toward the horizon prepare to deliver—and take—another volley over the nearby stretched-out bodies of their dead comrades; and in "The Crime of Desertion" a firing squad is set to send another kind of volley into four blindfolded men seated on their coffins. But, like most Civil War art and memoirs, Forbes's pictures and essays deal with the sunnier moments of the soldier's life. Homer's Civil War drawings and paintings have, with good reason, recently received extensive scholarly attention, and Waud's wartime artwork has been the subject of a handsome monograph. This striking facsimile republication of Forbes's magnum opus is a praiseworthy addition to the literature on Civil War art. Ben Bassham Kent State University For Country, Cause and Leader: The Civil War Journal of Charles B. Haydon . Edited by Stephen W. Sears. (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1993. Pp. xvii, 371. $25.00.) Throughout his military service, Charles B. Haydon kept a journal, written in some twenty pocket diaries and sent in installments to his home in Michigan. These diaries are reproduced here, judiciously edited by Civil War scholar Stephen W. Sears, who has wisely removed family gossip and other ephemera to leave the body of Haydon's relevant observations intact. Haydon enlisted on April 22, 1861 , during the rush to the colors following Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call to arms. He witnessed the first Bull Run offensive , the building of the Army of the Potomac, the Peninsula campaign, the events surrounding second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. Early in 1863 his regiment, the 2d Michigan, was transferred to the West, where it did duty in Kentucky and at Vicksburg under U. S. Grant. Haydon was severely BOOK REVIEWSI77 wounded in Mississippi, and, understandably, his journal entries become sporadic after that point. In March 1864, weakened by wounds and exposure, he contracted pneumonia and died in the Cincinnati Military Hospital. He had risen from sergeant to lieutenant colonel. Although he saw a good deal of the war, Haydon's diary is not most useful for its view of great battles. Because he served mainly at junior grades, he was not privy to command decisions, and his depictions of major events are often incomplete, compounded of limited eyewitness observations, camp gossip, and guesswork. He was on the periphery at first Bull Run and Fredericksburg and missed Antietam completely. Haydon is at his best in describing the everyday texture of army life. He was an unusually educated man for his rank, having spent four years at the University of Michigan before entering the legal profession. In camp, he read the Atlantic Monthly and the latest works by Charles Dickens. He also had a flinty intellectual integrity, a determination to record all of what he saw. The book gives a fine account of the life of a company officer struggling to impose drill and discipline, feeling the stress of responsibility, appreciating the compensations of small camp comforts and comradeship. The author graphically describes the misery of picket-line duty during the...