Reviewed by: A Yankee Regiment in Confederate Louisiana: The 31st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Gulf South by Larry Lowenthal Christopher Stacey A Yankee Regiment in Confederate Louisiana: The 31st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Gulf South. By Larry Lowenthal. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. Pp. xviii, 338. $48.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7190-5.) The Thirty-first Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry endured numerous experiences typical of Civil War regiments, including fierce combat, guerrilla warfare, intense boredom, diseases, and soldiering in an unforgivable climate and environment. For most of its existence, the unit served in the Department of the Gulf and fought in some of the most notable battles and campaigns of the trans-Mississippi theater. As Larry Lowenthal argues in A Yankee Regiment in Confederate Louisiana: The 31st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Gulf South, politics and military intrigue served as the impetus for the establishment of the Thirty-first Massachusetts. Knowing that he would need the support of northern Democrats to wage a successful war against the Confederacy, President Abraham Lincoln granted General Benjamin F. Butler the authority to raise six regiments. The author avers that Lincoln issued this authorization to avoid placing the controversial Butler in a position of high command. Lincoln's granting Butler the right to raise several regiments in Massachusetts set up a recruiting feud between Butler and the Republican governor, John A. Andrew. Men from all parts of the state and various socioeconomic backgrounds volunteered to serve and were trained at Camp Chase and Camp Seward in the winter of 1861–1862. In February 1862, Lincoln ended the ongoing feud between Butler and Andrew by awarding Butler command of the newly established Department of the Gulf, where the Thirty-first served during the entire war. The regiment departed its home state not long thereafter, landing at Ship Island, Mississippi, establishing a reoccurring theme dominating the regiment's vast experiences: dealing with the weather, geography, and flora and fauna of the Gulf South. Soldiers of the Thirty-first bemoaned the heat, sand, mosquitos, and violent thunderstorms. Before the unit battled Confederate soldiers, they endured the harsh environment of the Gulf South. The regiment was the first to enter New Orleans after its fall and began its first stint as part of an occupying Union force. In the spring of 1863, the regiment experienced its first taste of serious combat in the siege of Port Hudson. As in most Civil War regiments, Union and Confederate, diseases killed more soldiers of the Thirty-first than combat. Before participating in the Red River campaign in the spring and summer of 1864, the regiment was converted to cavalry. This conversion emerged from a demand for more mounted soldiers to cover and reconnoiter the large amount of ground encompassing the trans-Mississippi theater. As with other infantry [End Page 168] regiments converted to cavalry, the men of the Thirty-first were given mounts while keeping their long arms, ergo making them mounted infantry, often referred to as "dismounted cavalry" when leaving their horses for battle (p. 175). The unit participated in a litany of large and small combat operations in the Red River campaign. After the Red River campaign and the fallout from its failures, the regiment got a much-needed furlough; it was shipped back to Louisiana, where it engaged in several small-scale guerrilla war engagements in the summer of 1864 through February 1865. The Thirty-first spent the remainder of the war garrisoned in New Orleans again and as a tangential part of the last campaign of the Civil War to capture Mobile, Alabama. The regiment was in Mobile conducting provost duties when the war ended. Lowenthal's book draws from a wealth of archival sources, a treasure trove that inspired the author to write this history. The book is arranged chronologically, blending a narrative month-to-month account with context of the war's larger events. It also includes accounts from leaders and the rank and file describing the day-to-day life of a soldier in the Union army in the Gulf South. This fine volume could serve as a model for future scholars wishing to produce similar scholarly Civil War regimental...