Civil War NewsVol. 42, No. 3 48 Pages, April 2016$3.00

Battlefield Of Franklin Land Preservation PurchaseBy GreGory L. Wade

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — What is considered the bloodiest acreage in the Nov. 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin is now being reclaimed as part of the evolving Carter Hill Battlefield Park. Local preservation leaders recently closed on a $2.8 million purchase from owners Reid and Brenda Lovell after a months-long process of coordinating various funding sources for the critical 1.6 acres that adjoin the Carter House, a major battle landmark.

Details were recently provided at a press conference led by Franklin’s Charge board member Julian Bibb, who praised the “remarkable tran-sition” of the Franklin battlefield. Franklin’s Charge is a coalition of civic and preservation groups who joined together more than ten years ago to purchase local battleground.

Over 150 years ago the Army of Tennessee stepped off in a series of charges to be virtually destroyed by Federals under John Schofield in hopes of taking Franklin and later Nashville.

At that time, most of the terrain was open farmland on the outskirts of what was once a small Middle Tennessee farming community. Over time development covered much of the battlefield with houses, light in-dustry, and small businesses.

All that remained of the critical area where the Confederates tem-porarily broke the Federal line was the small farmhouse and a few acres known as the Carter House farm.

The 1.6 acres purchased, which adjoin the southern boundary of the Carter House property, is comprised of two lots. Today, they are occupied by a flower shop and other structures

that were turned over to the City of Franklin Parks Department by Franklin’s Charge and the Battle of Franklin’s Trust (BOFT), managers of the Carter House the nearby Carn-ton Plantation. The structures will be removed in coming months, possibly relocated for other use.

The purchase is only the latest step in a long and arduous effort to re-build the Franklin battlefield.

“It had to be a miracle,” quipped Civil War Trust (CWT) President James Lighthizer, referring to the most recent acquisition. Local res-ident Michael Grainger, long time Trust board member and former chairman, said, “Local leadership has been incredible and will contin-ue to be a partner [with the CWT].”

In 2005, after years of frustration attempting to preserve Franklin bat-tleground, local preservationists de-cided it would have to be done the hard way, by buying properties, of-ten with buildings on them.

The largest parcel of land was originally a local golf course slated to be sold to a developer to build houses on what was the right flank of the Confederate attack north to-ward the Federal lines just south of the town.

It was then that Franklin’s Charge came into existence. Funds have been raised for the $5 million pur-chase from private donors, the CWT, the City of Franklin and others. That 110-acre segment, now fully inter-preted and known as the Eastern Flank Battlefield, is what got the preservation ball rolling in Franklin.

Since that time nine other parcels in proximity to the Carter House have been purchased and have been, or will be, turned over to the Frank-

Franklin Alderman Michael Skinner, left, and Franklin Charge Board member Ernie Bacon attended the Franklin press conference.

Franklin Charge leader Julian Bibb speaks at the Lovell purchase closing. (Gregory L. Wade photos)

Battle of Franklin. 1891 print by Kurz and Allison. Restoration by Adam Cuerden. (Library of Congress)

lin Parks Department, according to Bibb.

But it was the land just south of the Carter House, long considered the most bloodied ground in Franklin, and some say in America, that was the most coveted.

BOFT Chief Executive Officer Eric Jacobson noted, “to not have this ground reclaimed and preserved, would be like having Omaha Beach cut out of Normandy.”

The most recent acquisition evolved when Franklin’s Charge and the BOFT began discussions with the Lovells, who have a strong sense of the history of the land, having grown up in Franklin.

“I was born and raised in Frank-lin on ground many believe should have been a national park,” said Reid Lovell. He recalled when visitors came to town and had to envision what happened, not walk on ground where it transpired.

“My great-grandfather, who fought here, and my parents would be proud of what we are doing here today,” he said at the press conference.

The Franklin Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted unanimously in February to fund part of the remaining debt on the Lovell property purchase. The previously saved plots, valued at $6.8 million, are being transferred to the city in exchange for $1.08 million to be paid by the city on a non-interest basis over seven years.

These funds will cover the balance now bridged by a local bank and will be derived from the city’s hotel-mo-tel tax. Local banker Chuck Isaacs was instrumental in working out the loans. All the city funds are allotted as well as a donation of $25,000 by his employer, First Farmers and Merchants Bank.

A $1.3 million grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) was a major piece of the

funding and the most complex, according to Bibb.

“With help from city officials, the Civil War Trust and others at the ABPP, we got it done,” Bibb noted. Other funding came from private do-nors including local Civil War Trust board member Grainger, who has been involved with other national preservation efforts.

Representatives of Save the Frank-lin Battlefield, the oldest battlefield

preservation group in Franklin who for years advocated the possibility of a battleground park, attended the signing of official documents and “have been with us every step,” said Bibb.

The site interpretation work will be led by representatives of the Ten-nessee Civil War National Heritage

Inside this issue:

23 – Black Powder, White Smoke24 – Book Reviews33 – Critics Corner36 – Events Section

11 – The Source 8 – Through The Lens10 – Treasures From The Museum14 – The Watchdog

H Franklin. . . . . . . . . . . see page 4

24 Civil War News April 2016

– reviews of civil war books –

The 116: The True Story of Abraham Lincoln’s Lost Guard. By James P. Muehlberger. Illustrat-ed, photos, map, timeline, bibliog-raphy, appendices, notes, index, 446 pp., Ankerwycke, www.shopaba.org, $24.95.

Just when you think that everything has been written about Abraham Lin-coln, another obscure subject comes to light. This is the history of first responders, The Frontier Guards, a group of Kansas veterans who came to the aid of Abraham Lincoln and defended the capital from Confeder-ate attack in the earliest stages of the Civil War.

This book lucidly describes the unit’s history and the activities of its leader, James Lane of Kansas. It details their performance in “Bleed-ing Kansas” and the efforts made to deceive the Confederacy into not at-tacking Washington City at its most vulnerable time.

Although the text is only about 200 pages, the book contains considerable information on their activities and

Redeeming the Great Emanci-pator. By Allen G. Guelzo. Illus-trated, photos, notes, index, 208 pp., 2016, Harvard, www.hup.harvard.edu, $22.95.

This is the second volume of the Nathan I. Huggins lectures at Har-vard University that I have read. The first, as eminent as this volume, Emancipating Lincoln: The Procla-mation in Text, Context, and Mem-ory by Harold Holzer, examined the impact of Abraham Lincoln’s proc-lamation of freedom at the time it was issued and how its meaning has changed since.

This second contribution eloquent-ly objects to charges of racism and political opportunism levied against Lincoln. The volume originated as the 2012 Huggins lectures.

In recent years, Lincoln’s reputation

Guelzo On Emancipation, Its Relevanceas the “Great Emancipator” has been under attack by historians and others who view his proclamations as political gamesmanship.

Allen Guelzo effectively refutes these allegations and places them in a contemporary framework. He revives the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s reputation as an anti-slavery advocate.

While noting Lincoln’s flaws, including his belief that recently freed blacks were unprepared for full citizenship, Guelzo explores the myths surrounding his proclama-tion. He discusses the relevance of self-emancipation and congressional attempts to take the lead on emanci-pation away from Lincoln.

Guelzo even explores the issue of reparations for slavery. After reading this book (and Holzer’s Emancipat-ing Lincoln), no one will be able to rationally deny Lincoln’s anti-slav-ery sincerity.

Guelzo opines that Lincoln still deserves the title of Great Eman-cipator because he was a positive force for race relations: “Lincoln is a piece of African American history as much as Civil War history; and the fate of African Americans is tied to the fate of all other Americans. In-equality, as William Julius Wilson reminded us, is a problem for blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians together as Americans, as citizens, as friends. For ultimately, we are indeed all in this together.”

The author explains his rationale by making several major points.

First, he explains emancipation’s significance and finds overwhelming evidence that Lincoln was deeply

committed to ending slavery. Care-fully choosing his words, Guelzo contextualizes Lincoln’s statements and character.

He adds that the “problem with our apprehension of Lincoln’s anti-slavery is that he seems to have gone about it in what we would regard as a bafflingly obtuse fashion.” This is because Lincoln did not initially view slavery as primarily a racial is-sue – but one that was political and economic.

Second, Guelzo argues that Lin-coln lacked racial empathy because he was “the wrong man for expres-sions of empathy on almost any sub-ject.” Many, including myself, will disagree with this.

Addressing the controversy sur-rounding demands for reparations for slaves’ descendants, Guelzo states that “reparations” were in fact paid by the gigantic cost of the Civil War in death, suffering and dollars. He says the war’s initial mission was reunification but it changed to both reunification and emancipation during the conflict.

Finally, the author concludes that Lincoln himself readily admitted his dependence on God when he said in 1864, “I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. At the end of three years of struggle the nation’s condi-tion is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.”

This is a first-rate book that de-scribes a major historical event and its relevance today.

Reviewer Frank J. Williams is founding chairman of the Lincoln Forum and author of Lincoln as Hero.

Conspicuous Gallantry: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of James W. King, 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry. Edited by Eric R. Faust. Illustrated, photos, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 304 pp., 2015, Kent State, www.kentstateuniversitypress.com, $45.

James W. King enlisted as a pri-vate in the 11th Michigan infantry in September 1861. Just 19 years old, King began a long correspondence with his future wife, Sarah Jane Bab-cock, whom he affectionately called Jenny.

King’s letters offer richly detailed descriptions of the places he saw, including towns like Louisville

11th Mich. Soldiers During, After Warand the mountainous regions of Tennessee and Georgia. Just like a tourist, King could not resist sitting in “the old armchair presented to [Andrew] Jackson by Washington” when he visited The Hermitage, near Nashville.

Throughout his enlistment King exhibited a strong desire to fight un-til the war was won, and he showed little reluctance to criticize the gen-erals. Don Carlos Buell, in his esti-mation, was a “traitor.”

And when George B. McClellan was relieved of command in Novem-ber 1862, King wrote, “we have tried such generals too long. This stand-still policy I do not believe in, never did. I hope our new leaders will not follow in the tracks of their prede-cessors.”

King’s experiences in the army included a minor engagement with Confederate raider John Hunt Mor-gan, as well as the battles of Mur-freesboro, Chickamauga and Mis-sionary Ridge. “I have seen sights that would make the blood curdle in one’s veins,” he told Jenny.

In some cases he chose not to describe what he saw. But editor Eric Faust wisely included some of King’s most colorful accounts from Charles E. Belknap’s History of the Michigan Organizations at Chicka-mauga, Chattanooga, and Mission-ary Ridge (1897). These include a description of King’s wounding at Missionary Ridge on Nov. 24, 1863.

Throughout the correspondence King often reflected on the terrible-

ness of war; yet he never wavered in his commitment to serve out his enlistment.

Southerners, in his view, had brought this “destruction” on them-selves — and he would see to it that they got what they deserved.

“The monster secession entered the sacred circle,” he wrote of one abandoned home in February 1863. “The home is left to the mercy of the Northern soldier who, to avenge him-self against some brother’s wrong, applies the torch, and the consuming flames speedily do their work…. Ah Jenny there is an awful penalty rest-ing on the heads of the leaders of this rebellion. May each of them meet a traitor’s doom.”

A number of topics arise in King’s letters, including his hatred of Cop-perheads and his views of women. Southern women, he noted, “have one very bad habit, and that is nearly all use tobacco & snuff to excess.”

When Jenny apparently suggest-ed that women might serve in the military, he replied that their nature was “an embodiment of peace and gentleness” and that women were “not fitted to pass through the trying scares which war always brings.”

But when Jenny told him that she had been learning to farm, James re-plied playfully, “You would make a pretty looking farmer Jenny.”

Only 15 men in the 11th Michi-gan volunteered to reenlist in 1864, and King was not among them. In July 1864, he was wounded in the shoulder by a Confederate shell that

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exploded above him while he was leisurely reading a book. After re-covering, King returned to Michigan with his regiment in September and was discharged in October.

Rather than remain up north, he returned to Chattanooga, where he worked as a clerk for the assistant quartermaster.

King returned to Michigan in the fall of 1865 to marry Jenny. Soon thereafter he settled in Tennessee to try his hand at growing cotton. Jenny spent some time there with him and some time back in Michigan.

Throughout 1866 they corre-sponded with one another and with other family members, with topics ranging from farming and land spec-ulation to race relations and national politics during Reconstruction. By 1868, however, the Kings had had enough of the South, and threats of Klan violence forced them to return to the North.

Conspicuous Gallantry is capa-bly edited and annotated by King’s great-great-grandson. The inclusion of both wartime and postwar corre-spondence makes this worthwhile reading.

Reviewer Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and author of several books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Visit his website at www.jonathanwhite.org.

Kansas Frontier Guard WasFirst To Defend Washington

even more on the relationship of Lin-coln and Lane. Lane was quite influ-ential in Lincoln’s political life.

The remaining 200-plus pages con-tain detailed and interesting biogra-phies of the unit members and their fates before, during and after the war.

This is a well-written and informa-tive history of an obscure unit and a relatively unknown aspect of the war. It provides much information on Lin-coln’s early-war political aspirations.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and believe it deserves a spot on your book shelf. I highly recommend it.

Reviewer Joseph A. Truglio is president and business agent for a motion picture film technicians local union and a lifelong student of the Civil War. His memberships include the Lincoln Group of New York and New Jersey Civil War Heritage Assn. He is president of the Phil Kearny Civil War Round Table in Wayne, N.J.

25Civil War NewsApril 2016

Lincoln in the Atlantic World. By Louise L. Stevenson. Illustrated, pho-tos, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 290 pp., 2015, Cambridge. www.cambridge.org, $99.99 hardcover, $29.99 softcover.

One of the great shifts in studies of American history in the 18th and 19th centuries has been the introduc-tion of a transatlantic perspective. Partly, this reflects a political agen-da since the transatlantic perspective seeks to displace ideas about Ameri-can exceptionalism.

But in a healthier way, the trans-atlantic perspective reminds us that events like the Civil War did not occur in a vacuum. Both sides placed heavy bets on the possibilities of European intervention, and both armies leaned heavily on the examples afforded by European warfare at mid-century.

But the transatlantic perspective cannot be limited merely to diplomat-ic or military history. Louise Steven-son’s Lincoln in the Atlantic World reminds us that, for Abraham Lin-coln, the Civil War was a “testing” of the single greatest accomplishment of Enlightenment political ideas, the creation of a large-scale republic.

Thus, “the outcome of the Civ-il War would determine the fate of republicanism both nationally and globally, in 1865 and for all time.”

Stevenson approaches the transatlantic Lincoln through a series of seven essays, which she

calls “lessons” – an African lesson, a German lesson, an English lesson, and so on.

The “African” lesson is about the unusual appearance, in the list com-posed in 1860 by John Locke Scripps of “most influential” books Lincoln had read, of Nathaniel Riley’s 1817 Authentic Narrative of the Brig Com-merce. That was an account of the shipwreck and enslavement of Amer-ican sailors in North Africa.

Scripps was shrewdly positioning Lincoln’s opposition to slavery as an issue that touched white Americans, not just blacks. He also was lining up Lincoln’s support for gradual, com-pensated emancipation with similar recommendations made in Riley’s popular Narrative.

Another “lesson” comes in the form of the hat Lincoln wore in his undercover passage through Balti-more en route to his inauguration. The hat was a soft-brimmed “Kos-suth hat,” made popular in America by the champion of Hungarian inde-pendence, Louis Kossuth.

“Lincoln had adopted the uniform of a European republican” and may have even borrowed his famous Get-tysburg formula — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — from a speech Kossuth delivered before the Ohio legislature in 1852.

The most intriguing of Stevenson’s lessons is the last one, taught by the British comedy, “Our American Cousin.” Although it is remembered today only as the play Lincoln was watching when John Wilkes Booth fired his fatal shot, Stevenson care-fully unpacks in detail the message Lincoln was enjoying.

“Overall, the play discredits aristo-

7 Essays Discuss Lincoln & EuropeWoman From The NorthGoes South As Teacher

Heading South to Teach: The World of Susan Nye Hutchison, 1815-1845. By Kim Tolley. Illustrated, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 278 pp., 2015, UNC, www.uncpress.unc.edu, $29.95 softcover.

First half 19th-century American history is often overshadowed in lit-erature and schools by the issues that brought about the Civil War. Often this preoccupation subsumes other themes or characteristics of the age some call “Freedom’s Ferment,” the ripening of the Republican spirit in the newly developing nation.

Freedom’s Ferment spawned a new way for Americans to view the world and was played out in arenas of American life that included religion, education, women’s rights, mental health care and for social justice.

Fueling this attitude was the Sec-ond Great Awakening (1790-1840), a religious revival movement that pushed these issues and abolition to the forefront of American society.

Kim Tolley’s biography of Susan Nye Hutchinson explores one of the little-known players of the Second Great Awakening. Hutchinson left be-hind a rich diary for scholars to catch a glimpse of this important time.

Tolley’s skillful use of other source material like newspapers, census returns and church records further illuminates Hutchinson’s life and provides a solid dose of Ameri-can social history.

The book’s setup is of particular note. Beneath the heading of each chapter, Tolley has included signifi-cant slices from Hutchinson’s diary, which set the stage for the chapter’s narrative.

In this fashion, readers get a much fuller and more robust portrait of the protagonist than in a traditional biography.

Susan Nye began her diary as she headed south in 1815. She married Adam Hutchinson in 1825. Her last entry was made in 1841.

At the time less than one out of five white Southerners, 16 or older, and fewer than one out of 10 en-slaved and free blacks had any reli-gious affiliation.

Nye was not just a teacher but also an evangelizer bringing the word of God to others. She did this in myriad ways: praying in the streets of Ra-leigh with slaves and free blacks, es-tablishing an independent school in Georgia, and risking arrest by teach-ing slaves to read.

Other American women of the age, such as Lucretia Mott, Ange-lina and Sarah Grimke, and Harriet Beecher, are better known for pro-moting women’s rights and speaking out against slavery.

Yet Hutchinson deserves credit as a groundbreaker for all she accomplished during an era of shifting social norms.

Readers interested in the social history of the first half of the 19th century will find this book enjoyable and fascinating.

The author’s sentiments about her subject are best summarized when she visits Hutchinson’s grave and notes about the headstone, “When the sunlight falls from the right an-gle, the phrase becomes clear: ‘The Righteous Live in Everlasting Re-membrance.’”

Reviewer James A. Percoco is Teacher-in-Residence for the Civil War Trust and The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, the author of Summers With Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments, and a member of the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

V O L U M E 1

The SelectedLetters and

Papers ofMaj. EugeneBlackford,

C.S.A.

SHARPSHO OTER

Fred L. Ray, Ed.

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SHARPSHOOTERThe Selected Letters

and Papers of Maj. Eugene Blackford,

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“A witness of a sort that historians rarely encounter.”

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A Virginia officer in an Alabama regiment, commander the Army of Northern Virginia’s elite sharpshooters, Eugene Blackford’s correspondence spans nearly the entire war and allows a modern reader to see this turbulent era through the eyes of someone who lived it. His accounts of the sharpshooters; battles like Chancel-lorsville and Gettysburg; camp life; army leaders; and national and regimental politics are detailed and exceptional. Volume 1 of 3.

cratic pretensions and both male and female conventions of gentility,” es-pecially the “sockdologizing” of the British upper classes who had done so much to favor the Confederacy.

“Sockdologizing” – a “verbal jab at aristocratic” pretensions — was almost the last word Lincoln heard, and formed an ironically appropriate period to a life that challenged pre-tension at every level.

Stevenson’s book is more of a se-ries of episodes than a comprehen-sive survey of Lincoln and the Atlan-tic world of the 19th century. Latin America, for instance, makes no ap-pearance in the book, nor do the Eu-ropean wars of the 1850s and 1860s.

The “English lesson” is almost entirely about John Bright but gives short shrift to Bright’s formidable political ally, Richard Cobden, who was known broadly as “the British Lincoln.”

There are several easily-correct-ed errors that will annoy hard-core Lincolnites (e.g., Francis Carpenter’s First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation depicts Lincoln’s read-ing of the “preliminary” proclama-tion to his cabinet on Sept. 22, 1862, not, as commonly thought, the first draft reading of July 22, 1862).

But this book adds a series of im-portant bricks in the rebuilding of the worldwide context of the Civil War, which is, after all, what concerned Abraham Lincoln the most.

Reviewer Allen C. Guelzo is the Luce Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College and the author of the New York Times best-seller Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.

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The Tennessee Campaign of 1864. Edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear. Photos, maps, notes, 261 pp., 2016, Southern Illinois, www.siupress.com, $34.50.

After the fall of Atlanta, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood broke away from the Union army under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to initially cut off his communications with the North and later to invade Tennessee in the hope of drawing Sherman off in pursuit. This volume is a collection of 13 essays on this pivotal 1864 campaign

The first essay, edited by William

13 Essays On ’64 Tennessee CampaignLee White, is a recently discovered diary about Confederate division commander Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s movements through Al-abama and northern Georgia at the commencement of the campaign.

Next is an accounting by Stewart Bennett of the battle of Allatoona Pass, Georgia. This is an exciting description of the bloody contest. John R. Lundberg tells of the Battle of Spring Hill, Tenn., and the after-math of the clash, when Gen. John M. Schofield’s troops slipped by the Confederate army, escaping to fight again at Franklin.

There are two essays about the Battle of Franklin. First is “The Destruction of the Army of Tennessee’s Officer Corps . . .” by Andrew S. Bledsoe. Following is an essay examining the psychology of killing as it pertained to Franklin, where there was a lot of killing and much close-quarter fighting

On the two-day Battle of Nash-ville, there are four essays. Brooks D. Simpson writes of the pre-battle communication difficulties and mis-understandings among Gens. George H. Thomas, Ulysses S. Grant and Henry W. Halleck. In “Where Genius Cannot Exist,” Paul L. Schmelzer scrutinizes Thomas’s generalship in light of German military writer Carl von Clausewitz’s standard for mili-tary “genius.”

D.L. Turner and Scott L. Stabler

The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War. By Mark Tooley. Illustrated, photos, notes, index, 316 pp., 2015, Nelson Books, www.thomasnelson.com, $26.99.

For 19 days in February 1861, 131 delegates from 21 states met in Washington in a quixotic attempt to prevent the Civil War. Mark Tooley has written a significant and entertaining book describing the often-overlooked efforts of the Washington Peace Conference. Up-per South and Border slave states, as well as Northern free states, were represented.

Tooley’s most valuable contribu-tion is to confirm that the national crisis was all about slavery. He says, “Nearly all the Peace Conference was a desperate attempt to protect slavery and assuage Southern wor-ries about Northern Republican en-croachment on Southern political prerogatives.”

He cites a Washington Star article that said the arriving delegates faced the “only question upon where (sic) there bids fair to be any considerable difference of opinion — the territori-al slavery question.”

The author describes the dele-gates, contemporary Washington, its clergy and churches (not really nec-essary), proposed compromise pro-visions, counting of the presidential electors’ ballots, Abraham Lincoln’s

1861 Peace Conference’sAim To Avert Civil War

arrival and tangential involvement, the conference’s agreement on pro-posed constitutional amendments, the immediate undermining of them by ex-President and conference pres-ident John Tyler, and congressional inaction on them.

The conference agreed to rec-ommend congressional initiation of constitutional amendments that would •reinstate the Missouri Com-promise boundary between free and slave territories; •require a majority of slave state senators to approve new territorial acquisitions; •prohib-it congressional interference with slavery where it existed; •affirm fu-gitive slave laws; •ban importation of slaves, and •require unanimous approval of the states to revoke any of these provisions.

It is significant that, like the un-successful Crittenden proposals of the preceding month, these con-flict-avoidance proposals dealt sole-ly with slavery-related issues.

At the conference’s close, Tyler pledged to present these proposals to both houses of Congress because it was “my duty to give them my offi-cial approval and support.”

By the next evening, however, he had taken his seat as delegate to Virginia’s secession convention, de-nounced the proposals and called the conference a “worthless affair.”

Tooley does not contend that the conference was insignificant. He points out that it probably delayed secession by Virginia and other Up-per South states, helped prevent Bor-der states’ secession, and arguably provided a cooling-off period that enabled the electoral vote counting and Lincoln’s inauguration to occur peacefully.

Despite a few minor historical errors, this book is a marvelous ex-position of a significant, generally unknown occurrence in the series of events that occurred between Lin-coln’s election and inauguration. It is highly recommended.

Reviewer Edward Bonekemper is Civil War News Book Review Editor and author of six Civil War books, including The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.

describe “The Fight for Freedom by the U.S. Colored Troops at the Bat-tle of Nashville.” Co-editor Steven E. Woodworth describes the actions of Gen. Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Smith’s command at Nashville. John J. Smith writes about civilians’ actions during the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.

Co-editor Charles D. Grear tells of “Texans’ Reactions to Hood’s Tennessee Campaign.” Finally, Tim-othy B. Smith and Jennifer M. Mur-ray, respectively, describe battlefield preservation at Franklin and Nash-ville, Tenn. Although the salvation of the battlefield land and buildings at Franklin got off to a late start, its story is positive. Unfortunately, the pres-ervation of land at Nashville is the story of a true “lost cause.” Except for Shy’s Hill and a few forts, redoubts and monuments, the battlefield of Nashville has been largely taken over by urban sprawl. Little remains of the fields where Thomas’s and Hood’s troops once struggled.

This book is a valuable addition to a Civil War library. Although it does not contain as detailed descriptions of the campaign as other volumes, these essays provide fresh insights.

Reviewer Robert L. Durham spent most of his career at the Defense Logistics Agency. He has written book reviews and articles for numerous historical blogs and publications.

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Kill Jeff Davis: The Union Raid on Richmond, 1864. By Bruce M. Venter. Photos, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 378 pp., 2016, Oklahoma, www.oupress.com, $29.95.

Union Col. Ulric Dahlgren lay dead in a muddy road northeast of Richmond, Va., on the night of March 2, 1864. He and his fellow cavalrymen had ridden into an am-bush set up by Confederate horse soldiers and home-guardsmen. On the slain colonel’s body, the Rebels found papers that ignited a contro-versy that continues to today.

Dahlgren and his troopers were part of the so-called Kilpatrick-Dahl-gren Raid intended to release Union captives in Libby Prison and on Belle Isle in the Confederate capital.

Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick had brokered the idea of such an opera-tion and received approval of it from President Abraham Lincoln and Sec-retary of War Edwin Stanton.

The plan involved a three-prong effort. A main body, nearly 4,000 horsemen under Kilpatrick, would

advance on Richmond from the north, while units of Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s command would come in from the east, up the Pen-insula. A diversionary movement un-der Brig. Gen. George Custer would move toward Charlottesville.

Dahlgren’s role in the operation was to lead a 500-man force to free the prisoners on Belle Isle, south of the James River.

In the end, Custer’s movement had little effect on the overall operation. Butler never sent forces toward the capital, and Confederate resistance proved stiffer than anticipated.

The furor arose immediately after the raid’s failure. The papers found on Dahlgren consisted of orders and his memorandum book. Most import-ant were the words, “Jeff Davis and Cabinet must be killed on the spot.”

Since then, as author Bruce Venter asserts, the raid has been “layered in myths, legends, truth, and confec-tion.” It has been the source of much historical inquiry and speculation. Venter’s new work, however, will likely stand as the definitive study on the raid for a long time.

The author addresses all the con-troversies by removing mysteries, rendering judgments and admitting that certain matters elude certainty.

The research is impressive, and the writing is finely crafted. This book is highly recommended.

Reviewer Jeffry D. Wert is a retired Pennsylvania high school teacher. He is the author of eight books on the Civil War, including his recent Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J.E.B. Stuart.

Crossing Antietam: The Civil War Letters of Captain Henry Au-gustus Sand, Company A, 103rd New York Volunteers. Edited by Peter H. Sand and John F. McLaugh-lin. Illustrated, photos, map, notes, bibliography, index, 184 pp., 2015, McFarland, www.mcfarlandpub.com, $35 softcover.

Hidden History of Connecticut Union Soldiers. By John Banks. Illustrated, photos, notes, bibliogra-phy, index, 206 pp., 2015, History Press, www.historypress.net, $21.99 softcover.

Crossing Antietam and Hidden History are excellent companion volumes. Both cover the war on a very personal level.

Crossing Antietam chronicles the war in the East from Capt. Henry Sand’s enrollment in the predom-inantly German 103rd New York through his death from a mortal wound at Antietam. Hidden History concentrates heavily upon the lives and deaths of specific Connecticut soldiers throughout the war with many references to Antietam.

The well-educated, bilingual and affluent Sand missed very little in his astute letters home. For instance, while very ill in New Bern, N.C., he wrote to his youngest brother Max: “I am glad to hear such good accounts of the young ladies of Brooklyn. Give my love and a kiss to them all — every one of them. We have a great many pretty ladies here, but I’m afraid you would not find them handsome as they are all col-ored (like meerschaum pipes – from cream color to ivory black). You, I suppose, prefer white ladies — I used to myself — it’s all a matter of taste.”

He left behind a less than flat-tering description of Col. Rush C. Hawkins, 9th New York Zouaves: “I don’t know him well enough to judge

of his character, but he doesn’t make a very favorable impression on me. He is not very refined and appears to be fond of show, as he goes round in camp in full Zouave uniform, with a long mustache and shaved head, and looks like anything but an acting brigadier.”

While he lay dying at the Otto farmhouse on the Antietam battle-field, Sand and his mother Isabella wrote several touching letters to his family in New York. Since I guide at the battlefield, Max’s five post-war paintings of the farm and house made the letters and the captain’s passing all the more poignant to me.

Hidden History is so much more than a collection of the tragic stories of Connecticut soldiers and their families. John Banks writes about Pvt. Orlando Snow who went into a deep depression when he lost his very ill brother Nelson in Otto’s cornfield at Antietam.

Nelson preferred to die in battle than risk being called a coward. Orlando did not snap out of his melancholy until an Irish enlisted man whipped him in a brawl. Captured with most of the 16th

Connecticut at Plymouth, N.C., in April 1864, he died in Andersonville that November.

Sgt. George Marsh, 8th Connecti-cut, was a veteran of New Bern. He was a carpenter, constantly sent money home to his parents and in his spare time tattooed his comrades with India ink. He died on the Rohr-bach farm at Antietam early in the morning of Sept. 17, 1862, while waiting to go into battle.

Without warning, an incoming Confederate 12-pdr. shot plowed into the prone Yankees. It killed three men, including Marsh, who died from the concussion of the round striking the ground next to him.

Both Hidden History and Cross-ing Antietam are insightful studies of Civil War soldiers. I recommend them to serious students of the war.

Reviewer John Michael Priest retired from teaching in 2011 after serving 30.5 years. He is a guide at Antietam. He has published four Civil War books and is an avid 54mm wargamer — French and Indian War through the U. S. Civil War.

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28 Civil War News April 2016

The Extraordinary Life of Charles Pomeroy Stone: Soldier, Surveyor, Pasha, Engineer. by Blaine Lamb. Notes, photos, bibli-ography, index, 276 pp., 2016, West-holme Publishing, www.westholme-publishing.com, $29.95.

Woe is the professional military man who gets caught in the crosshairs of vengeful, powerful politicians. That could have been the epitaph for Union Gen. Charles Pomeroy Stone who made the mistake of relying on the military skills of U.S. Senator

Doctor’s View As Surgeon,Inspector & Sanitary Agent

Agent of Mercy: The Untold Story of Dr. Archibald S. Max-well Civil War Surgeon & Iowa State Sanitary Agent. By George C. Maxwell. Illustrated, photos, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, in-dex, 193 pp., 2015, George C. Max-well, gcmaxwell1945@gmail.com, $12.99 softcover.

Medical logistics evolved during the Civil War in response to the need to manage and distribute med-ical supplies and allocate staff in an effective way. This subject has re-ceived little focus thus far. George Maxwell’s work goes a long way to-

ward remedying that situation. Maxwell’s work is a biographical

sketch of his great-great-great grand-father’s experiences during the war. Dr. Archibald Maxwell served the Union for two years. He held the following positions: surgeon, hospi-tal inspector, professor and State of Iowa Sanitary Agent.

Maxwell’s unique and diverse as-signments provide readers with in-sight into medical logistics through the eyes of politicians, soldiers, fam-ily members, medical professionals and relief organizations.

He was a self-made man who took every opportunity provided to edu-

cate himself. He also was a strong advocate for quality medical care and support for Iowa soldiers and civilians.

Many biographies telling the story of an author’s genealogy get bogged down in the details of specific events and situations that serve only to pro-mote a good image of the subject. However, George Maxwell uses a unique style to describe the events in a neutral way that is easy for readers to understand.

This work consists of multiple small chapters focusing on certain periods of Maxwell’s service. This format works well by providing readers background information about the types of obstacles military and political organizations support-ing Union soldiers encountered.

The author did a good job describ-ing Dr. Maxwell in the final para-graph of the epilogue: “His life story

remains an example to us of what is possible, if one dares to try.”

The book is reasonably priced and easy to read. It gives excellent insight into how the medical profes-sion operated during the Civil War and laid the foundation for modern battlefield medicine. It receives my highest recommendation for those interested in battlefield medicine and civilian relief work.

Reviewer Richard J. Blumberg has a master’s degree with honors in Civil War studies. He is past president of the Houston Civil War Round Table and is a speaker for that group and the Society of Women in the Civil War. He also reviews books for the Blue and Gray Education Society.

Charles Stone: Ball’s Bluff ScapegoatEdward Baker at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Va., on Oct. 21, 1861.

Not only did Baker, a well-liked politician but incompetent colonel, lose that battle, but he also lost his life. Stone, Baker’s commanding of-ficer, was blamed for the loss, Bak-er’s death, and collaborating with the Confederates.

Stone was the first target of the vengeful Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a collection of Congressmen whose main purpose seemed to be harassing the West Point-educated Democrats who made up much of the Union’s officer corps.

After the Committee held a sham investigation of Ball’s Bluff, Stone was sent to prison for several months. He was not even allowed to see any formal charges filed against him.

While those details of Stone’s life are the most famous covered by Blaine Lamb, the rest of his book is also rewarding. This first-ever bi-ography of Stone is finely detailed, despite the handicap that Lamb had to piece together Stone’s life from a vast array of primary and secondary resources.

Lamb found tantalizing hints that Stone kept journals detailing his career, but he could not find them in any known manuscript repository. This is Lamb’s first book and a

worthy addition to anyone’s Civil War library.

Stone’s early war service was or-ganizing Washington City’s defense, likely saving the butts of the same congressmen who would railroad him. He served as the early right-hand man of Gen. Winfield Scott and later Gen. George McClellan.

The latter abandoned him in the Ball’s Bluff controversy — probably because Little Mac was the next ob-vious target for blame.

Allowed to rejoin the army after his imprisonment, Stone served well in Louisiana and on the Red River Campaign. Still, his reputation pre-cluded him from serving a major role in the war. After the war, William T. Sherman recommended Stone for a position training the Egyptian Army, a post he held nearly 13 years.

My only criticism is the lack of maps and a detailed timeline relating to Ball’s Bluff. The Confederate side of the battle was also not detailed. The addition of that material would have helped the reader better under-stand Stone’s defense of his actions during the battle.

Reviewer Clint Johnson has written 12 Civil War and American Revolution history and historical travel books.

Recommended Novel About A VeteranThe Ones They Left Behind. By

Antonio Elmaleh. Historical fiction. Map, 260 pp., 2014, Antonio El-maleh, www.antonioelmaleh.com, $22.95.

Every so often a book comes along that makes the past profoundly relevant to the present. Such is

the case with Antonio Elmaleh’s historical novel, The Ones They Left Behind.

His book is a breath of fresh air given our current state of affairs in a deeply divided United States. Not only does his book resonate with hope and redemption, but it touches on other issues and pathos that we as a nation contend with, including the plight of being a wounded warrior.

The core of the story revolves around Union veteran Harriman Hickenlooper, a soldier in the 6th Iowa Volunteer Infantry who par-ticipated in Sherman’s March to the Sea. In 1867 he sets out to retrace that route in an effort to resolve his own inner demons and rediscover that people at their deepest level are kind, compassionate and forgiving.

His faith in humanity is central to the premise of the book. So certain is Hickenlooper that he will not be harmed as he makes his way across Georgia that he literally bets his farm on it.

On this venture he wears his

Union uniform but does not carry a firearm, just a faded American flag. What transpires along the 245 pages of Elmaleh’s terrific prose and nar-rative verve is a story that will tug at the reader’s heart strings without dripping into maudlin sentimental-ity. While his journey seems to be absurd and utopian in concept, Hick-enlooper defies all convention in this absolute page-turner.

Hickenlooper’s escapade is a one-man truth-and-reconciliation com-mission, mostly seeking to resolve his inner turmoil, but also to make amends to others he encountered when he was in Sherman’s military juggernaut.

The ever-idealistic Hickenlooper not only wants to make peace with-in himself, but also for the nation, which is struggling to emerge from the fratricidal carnage of the Civil War in one of the most devastated regions of the country. On his jour-ney Hickenlooper confronts not only his demons, but all of humanity’s deepest sins: wrath, envy and deeply

rooted prejudice.All of the novel’s characters are

multi-dimensional and believable. Elmaleh skillfully weaves issues of gender and race against this dark backdrop. One of the most poignant scenes is Hickenlooper’s reburial of his brother, whose remains he recov-ers on his journey.

One of the most significant charac-ters is not human at all, but rather a clock that serves as the metaphor for time and has a much deeper mean-ing in the plot’s context. So in some ways this novel is a mystery, with all the tension inherent in one, and the clock’s character pushes the novel forward in a well-paced, but frenetic manner.

The bet on his farm in Centreville, Iowa, requires Harriman to complete his journey from Centreville to Sa-vannah, Ga., and back, unharmed, in 44 days.

Given the mysterious nature of as-pects of the novel, readers might ex-pect that the twists that occur along the way would be dark. But the ge-

nius of The Ones They Left Behind is they are not. Rather, they remind us of the potential for good that each person has within himself, and read-ers are not left feeling forlorn or de-pressed. While the book is readable, it is deeply contemplative without being pushy in matters of morality.

The conclusion of the book is a stunner, too!

This book is highly recommended on a number of levels. It is a pure joy to read. Also, anyone who has an interest in the frailty and glory of the human heart or the price everyone pays when a nation goes to war should read The Ones They Left Behind.

Reviewer James A. Percoco is Teacher-in-Residence for the Civil War Trust and The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, the author of Summers With Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments, and a member of the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

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29Civil War NewsApril 2016

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A Connecticut Yankee at War: The Life and Letters of George Lee Gaskell. By Robert Grandchamp. Il-lustrated, photos, maps, notes, bibli-ography, index, 200 pp., 2015, Pel-ican, www.pelicanpub.com, $25.95.

George Lee Gaskell is yet another of those unknown Civil War figures whose experiences are sufficient-ly unique that they should be made available to students of the war.

Robert Grandchamp has done just that in a succinct, nicely pro-duced volume that utilizes Gaskell’s Civil War letters, sandwiched by a well-written and informative brief biography of Gaskell’s life before and after the war.

Growing up in eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island, Gaskell became a carpenter and then a clerk before en-listing on a commercial voyage as a hand on the merchant bark Ariel in 1860.

Already educated in English grammar and Latin, Gaskell sailed to Zanzibar and learned Arabic, French and Swahili. When he returned to Rhode Island, war had broken out. In December 1861 Gaskell enlisted in Battery G of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery. Battery G served with the Army of the Potomac in the Peninsula, Antietam, Fredericks-burg, Chancellorsville and Gettys-burg campaigns and saw action in several battles. Gaskell, however, never served in a gun crew. Instead, due to his high level of literacy, he was made the battery’s company clerk. He became immersed in re-cord-keeping duties and gained a unique perspective.

His Civil War career took a dra-matic turn in December 1863 when he accepted a voluntary appointment to a newly organized unit of black troops, the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, Colored (later the 11th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery). After passing a rigorous examination, Gas-kell joined his new unit, which spent the remainder of the Civil War on garrison duty in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

Following the war, Gaskell re-mained in the South and married into

a prominent Plaquemines family. He became involved in local politics, helped register freed black voters, and finally operated retail businesses in Louisiana and later in Chattanoo-ga, Tenn.

The heart of this book consists of Gaskell’s wartime letters — most written to his sister Mary and some to a local newspaper. As expected, the letters are literate and informa-tive. The correspondence regarding Battery G’s experiences at the battles of Fair Oaks and Second Fredericks-burg will be of value to students of those actions.

Most of the letters written while Gaskell served in Battery G reveal details of life in a battery on cam-paign. In fact, given the relative dearth of original correspondence by members of Federal field artillery units, the reader may well wish that Gaskell had written more often.

Gaskell’s letters from Louisi-ana are equally informative about a starkly different sort of war experi-ence. Primary accounts of service as a white officer commanding black troops in newly conquered parts of the South are lacking, and Gaskell’s articulate correspondence sheds needed light on that role, as well.

Grandchamp, who has written a solid history of Battery G, has done a nice job of combining Gaskell’s let-ters with necessary biographical de-tails in a tightly written and well-ed-ited book. He supplies an abundance of detailed, explanatory endnotes.

As with any such effort, there are minor criticisms. For example, the editor relies on the long-accepted strength numbers for the opposing forces in the 1862 Peninsula Cam-paign even though researchers such as Leon Tenney have recently shown that Confederate numbers were probably higher.

Grandchamp’s compilation is a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone interested in field artil-lery units or the experiences of black troops and their white officers in the occupied South.

Reviewer John Foskett is a practicing attorney in Boston, Mass., and has a life-long interest in the Civil War.

Informative Letters By George L. Gaskell

Lincoln’s Bold Lion: The Life and Times of Brigadier General Martin Davis Hardin. By James Huffstodt. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 432 pp., 2015, Casemate, www.casematepub-lishing.com, $32.95.

Gen. Martin D. Hardin (1837-1923) was the son of Mexican War hero John J. Hardin, an intimate friend of Abraham and Mary Lin-coln. Coming from an ancestry rich in military heroes, Martin Hardin experienced America from its era of canal boats and slavery to the times of the Gilded Age, airplanes and Pro-hibition.

This book is both a biography of General Hardin and a window into America’s change to industrializa-tion and modernization.

During his youth Hardin explored America’s backwoods from Jackson-ville, Ill., to St. Louis, Mo., and the river plantations of western Missis-sippi. He fished, hunted, rode canal boats, listened to slaves’ ghost sto-ries and developed a love for adven-ture. These attributes would serve him well during his life as a soldier.

Although Hardin was initially drawn to life as a lawyer, his mother Sarah Hardin and stepfather Chan-cellor Reuben Walworth of New York planned a military career for him.

Appointed to West Point by Pres-ident Franklin Pierce, he gradually adjusted to West Point’s military life, made many lifelong friends, grad-uated in 1859 and was assigned to command Fort Umpqua, Washington Territory.

During the trek to his new post, he endured the rigors of frontier travel, met numerous Indian tribes, and de-veloped a respect for Native Ameri-cans and their culture. His stay on the frontier was cut short by the opening of the Civil War as he was recalled East and attached to Battery H, 3rd U.S. Battery.

Due greatly to his mother’s social connections in Washington and her friendship with the Lincolns, Har-

Gen. Martin Hardin Saw America Change

din’s advancement was assured. Pro-moted to lieutenant colonel in 1862, he was assigned command of the 12th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regi-ment. He bravely led his command in actions at Second Bull Run, White Oak Swamp, Malvern Hill, Freder-icksburg, Gettysburg and the Penin-sula Campaign.

Hardin was wounded four times and lost his left arm during an ambush at Catlett’s Station. After a brief recuperation, he assumed command of the Washington defenses and was largely responsible for foiling Gen. Jubal Early’s plan to capture the capital.

Due to his mother’s lobbying, he was promoted to brigadier general in July 1864. He spent the remainder of the war in Washington and then commanding occupation troops in Raleigh, N.C.

After the war, Hardin pursued a legal career, his first love. Joining a powerful law firm in Chicago, he became a frequent companion of fellow lawyer Robert Todd Lincoln and joined virtually all of Chicago’s elite social clubs. After the death of his first wife, he married Amelia Mc-Laughlin, the daughter of a wealthy Chicago coffee merchant.

Between his thriving law practice and the McLaughlin family wealth, the Hardins enjoyed a privileged life befitting a wealthy couple of the Gilded Age.

Hardin never forgot his military friends, attended G.A.R. meetings, hosted Union and Confederate friends, and wrote extensively of his war experiences.

By his death in 1923, he had wit-nessed America transform itself from the days of covered wagons to a world military and economic power.

James Huffstodt does an excellent job portraying General Hardin’s life in the context of a changing Amer-ica. Readers get to know him inti-mately and also how his world was changing.

There are a few typographical and historical errors. For example, Presi-dent Henry Harrison should be Ben-jamin Harrison, Mrs. Bertha Potter should be Mrs. Bertha Palmer, and the date of Hardin’s return to active duty after his amputation was 1864, not 1863.

These minor errors detract very little from the valuable contribution this book makes as a definitive biog-raphy of a forgotten hero. It is highly recommended.

Reviewer Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including The Last Confederate Scout and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable.

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30 Civil War News April 2016

Wallace’s Career Through Shiloh Battle

In Theaters April 22nd!

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“My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune”: Major General Lew Wallace in the West, 1861-1862. By Charles G. Beemer. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 342 pp., 2015, Kent State, www.kentstateuniversitypress.com, $39.95.

Lew Wallace is known for different aspects of his life. The author of Ben Hur, he also served in the Union Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of major general. During his time in uniform, he led troops at the Battle of Fort Donelson and elsewhere, served on the military commission that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators, and led the commission that convicted Capt. Henry Wirz of conspiracy and murder.

Despite this long list of accom-plishments, Wallace is primarily remembered for a single day in his military career: April 6, 1862. On that first day of the Battle of Shiloh, Wallace commanded the three-bri-gade 3rd Division of the Army of the Tennessee near Crump’s Landing.

Ulysses S. Grant’s army was spread out over several miles while awaiting Don Carlos Buell’s army to join it for a campaign against Corinth, Miss. Grant was unprepared for a surprise Confederate attack on the Union forces. Located miles to the north, Wallace’s troops were not part of the initial battle but heard the guns in the distance.

A confusing series of events be-gan to unfold when Wallace received verbal and then written orders to march his division to support the rest of the army in its struggle to survive against the Confederate onslaught. This confusion impacted the Union army’s fighting strength that day and began a war of words that continued for decades.

The major controversy is about what those orders said. As pre-planned, Wallace took the inland Shunpike Road that would put him close to Shiloh Church and Sher-man’s Division. But the Rebels had driven Sherman back from that area, and Wallace was exposed. So he had to retrace his steps and eventual-ly come down the River Road. His division thus missed the first day’s fighting.

Grant later stated that he had ordered Wallace to take the River

Road. His orders were first issued verbally and transcribed by an aide. This written order was never located after the battle, and the exact instructions contained in it are at the crux of the allegations against Wallace.

Beemer explains that for years Wallace was blamed by many offi-cers for the near defeat on Shiloh’s first day. If he ignored a direct order to take the River Road, criticism of him by Grant, Halleck and others would be appropriate. But it is not clear he did so. If not directly orga-nized by Grant, the criticism was at least supported by his later writings and statements on the topic.

This work covers Wallace’s early career and military service through the Battle of Shiloh. Most notable are Wallace’s actions at Fort Donel-son, where his unauthorized actions helped save the day for the Union.

Beemer argues that non-recogni-tion of these actions was part of a larger conspiracy created by officers on Grant’s staff to ensure that Wal-lace, not Grant, was blamed for the failures on Shiloh’s first day.

For readers interested in the dis-putes between political and “profes-sional” generals, this book will be interesting — especially to students of Grant or Wallace.

Reviewer David Sesser, a former museum curator, is Special Collections Curator and E-Resources Coordinator at the Huie Library, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Ark.

Atlanta Campaign Book HasWeak Sources & References

Atlanta 1864: Sherman Marches South. By James Donnell. Illustrat-ed, maps, photos, bibliography, in-dex, 96 pp., 2016, Osprey, www.os-preypublishing.com , $24 softcover.

This little work offers a very general account of the crucial 1864 military campaign in North Georgia. James Donnell has based his text overwhelmingly on the unreliable official reports and self-serving memoirs of the commanding generals

(William Tecumseh Sherman for the Union and Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood for the Rebels).

Donnell has made little, perhaps no, use of the major studies of the campaign that have appeared during the last four or five decades.

His 15 suggestions for “Further Reading” omit all works by Russell Bonds, Albert Castel, Stephen Davis and others who have done so much to reshape our understanding of the 1864 operations in Georgia.

The book will be of limited value to those who have no knowledge of the events that brought about the September 1864 Union victory that may have saved the Lincoln Administration.

Both new recruits to the study of the Civil War and veteran campaign-ers would be wise to turn to one or more of the recent far better and much more substantive works on the campaign.

Reviewer Richard M. McMurry, an independent scholar in Dalton, Georgia., is working on a study of Joseph E. Johnston’s role in the Confederate military history.

Books for Review can be sent to:

CWN Review Editor, Edward H. Bonekemper III814 Willow Valley Lakes Dr., Willow Street, PA 17584

Send cover image to ebonekemper@comcast.net

31Civil War NewsApril 2016

Good 179th N.Y.Volunteers History

Full Account Of LouisianaPlantation & Butler Family

War Affected Country’sEconomic Development

“If I Have Got To Go and Fight, I Am Willing.”: A Union Regiment Forged in the Petersburg Cam-paign: The 179th New York Volun-teer Infantry 1864-1865. By Edwin P. Rutan II. Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, in-dex, 524 pp., 2015, RTD Publica-tions, www.179thnyvolunteers.blog-spot.com, $24.95 softcover.

This book tells the tale of the 179th New York Volunteer Infan-try, a regiment raised in the Em-pire State’s southern tier during the spring and summer of 1864. In June, shortly before the Petersburg Cam-paign commenced, the 179th went to the front and joined the Army of the Potomac’s 9th Corps.

Over the next 10 months, the reg-iment participated in the opening assaults against Petersburg and the Battles of the Crater, Poplar Springs Church and Fort Mahone. During this year of bloody action, it lost 72 killed and another 109 dead from disease.

Like most modern regimental his-tories, Rutan’s book does not seek to glorify the men of the 179th but sim-ply to “understand more deeply and more broadly the reality of the sol-diers’ experience and respect what they endured.”

Even though he professes no argu-ment, Rutan develops something of a thesis. He takes pains to disprove a common theory about regiments recruited late in the war. Some his-torians — and Rutan singles out Bruce Catton, Ella Lonn and James McPherson — have hinted that late-war regiments were mostly filled with “bounty men,” soldiers who joined the ranks because of high en-listment bonuses, not patriotism.

The theory contends that late-war regiments rarely aided the Union army in its hour of need and were weighed down by rampant skulking, desertion and antiwar activism. Ru-tan believes the 179th New York did not fit this mold.

Although it had its share of de-sertions and although each soldier collected as much as $700 in boun-ties, the 179th fought doggedly, los-ing between 15 and 40 percent of its combatants in its battles.

The officers and enlisted men were “no rear echelon or garrison soldiers,” Rutan writes, “This book demonstrates that the 179th New York was a ‘high number’ regiment that fought.”

This is an excellent regimental history. In addition to providing the traditional play-by-play action of the 179th’s important battles and cam-paigns, Rutan injects social history into his narrative.

He discusses the importance of the draft, substitution, local and state bounties, desertion, religion, health, politics, the 1864 election, ties to the home front, acceptance of death, and veterans’ postwar reunions.

Perhaps the most interesting chap-ter involves the court-martial of Pvt. Newton Spencer, a soldier from Co. F who wrote a scathing letter pub-lished in the Penn Yan Democrat blaming Maj. Gen. George G. Meade for the disaster at the Crater. Union high command charged him with disrespecting a commanding officer to discourage men from betraying their commanders to the antiwar press during an election year.

Rutan’s chapter about Spencer is a skillful reminder that regimental history involves more than narrating the Union army’s well-known battles against the Confederates.

In short, this book is cutting-edge. It invigorates the genre by looking at sources that go beyond the battle-field.

It is not without its shortcomings, and most of these have to do with awkward text and image formatting. Rutan originally published his regi-mental history as an e-book, and it is evident that he and his editors made little effort to revise the manuscript when they transferred it to the print-ed version.

Block quotations are frequent and enormous. This might suit the in-ternet, but it tends to break up the narrative and stifle analysis in the printed version. Also, the alignment is inconsistent, and the print is terri-bly small.

Most vexing of all, nearly all of the e-book’s maps and some of its pho-tographs are missing from the print-ed copy. At various points, bracketed text indicates where these missing maps and images ought to appear.

This apparently is the author’s reminder to visit the e-book to get the full experience. But for a reader who possesses only the printed copy, these insertions are simply annoying.

It is fair enough to say that “If I Have Got to Go and Fight” can exist as both an e-book and a hard copy. However, in the printed format it needs to play by the rules.

These reservations should not de-ter readers. This is a solid regimental history, one that justifiably empha-sizes the important role played by those Union soldiers who were re-cruited during the war’s final year.

Reviewer Timothy J. Orr is an assistant professor of history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. For eight years, he worked as a ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park.

The Butlers of Iberville Parish, Louisiana: Dunboyne Plantation in the 1800s. By David D. Plater. Il-lustrated, maps, photos, notes, bibli-ography, index, 332 pp., 2015, LSU, www.lsupress.org, $35.

Edward George Washington But-ler (1800-1885) was the son of an army officer. His father’s friend An-drew Jackson served as the boy’s guardian after his father died. With

Jackson’s support, young Butler se-cured an appointment to West Point, from which he graduated in 1820.

Eleven years later he resigned from the army. In 1826 Butler wed Frances Parke Lewis, a great-grand-daughter of Martha Custis Wash-ington. One of the bridesmaids was Frances’s cousin Mary Custis — lat-er Mrs. Robert E. Lee.

The Butlers moved to Louisiana to make their fortune growing sugar. For decades they struggled with the numerous problems that beset plant-ers along the Mississippi River.

By 1860 they had risen into the lower strata of the Southern aris-tocracy. Butler had returned to the army in the Mexican War as colonel of the 3rd United States Dragoon Regiment. In 1861 he served as a delegate to the Louisiana secession convention.

Too old for Civil War service, But-ler sent his two sons into the Con-federate army. One received a mortal wound at Belmont, Mo., in Novem-ber 1861 while major of the 11th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. The other served as a staff officer and survived the war.

David Plater has given us an ex-cellent account of the Butlers’ lives

— especially of Frances’s crucial role in managing Dunboyne Planta-tion during her husband’s absences.

The book is recommended for those desiring to study antebellum Southern agriculture, particularly the sugar plantations. It also offers much good material on Southern family life, the effect of the Civil War on Louisiana, and the efforts of white Southerners to rebuild their lives af-ter the war.

Readers seeking accounts of Civil War military action will find almost nothing here. Some of the material on Butler’s military career, however, will be of value to those studying the United States Army’s 19th-century history.

A good map or two would have enhanced the book. Judicious edit-ing and common sense, both in short supply these days, would have great-ly reduced the excessive length of many of the footnotes and made the book much more reader-friendly.

Reviewer Richard M. McMurry, an independent scholar in Dalton, Ga., is working on a study of Joseph E. Johnston’s role in the Confederate military history.

Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Work-ing Class. By Mark A. Lause. Illus-trated, photos, notes, index, 296 pp., 2015, Illinois, www.press.uillinois.edu, $95 hardcover, $28 softcover.

This book is part of the Universi-ty of Illinois Press’s “The Working Class in American History” series. Mark Lause’s central theme is that the Civil War caused a reshaping of the economic, social and political structure of the United States.

In 1860, U.S. wealth was based on agriculture that was supported by a society of artisans producing materi-al goods in small quantities. By 1866, the U.S. was an industrial country supported by agriculture. Laborers in manufacturing and transportation grew more numerous than those en-gaged in agriculture.

The author explores the rela-tionship between labor and capital. Those interested only in the military aspects of the Civil War should read

at least the book’s first portion. The armies fighting in the fields were only as effective as the munitions the industrial laborers produced and that the transportation workers moved to the front.

During the war an overlooked struggle took place on the home front as labor leaders fought with owners for increased benefits for their members.

Lause notes that one of the mis-conceptions about the Civil War is that most industrial workers opposed the Federal government’s efforts to end slavery. Labor, some historians claim, feared that if slavery was end-ed African Americans would flood the labor market as cheap labor and decrease industrial workers’ pay.

The New York draft riots and discontent in the Pennsylvania coal fields are used by these historians as examples of labor resistance to the war and emancipation effort.

In rebuttal, Lause points out that a substantial portion of the men fight-ing for the Federal cause were indus-trial workers and the troops used to crush the New York draft riot includ-ed labor union members.

The book’s heart and soul is con-cerned with the idea of free labor: the right of laborers to collectively negotiate with their employers con-cerning wages, benefits and safety issues. Lause contends that the lead-ers of the free labor movement saw slavery as an impediment to devel-oping a free labor movement and thus opposed slavery.

The U.S. free labor movement had started before the Civil War when industrial workers began to strike, with various degrees of success, for higher wages and improved living conditions.

The free labor concept was not

confined just to the North. Southern industrial workers saw their live-lihoods threatened by the employ-ment of slaves in both skilled and unskilled industrial occupations. The author’s discussion of free labor also includes female and African-Ameri-can workers.

The core of the book examines labor unions’ development from the 1850s to 1877. During this period, free labor made some gains but also suffered severe setbacks in winning pay hikes, job security and fringe benefits. As a result, some union leaders became socially and politi-cally radicalized.

Both home-grown and imported ideas concerning a revamping of American society and government began to be espoused by union lead-ers as they sought to win concessions from transportation and industrial leaders.

The year 1877, says Lause, marked a low point in the free labor move-ment in the United States. During that year the federal government ended its Reconstruction policy in the South and used Federal troops to break up industrial and transporta-tion strike efforts.

This book is well worth reading to understand the United States’ eco-nomic development. The Civil War, like World War II, reshaped labor/capital relations. My only complaint is the small size of the print; I had to stop after every 20 pages to rest my eyes.

Reviewer Charles H. Bogart has a B.A. in history from Thomas More College and an MA in urban planning from Ohio State University. He is the historian for Frankfort, Kentucky’s Fort Boone Civil War Battle Site.

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32 Civil War News April 2016

Against the Grain: Colonel Hen-ry M. Lazelle and the U.S. Army. By James Carson. Illustrated, pho-tos, maps, notes, bibliography, in-dex, 428 pp., 2015, North Texas, www.untpress.unt.edu, $32.95.

Henry M. Lazelle is another inter-esting figure from the Civil War era whose relative anonymity is difficult to explain. In this biography La-zelle’s great-grandson James Carson relates his story and sheds light on a number of areas that generally es-cape attention.

Lazelle’s career reads like a mov-ie script. He graduated in 1855 from West Point, where he roomed with the later renowned painter James McNeill Whistler. He served as a lieutenant at Fort Bliss in western Texas, where he fought Apaches.

In 1861 he and his command were surrendered to the authorities of a seceded Texas by their treasonous commander David Twiggs. Lazelle was held until exchanged and paroled in July 1862. Then he was appointed Assistant Commissary General of Prisoners of War, a post considered to be consistent with his parole.

In October 1863, Lazelle was ap-

U.S. Army Col. Henry M. Lazelle Had A Varied & Colorful Career

pointed colonel of the newly raised 16th New York Cavalry. He spent a year leading that unit in a largely futile conflict with John Mosby’s rangers in northern Virginia. After performing other functions, he was assigned to Reconstruction duty in North and South Carolina before being sent back out West on various posts in connection with the “Indian Wars.”

He returned to West Point as Com-mandant of Cadets, was re-assigned to Western posts, and was sent to India as an observer of British mili-tary exercises related to the Empire’s difficulties with Afghanistan. He re-turned to Washington to assume su-pervision of the compilation of the Official Records and ended his mil-itary career as commander of Fort Clark, Texas.

Lazelle was a bright but conten-tious character, and dispute seemed to be his constant companion. Two incidents were significant. While Commandant of Cadets at West Point he became embroiled in the sharp controversy involving the al-leged harassment and bullying of one of the few black cadets, Johnson Chestnut Whittaker.

Lazelle, whose racist views are discussed frankly by Carson, and West Point’s Superintendent, John M. Schofield, drew a line in Whittak-er’s court-martial that left intact an ongoing “tradition” of cadet hazing that was particularly egregious in the cases of the socially isolated black cadets.

When Schofield was replaced by Lazelle’s classmate Oliver O. Howard, who was far more sympathetic to blacks and who had a more jaundiced view of West Point’s traditions, he and Lazelle inevitably clashed. Howard had Lazelle relieved but also was relieved himself by commanding general William T. Sherman.

The other notable dispute involv-

ing Lazelle erupted in connection with his supervising the continued compilation of the Official Records. On Lazelle’s watch, a roster of loyal members of the otherwise mutinous 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry who fought at the Battle of Stones River was included.

Apparently, however, the list originated from a newspaper story, which ignited a political battle over how the ORs were being compiled. While Lazelle prevailed on the is-sue and secured more congressional funding for the project, he ultimately was replaced.

This book provides illuminating insights on a number of interesting Civil War-era military issues: soldier and family life at isolated frontier forts, arcane and contrived rules of prisoner exchange and parole, frus-trations of small unit commanders confronting Mosby’s “guerilla” ac-tivities, cadet life at West Point, the politicized process of assembling the Official Records, and Army politics and bureaucracy.

The text is well-written if some-what dry, and the author presents a balanced study of Lazelle despite his familial connection. Extensive use has been made of primary sourc-es, and there are several interest-ing period photographs, especially of Lazelle’s various frontier posts. There are only four maps, but they adequately show the locations of La-zelle’s assignments and activities.

Although Lazelle’s Civil War ex-periences were somewhat truncated, Civil War students will find this book of substantial value for its revealing view of Army life before, during and after the war. It is recommended.

Reviewer John Foskett is a practicing attorney in Boston, Mass., and has a life-long interest in the Civil War.

Scott’s Memoirs Is Good Military HistoryMemoirs of Lieut.-General

Winfield Scott. Edited by Timo-thy D. Johnson and Michael Gray. Notes, bibliography, index, 414 pp., 2015, Tennessee, www.utpress.org, $59.95.

Winfield Scott is often regarded as the greatest American soldier to serve between the eras of George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Born in 1786 (“a year older than the Con-stitution” he is reported once to have said), Scott entered the army in 1808.

He served for the next 53 years and for much of that period was Ameri-ca’s leading military figure.

Scott fought in the War of 1812, receiving promotion to brigadier general in 1814. In 1841 he became a major general and commanding gen-eral of the army — a post he held un-til November 1861. His 1847 cam-paign capturing Mexico City is one of the outstanding feats of American military history.

In 1861 Scott proposed to Presi-dent Abraham Lincoln that the best strategy to defeat the Confederacy was to blockade the Rebel coast and establish national control of the Mis-sissippi River.

The administration rejected the plan and launched a series of bloody and unsuccessful efforts to end the war by capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond.

In the long run, however, Union forces managed to win the war by implementing, if unintentionally, a modified or expanded version of Scott’s basic plan.

By that time, Scott had retired to West Point, New York. He then wrote his Memoirs, which were pub-lished in 1864. The old soldier died two years later.

The Memoirs cover, but only superficially, the first months of the

Civil War. Scott’s earlier chapters, however, contain much information on the antebellum army that will interest anyone studying American military history. That army, after all, shaped many of the Civil War’s officers.

Scott’s observations on individu-als he knew — and often feuded with — will also spark interest. He skew-ered Gen. John P. Boyd as “courte-ous, amiable ... but vacillating and imbecile, beyond all endurance.”

He described President James K. Polk as someone “whose little strength lay in the most odious ele-ments of the human character. ... a man of meaner presence is not often seen.”

Zachary Taylor, he said, was “slow of thought. ... quite ignorant … and quite bigoted.” Finally, Jefferson Da-vis was “profoundly ignorant of law. ... [a] deadly enemy.”

Timothy Johnson and Michael Gray have done a fine job editing this work. The addition of maps would have made it much more useful.

Reviewer Richard M. McMurry, an independent scholar in Dalton, Ga., is working on a study of Joseph E. Johnston’s role in the Confederate military history.

Winfield Scott’s Vision for the Army: Mobilizing the North to Preserve the Union. By Mark C. Vlahos. Illustrated, photos, maps, tables, bibliography, notes, 210 pp., 2015, LuLu Publishing, www.lulu.com, $19.51 softcover.

By 1861, Winfield Scott had served in the army for over five de-cades — including commands in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. In addition, he had a profound effect on the strategic concept adopted by Union forces during the Civil War.

The so-called Anaconda or Snake Plan realistically envisioned a pro-tracted war of four or more years and proposed an army of 25,000 regulars and 60,000 volunteers.

Mark Vlahos suggests that “Scott’s decision to keep Regular units intact” rather than scatter the regulars as a training cadre “would have a lasting impact on mobilization.” Influences on Scott’s thinking and alternatives to his use of Regular infantry are the focus of this book.

The author traces the evolution of military mobilization from the Rev-olutionary War to 1865. He defines the role of the militia system and the part played by Regular infantry units in the Eastern and Western Theaters of the Civil War.

Eventually, Vlahos reasons, “Scott’s decision to keep the Regu-lar infantry intact deprived the mo-bilized Army of maximum use of a small reservoir of military leadership and expertise contained in the stand-ing army.”

He derives this judgment from some of the early war writings of George B. McClellan, the brief re-flections on the use of the Regulars in the postwar memoirs of John Schof-ield and Ulysses S. Grant, and Fred Shannon’s two volume study, The Organization and Administration of the Union Army 1861-1865 (1928).

Instead of the Regular infantry being used on the battlefield, as an intact unit, Vlahos contends it should have been broken up and used as a “training cadre.” These writings not-ed above are the only sources cited by the author to support his thesis.

Also, Vlahos notes, “…there is not one book out addressing mobi-lization and Army expansion for the Civil War…” However, he fails to cite Marcus Cunliffe’s classic study of army organization, Soldiers & Ci-vilians: The Martial Spirit in Amer-ica, 1775-1865 or any of the three studies on the draft and mobilization of Union armies.

Cunliffe credits the militia system as an integral part of the American

military tradition, while Vlahos gives no credibility to the part played by the militia during the Civil War. He dismisses it: “The Militia system as organized could not provide a reservoir of military manpower.”

The author appears unaware of the important role played by the New York State Militia (NYSM) (New York State National Guard (NYSNG) after 1862). When war began in 1861, the NYSM exceeded the size of the Regular Army by over 3,000.

Early in the war at least four NYSM regiments were federalized for the duration of the war. The 9th NYSM, 14th Brooklyn, 20th NYSM and the 69th NYSM all served with distinguished records.

On four occasions there were ad-ditional musters of NYSNG units into Federal service for 90 days each: 1861 (7,334 men), 1862 (8,588), 1863 (13,971), and 1864-65 (5,000+).

Finally, over 600 former members of the famed 7th NYSM served in the volunteer armies, while 345 were commissioned officers serving as a “training cadre” for volunteer units.

Winfield Scott deserves kudos for his vision for the Union army. As Vlahos observes, “Nobody contrib-uted more to establishing the army.” Scott’s maintaining the Regular in-fantry as a unit was based on his bril-liant use of Regulars as intact units at Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane in 1814.

Scott realized the necessity of uti-lizing the Regular infantry as an in-tact force functioning as a model for the volunteer units.

This book is a brief and infor-mative history of the Union army’s organization and mobilization from 1861 to 1865. More than 20 charts and tables complement the text along with numerous illustrations.

Although the author suggests al-ternatives to Scott’s decision to keep the Regular infantry units intact, the use of the Regulars did work even with an imperfect militia system.

This success is demonstrated by recently published works on the use of Regular infantry in the Civil War as a cohesive fighting unit: Timo-thy Reese’s Sykes’ Regular Infantry Division, 1861-1865 (1990); Mark Johnson’s That Body of Brave Men: The U.S. Regulars And the Civil War in the West (2003); and the excep-tional tome, On Duty Well and Faith-fully Done: A History of the Regular Army in the Civil War (2013) by Clayton Newell and Charles Shrader.

However, there are a few issues. The book lacks an index. There is too much reliance on Wikipedia as a source. Several sources used are dated — Robert Henry’s The Story of the Mexican War and Carl Sand-burg’s Abraham Lincoln: The War Years are examples.

Vlahos’s monograph is, however, an informative and fascinating study of the mobilization of the Union army during the Civil War period.

Reviewer Michael T. Russert, a member of the North Shore Round Table of Long Island and the Company of Military Historians, has a MALS plus 60 hours in American Studies.

Winfield Scott’s PolicyOn Regular Army Use

33Civil War NewsApril 2016

Editor’s note: With this column we launch a new feature, “Critic’s Cor-ner,” contributed by Stephen Davis of Atlanta. In each column Steve will select a “golden oldie” of the Civ-il War bookshelf – one well-known work which happens to be one of his personal favorites.

“Favorite books” is a topic which always elicits different opinions. Steve welcomes comments and, yes, criticism. Please email Steve atsteveatl1861@yahoo.com.

Unapologetic ConfederateSome years ago I gave a talk in

St. Louis entitled, “From Cooke’s Books to Krick’s Licks: A Century of Reading on the Army of Northern Virginia.” Bob Krick loved the title (he was in the audience), but it also suggests my choice here, John Esten Cooke’s Wearing of the Gray (1867) as pictured below.

Is Cooke’s Wearing a memoir, a history, or a romantic novel? Well,

Steve Davis’Critic’s Corner

it’s a little of each. It’s also one of the most elegant books written by a Confederate about the war.

Cooke was the consummate Virginian. Born at Winchester in 1830, he was nine when his father, a lawyer, moved his large family to Richmond. There John Esten (pron. EEstin) received good early schooling, but his father’s limited finances kept him from entering the University. He read law under his father’s tutelage, and in 1851 joined the practice of “John R. Cooke & Jno. Esten Cooke.”

The younger Cooke’s real interest, however, was writing, in which he showed early talent. He published his first poem at eighteen. A nov-el about French chivalry, written in 1847, was later serialized in the Southern Literary Messenger, Rich-mond’s esteemed magazine. Publi-cation of other novels by Harper & Brothers in New York, largely his-torical romances set in Virginia, al-lowed Cooke to give up law practice for literature. By the time of the war, he enjoyed prestige as one of the South’s leading writers.

Cooke had joined the Richmond Howitzers even before John Brown’s raid. After Sumter he became ser-geant in the Howitzers, and com-manded a gun at Manassas. Promot-ed to captain, he joined the staff of Jeb Stuart, to whom he was related by marriage.

Service in Lee’s army gave Cooke the war experiences he began to soon write about. In early 1863 a series of articles, entitled “Outlines from the Outpost,” began appearing in Rich-mond’s Southern Illustrated News. One of these, “Stonewall Jackson, and the Old Stonewall Brigade,” demonstrates Cooke’s qualities as Southern author.

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• He admired Jackson. Stonewall was “the military leader of masterly genius.”

• Confederates were superheroes. “They marched, and fought, and triumphed, like war machines, which felt no need of rest, or food, or sleep.”

• Yankees were incompetent on the battlefield, especially against Stonewall. They brought into battle their best troops, “only to have them put to rout. They advanced with the most magnificent trains of supplies, only to have them captured. They brought to the contest new uniforms – only to have them covered with the mud and opprobrium of defeat and disaster.”

• The Confederate cause was no-ble. “The flag of the Republic must be borne aloft in triumph tho’ the dearest and most precious blood of the Southern land be poured forth like water.”

You get the idea. Cooke was an unapologetic Confederate, serving to the very end (and never wounded). After General Stuart’s death at Yel-low Tavern, he was assigned to Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton’s staff as inspector-general of horse artil-lery He surrendered in this capacity at Appomattox. He buried his silver spurs there rather than give them over to the Yankees.

Penniless at the end of the war, Cooke had to resume writing quick-ly. That meant for New York pub-lishers, which in turn meant that he had to soften his tone when he wrote about his former enemies. He com-piled his “Outlines” articles, plus others he had written, added in more, and thus developed Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War, which was published by E. B. Treat of New York in 1867.

The book carries 47 articles un-der such headings as “Personal Por-traits.” Staff service in Lee’s army had allowed Cooke to meet lots of leading officers, and he described

them all as chivalrous, brave and noble. His compliments could be repetitious, but they were sincere. He admired Jeb Stuart the most, and dedicated Wearing to Stuart’s mem-ory. Describing Stuart’s “boyish gai-ety,” he recounted how Jeb loved to laugh, joke and sing. Douglas South-all Freeman once wrote, “Cooke ‘caught’ Stuart precisely….Nothing that has been written since Cooke’s day has changed a line in the laugh-ing face of Stuart.” Cooke wrote of others just as touchingly. In Wearing he ends his sketch of John Mosby by recounting a scene he must have witnessed: Mosby alone, standing at Stuart’s grave in Hollywood Ceme-tery, breaking down in tears.

A section called “In the Cavalry” allows Cooke to write a lot about Stuart, but also “Jackson’s Death-Wound” – Cooke was one of the first Southern writers to recount the fatal incident at Chancellorsville.

The section called “Outlines from the Outpost” reprints most of his Southern Illustrated News columns, but some of them didn’t make the cut for the New York publisher. One war-time article deriding Yankee generals (Nathaniel Banks as “a shoemaker, I believe, from Massachusetts”) was excluded from Wearing. Cooke was ever the novelist, and even some of his reminiscences in Wearing have tinges of fiction. For one he even brought in a Colonel Surry and May Beverly, characters in one of his an-tebellum Virginia romances. We may excuse this: if it’s not straight histo-ry, it’s still in the spirit of fun.

The grind of war and the South’s course to defeat necessarily hardened Cooke, as one sees in his “Latter Days” section. “The war grows tedious,” he wrote in “On the Road to Petersburg.” At Appomattox Cooke saw an army which had been overwhelmed by enemy numbers, worn out by starvation and exhaustion. But he could still see heroism and gallantry. “The South is prouder of Lee to-day,” he wrote

in June 1865, “and loves him more, than in his most splendid hours of victory.”

One of the reasons I enjoy re-reading Wearing of the Gray is its timelessness. We live in a politically correct world today, in which relics of the Southern War for Independence are being taken down, moved away and packed into closets. For me, John Esten Cooke’s writing, with its unabashed Confederatism, is a welcome antidote.

Stephen Davis is a longtime Civil Warrior and avid book collector. His two paperbacks on the Atlanta Campaign, A Long and Bloody Task and All the Fighting They Want, will be published this summer as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series.

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Wearing Of The Gray reprint.

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34 Civil War News April 2016

Ghosts: Images of War. By Car-rie Zeidman. Photos, 72 pp., 2015, Swiss Creek Publications, www.swisscreek.com, $40 softcover.

This book is not about “ghosts” in the literal sense. Readers will find no pictures of phantoms, images in-terspersed with trees, or misty float-ing orbs. Instead, a journey is tak-en through four hallowed grounds to explore and tie the past with the present.

Photos from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I and World War II are combined with pictures of modern visitors or period photos to create chilling images at historical locations. Time stands still

Book Features Period, Modern Photos From 4 American Wars

as readers study these photos that create a “You Are There” effect.

Readers are placed at the scene of horrific battles such as Gettysburg, Flanders, Monmouth, Antietam, Normandy and Pearl Harbor; ceme-teries at Monmouth and Normandy; and the Nazi death camp at Aus-chwitz-Birkenau.

I found the picture of the Chil-dren’s Memorial in the Jewish cem-etery in Warsaw the most emotional. Standing in front of this memorial was a period photo of children on their way to one of the death camps. Interspersed with them is a modern image of a man staring at the mon-ument.

Another creative photo is from Appomattox Court House. A peri-od image is combined with one of a modern visitor. This photo and doz-ens more can be viewed over and over as doorways to the past brought to life in the present.

This work is sure to generate dis-cussions and provide memories of times that should never be forgotten. It is an antidote to George Santaya-na’s warning that “Those who do not

Blood in the Ozarks: Union War Crimes Against Southern Sympa-thizers and Civilians in Occupied Missouri. By Clint Lacy. Illustrat-ed, photos, maps, 163 pp., 2015, Poisoned Pen Publishing, mobush-whacker@gmail.com, $17 softcover.

This short book is the latest sal-

vo in an apparent long-running feud between the author and two other amateur historians of the Civil War in Missouri. The bone of contention between them relates to a wartime Union cavalry raid on the Pulliam family farm nestled in the Ozark foothills of southeastern Missouri.

Both sides acknowledge that two companies of Union militia cavalry commanded by Maj. James Wilson charged into a Confederate militia cavalry encampment on the Pulliam farm on Christmas Day 1863, kill-ing at least 30 Rebel troopers while freeing about 100 Union POWs held there.

Clint Lacy contends that, during the raid, Wilson’s men also indis-criminately murdered about 60 civil-ians who had gathered for a Christ-mas dinner and religious service. Calling the raid the “Wilson Massa-cre,” the author counts women and small children among the dead.

Lacy’s two detractors deny the

Troops Carried OutMassacre In Missouri

Wilson Massacre. They argue, in several publications cited in the book, that only Confederate troops were killed by Major Wilson’s command.

Blood in the Ozarks is Lacy’s at-tempt to prove the historical reality of the Wilson Massacre. Much of Lacy’s evidence is circumstantial. The most convincing evidence that he marshals involves an unpublished Civil War memoir dictated in 1918 that specifically mentions that “[s]oldiers, their families, nearby fami-lies” were “[a]ll killed” in Wilson’s raid.

Readers can make up their own minds as to whether or not Lacy has carried the burden of proof for the reality of the Wilson Massacre. This lawyer views Lacy’s evidence of the massacre as falling short of proof be-yond a reasonable doubt. Nonethe-less, I think that Lacy makes a very believable case for the massacre.

Lacy’s prose is only so-so. Lengthy and frequent quotations also interrupt the flow of the author’s narrative and sometimes make it dif-ficult to follow. The few photos and illustrations in the book generally complement the narrative.

The book contains no bibliogra-phy, but the footnotes attest to Lacy’s combing of period Missouri newspa-pers and other source materials. The footnotes are grouped at the end of each of the nine chapters, an im-provement upon bunching them up at the end of the text.

Despite its narrow focus, I recom-mend Blood in the Ozarks to readers interested in the Civil War in Mis-souri or the war’s impact on the ci-vilian population of that state.

Reviewer C. Michael Harrington is a member of the Houston Civil War Round Table and Civil War Aficionados. He has written several articles on South Carolina Confederates. A practicing lawyer, he has degrees in economics from Yale and Cambridge and a law degree from Harvard.

learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

An “extras” section includes six of the author’s favorite photos. The first is the “Iron Mike” statue at Norman-dy, a tribute to the 82d and 101st Air-borne. The second is a monument to the French Battle of the Marne. The third is of a stunning sunset at Valley Forge.

The fourth photo is a view of Ho-nolulu from Diamond Head. The fifth shows twilight on the James River near the Belle Isle Civil War prison. The last photo reminds us of the dedication and sacrifice of the American soldiers who lie at rest in the American Cemetery at Norman-dy. Lest we forget.

This work is an excellent photo archive of our historical past inter-twined with modern photographic images to create long-lasting mem-ories. Highly recommended.

Reviewer Larry Clowers lives in Gettysburg, Pa., and is a professional historical interpreter of Ulysses S. Grant.

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35Civil War NewsApril 2016

Novel Follows 2 Men’sLives From 1858-1868

Henceforth the Bad Angel. By Philip Brewster. Novel. 376 pp., 2015, Philip Brewster, http://badan-gelbook.com, $15.99 softcover.

Novels about the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater are relatively rare. Works such as Paulette Jiles’s Enemy Women and Daniel Woodrell and Ron Rash’s Woe to Live On have attempted to tell the complex story of the war in Missouri.

Philip Brewster’s new novel fol-lows two young men, one white and one African American, through three turbulent events in Kansas history in 1858, 1863 and 1868.

Brewster’s novel begins with the emigration of Michael Craddock and his family from Ohio to Kansas Territory in 1857. While traveling through Missouri, they meet a slave boy named Gabriel, and a friendship develops between Gabriel and young Michael.

In 1858 the boys witness the in-famous massacre of Free State men at the Marais des Cygnes and then meet abolitionist John Brown. They also encounter Abraham Lincoln when the presidential aspirant makes

a brief visit to Kansas in 1859.Once the Civil War begins, the

narrative moves forward quickly to August 1863 and William Clarke Quantrill’s devastating raid on Law-rence, Kan. The young men witness the attack, Michael as a civilian and Gabriel as a recruit in the recently authorized 2nd Kansas Colored In-fantry regiment.

In 1864, after Gabriel participates in Gen. Frederick Steele‘s Camden Expedition, he joins Michael as a courier for the Kansas militia during Sterling Price’s raid through Mis-souri and Kansas. They witness the fighting between the Kansas militia and Price’s men at the Mockbee farm and the Union charge against the re-treating Confederates at Mine Creek.

With the war over, Gabriel joins the 10th U.S. Cavalry while buffalo hunter Michael joins Maj. George A. Forsyth’s Scouts and survives the brutal 1868 battle between the scouts and the Plains Indians at Beecher Is-land. The narrative concludes with Michael’s visit to Nicodemus, Kan-sas, for Gabriel’s funeral.

Brewster has penned an engaging narrative with fully developed char-acters and vivid, detailed descrip-tions of the major events. Although a few minor errors have crept into the narrative, it appears that Brew-ster consulted some of the standard works on the territorial, Civil War and Indian War periods in Kansas history.

Those who prefer works of fiction and desire to learn more about some of the most significant events in the “Sunflower State,” all at a very rea-sonable price, will find Henceforth the Bad Angel quite enjoyable.

Reviewer Jeff Patrick is an interpretive specialist with the National Park Service at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Republic, Mo. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in American history from Purdue University.

Youth Novel Follows A BoyTransported To Civil War

Will’s War: A Boy Travels Through Time to the Civil War. By Lynn Lowin. Juvenile novel. 474 pp., 2015, Lynn Lowin, lynnlowinwrites@gmail .com., $16.95 softcover.

This account uses William Brad-ford, a 13-year-old boy from Litch-field, Conn., as a time traveler. Will’s interest in the Civil War begins as he is reading a book by Bruce Catton, and he is mysteriously transported back to 1861.

Throughout the book, Will travels between contemporary Litchfield and the wartime Virginia Shenando-ah Valley.

He witnesses the battles of First Manassas, Port Royal, New Market and Gettysburg, as well as the sur-render at Appomattox Court House.

But he is more than a passive by-stander. He fights with the Virginia Military Institute cadets at New Mar-ket, participates in partisan guerilla raids, and is a medic at Gettysburg.

In his final travel episode, Will witnesses Gen. Robert E. Lee’s sur-render of the Army of Northern Vir-ginia and is reunited with soldiers and civilians he has interacted with over the past four years.

Back in Litchfield, he learns that his great-great-grandfather fought in the war. His estranged father gives him letters from his ancestor that propel him to seek information about his ancestor and his wartime role.

Will’s story reflects the trage-dy and loss of war. He experiences the sorrow of friends’ deaths, hard-ships imposed on ordinary families and suffering of the wounded. He concludes that the war his ancestor fought represented the inhumanity of man to man.

War was truly hell with its horrors of amputated limb piles, starving soldiers and civilians, and mangled bodies. Will thus becomes like all

participants in war: he longs for peace, a return home and an end to the needless slaughter.

Lynn Lowin’s use of time travel provides the medium by which she combines accurate historical data with a story constructed to relate to young 21st-century readers. The book allows today’s youth to learn the basic events and tribulations of the Civil War from a person their own age who also deals with con-temporary issues of divorce, work, dating and sibling bickering.

Additional themes of forgiveness, strength in adversity, and the impor-tance of family are incorporated as lessons for maturing adolescents.

Will’s War is thus not aimed at the Civil War historian but provides an excellent format for the war’s basic history in a context very readable and relevant to young readers. For this purpose, it is highly recommended.

Reviewer Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including The Last Confederate Scout and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable.

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