Glynn Young

“A Season of Slaughter” by Chris Mackowski & Kristopher White

April 12, 2023 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

From May 5 to May 7, 1864, the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Robert E. Lee, battled with the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Ulysses S. Grant. In what was known as the Battle of the Wilderness. The terrain was horrific for a battle – hundreds of acres of dense scrub, trees, and thick woods. Dry conditions, not to mention shelling by artillery, were conducive for fires. It was also notable for being the first engagement between the two commanding generals.

With only a day passing, the two armies moved from the Wilderness area to the region around Spotsylvania Court House and soon found themselves engaged again. Except this time, it was more of a push-me / pull-you series of engagements, with the Confederate lines generally holding (with one major exception) and with continuous punching of those lines by Union forces. Instead of three days, the action went on for two weeks, from May 8 to May 21.

Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White detail the action day by day in A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864. And they do more. Each chapter (general covering each day) includes directions on how to visit the various battle and engagement sites and explaining what visitors today would see that the actual participants would not have (or vice versa). The book serves as both an essential day-by-day history of the battle and a field guidebook (with photographs). Also included are numerous photographs of many of the officers, generals, and soldiers involved in the battle.

The book is not written for expert or academic readers but for the general reader who might be interested in the battle, the Civil War, and American history. And for those interested in touring the battlefields. For that general reader, it is an excellent and helpful resource.

A professor at St. Bonaventure University, Mackowski has B.A., M.A., M.F.A., and Ph.D. degrees in communication, English, and creative writing. The author of some nine books, he’s written extensively on the Civil War for a number of publications. He also worked for the National Park Service and gave tours of the Civil War battlefields at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. He serves as editor at Emerging Civil War.

White is the deputy director of education at the American Battlefield Trust. He received a B.A. degree in history from the California University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. degree in military history from Norwich University. For five years, he served as a ranger-historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. He is also a co-founder and chief historian for Emerging Civil War, and has published, co-authored, and edited nearly 24 books.

A Season of Slaughter stresses the importance of the month of May. The two commanding generals were not only testing their armies but also each other, each gaining the measure of what he was dealing with. It was also the month when the strategy of the overall Union army changed, a change driven by Grant: the goal became not the capture of Richmond, the Confederate capital, but the destruction of Lee’s army. If Grant had to do that by wearing down the Confederates, Grant would do that, even at the cost of horrific loss of Union soldiers.

Top illustration: Battle of Spotsylvania by Thure de Thulstrop.

“If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania: Vol. 1” by Scott Mingus & Eric Wittenberg

April 5, 2023 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

When you get the compressed view of history in school – too much to cover and not enough time – you tend to think events like battles just happened. Two armies showed up and fought. But as Scott Mingus and Eric Wittenberg demonstrate in If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac March to Gettysburg, battles like Gettysburg have lead-ups, clashes and conflicts, and after-events.

In other words, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia didn’t just show up in Gettysburg and fight George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. In the month leading up to the battle, Lee’s army moved in three substantive routes toward Pennsylvania. The approval to take the war into the North was given by the Confederate government in late May, and Lee wasted no time. By June 1, his army began to move.

Along the way, the Northern generals tried to figure out what Lee was up to. They knew a large part of his army was moving north, but was the objective West Virginia, Pennsylvania’s state capital of Harrisburg, a turn back toward Baltimore and Washington, D.C., or perhaps even Philadelphia? Lee’s ultimate target was unknown.

Volume 1 of this work covers the period from June 1 to June 21, 1863, from leaving Fredericksburg, Virginia and arriving near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, some 25 miles from Gettysburg. and the authors are meticulous about explaining what was happening from the perspective of soldiers, officers, generals, and civilians. Drawing upon books, memoirs, letters, official histories, Mingus and Wittenberg document Lee’s daily progress north in detail.

Small battles, skirmishes, and limited engagements marked Lee’s progress north. A few of the engagements were intense. Generally, the Union troops got the worst of it, including the Confederates’ recapture of Winchester, Virginia, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, which had chafed under Union occupation.

The authors do a masterful job of reconstructing three weeks of movements by both armies. Gettysburg didn’t just happen one day; that battle has a history, and Mingus and Wittenburg have fully documented it.

Mingus, an author and speaker, has written or co-authored some two dozen books on the American Civil War and Underground Railroad. He was previously a new product development director in the global paper industry, He lives in Pennsylvania. Wittenberg, a practicing attorney, is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, tour guide, and battlefield preservationist. He’s written numerous books and articles on the Civil War and lives in Ohio.

Vol. 2 in this series covers June 22-30, 1863, and will be published June 30 of this year.

“Grant vs. Lee,” edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch

March 29, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Emerging Civil War (ECW) is one of my favorite blogs to follow for stories, news, and articles about the Civil War. It has quite a roster of editors and writers, all of whom have backgrounds (and often jobs) in history, national parks, and publishing. They publish a weekly newsletter, sponsor an annual conference, and have a series of books published with the publishing firm Savas Beatie.

What I particularly enjoy is how their posts and publications are in understandable (i.e., non-academic) English. They’re writing to be read and understood by people like me, the general public. (In case you’re interested, they also produce and manage a sister site on the American Revolution, Emerging Revolutionary War Era.)

Last year, ECW published several works to celebrate their tenth anniversary. One of those is Grant vs. Lee: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War. Edited by ECW Editor-in-Chief Chris Mackowski and contributor Dan Welch, it’s a collection of 46 articles by 22 authors posted on the site from the preceding 10 years.

The Civil War period covered is less than a year – Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee did face each other in battle until the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-7, 1864). And even then, their armies fought over terrain unconducive to battle – dense scrub and forest that had as much to do with the engagement’s outcome as anything the armies or the generals did. In one essay, Mackowski argues that it was this battler, rather than Gettysburg, that should be considered the turning point in the war. What Lee learned was that Grant would through wave after wave of men and weaponry at him, and only counting the fearsome cost afterward. (“Was Grant a butcher?” he asks in another essay.)

Other battles and engagements are covered, including Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, North Anna, Petersburg, the fall of Richmond, and Appomattox. And the collection not only addresses battles but also the regiments and individuals involved, including author and poet Herman Melville’s perspective on the Fall of Richmond.

In short, Grant vs. Lee is a solid introduction to the last year of the Civil War.

Welch is an educator in a public school district in Ohio and serves as a seasonal park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park and associate editor of Gettysburg Magazine. He’s written two books in the Emerging Civil War Series and co-edited several volumes.

The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi by Chris Mackowski.

ECW Podcast: Grant vs. Lee.

“Four Years with Morgan and Forrest” by Col. Thomas F. Berry

March 22, 2023 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864) was a Confederate general whose operations seemed more guerilla-like than military. He’s known for attacking the supply lies of Union General William Rosecrans and famous for a raid into Indiana and Ohio that took hundreds of prisoners, before ending in Morgan’s capture and imprisonment (he did manage to escape prison and return to the war).

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) was a Confederate general who was the most feared cavalry commander on either side during the Civil War. He disrupted Ulysses Grant’s operations at Vicksburg, he broke out of Union encirclements, and he participated in the Battle of Chickamauga. He was also involved in what came to be known as the Massacre at Fort Pillow, where Black soldiers in Union uniforms were systematically killed.

Colonel Thomas F. Berry (1832-1917) rode with both Morgan and Forrest. In 1914, he published his memoir of the Civil War and shortly after, Four Years with Morgan and Forrest. Given the reputations of both Confederate commanders, it’s easy to see why he waited nearly 50 years after the end of the war. He kept a diary throughout the war, and the diary became the basis for the memoir.

The memoir surprises in two ways.

First, Berry feels no remorse or regret for anything he or his commanders did during the war; the reader has the impression that Berry would it all over again if he had to and wouldn’t change a thing.

Second is what Berry describes. Jack Ryan, Jack Reacher, and James Bond move over. You look like pikers compared to the real-life adventures of Thomas Berry. The memoir is full or raids, attacks, battles, and deaths (a lot of deaths), and even includes a tragic love story.

Berry was captured 13 times. He escaped all 13 times, including from the prison on Rock Island in the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois – in the dead of winter, and by traveling on a chunk of ice. He was shot a total of 26 times, surviving all wounds. One bullet was so lodged that the surgeon refused to operate, so Berry, with the help of a nurse, operating on himself and removed the bullet. He was stitched himself up afterward. (He does thank the nurse for her assistance.)

His story doesn’t end with the end of the Civil War. Berry went on to fight in Mexico for the next two years, during the short-lived reign of the Emperor Maximilian.

It’s an amazing and often shocking story. You wonder if Berry invented some parts, like performing surgery on himself. But he describes it in such a matter of fact, non-sensational way that you tend to accept the account at face value. He doesn’t seem to exaggerate; he simply follows what he wrote in his diary.

What a story he tells!

“Contemners and Serpents: The James Wilson Family Civil War Correspondence”

March 15, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

James and Eliza Wilson were Presbyterian missionaries to India, including what is now Pakistan, from 1834 to 1852. Their five children, four sons and a daughter, were born there. Both James and Eliza were from Pennsylvania, and most of their families were in Ohio and Indiana. Eliza’s sister married a man who became a successful planter in Georgia and occupied a place at the top of the social hierarchy there.

When they left for mission service, partisan feeling in the United States could run high – for example, the 1824 presidential election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson was bitterly contested and controversial. But what had not yet emerged was what would become the defining, and intractably dividing, issue of the 1850s and 1860s – slavery. When they returned in 1852, the United States seemed a very different place, one that was increasingly not united.

Their older sons had been educated in the United States, a common practice for missionary families. When the family came back in 1852, they settled in eastern Tennessee, not far from Knoxville. This area was not a bastion of pro-slavery sentiment, unlike the cotton-growing areas of western Tennessee.

When the time came to choose sides, all four of the Wilson sons would enlist in the Confederate Army. The father, James, was pro-Union, at least in the early period of the war. He eventually became a chaplain with the Confederate army. The Wilson’s daughter Bessie was an ardent Confederate sympathizer. The influence of their mother’s family seems to have been a factor but not a complete explanation. The oldest son, Luther, for example, was educated at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey, although some of his observations suggest a pro-Southern perspective.

That we know what we do about the James Wilson family is because of their letters, and each of the family members wrote a considerable number of them. The letters have been collected and published under the title of Contemners and Serpents: The James Wilson Family Civil War Correspondence. The “contemners and serpents” comes from the lyrics of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

How the letters were preserved and found is a story in itself. Theodore Albert Fuller (1909-1990) operated a retreat in North Carolina. A daughter of the Wilson’s oldest son Luther would come each summer, and she would always bring her most prized possessions with her. She happened to die at the retreat one summer, and her executor decided her prized old documents were worthless, so he threw them out. Fuller, who had published books on local history, saw their value and bought them from the estate. He researched the family and developed a manuscript based on the letters, but never published it.

In the late 1990s, Thomas Daniel Knight was a graduate student at Oxford studying American history. He met Fuller’s daughter, who mentioned the manuscript. Years later, after receiving his doctorate, Knight was offered the opportunity to edit and annotate the manuscript. The result was this book.

The volume is extraordinarily well done. The letters appear in their entirety, with all names footnoted and identified. The letters are also placed in their historical context of battles fought and other developments (Eliza and Bessie, for example, were expelled from Knoxville after it fell to the Union Army). The father and all four sons would survive the war, although two of the sons were captured at the end of the war and spent time in prison camps.

What Contemners and Serpents provides is an inside look at the Civil War from the perspective of four sons fighting the war, a daughter and mother supporting the South, and a father who was something of a reluctant participant. They were writing to and for each other, of course, and not for publication. We are the beneficiaries of Col. Fuller’s saving of the letters and Dr. Knight’s careful and informative treatment and further development of what he was given. (Knight himself found additional letters of the family.)

Knight is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley. He received his B.A. in history and classics from Washington & Lee University; his M. St. in 18^th Century English History and his M. Litt. In American History from the University of Oxford; and his doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. In addition to numerous awards for his work, he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Oxford debating Society.

Top photograph: Both Eliza Wilson and daughter Bessie were in Knoxville during the occupation by Gen. Burnside’s Union army, Confederate Gen. Longstreet’s siege to retake the city, and the eventual rival of Gen. Sherman’s Union forces which forced a retreat by the Confederates. Both women were expelled from the city and eventually ended up with relatives.

When Research for Your Historical Novel Changes Your Understanding

March 8, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

For more than a year, I’ve been researching / writing/ researching / writing a historical novel set during the American Civil War. It’s loosely based on the experiences of my great-grandfather, but the more I write and research, the looser it becomes.

I thought I knew the basic story of the war. What I soon learned is that, for a very long time, historians focused on the war in the East, which specifically meant Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. But in the last two of three decades, the war in the West – in particular, Tennessee and Mississippi – has come to be recognized as almost as significant as that in the East.

It was certainly significant for both sides of my family. My father’s family experienced the Battle of Shiloh and Grierson’s Raid (the basis for the 1959 movie The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne). My mother’s family experienced the Union occupation of New Orleans (starting in 1862), both the Creole French and German immigrant sides of the family.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: John Clem, who “enlisted” in the Union army at age 9 in 1861 and became a soldier at age 12.

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