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Grierson’s Raid and “The Horse Soldiers”

April 6, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

After I started elementary school, I became the movie partner of my mother. My father rarely went to the movies; my mother had been starstruck since she was a child. During the summer months, and on weekends during the school year, I accompanied her to one of the big theaters in downtown New Orleans to watch the latest movie she was interested in. We started with the Disney films – my earliest remembered movie is Bambi, the 1942 film which I would have seen via re-release in 1956 or 1957.

My most vivid memory was going to the Saenger Theatre on Canal Street to see The Last Voyage, starring Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. Released in 1959, it was a tension-filled story about a passenger liner sinking in the Pacific, with rescue boats too far away to reach it before it sank. I cried through most of the movie. My mother felt so bad for taking me to see what was an adult-themed movie that, when it ended, she took me across Canal Street to see Some Like It Hotat the Joy Theatre. It was certainly funny, but it was even more adult-themed than The Last Voyage.

That same year, she took me to see The Horse Soldiers, a Civil War epic starring John Wayne and William Holden. (She liked John Wayne, but William Holden was one of her three favorite actors, with Robert Stack and Clark Gable rounding out the list.) The movie was based upon a 1956 historical novel of the same name by Harold Sinclair. The book itself was based upon a true story generally referred to as “Grierson’s Raid.”

From April 17 to May 2 of 1863, Colonel Benjamin Grierson (a pre-war music teacher in Illinois who happened to hate horses) led a brigade of three cavalry regiments from LaGrange, Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, slicing right down through the state of Mississippi. Grierson’s Rad was intended by Gen. Ulysses Grant to be both a diversionary campaign and an effort to disrupt Confederate supply lines leading up to the siege of Vicksburg.

The raid was an unqualified Union success and proved critical to Grant’s ultimate victory at Vicksburg (William Tecumseh Sherman, who rarely said anything complimentary or even kind about other Civil War efforts, called the Grierson campaign “the most brilliant of the war.” Down through the state of Mississippi, train depots were burned (sometimes igniting nearby homes and businesses), railroad tracks were torn up, and stories of food, munitions, and clothing meant for Vicksburg were destroyed.

In 1954, Dee Brown, who years later would win the Pulitzer Prize for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published Grierson’s Raid, a historical account of the campaign. Later historians have offered unflattering critiques of the book; Brown does have a tendency to occasionally invent dialogue which, while based on letters and memoirs, was closer to imagined than real. But his day-to-day account provides the sweep of the raid, the people and towns involved, how it was both resisted and (sometimes) welcomed, how the brigade “lived off the land,” and its rather unqualified success. It does provide the narrative sweep of the story, even if even amateurs like myself can easily spot what clearly Brown had to invent.

A more historical account of the campaign can be found in the 2018 book by Timothy Smith, entitled The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Raid Through Mississippi, published in 2018 (more on that book next week).

It’s strange that this campaign, so critical to the Union victory at Vicksburg, one of the two turning points of the Civil War in 1863 (the other being Gettysburg), is rarely mentioned in American or Civil War history classes, at least in pre-college education. Perhaps the paucity of solid historical accounts is one reason.

But there are historical records. Brown cites five primary sources he used for his 1954 book: Grierson’s manuscript autobiography and papers in the Illinois State Historical Library; Grierson’s privately printed Record of Services Rendered the Government; the journals of Stephen Alfred Forbes and his family letters; Griersons Raids, an account published by Richard Surby, a sergeant who took part in the raid; and the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.

The 1959 movie Horse Soldiers changed names, invented scenes that never happened, and added a romantic interest with the Southern plantation owner Hannah Hunter who deliberately eavesdrops on campaign discussions and is taken along for the raid. The movie was fairly popular at the time but never broke even; the two top stops were each paid $750,000.

What neither my mother nor I knew at the time was that Grierson’s Raid was part of our family history, with the Youngs’ home being in the Brookhaven, Mississippi area at the time. The raiders discovered pocket allegiance to the Union among some Brookhaven residents; the town had been established by a New Yorker and named for a town in that state. And when the burning of the train deport threatened to spread to the town itself, Grierson ordered his troops to help the town’s citizens fight the fire. My the 61-year-old great-great-grandfather would have likely been there. His youngest son and my great-grandfather would have been 16 at the time and might have been there or might have already enlisted.

“Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier” by Louis Leon

March 9, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In 1861, Louis Leon was 19, a clerk in a dry goods store in Charlotte, North Carolina. He joined the Charlotte Grays, Company C, First North Carolina Regiment to fight for the South. His brother Jacob joined up at the same time. Louis was a private, and he would remain a private through the duration of the Civil War.

Fifty-two years later, now an old man, Louis decided that if generals and other officers could publish their diaries about the civil War, he could, too. In 1913, his war-time diary was published as Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier.

Rather than grand strategy and the description of great battles, Leon’s diary focused on what the vast majority of soldiers were focused upon during the war: food, marching back and forth, action during battles, the discomfort of riding a troop train, and kindnesses by local citizens (especially young ladies). As his words indicate, much of the war was tedium – waiting, marching forth only to be called back, chores around camp.

Yet Leon was in major battles, including Gettysburg (July, 1863) and the Wilderness (May, 1864). The Wilderness was the first major effort by the newly appointed general-in-chief, Ulysses S. Grant, to take the Confederate capital at Richmond. It didn’t succeed but neither side could really claim victory. For Leon, however, the battle had a major impact: along with hundreds of others, he was taken prisoner and eventually sent to a prison in the North. His accounts of prison life are terse and sometimes funny; it doesn’t appear that he unduly suffered, like many other prisoners of both sides did at different prisons and prison camps.

Leon, being Jewish, makes note of Jewish holidays like the Day of Atonement and the occasional anti-Semitic comment, which he did not seem to take personally. His fellow soldiers didn’t seem to care about his religion or background, if he was ready and willing to fight. He was able to get letters to his parents in New York, usually through the help of a friendly Union picket. (Leon offers no explanation as to why his parents were in New York while he and his brother fought for the South, but it does make one realize how the Civile War often split families.) And he speaks of Robert E. Lee is almost saintly terms; the general was revered by his soldiers.

Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier is the Civil War as seen from the bottom. Leon was a soldier who followed his orders, no matter how non-sensical. He maintained his sense of humor and his sense of stoicism, reporting the death of friends in short, factual statements. The book is an articulate look into the daily life of the soldier during the Civil War.

Top illustration: Battle of the Wilderness by Kurz and Allen, via Wikipedia.

“The Confederate Surrender at Greensboro” by Robert Dunkerly

March 2, 2022 By Glynn Young 5 Comments

I’m trying to learn what kind of experience my great-grandfather, Samuel Young, went through in the Civil War, and so I read a book which might, or might not, reflect that experience.

My great-grandfather, according to the story handed down in the family, enlisted in a Mississippi unit about 1863. I’ve found a record for an S.F. Young (right initials) in E Company, 2^nd Mississippi Cavalry. The problem is that the company was formed in a county in northeastern Mississippi, near Tupelo. My grandfather was from Pike County in southwestern Mississippi, near the border with Louisiana. The 2^nd Mississippi Cavalry became part of a corps under Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, which surrendered in Alabama on May 4, 1865 (nearly a month after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox).

The family story put my great-grandfather farther east, with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia or Gen. Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, which surrendered two weeks after Lee at Greensboro, North Carolina. The story says that Samuel, employed as a messenger boy because of his age (18 at the end of the war), had to make his way home to Mississippi mostly on foot. When he finally arrived home, some months after the end of the war, he found his family gone. They’d moved to eastern Texas to escape Federal control (in case you might wonder, they were small farmers who owned no slaves, at least according to census records). Samuel trekked across Louisiana to Texas, where he found them in the late fall of 1865.

We know what happened afterward. Samuel married a local Mississippi girl, they had seven surviving children (the youngest of whom was my grandfather), and he died in 1920. He’s buried in a small town near Alexandria, La. He was also the youngest in his own family, and the only one of three brothers who survived the Civil War.

I was familiar with Lee’s surrender; most Americans likely think it was the event that ended the war. But Johnston’s army was still in the field in North Carolina, with Gen. William Sherman’s army after him. I didn’t know much on Johnston’s surrender two weeks after Lee’s, until I happened across a book.

The Confederate Surrender at Greensboro by Robert Dunkerly, published in 2013, is an in-depth account of the last days of the Army of Tennessee. Dunkerly draws upon some 200 individual accounts, from soldiers, officers, and civilians, to tell an immediate and compelling story of the last days of the 40,000-man army.

Johnston’s movement up from South Carolina to Raleigh, the North Carolina state capital, and then to Greensboro happened to coincide with the Confederate government’s flight from Richmond to Danville, Virginia, and then to Greensboro. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet would continue south until their eventual capture at Irwinville, Georgia. Part of Dunkerly’s story of Johnston’s surrender is also the story of the last days of the Confederate government.

The final days were anything but calm. Rumors abounded among the soldiers about surrender, about Lee’s army, and about plans to continue the war. Stragglers, deserters, and eventually soldiers paroled from Lee’s army were making their way south and began to make contact with units of Johnston’s army. Confederate government stories of provisions were looted by soldiers and civilians alike. The economy was non-existent, social order had broken down, and people were doing what they could to defend themselves, their families, and their homes. Desertion was a growing problem; many soldiers were simply leaving to go home. Johnston might have lost up to a fourth of his army to desertion.

Imagine a society in which currency is worthless, banks have failed, necessities are scarce, and bands of soldiers, deserters, and former slaves are ravaging the countryside, looking for food (and sometimes plunder). Dunkerly tells this enthralling story, with the army at its heart.

Dunkerly is a historian, speaker, and author actively involved in historic preservation and research. He received his bachelor’s degree in history from St. Vincent College and his master’s degree in historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. He’s worked at nine historical sites and published some 11 books, including Redcoats on Cape Fear: The Revolutionary War in Southeastern North Carolina. He’s currently a park ranger at Richmond National Battlefield Park.

Whether my great-grandfather was part of Lee’s army or Johnston’s, he would have been making his way home through a society in which nothing was the same, nor would be again, civil order was in shanbles, and food was what you could shoot or forage. And thousands of former soldiers were in exactly the same situation. Somehow, Samuel Young made it.

Top photograph by Scott Umstattd via Unsplash. Used with permission.

When You Hit the Writing Wall

February 23, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’ve learned there is more than one kind of writing block.

I’ve been blessed with never to have experienced writer’s block, that immobilization that often afflicts writers and stops them cold from writing another word. I’ve sympathized with people who’ve had it, and I know it’s real. They stare at a blank page or screen, and – nothing.

The sources of writer’s block are legion – stress, tension, deadlines, family tragedy, accidents, illness, writing one’s way into a dead end with no resolution, finances, success of a novel (creating high expectations for the next one), the end or beginning of a relationship, and more. F. Scott Fitzgerald had it. So did Herman Melville. So did composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Writer’s block is so well known and so well-documented that there are scores of books on the subject, classes you can take, and writing coaches who can help guide you through it.

Most writers experience it to one degree or another.

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

Photograph by Ryan Snaadt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Terms of Service” by Chris Martin

February 16, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Chris Martin works at Moody Publishers as a content marketing editor and a consultant in social media, marketing, and communications. He has a deep background in social media and digital content strategy. He perhaps best known for his blog, Terms of Service, where he writes thoughtfully and with great insight about topics as diverse as the metaverse, TikTok, Wordle, and the impact of social media on society and culture.

His new book is entitled, appropriately enough, Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media. The book is a primer on social media and the internet but is also more than that – a look at how the internet shapes us and what can we do about it. And his solutions are not “let’s pass a law” type of prescriptions, but instead what individuals can do themselves.

This is not a book that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok will like. But it’s an important book, one that is both deeply thought through and easy to read.

Martin starts at the beginning with how the internet evolved, how it works now, and how it affects our lives. He examines fives ways the social internet shapes us – the belief that attention assigns value, how we trade away our privacy, how affirmation becomes more important than truth, and how we demonize – and then destroy – people we dislike.

His recommendations for dealing with this are particularly helpful, because they are relatively simple things individuals can do. (They may not be easy, particularly if you’re a social media addict, but they are simple and straightforward.) This emphasis on individual actions is far more empowering than waiting for “Congress to pass a law.” As Martin points point, it’s inevitable that governments will start regulating the social internet, but that doesn’t mean we must or should wait. And what we can do as individuals starts with something many readers may find surprising – studying history.

Terms of Service is a highly readable and intelligent look at the social internet, how it shapes our lives, and what we can do to regain control.

Top photograph by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Bad News” by Batya Ungar-Sargon

February 9, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor at Newsweek and co-hosts Newsweek’s podcast “The Debate.” Before joining Newsweek, she was the opinion editor of Forward, the largest Jewish media outlet in the United States. She’s written for The New York Times and Washington Post. She’s appeared on MSNBC, NPR, and NBC. She has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

She is not the person you would expect to have written a book like Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. But she did.

Bad News is not a book written from a conservative, right-wing, or alt-right perspective. It’s not a hastily compiled mishmash of everything that’s wrong with the news media. Instead, Ungar-Sargon has published a carefully researched, well-documented, and well-written story of where American news media has gone seriously wrong and how that is harming the United States.

If the problem could be summarized in one sentence, it would be this: the business model of the news media has shifted from reporting the news to giving its demographic the perspective that it wants. Some call this reporting the narrative instead of the news. Whatever it’s called, it’s making a significant contribution, perhaps the most significant, to destroying trust it itself, in American Institutions, and what Americans have believed about their country. And that has implications far beyond the 50 states

This is what Ungar-Sargon documents in Bad News:

The people who are the reporters and editors have not been working-class for two generations. The economic and social status of reporters changed fundamentally, and the author points to the Watergate scandal as one of the starting points.

The major news media have abandoned the working class, not unlike the Democratic Party did beginning with the Clinton Administration. The working class is still large group of people, and Fox News isn’t so much the conservative media outlier as it is the channel that covers what the working class cares about.

Social media and the internet, far from “democratizing” society, have been the mechanisms by which the major news media centered their efforts on narrative instead of news – and turned the narrative into a business model.

The media’s coverage of racial issues fits its audience’s understanding about race and itself, but it is completely out of kilter with what most Americans believe or experience. One example: 81 percent of Black Americans do not want the police defunded. Ungar-Sargon argues that the media is besotted with race because a discussion of class, which she sees is the real issue, would undermine the media’s own position.

The media’s cartoonish coverage of Jews, crime, and Trump voters exemplify what is happening. She doesn’t say it exactly this way, but Donald Trump is like the drug to the news media’s addiction. It needs Trump, and not only to prop up its ratings and subscriptions but also to be the ever-present Bogeyman out to destroy America as the media understands it.

She doesn’t present a laundry list of how to fix the problem; the solution will take generations. But she does suggest things that Americans can do to stop the media from exercising the negative influence it has. And it’s not things like cancel your newspaper subscription.

Bad News is an important book, one likely to be ignored by the news media. But the rest of need to read it and understand it. It’s that important.

When Journalism Began to Change

When the Worldwide Web Was a Marvel – and a Mystery

How Email Started a Revolution

The Media and Kyle Rittenhouse

The U.S. Media and Russian Collusion

Top photograph by Markus Spiske via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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