Civil War

Research Can Teach You a Hard (if Useful) Lesson

August 17, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I learned a very hard lesson while writing a historical novel. I learned how hard it can be, and it’s hard for both the research you do and for the research you have to ignore.

I’m writing a novel that takes place in two historical periods – the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, and 50 years later, during the run-up to World War I. The story was loosely based on a story handed down in the family about what had happened to my great-grandfather. The emphasis is on the word “loosely,” because the more I researched, the more I discovered that what was passed down as a family story had very little basis in fact.

Because I discovered this about 40,000 words into the manuscript, it stopped me cold. For weeks. I kept hoping I was wrong, but I learned my extended family had two oral traditions about my great-grandfather. And the version passed down to me was the wrong one, or perhaps I should say “more embellished.” It made a great story, but it was flat-out wrong.

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

Photograph: Some of the 1,700 Union cavalry troops who rode through Mississippi in 1863 during Grierson’s Raid.

“The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Lived It”

August 9, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

By late 1861 and early 1862, people on both sides of the Civil War had begun to understand that this conflict wasn’t going to be “over by Christmas.” There would be no knockout punch; instead, it was going to be a long, tough slog. And the outcome was anything but assured. While we have the benefit of hindsight, the people who lived through the Civil War didn’t have foresight.

You can argue that every year of the Civil War was a critical year in some way, and 1862 was no different. The naval blockade of the Southern states would tighten; New Orleans would fall to Union Admiral David Farragut; and some of the bloodiest battles of the war – like Shiloh and Antietam – would be fought, along with Second Manassas or Second Bull Run. And Abraham Lincoln had begun to move toward a proclamation to emancipate the slaves in the seceding states – a political move rather than a military one, and one fraught with political risk.

The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Fought It tells the story of 1862. And it tells it in the words of the political and military leaders, soldiers, and ordinary citizens who led it, fought it, experienced it, survived it, and, in some cases, died during it.

Edited by historian and author Stephen Sears, the volume is the second of four in the Library of America collection of first-account Civil War writings. Sears has made use of memoirs, newspaper reports, letters, legislative acts, speeches, proclamations, and more, providing a short introduction to each to provide context. But you read what was happening by the people who were there.

The volume includes accounts by well-known authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, who visited the White House and met Lincoln; the poet Emily Dickinson; the poet and author Herman Melville; and Ralph Waldo Emerson. You read minutes and letters by the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, and diplomatic summaries from Charles Francis Adams (grandson of John Adam and son of John Quincy Adams), reporting from London. A considerable number of Lincoln’s letters, acts and proclamations are included (including both the first-draft Emancipation Proclamation issued together with the suspension of the write of habeus corpus). Speeches are here, like by former slave and emancipation activist Frederick Douglass. The letters of soldiers and officers to loved ones are represented.

*The Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which led to the surrender of New Orleans*.

What emerges from all these reports is the understanding that the war would be costly, that there was nothing romantic about it, and that politics could be just as important in making military decisions as military objectives themselves.

Sears has published books on the battles of Gettysburg, Antietam, the Peninsular Campaign, and Chancellorsville, and on George McClellan, Lee’s lieutenants, Lincoln’s lieutenants, Lincoln’s generals, and related subjects.

The Civil War: The Second Year by Those Who Lived It is an often surprising, sometimes shocking, and always fascinating story of what happened in 1862. And it’s told by the people of the time.

Top illustration: The Second Battle of Manassas or Bull Run in 1862.

“If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania, Vol. 2” by Scott Mingus and Eric Wittenburg

August 2, 2023 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Volume 1 of “If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania” covered June 3 – 21, 1863, when Robert E. Lee’s armies implemented the Confederate decision to invade the North. Volume 2, picks up with the period June 22-30, 1863, as Lee’s army and that of Major General George Meade moved into the positions that would eventually become the Battle of Gettysburg. Co-authors Scott Mingus and Eric Wittenburg continue the masterful job they did with the first volume, placing the reader right in the thick of events and happenings.

Because Lee’s army was now on official northern soil, there is considerably more information provided about the civilian response. Rumors had been circulating for days; many Pennsylvanians believed Lee was aimed for the state capital of Harrisburg. Many people fled, including free blacks, who knew the confederates would send them south to slavery. But many had no choice but to stay, hoping for the best. Surprisingly, some areas even welcomed the invading Confederates.

Units and advance troops encountered (or sometimes stumbled upon) each other, and the small battles and skirmishes of the previous three weeks were repeated. There was also considerable looting; the Confederates felt no hesitation in doing to Pennsylvanian farms what had been done to Southern farms. Lee had ordered that no destruction be undertaken; his order was generally followed, with at least one major exception. Confederate General Jubal Early came upon the ironworks owned by U.S. Senator Thaddeus Stevens, long an ardent abolitionist. Early deliberately disobeyed Lee and had the ironworks destroyed.

Like its predecessor, Volume 2 is packed with photographs of officers and soldiers as well as very helpful maps. The maps in particular allow the reader to track Lee’s progress north and Meade’s movement as well. While the two armies were moving toward confrontation, Union troops were making as effort to strike at Richmond, as so many Confederate troops were with Lee.

And Meade found himself in a surprising position. Gen. Joseph Hooker had been head of the army, but he was removed from command during the Union army’s movement north and replaced by Meade. Gettysburg would be Meade’s trial as commander, and he would do well.

While the two-volume work tops on the eve of the first day of Gettysburg, the authors include an epilogue which summarizes what transpired. And it was a crucial battle; a Southern victory might have led to the Confederacy’s recognition by Britain and France. The authors include what was happening in both countries as the two armies approached each other in America.

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.

Volume 2 of “If We Strike for Pennsylvania” is every bit as good as Volume 1. Both books make for riveting reading, even if we do know the outcome beforehand. The officers, soldiers, and civilians at the time did not know what would happened, and Mingus and Wittenburg neatly convey the hopes, the fears, and the terror that people experienced.

My Enchantment with (Addiction to?) the Civil War

July 26, 2023 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

My enchantment with, or addiction to reading about, the Civil War has deep roots that go back to early childhood. And it came through both sides of my family.

From my mother came the romance. If you had asked her, at any time of her life, what her favorite movie was, you would have received the consistent answer of Gone with the Wind. She was 16 when she first saw the movie. I don’t know how many times she watched it, especially after it became a regular staple of television. But the story of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, set against the backdrop of the Civil War and its aftermath, captured my mother’s romantic heart.

The novel by Margaret Mitchell won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The movie passed into American film legend, and my mother knew all the details, like how the directors searched long and hard for an actress to play Scarlett. Filming had started (like with the scene depicting the burning of Atlanta) when they finally decided on Vivien Leigh. And my mother adored Clark Gable, talking about him long after his death in 1960.

The movie, like the book, was imbued with the myth of the Lost Cause, that the Civil War had really been about states’ rights and that the South had fought a just and noble war. Today, our understanding has turned 180 degrees. It makes one wonder about the validity of extreme positions, whatever extreme they represent.

Because my father didn’t care much for movies, I became my mother’s movie partner by default. One of the movies we saw together was The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne and Constance Towers. It is a highly fictionalized and considerably misleading account of Grierson’s Raid, an 1863 foray through Mississippi by 1,700 Union cavalry troops. (A better account is the book The Real Horse Soldiers by Timothy Smith.) I must have been an impressionable age; I still remember much of the movie today, and it, too, channeled my interest in the Civil War. When we told my father about the movie, he mentioned that the raid went right through the area where his father and grandfather had lived.

A few years later, I attended LSU. At the time, chaired by T. Harry Williams, it had one of the most highly regarded history departments in the U.S. Williams had published a slew of books on the Civil War, but it was his biography of Huey Long that won the Pulitzer Prize and the national Book Award. He taught a senior-level history course on the Civil War that was limited to 12 students, and history majors had first call. I had to content myself with reading his books, like his biography of Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard.

John Wayne and Constance Towers in *The Horse Soldiers* (1959)

The subject of the war remained a reading interest, like Bruce Catton’s Civil War trilogy and James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. About 25 years ago, I was in a local antique store that also carried books, and I found a first edition of Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs in two volumes). Grant’s memoirs have been reprinted in numerous editions over the years; you can even find a Kindle edition for 49 cents. I paid $75 for my edition; the same edition now lists on some web sites for $1,250. Who knew?

I’m not a fan of visiting battlefields, but my youngest son and I did visit the Pilot Knob Battlefield Park, less than an hour from St. Louis. And I discovered that the Missouri Civil War Museum sits adjacent to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, about a 20-minute drive from my house.

The clincher for my Civil War interest was family history, again on both sides. My mother’s grandparents lived in New Orleans when it was occupied by Union forces; my paternal great-grandfather, born and raised in Mississippi, was a Confederate soldier.

It is that great-grandfather’s story that has turned out to be the most problematic. What was handed down by my grandfather and father may, or may not, be what actually happened to my great-grandfather in the war. While it’s been frustrating to track it down, it’s been a fascinating research exercise as well. And I’ve followed all kinds of trails down Civil War rabbit holes.

My interest in the Civil War has taught me many things, but most of all it’s taught me is that the past is never really the past.

Top photograph: Clark Gable and Vivien Liegh in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Belle Boyd: Cleopatra of the Secession

July 19, 2023 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Belle Boyd (1844-1900) was 16 when the Civil War began. A member of a prominent family in Martinsburg, Virginia (it became part of WestVirginia), she’d been in boarding school in Baltimore when the Southern states began to secede. She made he way back home, and when the war began, she promptly decided to do whatever she could to help the South win.

She became a spy.

Her hometown afforded more than ample opportunity; like doe so many other towns in contested areas, control of the town changed hands several times. She made no secret of her sympathies; she did make secret her listening in on Union plans and army movements. In one particularly amazing incident, she braved gun and cannon fire in rushing across a large field to bring news of Union army reserves to Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

Union authorities were not ignorant of Belle Boyd’s activities. No less a person than Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, in President Lincoln’s cabinet, ordered her arrest. She was arrested six times and imprisoned twice. At one point, Pinkerton detectives were hired to track her down. She was finally able to make her way to safety in England before the war ended; to support herself, she became an actress.

She almost immediately began writing her memoirs, for which was a ready market in both North and South. She had locked a Northern reporter in his room during one Union army evacuation, and he was captured by the Confederates. He knew exactly who bore responsibility, and when he returned to the North, he wrote stories, many grossly exaggerated, that turned Belle Boyd into a notorious spy and femme fatale, at least as far as Northern readers were concerned. Belle shrugged off his lurid stories; what else should you expect from a Northern newspaper, she said. In the South, she was regarded as a great heroine, and Stonewall Jackson himself commended her patriotism and activities.

Her memoir, published in 1866, sold quite well. Entitled Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison: Cleopatra of the Secession, it detailed her activities from the beginning, her Southern patriotism, her captures and imprisonments, and her “in your face” attitude, including waving a small Confederate flag on the train bearing her to prison in Washington, D.C.

She writes with passion and intelligence. She may have been a teenager, but she was determined to do her part for the South. She gave little thought to her own safety, unless her treatment by Union authorities might reflect badly on them. She was typically jailed without any explanation or formal charges (although I’m sure she could have guessed), as habeas corpus had been suspended by executive order.

Boyd married three times; her second husband was a British citizen who had fought for the Union. She had a daughter from her first marriage and four children from her second. She died of a heart attack in Wisconsin and was buried there.

Her memoir, published in two volumes, is considered by many to be “highly fictionalized.” It is a rather breathless account, and it’s easy to see how she might have described some experiences and even invented others to put herself in a daring and positive light. But it is a highly entertaining account; Belle Boyd knew how to capture attention.

“Bloody Promenade” by Stephen Cushman

July 12, 2023 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

I found Stephen Cushman’s poetry first, and then I discovered he wrote about the Civil War as well.

Cushman is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. He’s known for his seven collections of poetry and two books of literary criticism, Fictions of Form in American Poetry and William Carlos Williams and the Meanings of Measure.

But when he was a child, he was given a book about the American Civil War. It was The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (1960), with a narrative by noted Civil War historian Bruce Catton. The book became the key that unlocked a lifelong interest in the war, to the point where he’s published three books about it – The Generals’ Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today, Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War, and Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle.

Cushman lives about 50 miles from the battle cited in that last work. It happened over two days, May 5 and May 6, in 1864, and it was one of the most horrific battles of a war known for its horrific battles. The Battle of the Wilderness was the first direct confrontation between Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee, and Grant proved he would be relentless even if he lost. Lee had not come upon an opponent like this before, an opponent determined to defeat Lee whatever it took in lives and material.

Cushman explains that he’s not providing a history of the battle or an analysis of its strategies and tactics. Bloody Promenade doesn’t fit a precise literary genre. It’s not so much a story of the battle as it is a reflection of what that battle meant in the war, in American history, and to himself. I live more like 750 miles from that battle, but it is the one that has come to be something of a metaphor for the war to me. I understand Cushman’s preoccupation with it.

The book is about ancestors and people who engage in re-enactments. It’s about what eyewitnesses reported and how newspapers and magazines covered it. It’s about the battle as described in memoirs of the famous and not-so-famous. It’s about the battle and the war in histories and poetry. And it’s about the terrain itself, that dense thicket of trees, shrubs, tall weeds and scrubland that, given the dry weather, was almost waiting for something to set off a conflagration. Which is what happened.

In addition to his own poetry and historical writing, Cushman serves as general editor of the fourth edition of Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. He’s served as co-editor of Civil War Witnesses and Their Books: New Perspectives on Iconic Works and Civil War Writing 1866-1989: New Perspectives on Iconic Works. He’s also published numerous articles on both poetry and the Civil War. He received a B.A. degree from Cornell, an M.A. and D. Phil. Degrees from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Yale.

Bloody Promenade fully resonates. It’s not an account of a battle (several other books are available with as much or as little detail as you could want). It’s a book about the meaning of a battle – how it was understood at the time, after decades had passed, and now. It’s a reminder that the past is never really past.

A Season of Slaughter by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White.

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

The Battle of the Wilderness by Gordon Rhea.

Top photograph: What the Wilderness “battlefield” looked like.

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