Reviews

“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.

“Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era” by Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant

February 15, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, you know. You’re reading a book, and you sense that what you have in your hands is a game-changer.

This happened as I read the authors’ introduction to Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era. Co-authors Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant studied what many had long believed to be an exaggeration at best and mythical propaganda at worst – the number of underaged boys who fought in the Civil War – and discovered something startingly different. The result is a work that changes our understanding of the Civil War, arguably the most powerful event in the history of the United States.

During the war itself, the myth of the “drummer boy” almost propagated itself, especially in the Union states. On both sides, the official minimum enlistment or conscription age was 18. With a parent’s consent, it could be less than that. In practice, and again especially on the Union side, the minimum age was widely disregarded.

For evidence, Clarke and Plant turn to memoirs, histories, periodicals, and especially both pension records and legal proceedings, whereby parents sought to have their underaged sons discharged. The military tended to be in the driver’s seat, however, and particularly so with the suspension of habeus corpus by President Lincoln (in 1863, Congress codified what Lincoln had done by executive order in 1861).

Clarke and Plant carefully sift through the data and conclude that about 10 percent of the soldiers in both the Union and Confederate armies were under the age of 18 – teenaged boys, and sometimes younger. Numerically, that’s about 180,000 on the Union side and 20,000 on the Confederate side. Parents discovered their rights over their children seriously eroded by the demands of war and found themselves more often than not on the losing side in courtroom battles. Confederate parents appear to have had an easier time of reclaiming their underaged sons.

The authors tell the stories of some of the more famous children and teens fighting in the war, many as musicians in drum and bugle corps. The stories, of course, are what capture our attention and what captured the attention of readers during the war (see “Young Fred Grant Takes the Mississippi Capital, Almost” at Emerging Civil War). But they spend most of their tome looking at records, data, reports, and court records. It’s no surprise that the book was 10 years in the making.

The authors examine the history of underaged enlistment, going back to the War of 1812 and some of the legal disputes prior to the Civil War. They describe the social and cultural background that supported underaged enlistment, including the belief that war inspired courage in young minds and the propaganda benefits of depicting young boys fighting for their country. They show the various paths to enlistment included work, politics, and schools.

The subject of underaged soldiers was widely debated. While it tended to be more of a one-way outcome on the Union side, Confederate authorities (and parents) were concerned about what was called “preserving the seed corn” – making sure that the war didn’t devastate the region demographically. This was much less of a concern in the Union, with its much higher population. And one of the most moving chapters in the book is the account of enslaved and free youth who were forced into military and supporting service on both sides.

Clarke is an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney in Australia and the author of War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North. Plant is a professor of history at the University of California at San Diego and the author of Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America.

Of Age is more than a significant contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. It changes our perception and understanding of the war itself, through the lens of how both the Union and the Confederacy used some of the most vulnerable members of society to fight. These children, and that’s what they were, children – were more than musicians and helpers. They picked up rifles and fought alongside men of legal age. Clarke and Plant make sure their rightful story is told and their contribution recognized.

Top photograph: Johnny Clem, one of the most famous child soldiers of the Civil War. He joined a Michigan regiment at age 9 and was officially enrolled at age 12. Photo: Library of Congress.

“Irish American Civil War Songs” by Catherine Bateson

February 1, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

My thoughts, lately, have been turning toward the green. Not environmental green, but Irish green.

A couple of years ago, my brother did one of those “Spit in a tube and mail it in” DNA tests. We’d always understood our heritage to be (in this order) English, Irish, French, and German. The results mostly corroborated that, except in the order: Irish (County Cork, Irish, in fact) led the blood pack, with 38 percent of our DNA. English (Midlands) was in second place at about 18 percent, followed by English (London) at about 10 percent. French (Alsace Lorraine) was there, to be sure, and so was German (Saxon). We even had a surprising 7 percent Scandinavian, which I suspect went back to the Vikings conquering England and Ireland.

The Irish, as it turns out came from our father’s side of the family, through both of his parents. On his father’s side, it likely came sometime in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, on his mother’s, mostly the 19^th century.

The Irish had been emigrating to North America for a considerable period of time, likely as long as European emigration has existed. But it was in the 1840s that Irish emigration became a flood to America, following the Potato Famine. By the time of the Civil War, Irish immigrants accounted for 1.5 million of the total U.S. population (slave and free) of 31.5 million. The U.S. population had increased 35 percent from 1850 to 1860, and a considerable portion of that increase was due to immigration.

Some 200,000 Irishmen / Irish Americans fought in the Civil War. Most fought on the Union side, but about 20,000 signed on as Confederate soldiers. They brought with them their history, their political leanings, and their experiences with the famine and immigration. And they brought their songs.

Catherine Bateson, a lecturer in American history at the University of Kent in England, has documented the importance of Irish music, ballads, and songs in Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood. I knew that music was important for both sides during the Civil War; it was used for marching, ceremonial activities, rest periods, and even for propaganda purposes with both soldiers and civilians. Thousands of songs and hymns were written and sung during the war years.

As Bateson makes clear, the Irish brought with them their longstanding love of ballads and music. They told stories with their songs and ballads, tales of victories and defeats. They expressed their political leanings (and desire for independence from Britain). And their music made its way into general overall American music, including to provide the music (and some of the lyrics) for “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” the Confederate anthem, and “The Fighting 69^th,” the song of the famed Irish brigade from New York that provided the basis for so many other songs then and afterward.

Bateson describes the background of Irish music and songs in mid-19thcentury America; how Irish American Civil War songs were produced; the ballads of the battlefield; how lyrics reinforced Irish cultural identity and Irish nationalism; how the songs and ballads expressed wartime politics; and how their music provided Irish Americans with identity and expressions of loyalty. Irish American music celebrated their military leaders, like Thomas Francis Meagher and Michael Corcoran, and their music provided solace after devastating defeats like the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.

Bateson received her undergraduate degree in history from University College London and spent a year abroad studying at the University of Pennsylvania. She received an M.A. degree in American Studies from King’s College, London and her Ph.D. in history from the University of Edinburgh. She’s also an associate editor in the Irish in the American Civil War project and a former vice-chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of America.

Irish American Civil War Songs provides a detailed study of some of the important music associated with the Civil War. It also opens a window into what some 200,000 soldiers sang during the war, and how their music provided very specific meanings.

Top photograph: Soldiers of the Fighting 69th (Irish) Brigade. Michael Corcoran is standing at left, his hand on the gun carriage wheel. Thomas Francis Meagher is standing behind the gun. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

William’s Faulkner’s Civil War

January 11, 2023 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

If there is one writer who cast the largest shadow upon southern U.S. literature in the 20^th century, it’s William Faulkner. He also cast one of the largest shadows over all American literature in the 20^th century. At my university, few escaped the required courses in American literature without reading the short stories “Barn Burning” and/or “The Bear.” I’d read “Barn Burning in high school, but, taking English rather than American literature in college, I didn’t read Faulkner until years later. It was Flannery O’Connor who led me to Faulkner, and then I read nearly everything he wrote.

Michael Gorra has studied and taught Faulkner, Faulkner’s works, and literature for more than 40 years. The Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, he’s also served as editor of the Norton Critical Editions of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. The man knows his Faulkner.

And to know Faulkner, you have to know the Civil War. The war, its aftermath, the “Lost Cause,” and the memory of the war – even by those who didn’t experience it – is a major theme, perhaps the major theme, in the history and literature of the South. Gorra knows his Civil War, too, and he’s a Connecticut-born Yankee who teaches at a Yankee university in Massachusetts.

Gorra’s The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War is a remarkable work of literary criticism. It’s about the themes of the war in Faulkner’s writings, but to understand those themes, you have to grasp the story of the war and its significant details. Gorra does that, but he does more. He’s read the letters and memoirs of people who fought and lived the war. He’s studied the major battles, especially the ones that play even a small role in Faulkner’s novels and stories. He’s walked the terrain of the war, and he’s studied how the war was fought in Faulkner’s home state of Mississippi.

All of this permeates Faulkner’s novels and short stories. Sometimes it’s an overt influence; sometimes, it’s very subtle. Reading Faulkner years after university might have been the best thing that happened to me in understanding his works, because I recognized how much he was talking about had permeated my own family.

Literary criticism is often tedious and difficult. Gorra’s work on Faulkner here is anything but that. His writing is accessible, and he tells Civil War stories that amplify and expand upon what Faulkner did. He makes the writer understandable in a way few critics can. And he doesn’t shy away from the controversial aspects of Faulkner’s works, and there are plenty of controversial aspects.

Gorra’s published works include Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of An American Masterpiece (2012), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography; The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany (2004); After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie (1997); and The English Novel at Mid-Century (1990). He’s also served as editor for volumes of stories by Joseph Conrad and Henry James for Penguin. His awards and recognitions include a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, including a Public Scholar Award, and a National Book Critics Circle award for his work as a reviewer.

The Saddest Words tells a wonderful story of how one of the most important American writers used family history, family stories, and historical events to create what became some of the most significant literary works of the 20^thcentury. The Civil War sits at the center of it all, much like it continues to sit at the center of American life.

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