Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

book review

“Poets of the Civil War,” edited by J.D. McClatchy

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If I asked you to give me the name of an American Civil War poet, you would likely say “Walt Whitman.” His poems, like “O Captain! My Captain!,” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and “The Wound Dresser,” certainly catapult him to the top of the Civil War poets list.  

But if I were asked to name another Civil War poet, I’d be rather stumped. Until, that is, I laid eyes on Poets of the Civil War, edited by J.D. McClatchy, published in 2005 as part of the Library of America’s American Poets Project. And I was in for a major surprise. Whitman doesn’t stand there by himself.

The list of Civil War poets includes some of the best-known writers and poets of the 19th century. William Cullen Bryant. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. John Greenleaf Whittier. Herman Melville. James Russell Lowell. Bret Harte. Ambrose Bierce. Sidney Lanier. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War”

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Beginning in 1990 and continuing for the next two decades, the University of Arkansas Press published a series of photographic histories of the Civil War. The volumes were developed by state, using states where a considerable portion of the war was fought. The university press included volumes on Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia. 

Each volume is structured the same: an overall introduction to what happened to the state and its people during the war, followed by chapters on specific battles, armies, or state events. The emphasis is on the photographs, with each making extensive use of individual portraits of generals and other officers as well as enlisted men. 

Each chapter begins with a narrative, and the photographs follow. An explanatory text accompanies each portrait, explaining who the person was, where they served, what battle or battles they fought, and whether they lived, survived with injuries, or died. 

The volume on Mississippi is entitled Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War. It was the third volume in the series, published in 1993. It’s a hefty volume, not quite as lavish as a coffee table book but leaning in that direction. It was written by two men. Bobby Roberts was then the director of the Central Arkansas Library System and director of the Archives at the University of Arkansas. Carl Moneyhon was a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Moneyhon’s books include Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, A Documentary History of Arkansas (co-author), and The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas. 

The book is now almost 30 years old. The text is relatively up to date, which is not a surprise given how it focuses on major events and battles and well-known historical military figures. A considerable amount of information exists from which to choose; the state experienced some 17 battles, nine of which were connected to the Vicksburg campaign. The chapters in the book focus on Civil War photography in the state, Mississippi goes to war, Mississippians in the Amery of Northern Virginia and the western armies, the struggle for northeast Mississippi, Vicksburg, the home front (which often turned out to be closed to the front than home), Meridian and the battles in northern Mississippi, and after the war. Photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers are included.

Private James Madison Moore, Company A, 14th Regiment, Mississippi Consolidated Infantry

The pictures were provided by a number of individuals and national and state agencies and organizations, including the Military History Institute, Mississippi’s State Archives, the Special Collections at Louisiana State University Library, and other sources.

It’s the portraits of the soldiers, Union and confederate, that make the volume. So many of the were young, in the late teens and early 20s. Some look more like boys in uniforms than soldiers. Some have almost haunted looks about them. But these were the soldiers who fought on both sides; the texts include whether they died or experienced amputation of an arm or leg. One notes that the man, recently promoted and on furlough to visit his family in northern Mississippi, was ambushed and murdered by bushwhackers and/or deserters. Civil order had largely collapsed across the state.

It’s a big book with a large topic, but the photographs help bring home the reality of what the war was like for the men who participated in it. 

Top photograph: Members of the 9th Mississippi Infantry at Pensacola, Florida, early in the war. Photograph by J.D. Edwards of New Orleans. 

“Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi” by William C. Harris

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It’s barely mentioned in the standard school history textbooks, but the Southern states experienced two Reconstructions after the Civil War. The second is the best known, lasting from 1867 to 1876, and generally known as Radical Reconstruction (for the Radical Republicans in Congress who controlled it). The first is Presidential Reconstruction, between 1865 and 1867, directed by President Andrew Johnson, who believed he was carrying out the desires and plans of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, who wanted a speedy reunion.

The Radical Republicans wanted punishment, and they wanted civil rights for the former slaves.

Mississippi was the second state to secede after South Carolina and the first to seek reunion. But reunion was anything but simple. The state was devastated economically; much of its large agricultural and small industrial infrastructure has been destroyed, and its social infrastructure was in upheaval. Law and order had broken down, railroads destroyed, and planters and farmers were desperate for a labor force to plant and harvest cotton.

Historian William C. Harris explains what happened during these roughly two years in Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi, originally published by LSU Press in 1967. The state faced what looked to be insurmountable difficulties – a huge debt, a collapsed currency and economy, the disappearance of the slave system that underpinned cotton and agriculture, cities and towns that had been destroyed, the deaths of so many men in the war, and the breakdown of law and order across the state. 

Both the provisional government and the restoration government struggled with what to do about the former slaves. Planters wanted to keep them tied to the land; the slaves themselves flocked to the cities and towns, looking for work. There were the questions of civil rights, including land and property ownership, education, and voting. And the state faced the enormous problem of trying to revive agriculture and especially cotton production, which seemed to offer the best way for the state economy to recover.

Harris explains that the state leaders trying to manage the restoration were largely men who had been pro-Union or anti-secessionist and associated with the old Whig Party. They were aware of congressional sentiment, but they were also considering what would have been at one time unthinkable – former slaves having the right to vote. A few understood that Congress was unlikely to accept anything short of the full rights of citizenship. 

William C. Harris

He pays special attention to efforts aimed at reviving the state’s economy – agriculture, levee reconstruction, the railroads, towns, commerce, and industry. And he explains the Black Codes, tentative steps toward rights for the former slaves but also an attempt to regulate them in Mississippi society. It was these activities which put a national spotlight on presidential reconstruction across the South, outraging newspapers and many in the North who saw the codes as a kind of slavery in disguise. 

Harris is a prominent Civil War historian, educator, and author. His published books include The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi, William Woods Holden: Firebrand of North Carolina Politics, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union, Lincoln’s Last Months, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union, and Lincoln and the Union Governors. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Alabama, and he taught at Millsaps College and North Carolina State University, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 2004.

Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi, 55 years after its publication, remains a valuable resource for understanding how the state tried to manage its emergence from the chaos of the Civil War, where it succeeded, and where it fell woefully short. 

Top photograph: Oxford, Mississippi, in August, 1864, after its destruction by Union troops.

“The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi” by Chris Mackowski

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As many times as I’ve driven through or visited Jackson, Mississippi, I never knew that two Civil War battles were fought within days of each other right here at Mississippi’s capital city. The first, the Battle of Jackson, happened May 14, 1863. The second, at nearby Champion Hill. happened two days later. Champion Hill was the pivotal action in guaranteeing the eventual fall of Vicksburg, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy in half.

Chris Mackowski, in The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi, tells the story of that battle, one that ended in the city’s capture and eventual large-scale destruction. It was something of a pincers battle, with Ulysses Grant directing General James McPherson to lead his troops from the northwest and General William Sherman to lead his troops from the southwest. After the diversionary tactic of Major Benjamin Grierson’s raid through Mississippi from mid-April to early May of 1863, Grant successfully moved his army across the Mississippi River at three places as part one of the capture of Vicksburg.

Part two was critical – capture the disable the railroad (and supply chain) from Jackson to Vicksburg – and that meant an attack on Jackson. Facing him in Jackson was a very reluctant Confederate general, Joseph Johnston – reluctant in that he didn’t want to be in Jackson to begin with and was only there because Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered him to go. He no sooner arrived than he ordered the troops to retreat eastward.

Mackowski tells an enthralling story, placing the reader in the middle of the action on both sides. You experience the determination of the Union troops and their generals, and you experience the panic felt of the citizens of Jackson as those troops approached the city. Jackson’s fall was not the worst thing to happen to the Confederacy, but it made a significant impact on the people of Mississippi and elsewhere in the South. The city would later be re-occupied by the Confederates, only to be abandoned again on July 14 as Grant marched east from the surrendered Vicksburg. The city was largely a ruin; its destruction earned it the nickname “Chimneyville.”

The book is filled with small but telling details. The Bowman Hotel, where Johnston’s short stay was cut even shorter by the approaching federal, is the same place where Grant sets up his headquarters. Sherman ordered the hotel and other private properties to be protected as the army left for Vicksburg, but fires were set in spite of those orders, and the hotel was destroyed. And also fascinating is the brief account of Grant’s 12-year-old son Fred, racing up the state capital stairs to reach the Confederate flag flying on the flagpole, only to be met by a jubilant federal soldier coming down the stairs, the flag in his arms. 

Chris Makowski

Mackowski is the author or editor of almost 30 books on the Civil War. He’s the editor-in-chief for the Emerging Civil War web site and the editor for the Emerging Civil War Series of books. He is a writing professor and associate dean for undergraduate programs at St. Bonaventure University in New York. He also serves as historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge on the Spotsylvania battlefield in Virginia. He’s worked as a historian for the National Park Service, and he gives tours at four major Civil War battlefields – Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. 

The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi is a concise, highly readable account of the battle, filled with maps and photographs and supported by extensive research. It was a relatively small battle in the context of the Civil War, but it was a critical action that helped lead to the fall of Vicksburg two months later.

Top photograph: The Bowman House Hotel in Jackson about 1863, prior to its destruction by fire. Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives & History. 

“Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front” by Timothy Smith

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In high school and college, when we read about or study the American Civil War, we learn primarily about the political and military figures and the battles and campaigns. When I attended LSU, the school’s history department had a national reputation, with professors like T. Harry Williams, who was not only a highly regarded Civil War historian but also wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Huey Long. Williams published several books on Abraham Lincoln, P.G.T. Beauregard, Civil War generals, and related topics.

In recent years, more attention has been paid to the war and how it affected civilians. When Union armies invaded the Southern states, they civilians they encountered were largely women, children, and older men beyond military age. And it is this group, and their lives in towns, cities, and farms, that Timothy Smith considers in Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front.

Smith divides his story in two pieces. First is how the state of Mississippi dealt with the military conflict from secession through the end of the war. The second is how the civilian population experienced the war. He pays particular attention to the belief among historians that the South was defeated not only by Northern industrial might but also by the people losing the will to fight. He finds some of that may be true, but that the “losing the will to fight” sentiment may have played a smaller role than previously thought.

Mississippi’s surely had more than sufficient reason to lose heart. From early in the war, the state was devastated economically, militarily, and socially. Agriculture was disrupted, cities burned, and railroads destroyed. What little there was industrial infrastructure also suffered severely. Deserters and criminals freed from jails roamed the countryside. Cotton, which had been the state’s primary crop, became almost useless with the federal blockade of ports. Inflation soared. Foodstuffs became scarce. The state had to sequester food for the military. Many people fled the state during the war for less affected places like Texas. (My own Mississippi ancestors did precisely that, returning only after the war was over.)

Particularly interesting is Smith’s discussion of the anti-secession sentiment in the state, which was surprisingly strong. Not everyone wanted to leave the Union; not everyone owned slaves. But everyone would largely suffer equally.

Timothy Smith

Smith provides an overview of what people experienced. Military battles aside, it was a dark time for many people in the South, free and slave, and the effects would be felt for decades. Some say the effects are still being felt. 

Smith’s numerous books on the Civil War include accounts of the battles of Vicksburg, Corinth, Champion Hill, Shiloh, Forts Henry and Donelson, and Chickamauga; the Mississippi secession convention; U.S. Grant’s invasion of Tennessee; and the Grierson Raid in Mississippi. A professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Martin, he’s won numerous awards for his books, including the Fletcher Pratt Award, the McLemore Prize, the Richard Harwell Award, the Tennessee History Book Award, the Emerging Civil War Book Award, and the Douglas Southall Freeman Award. He lives with his family in Tennessee.

Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front is a sobering story. Mississippi and the other Southern states may have brought the war upon themselves, but its people endured and survived, Smith explains how that happened.  

Related:

“The Real Horse Soldiers” by Timothy Smith. 

Top photograph: The original Oxford, Miss., courthouse, with a Union army encampment on its grounds. 

“The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles” by Michael Ballard

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If there is a state we most associate with the American Civil War, it is Virginia. Numerous battles occurred there; the federal and confederate armies faced each other for four years, most often in a stalemate; and the two enemy capitals ensured that Virginia was a major theater of the war. And it was in Virginia that Robert E. Lee ultimately surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. 

Some have argued that the United States really won the war farther west – the fall of New Orleans and Vicksburg, the battles around Nashville and Chattanooga, the capture of Atlanta in 1864, and Sherman’s March to the Sea. 

And then there was Mississippi, the second state (after South Carolina) to secede from the Union. The Civil War in Mississippi was more – far more – than Vicksburg. Historian Michael Ballard (1946-2016) tells the story in The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles (2011). The book is volume 5 of the Heritage of Mississippi published by the University Press of Mississippi for the Mississippi Historical Society and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Vicksburg (1863) may have been the most important battle in the state; its surrender solidified control of the Mississippi River by the United States and severed the Confederacy in half. But the northern part of the experienced numerous battles. The town of Holly Springs changed hands 57 times. The town of Oxford was burned. The state capital of Jackson fell twice to the federals; Grant took the city and then attacked Vicksburg from the east. Before he marched to the sea in Georgia, Sherman marched from Jackson to Meridian in similar fashion, destroying anything that might be of value to the Confederates. Major Benjamin Grierson led a three-week-long raid with 1,700 cavalry troops from the Tennessee line south, eventually arriving in federally held Baton Rouge in Louisiana. 

The destruction through the years of war was large-scale – plantations, factories, warehouses full of supplies, railroad deports and track, and whole towns in some cases. In his well-written and highly readable account, Ballard succinctly tells the story of all of what happened. 

Michael Ballard

During his lifetime, Ballard published numerous books about the Civil War, including A Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy (1986); Landscapes of Battle: The Civil War (1988); Pemberton: The General Who Lost Vicksburg (1999); A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia: The Memoirs of Private David Holt (1995); Grant at Vicksburg: The General and the Siege (2003); U.S. Grant: The Making of a General 1861-1863 (2005); and several others. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Mississippi State University, where he also worked as archivist and director of the Congressional and Political Collection. 

The Civil War in Mississippi is a fine history and a sobering one. By the end of Civil War, the state’s economy was in ruins, its towns and cities had experienced widespread destruction, thousands of its men had died on battlefields across the state and the South, and its social order was turned upside down. Recovery would be a long time coming. 

Top photograph: Artist’s rendering of the Battle of Corinth, Miss.; Mississippi Department of Archives and History.