book review

“Ends of War” by Caroline Janney

September 19, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I have an image in my head, likely based on what I remember from American history in college, that when Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant agreed to surrender terms at Appomattox in April 1865, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia went home. Two weeks later, William Johnston surrendered to William Sherman at Greensboro, North Carolina, and Johnstone’s Army of Tennessee went home. And that was end of the Civil War.

Well, not quite.

As Lee’s army fled west from Richmond and then Petersburg, what had been about 60,000 men was losing strength. Some were captured, some took off for points west, and some disappeared into the woods and valleys. By the time Lee and Grant met, Lee’s army was likely between 30,000 and 40,000, and more men were leaving every day.

Grant’s purpose, to which he stuck ferociously through the negotiations and through the coming months, was to bring peace. Lee’s men could go home. They would be issued rations and paroles. A parole was good to obtain rations from Union provosts and to obtain transportation on ships and trains to go home. There would also be no reprisals for having served in Lee’s army.

McLean House in Appomattox, where Lee surrendered to Grant

Many headed east first – to get to the ports where they could get passage to Mobile, New Orleans, and other ports. Others headed toward rail stations, though those were more problematic; many railroad tracks were not repaired from the war, and men would find themselves alternately riding and walking to the next station.

But for many in the Confederate army, the war was not over. Some tried to reach Johnston’s army, which was Lee’s army was trying to do in his flight from Richmond. Others decided to try to Texas and the army of General Edmund Kirby Smith. Still others would become guerillas and continue to war effort – something Grant feared almost more than anything. The region of Virginia and North Caroline experienced upheaval, chaos, and disruption that would continue for weeks (see my review of Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina by Ernest Dollar Jr.).

It looked like peace and an easy reunification might prevail, until the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14 crystalized the desire for vengeance. It would be argued from the man in the street to the highest levels of government that Grant’s paroles of Lee’s men had limited application, and Lee, his officers, and many of his mean should be tried for treason. The wave demanding vengeance could only be stopped, and then incompletely, by Grant himself.

In Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army After Appomattox, Caroline Janney tells a riveting story of the final days and weeks of Lee’s army, its officers, and its men, how their paroles came almost seen to be worthless before cooler heads, notably Grant’s, prevailed. No peace could be or would be drafted and signed; peace treaties were between sovereign nations, and the United States view the Confederacy as a region of rebellion. A peace treaty would have also hammered out what punitive terms there might be for the defeated nation, its leaders, and its military. In the place of a peace treaty stood only the terms of Lee’s surrender to grant, which were extended by Sherman to Johnston.

But, as Janney makes clear, in those final, chaotic days of confusion, despair, and anger, the idea of what the South called “the Cause” became “the Lost Cause.” The South had not been defeated on the battlefield but by Northern industrial might, foreigners in the army, and the use of freed slaves as troops. Any evidence to the contrary was discounted and dismissed; the South believed its cause had been a righteous one.

Janney is the John Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. She has worked as a historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University. has also published Burying the Dead But Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (2008) and Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013). She received a B.A. Degree in government and a Ph.D. degree in history from the University of Virginia.

She recently received the 2022 Gilder Lehman Lincoln Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gettysburg College for Ends of War. The book was also a joint recipient of the Richard Barksdale Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Roundtable for the best book on a Civil war subject published in the preceding ear.

The awards are no surprise. The book is an extraordinarily well-researched effort, as demonstrated by the extensive notes and bibliography. Written in non-academic language, it’s difficult to put Ends of War down. She succeeds in making her case, and she’s changed our understanding of the end of the Civil War and how it affected the country for a century afterward.

“Hearts Torn Asunder” by Ernest Dollar Jr.

August 3, 2022 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

It’s April 1865, the last month of the Civil War. Richmond has fallen. The Confederate cabinet is fleeing. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Lee’s soldiers are paroled and dispersed, most heading south (and on foot) into North Carolina and toward home in the rest of the former Confederacy. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army is chasing that of Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston, and the chase is ending near Raleigh and Greensboro. As Johnston meets with Sherman to discuss surrender terms, he learns that President Lincoln has been assassinated in Washington.

The final convulsion of the war and the Confederacy is happening in central and north central North Carolina. And it its path are the people who live there, in cities and towns, and on farms, people who see both armies strip the countryside bare of food and provisions. One army’s soldiers experience sorrow and despair, while those of the other feel jubilation. Soldiers of both, after four long years of war, are experiencing what today we recognize as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. It isn’t called that then; it isn’t even recognized.

But citizens and soldiers are experiencing its effects – and the effects of hunger. The hunger was at times so great that soldiers and civilians alike began attacking warehouses and trainloads of provisions meant for the Confederate army.

Horrors and atrocities happened on both sides. Rage, fed by deaths and maiming of friends and fellows and fueled by alcohol, could make otherwise kind men do terrible things. Civilians – men, women, and children, free and slave – bore the brunt of that rage. And it was rage coming from both Union and Confederate soldiers.

The story of that month and that place is told, and told well, by Ernest A. Dollar, Jr. in Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina. It’s a somber, sometimes shocking story that shows a side of war we rarely see in the movies or are taught about in school. But it happened, and it happens. And it doesn’t simply change people; it also changes cultures and societies. The effects of what happened in North Carolina in April 1865 were felt for generations.

Dollar graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with B.A. degree in history and a B.F.A. degree in design, and an M.A. degree in history from North Carolina State University. He’s worked at historic sites in both North Carolina and South Carolina. He’s currently the Executive Director of the City of Raleigh Museum, and he and his family currently live in Raleigh.

Hearts Torn Asunder makes for hard reading. But it’s a story that needs to be told.

Top image: Engraving of the meeting of Gen. Joseph Johnston and Gen. William T. Sherman at the Bennett Homeplace, April 1865.

“The Battle of the Wilderness” by Gordon Rhea

July 13, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Gordon Rhea is an attorney and Civil War historian. He’s written several highly regarded books about the war, including The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864 (1997), To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864 (2000), Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26–June 3, 1864 (2002), Carrying the Flag: The Story of Private Charles Whilden, the Confederacy’s Unlikely Hero (2004), and On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4–14, 1864 (2017).

His books have received a number of awards and recognitions, and he’s served as a lecturer at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and as a commentator for CNN. I discovered his The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864, published in 1994 by LSU Press, when another writer of another Civil War book spoke of the Rhea work in almost reverential tones. I discovered the book was still in print, available in paperback and on Amazon Kindle. The hardcover is also available in used editions.

And what a story Rhea tells.

The Battle of the Wilderness was the first major confrontation between Ulysses S. Grant, newly appointed by Abraham Lincoln to lead the Northern armies, and Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia. It was an effort by Grant to break through the stalemate around Richmond and capture the Confederate capital. Fought over roads, some open fields, and the dense woods known as the Wilderness, the battle pitted the wills of two opposing commanders, both of whom were determined to prevail at almost any cost.

The battle would end in stalemate, with both sides gaining and losing something. The number of casualties places the battle in one of the top five in the Civil War. The Union had between 17,000 and 18,000 dead, wounded, and missing or captured. The Confederacy had between 11,000 and 12,000. But the overall losses were greater in ultimate impact for the Lee’s army, because these were losses that could not be replaced. And both sides experienced the loss of key generals.

Rhea tells the story almost like a novel. It’s an enthralling, riveting read, with the action so immediate that the reader feels a direct part of it. The first day went mostly to Lee’s army; the second day began with a Union breakthrough, but it was soon turned back with the forces of General James Longstreet arriving at the last possible minute and almost too late. Lee would also lose General J.E.B. Stuart, who died of his wounds a few day after the battle ended.

Drawing upon official records, diaries, letters, and news reports, Rhea tells the story not only from the generals’ perspective but also from that of the men fighting on the ground, often face-to-face in woods burning from the artillery fire. And it’s a comprehensive story, made all the more remarkable with how complex this battle actually was. Rhea sorts it out and helps the reader understand exactly what happened. He also includes numerous maps and illustrations to aid understanding.

I’ve read quite a few books about the Civil War, and The Battle of the Wilderness ranks as one of the very best.

Top illustration: Map of the Battle of the Wilderness, made in 1895 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Momentous Discovery: “The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad”

June 7, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Sir Galahad, son of Sir Lancelot ad the Lady Elaine of Corbenic, remains shrouded in the mists of time. We knew he undertook his famous quest to find the Holy Grail (not to be confused with the Holy Grail Winery and Vineyard in Missouri) and went roaming in a “wild forest,” but that’s all we knew.

Until now.

A research team from the Society for Galahadic Study and Emulation has announced a momentous discovery. In the archives of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, they found (actually, it was one of their student interns who found it) a bust of St. Plagiarus of Tintagel (pay attention to the names). Inside the bust was a sheaf of manuscripts of accounts of Sir Galahad after he embarked upon his quest.

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

“The Real Horse Soldiers” by Timothy Smith

April 13, 2022 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

From April 17 to May 2 of 1863, a group of some 1,700 Union cavalry traveled from LaGrange Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In less than three weeks, they cut a swath through central Mississippi surprising Confederate forces, Mississippi’s governor, and a number of cities and small towns along the way. Their goal: disrupt Confederate supply lines and draw attention from General Grant’s crossing of the Mississippi River right below Vicksburg.

The cavalry, under the command of Colonel Benjamin Grierson of Jacksonville, Illinois (and a music teacher in civilian life), were wildly successful. Grierson’s Raid, as it became known, was celebrated in the North and even grudgingly admired in the South. It had pulled off what few thought possible.

One might think that such an event would have been the subject of numerous books. For whatever reasons, possibly including a bias toward the eastern battle front in the Civil War, few book-length accounts are to be found. Dee Brown, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published Grierson’s Raid in 1954. It was not well received by critics, and its reputation has not improved with time. Brown often made fast and loose with his account, inventing conversations and scenes out of whole cloth. Even a non-historian like myself can read it today and see where Brown fudged, or invented, his facts.

In 1956, a writer named Harold Sinclair published a novel about the raid, The Horse Soldiers, embellishing history even more. The novel because the basis for the 1959 movie of the same name, starring John Wayne and William Holden. The movie moved the story even farther away from the historical record.

In 2018, Timothy Smith, a professor at the University of Tennessee – Martin, published The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi. Proving that history books do not have to be dry and dull, Smith wrote a historically accurate account that tells the story in an engaging and fascinating way. Having read both the account by Brown and this account by Smith, the historian’s book is far superior and loses nothing in the telling.

Sixty-four-years after Dee Brown’s book, Smith had more sources to draw upon, but he used many of the same sources used by the popular writer. His account provides far more context than Brown’s, especially about Grierson’s background, the politics that was ongoing among the Union army leaders, and the importance of the raid to Grant’s ultimately successful attack on Vicksburg.

Reading about Grierson’s Raid is also personally intriguing. I had ancestors who died at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in 1862, and other relatives who were living in the Brookhaven, Mississippi, area at the time of the raid. They experienced first-hand what I know only as history, and it expands my understand of my family’s life during the Civil War.

Smith has published numerous books about the Civil War, including several on the Battle of Shiloh, the war in Tennessee and Mississippi, and the siege of Vicksburg. He’s appeared on the History Channel and C-Span and spoken widely about the Civil War. A former park ranger for the National Park Service at Shiloh Battlefield, he is currently a professor of history and philosophy at the University of Tennessee – Martin.

The Real Horse Soldiers is a fine book. Smith not only tells a thrilling story; he also tells a historically accurate story.

“Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier” by Louis Leon

March 9, 2022 By Glynn Young 1 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.

book review

Footer

Meet the Man