Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

book review

“The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi” by Jim Woodrick

By Leave a Comment

For most of us, the role of Mississippi in the Civil War revolves around Vicksburg and the months-long siege of that Mississippi River city in 1863 by the army of Ulysses S. Grant. Vicksburg was a critical target for the Union; until it fell, it prevented Union control of the Mississippi River. 

But for Mississippi, the war was far greater a force than only Vicksburg. Northern Mississippi, and cities like Corinth, Holly Springs, and Oxford, experienced the destruction of war before Vicksburg did. From early in the war, the Gulf Coast was effectively controlled by the Union Navy. The state’s citizens experienced increasing degrees of shortages of foodstuffs and basic necessities. 

And then there was Jackson, the state capital.

Jackson was important primarily because of its railroads. Grant’s army, in a pincer movement, occupied Jackson once in 1863 because of those railroads and how they supplied Vicksburg. The rail lines were disrupted first, and then the Union Army turned back on Vicksburg. Once that city was surrendered on July 3, Grant once again turned his eye on Jackson.

What happened next is the subject of The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi by historian Jim Woodrick. As he notes, much of the siege works and battlefields involving Jackson have long been paved over and developed; there’s precious little left to show exactly where the military action happened. (As many times as I’ve been to Jackson and traveled through it, little did I know of what happened on what is now the area of the Mississippi Medical Center.)

The book is primarily a military history. Woodrick describes how Union forces converged on the capital city, how the Confederate army of Joseph Johnston dug in, the movement of Union forces in nearby towns like Canton, how part of the siege was conducted from the grounds of the State Insane Asylum overlooking the capital, and how and why Johnston determined to abandon the city and move to the east. 

Jim Woodrick

The story includes small, fascinating details, like how the piano at a local home survived the siege and subsequent looting and burning and eventually found a home in the Civil War Museum in New Orleans. And Woodrick describes the side activities, including how a Union troop found its way to Brookhaven, some 75 miles south, wreaking more havoc and capturing some 200 Confederate conscripts at the camp there. (I mention Brookhaven because my ancestors were living there at the time.) He also considers how much damage was actually done to the capital, which for years afterward was referred to as “Chimneyville,” for what was left of so many burned buildings.

A native of Meridian Mississippi, Woodrick was graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson. Since 1997, he has served on the staff of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), notably as the Civil War sites historian, and is currently the director of the MDAH Historic Preservation Division. 

The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi is a compact, fact-filled account of how a Confederate state capital experienced the Civil War and eventually fell to Union forces. Woodrick tells a fascinating, concise story. 

Related:

Jim Woodrick discussing the siege of Jackson.

Top photo: A view of the Mississippi state capital after the siege. The capital building survived.

“Reconstruction in Mississippi” by James Wilford Garner

By 1 Comment

James Wilford Garner (1871-1938) was born and raised in Pike County, Mississippi, the same county where my paternal great-grandparents were born and raised (during the Reconstruction period, the state legislature split the county into two, with the southern half retaining the name and the north half being renamed Lincoln County). Garner graduated from the Mississippi Agricultural & Mechanical College in 1892 and went on to study at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. 

Garner would become a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Illinois, and he also did extensive teaching work in India. He co-authored a history of the United States with Henry Cabot Lodge, and he published a number of other works on government and political science.

The work he is best known for is his Ph.D. thesis, published in 1901 under the title of Reconstruction in Mississippi. It firmly established him as what was then called the Dunning School, named for Columbia professor William Archibald Dunning. The school of thought generally favored a conservative, more pro-Southern understanding of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. 

The thinking of the Dunning School was influential in universities through World War II, although it was not without its critics, notably historian and civil rights activist W.E. B. DuBois. However, DuBois did consider that, of all the writings associated with the Dunning School, Garner’s Reconstruction in Mississippi was the fairest.

Reading it today, 120 years after it was published, is to see it as a product of its time. Yet Garner did marshal a huge amount of data to support his thesis that Reconstruction, managed by Radical Republicans and backed by the U.S. Army, was largely a disaster for the state of Mississippi. 

The work begins with a summary of secession and the Civil War and the transition from war to reconstruction. It covers presidential reconstruction under Andrew Johnson, followed by congressional reconstruction. The period of congressional reconstruction was particularly marked by rampant theft and corruption in the state government, involving Northerners called carpetbaggers and Southerners know as scalawags who seemed determined to raid the state of as many resources as possible. Garner notes that many of the Union soldiers who had fought in Mississippi returned after the war to live there. (He also notes than roughly one fifth of private property in the state changed ownership during the period.) 

James Wilford Garner

It was a difficult time for many in the state. Not only was Mississippi economically devastated by the war, rail lines had to be rebuilt, the postal service reestablished, social order restored, and a civil government created that could function. Garner also devotes entire chapters to the creation and functioning of the Freedman’s Bureau, the disturbances associated with the Ku Klux Klan, and the creation (or re-creation) of the public school system, which was also plagued by corruption. 

Reconstruction in Mississippi has a definite pro-Southern tilt to its depiction of Reconstruction, but I understand why DuBois considered it relatively fair. Garner is evenhanded in his criticisms, and he does discuss the period broadly and rather inclusively. He doesn’t paint the period of slavery as some happy, pleasant time for all concerned. But it’s his extensive use of data, tables, and charts that is most impressive. 

Top illustration: A Drawing of a Freedman’s School in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1866.

“North Against South” by Lowell Johnson

By 1 Comment

The first thing you should know about Ludwell Johnson’s North Against South: The American Iliad 1848-1877 is that it’s controversial. First published in 1978 under the title Division and Reunion, 1848-1877, the book argues that Reconstruction was an extension of the military warfare carried out by the North during the Civil War, that Jefferson Davis was a more able leader than Abraham Lincoln, and that Robert E. Lee was a better military leader than Ulysses S. Grant.

That’s just for starters. Johnson (1927-2017) also says that the writing of Civil War history after World War II has been filtered through the lens of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It’s not that this vast multitude of history works are wrong and should be rejected, but more that readers and students need to understand the lens through which the Civil War has been seen and understood.

Johnson marshals facts and data to make his case. He tells the story of what led up to the war, how the war began and its major military battles, the critical role played by the North’s economic and manufacturing advantages, and what he describes as the three post-war “peace settlements” – President Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction plan, the reconstruction plan of the Radical Republicans, and finally the abandonment of Reconstruction. 

What is perhaps most surprising in Johnson’s account is the sense of both sides being the aggressor. The North was not trying hard to avoid war while the South seemed hellbent to make one, nor were Northern armies waging a just and righteous crusade for human freedom. As the war faded in living memory, myths grew up on both sides. And the national trauma that we call the Civil War would continue to play a significant role in national politics.

Ludwell Johnson

Johnson was a professor of history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He focused his studies and teaching on the American Civil War. He was also the author of Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War (1958). 

I don’t have the background in Civil War history to say whether Johnson was right or wrong. I would hazard an educated guess that this book likely angered many Civil War historians when it was published in 1978 (and republished in 2002). For me, the real value of North Against South is understanding that one shouldn’t simply accept the received wisdom, whatever the source, and that the past continues to matter more than we’d like to think.

Top photograph: A scene from the Battle of Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrup via Wikimedia Commons.

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

By Leave a Comment

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”

By Leave a Comment

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

By Leave a Comment

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.