Civil War

“Midnight on the Potomac” by Scott Ellsworth

October 1, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

A considerable portion of my historical novel Brookhaven is set in the last year of the Civil War, and yet the novel only covers a few of the momentous events – the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse, the final siege of Petersburg, Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, and Johnston’s surrender to Sherman near Greensboro.

Indirectly, the novel covers Grierson’s Raid through Alabama, the fall of Atlanta and Sherman’s march to the sea, and the political and social chaos that followed. People lived through those times; my own ancestors (on both sides of my family) lived through it.

The last year of the Civil War is also the focus of Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. In almost a conversational vignette style, historian Scott Ellsworth guides the reader through the major events of 1864-1865, showing how they not only were significant in and of themselves but also how they shaped post-war America.

You meet spies and ghost armies, experience the horrific battle in the Wilderness near Richmond, and discover how slaves were liberated and sometimes abandoned by Union armies. You follow the acting career of John Wilkes Booth and how it led to that fateful night at Ford’s Theater. You learn how the fall of Atlanta assured Lincon’s reelection, and you join Booth in listening to Lincoln’s second inaugural speech. You meet the famous and not-so-famous, and you experience history in many of the words and first-hand accounts of the people who were themselves involved.

It says something of Ellsworth’s skill that the writing and stories seem almost effortless. You know they’re not; a prodigious amount of research and knowledge was required for that “effortlessness.”

Ellsworth previously published The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City’s Search for Justice; Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921; The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph; and The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas. He attended Reed College in Oregon and graduate school at Duke University in North Carolina. And he also worked as a historian at the Smithsonian Institution. He lives with his family in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he teaches at the University of Michigan.

Through the power of stories, Midnight on the Potomac explains what happened that last, fateful year of the Civil War, and it does so in a highly readable, engaging way.

“The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg” by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch

September 17, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

My historical novel Brookhaven is set during the Civil War’s final two years and immediately after, and then in 1915, 50 years later. The moment that sets the story into motion happens in late April of 1863 – Grierson’s Raid, in which a troop of some 1700 Union cavalry made their way through Mississippi from the Tennessee border to (eventually) Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The soldiers came to Brookhaven, most notably burning the train station and tearing up railroad track.

The raid had a specific point: divert attention from Gen. Grant’s army preparing to cross the river from Louisiana and end the siege of Vicksburg, the last Confederate position on the river. The fall of Vicksburg would been the Union controlled the entire length of the river and would split the Confederacy in two.

The Vicksburg campaign was covered in a collection of articles edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch, part of a series called “Summer of ’63.” Their Vicksburg & Tullahoma covered the events and milestones of that campaign, including a raid on Mississippi’s capital of Jackson, which eventually led to a Union victory.

Now Mackowski and Welch have done it again, this time turning to another major Union victory in 1863 – the Battle of Gettysburg.

The Summer of 1863: Gettysburg follows a similar format. Mackowski and Welch have gathered and edited articles from the Emerging Civil War web site (which I can’t recommend highly enough if you’re interested in American history generally and Civil War history specifically). When you read a concentration of work like this, you realize just how fine the historical scholarship is on the site.

The subjects include understanding why the Battle of Chancellorsville is so vital to understanding Gettysburg; how Gen. Meade took control of the Union army on the eve of battle; the mascot of the 11h Pennsylvania; prominent local families; how the Union retreated through the town at the beginning of the three-day battle; the impact of three men on the battle’s outcome; the role of Stonewall Jackson; the poet and writer Herman Melville on Pickett’s Charge; the aftermath, including the effort to punish Gen. Meade for “allowing” Lee’s army to escape; how the wounded saw the battle; how the battle was memorialized; the famous 1913 reunion of both Union and Confederate veterans,; and much more.

A professor at St. Bonaventure University, Mackowski has received 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.

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.

A collection like The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg makes you appreciate the quality of the articles at Emerging Civil War. It also reminds me of the debt I owe to the writers there; I spent considerable time using the site for research and background for Brookhaven. It’s a debt I can’t repay. And my book has been published for some months, yet I still spend considerable time on the web site.

Top illustration: The Battle of Gettysburg as depicted by artist Thure de Thulstrup for Harper’s Weekly.

Stephen Foster: How Song Opened a Door on History

August 26, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

You can’t research and write a novel about the Civil War, or anything else set in the mid-19^th century, without quickly running into the songs people sang. As I researched what would eventually become my novel Brookhaven, I came across war songs, anthems, sung by the Irish who came to America and enlisted, hymns, songs by the home folk, and more.

I went looking for a book about music in the Civil War, and I found ta small volume published by the Library of America in 2010, Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America’s First Great Popular Songs. It’s a small, eye-opening gem. I discovered that songs I learned in elementary school had been around for more than a century.

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

Three Fictional Encounters in Three Factual Events

July 16, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In my novel Brookhaven, the teenaged Sam McClure has three fateful encounters with John Haygood. The three happen in successive years, and each of the three involve Civil War military operations.

I was reminded of this when Emerging Civil War posted articles on two of the three operations a week apart this month.

The first encounter happens during Grierson’s Raid, an operation ordered by Ulysses S. Grant to distract the Confederates during his siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Some 1,700 Union cavalrymen rode through Mississippi, starting at the Tennessee border and finishing in Union-occupied Louisiana. They tore up railroad track and caused considerable havoc, but more importantly, they kept the Confederates focused away from Grant transferring his army across the river to besiege Vicksburg from the east.

One of the towns visited by Grierson’s cavalrymen was Brookhaven, where they burned the train station and tore up track. In the novel, Captain Haygood meets Sam in the McClure General Store, where Sam’s grandfather is accidentally pushed against a counter and dies in the boy’s arms. Sam later hears a conversation between Haygood and Sam’s mother Louisa, and he realizes what their relationship had been years before. It’s that knowledge which sets the story of Sam’s enlistment in the Confederate Army into motion.

*An artist’s depiction of trying to escape the fires with wounded during the Battle of the Wilderness. (Library of Congress)*

The second encounter happens a year later, during the Battle of the Wilderness near Richmond. Samis carrying messages between generals, and in the thick of the fighting, he meets John Haygood once again, this time at the point of a pistol.

This battle was horrendous, even in the context of all the other Civil War battles. The Wilderness was dense scrub forest. The weather had been dry for weeks, and Union artillery shells ignited the dense, dry woods into a blazing inferno. The Union guns are said to have killed more of their own army’s men than anything the Confederates did. Wounded men, unable to escape on foot, often shot themselves rather than be burned alive.

The Emerging Civil War story I read on July 3 was about an Australian general in World War I, Sir John Monash, who is considered to be one of the best generals of that war. One reason is how closely he studied the American Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness and how Grant modified his strategic objectives. I’m neither a veteran nor a military historian, but I read so much about the battle for the novel that I think I felt like one.

*A depiction of the Union breakthrough at Petersburg, April 2, 1865. (Library of Congress)*

The third encounter between young Sam McClure and John Haygood happens during another military encounter, the final Battle of Petersburg. Petersburg, south of Richmond, was an important railroad junction to keep Richmond and Lee’s army supplied. It had been under Union pressure for a considerable period, and the pressure was finally working. Petersburg’s fall forced Lee (and the Confederate government) to abandon Richmond. Lee fled west, reaching the town of Appomattox Courthouse, where he surrendered.

Sam, still running messages between armies, takes cover in the woods during a Union cavalry charge. And it is the mortally wounded John Haygood whose horse collapses there, almost at Sam’s feet. This third and final encounter will lead to a meeting two years later.

I don’t such a cavalry charge took place in fact, but Emerging Civil War published an article July 11 that described the final piercing of Petersburg’s defense on April 2, 1865. That would be the date of Sam’s final meeting with Haygood. A week later, Lee surrendered. (I deliberately chose April 9 as Sam’s birthday; the surrender happened the day Sam turned 15.)

I probably shouldn’t be surprised; this is what happens with historical novels. But I find myself still taken with how factual reports continue to bring me right back to the story I wrote.

Related:

Bloody Promenade by Stephen Cushman.

The Battle of the Wilderness by Gordon Rhea.

Echoes of the Wilderness: Grant, Lee, and Monash’s Art of War – Leigh Goggin at Emerging Civil War.

Petersburg Breakthrough – Edward Alexander at Emerging Civil War.

Top illustration: Major Benjamin Grierson and his cavalry make a triumphant entry into Union-controlled Baton Rouge at the conclusion of their famous raid through Mississippi. (Library of Congress)

“Mosby’s Rangers” by James Joseph Williamson

July 9, 2025 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

In my novel Brookhaven, I have the 13-year-old Sam McClure sent to the Confederate army in the East. His father had fought with Robert E. Lee in the Mexican American War, and Lee hoped that the young Sam had learned some of his father’s espionage and survival skills. The young man is assigned to a unit called Colby’s Rangers, and after a few weeks of basic training is sent with others to prepare for Lee’s invasion of the North, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg.

The model for Colby’s Rangers in the novel is an actual unit called Mosby’s Rangers. It was less involved in espionage and more involved in disruptions of federal lines, camps, and supply lines. When General Jeb Stuart “rode around” the Union army of George McClellan in 1862, it was Mosby’s Rangers leading the cavalry.

Beginning in April 1863, James Joseph Williamson was a private who gained what many Confederate soldiers and cavalrymen desired – a spot in Mosby’ Rangers. Some 44 years later in 1909, he published a memoir of his time with the unit, which stretched to the end of the war in 1865. Mosby’s Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Fourth-Third Battalion Virginia Cavalry, From Its Organization to the Surrender is the title. and it was republished as an e-book in 2018. (It’s also available as an audio book.)

Memoirs of the Civil War by soldiers were common in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The Civil War generation was dying out, and much of the story had not been told. Generals had been their memoirs published; Ulysess S. Grant’s memoirs were a bestseller. But now it seemed it was the soldiers and lower officers who were publishing accounts “from the ground level.”

Williamson published two editions in his lifetime; the second corrected errors and added information. He had kept a diary during the war years, and the diary became the basis for the memoir.

It’s a highly readable, interesting, and often thrilling account. John S. Mosby was a Virginian attorney when he joined the Confederate Army. He caught the eye of Jeb Stuart, and he soon became known as one of Stuart’s key men. Mosby’s Rangers operated primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Viriginia, he it’s fair to say they ran circles (literally and figuratively) around Union armies.

He was nicknamed the “Gray Ghost;” his cavalrymen could slip through enemy lines almost like phantoms. One of the most famous of the Rangers’ exploits was in March 1863. In the early morning hours, a group of 30 Rangers led by Mosby discovered a break in Union lines. They traveled several miles to Fairfax County Courthouse and captured Union Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, two captains, 30 soldiers, and nearly 60 horses without a shot being fired to a man lost. And then they made their way back to Confederate lines. The story electrified the South and outraged the North; it also earned Mosby a promotion. After Stuart’s death, Mosby reported directly to Lee.

Williamson was one of the 29 men who accomplished “the impossible raid,” and his account is riveting.

Mosby survived the war, despite a bounty placed on his head by Grant. Impressed by what Mosby had accomplished, Grant would pardon him when he became President. They became friends, and Mosby – to the dismay of his Southern fans – became a Republican and worked to unify the country. His popularity diminished rapidly.

Mosby’s Rangers is a great story, told first-hand by a man who was there and saw it happen.

Top photograph: A group of Mosby’s Rangers, with Mosby in the center.

“Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War” by Sarah Kay Bierle

June 25, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In my research for my novel Brookhaven, it was difficult not to run across references to one particular officer.

John Pelham was an Alabama boy, the third of three sons and born in 1838 in a small wooden house in rural Benton County. His father was a doctor and farmer, enjoying both community respect and economic success. The family’s reputation was such that John’s father was able to get an appointment for his son to the U.S. Military Academy. The young man arrived at West Point in 1856, enrolling in a five-year degree program.

As the rhetoric of the years leading up to the Civil War became increasingly heated, West Point must have become a strange place – outwardly uniform but inwardly affected by the same passions rearing the country apart. John left the academy in 1861, one month shy of graduation. Like other Southerners at West Point, he was being closely watched as secession tore the country apart. He made his way to New York City and then to border-state Kentucky, finally reaching home. Just as he’d been watched by his commanding officers at West Point, he’d also been observed by their Southern counterparts, who were keen to make use of his military training.

For the rest of his short life – he would be mortally wounded aged 24 at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford in 1863 – John Pelham became the stuff of legend. Historian Sarah Kay Bierle has spent years studying in his life, separating fact from myth. The facts of his military prowess didn’t need myth and legend to enhance his reputation. Despite almost all of his letters having disappeared, she’s been able to reconstruct his life and accomplishments from the letters and reports of others as well as official records and reports.

Bierle has succinctly and compellingly summarized it all in Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War.

And what an enthralling story it is.

Pelham proved the utility of the horse artillery. Have horses pull artillery pieces meant they could be moved frequently and strategically during battle. Pelham demonstrated the value – and his own – during the battles of the Peninsular Campaign, First and Second Manassas (Bull Run), Antietam, and Fredericksburg, among several others. He caught the eye of Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and Robert E. Lee. He was promoted to major and then recommended for a promotion to lieutenant colonel, which was pending at the time of his death.

He became known as the “Gallant John Pelham;” it was Lee who described his “glorious courage” (and inspired the title of Bierle’s book). In the years after the war, the legends cropped up around him; it seems every young Southern woman had had a romance with him. (And while it was in a different context, it was Pelham who inspired one aspect of the main character in my novel – how legends get born that often have no basis in fact.)

Bierle is what’s called a public historian, working in the field of Civil War education and battlefield preservation. She’s written articles and essays for numerous publications, including Emerging Civil War, and is a frequent speaker on Civil War topics. Her previous publications include Decisions at Chancellorsville, War in the Western Theater, and Call Out the Cadets: The Battle of New Market, May 15, 1864.

Glorious Courage is a fascinating read. It does what good history should do – separate fact from fable and present a person or event as it should be. In the case of John Pelham, he didn’t need legends to enhance his reputation, and Bierle serves her subject very well indeed.

Related:

Martha Pelham’s Letter: Finding Colorful Details for John Pelham’s 1858 Summer – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Artillery: John Pelham – Artilleryman, Gallant Fool, Splendid Boy – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Podcast: Historian Sarah Kay Bierle on ‘Gallant’ John Pelham – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

Top photograph: One of there three known photo of John Pelham.

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