Civil War

“Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi” by William C. Harris

October 24, 2022 By Glynn Young 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.

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

October 17, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

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.

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

October 10, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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

October 3, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

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.

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.

“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.

“War and Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1861-1875” by Charles Mills

September 12, 2022 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the U.S. government’s Works Projects Administration undertook a number of efforts to help the unemployed retain their skills. While critics saw it as creating a huge army loyal to President Roosevelt, the WPA did employ some 8.5 million people in a wide variety of areas.

One of those efforts was the Writers’ Project, which, among other projects, produced travel guides to cities and states across the United States. Writers also collected oral histories of still-living Americans who had experienced extraordinary events, like the Civil War.

War and Reconstruction in Mississippi 1861-1875 was one such work. It focused on the town of Holly Springs in Marshall County, in the northern part of the state. Holly Springs was noteworthy for a number of reasons, not least of which was that it had changed hands 57 times during the Civil War. Before the war, it had been a prosperous town in a planter- and slave-based economy. During the Reconstruction period, it was occupied by a federal garrison and experienced Republican political control.

The WPA document assembled a history of the town and its founding, its experiences during the war as recounted by still living inhabitants, the role of Freedman’s Bureau during Reconstruction, and how the former Confederates eventually regained political control by stuffing the ballot box for the Democrats.

The document was edited and republished by Charles Mills in 2010. While some 60 to 70 years intervened between the events and how people remembered them, it still remains a valuable resource for what people on all sides experienced during the war and what followed.

Mills is also the author of Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains, Legends of the Superstition Mountains, Death and Delusion in the Superstition Mountains, Treasure Legends of the Civil War, Love, Sex and Marriage in the Civil War, Civil War Civilian Life: Manassas, Virginia (Battle of Bull Run), and several other works on historical subjects. He is the producer and co-host of Virginia Time Travel, a TV program seen by two million viewers in northern Virginia, which is also where he lives (on land once owned by George Washington).

Top photograph: The New York Herald of Nov. 7, 1862, describing the expected move of Gen. Grant’s army southward toward Holly Springs.

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