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Author and Novelist Glynn Young

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Ulysses S. Grant

“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. 

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. 

“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. 

Caroline Janney

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.

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Meet the Man

An award-winning speechwriter and communications professional, Glynn Young is the author of three novels and the non-fiction book Poetry at Work.

 

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