Summon Only the Brave! Commanders, Soldiers, and Chaplains at Gettysburg. By John W. Brinsfield Jr. Maps, photos, appendices, bibliography, index, 203 pp., 2016, Mercer University Press, www.mupress.org, $35.
Reviewed by Sean A. Scott
Since Edward Everett’s discourse on “the terrible and glorious days of July,” the battle of Gettysburg has been analyzed from seemingly every conceivable viewpoint. This new volume by retired army chaplain John
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Brinsfield examines leadership, broadly defined, over the course of the engagement.
By weaving together firsthand accounts, official reports, memoirs and reminiscences, Brinsfield seeks to convey “something of the mood and spirit of the soldiers and commanders on each side.”
The book unfolds chronologically and devotes its seven chapters to each army’s march to town, the three days of fighting, the immediate aftermath of battle, and participants’ personal reflections. The narrative primarily recreates military leaders’ decisions and then describes these orders’ effects through the eyes of chaplains.
The 238 chaplains present during the battle not only provided spiritual leadership but assisted surgeons tending the wounded and, in a few cases for the Confederacy, even fought.
As the editor or co-editor of two previous studies on Civil War chaplains (Faith in the Fight: Civil War Chaplains [2003] and The Spirit Divided: Memoirs of Civil War Chaplains: The Confederacy [2006]), it is not surprising that Brinsfield focuses on the opinions of chaplains at Gettysburg.
On the Union side, he relies heavily on the writings of Catholic William Corby, Congregationalist Joseph Twichell, and Lutheran John Stuckenberg. Catholic James Sheeran and Episcopalian Peter Tinsley gave the most detailed Southern perspectives. With the exception of Tinsley’s diary, the other four men’s writings have been published previously.
Perhaps no one epitomized more than Chaplain Twichell the noble humanity on display in the midst of indescribable suffering and loss. After three days of helping surgeons tend to Union soldiers, Twichell compassionately comforted Confederate wounded, many of whom had yet to receive any medical treatment.
He developed such a close bond with one Southern youth who “possessed a most cheerful Christian spirit” that he brought him a bed and pillow and visited him often.
Despite the different color of their uniforms, when his newfound friend died the Northern chaplain “buried him... and mourned for him sincerely.”
Superb anecdotes notwithstanding, in my estimation the book’s lack of original research is its biggest disappointment. Only a handful of sources come from archives. Having compiled the names of all chaplains on duty during the battle, Brinsfield could have cast a wider net and utilized more unpublished accounts.
For example, the diary and letters of Frank Morse of the 37th Massachusetts, housed at the Massachusetts Historical Society, may have proven beneficial. Furthermore, the National Archives holds numerous records related to chaplains and in all likelihood possesses documents relevant to this study.
More problematic to my thinking, in several places Brinsfield relies on Wikipedia for information, oftentimes citing it as a source for biographical material on various generals. In one instance he pulls from the Wikipedia entry on Dorothea Dix a direct, undocumented quotation from nurse Julia Wheelock about helping wounded Confederate soldiers.
A quick search on Google Books reveals the citation to be more or less accurately recorded (ellipses should have been included) from Wheelock’s 1870 memoir The Boys in White. However, Wheelock’s journal entry referred to her work after the battle of Fredericksburg, not Gettysburg.
Reliance on more reputable sources and more thorough research would strengthen the book’s overall credibility and reliability for other scholars.
Despite this methodological drawback, Brinsfield has capably interspersed several unique chaplain perspectives into the standard military account of the battle to produce an effective narrative. More importantly, he successfully achieves his goal of highlighting participants’ emotions and motivations.
While it does not offer revelatory material to alter one’s overall perception of the battle of Gettysburg, Summon Only the Brave! is a useful addition to the literature.
Sean A. Scott teaches at the Indiana Academy, a residential high school for gifted juniors and seniors in Muncie, Ind.
He specializes in religion during the war and is developing a new course for his students on Abraham Lincoln.
Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri: Steamboats, Gold and Peace. By Ken Robison. Photographs, epilogue, endnotes, bibliography, 256 pp., 2016, The History Press, www.arcadiapublishing.com, $21.99 paperback.
What do the Montana Territory, fur trading, steamboats, outlaws, slaves, gold and peace have in common with the Civil War? Native Montanan Ken Robison explains it all in his latest work, Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri. This is the third in a series of books exploring the lives and experiences of Montanans before, during and after the Civil War.
Robison tells the story of the westward migration into the Montana Territory, especially along the upper portion of the Missouri River. During the war, the territory became a refuge of choice for those wanting to get away from the hardships of battle and harsh conditions on the home front. Additionally, the Montana Gold Rush of 1862 fueled migration to this area.
The author’s experience as a retired Navy captain gives readers special insight into the structure of various types of vessels which plied the Missouri, as well as the commercial/military use of steamboats during the Civil War, which one might argue hasn’t received adequate coverage thus far.
Robison’s work goes a long way toward filling this void. Steamboats were used as both personnel transports and cargo vessels. One of the bigger steamboat personnel transport operations ran along the Missouri River from St. Louis to Fort Benton, in the Montana Territory.
This river, like many waterways, was also strategically important as a transport system connecting supply and distribution points for miscellaneous cargo in many key areas of the Civil War’s Western Theater.
Each chapter of Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri is carefully crafted as a stand-alone vignette covering a wide range of topics focusing on this geographic area. The book covers the antebellum, Civil War and postwar periods until Montana became a state in 1889. This gives readers insight into the history of Native Americans, fur trading, steamboats, farming and slavery, as well as the Montana Gold Rush.
The author uses a balance of primary and secondary source documents. His research is enhanced by photographs from his own collection and artifacts from the Overholser Historical Research Center located at Fort Benton Mont., in the heart of the Upper Missouri area Robison writes about.
Robison is passionate about the story he tells of his native state. His use of photographs and artifact descriptions is excellent. Readers will be quickly drawn to his easy-to-read narrative and attractive pictorial accompaniment.
Richard Blumberg has served as President of the Houston CWRT and has spoken and written on a wide variety of subjects, with special interest in women’s roles and logistics in the Civil War.
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A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War. By Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh. Maps, notes, index, 616 pp., 2016, Princeton University Press, press.princeton.edu, $35 hardcover.
Reviewed by Brian S. Wills
Almost from the outset, the authors of A Savage War assert their intention to “add our voices” to the effort to “restore balance to the history of the Civil War” which occurred in America from 1861-1865. In that effort, historians Williamson Murray and Wayne Hsieh bring different perspectives to their history of the war, ranging from the Peloponnesian War to various modern conflicts. In their interpretations the authors take issue with the importance of technology, yet stress the significance of rail and water transport for the ultimate Union victory.
The authors are to be commended for the effort to restore “balance,” although one may question their connection of the South to Sparta and the North to the more refined Athens of Ancient Greek civilization. Futile Union assaults on Confederate positions at Marye’s Heights outside Fredericksburg would seem to be more comparable to the attacks of Sir Redvers Buller at Colenso in the Second Boer War than the charge at Balaclava in the Crimean War.
Despite their placing of the American war in the context of other struggles in the ancient and modern world, A Savage War takes a relatively traditional approach to examining the Civil War. Occasionally, the chapters get muddled by comments based on factors to which the reader has yet to be introduced, but these discussions appear aimed more at those who have some knowledge of events from the outset.
Modern references also confuse the larger points, as when the authors attempt to employ “a passionate soliloquy” from Vietnamese Gen. Võ Nguyên Giáp, without actually providing it, and then comparing his sentiments to those expressed by John F. Kennedy in urging the citizens of his nation to service.
In a further effort to expand the appeal of the work, odd references emerge to films like “Glory,” or in the suggestion, however valid, that modern historians have engaged in “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” Certainly, the point is well made that contingency and chance, “the twin sisters,” mattered, but there is too much of a tendency to indulge in counterfactual speculation about what might have occurred in the war. Such an approach has popular appeal, but offers more in the way of distraction than insight.
Numerous arguable points arise in the volume, such as the assertion that Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers in the wake of Fort Sumter had no special bearing on the response of Virginia and other border states concerning secession.
The authors also contend that among the higher ranking Confederate generals in the West, “only Nathan Bedford Forrest distinguished himself” in comparison to the Union’s “minor army commanders,” George Thomas, John “Black Jack” Logan, Samuel Curtis, and James McPherson. Such phraseology skews the discussion away from prominent lower-level Confederate leaders who served effectively.
Certainly Federals who faced the soldiers of Patrick Cleburne and Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, for example, would have felt that those officers merited recognition as formidable opponents.
Perhaps strangest, for a volume on the “military history of the Civil War,” are the omitted or glancing references to small, but instructive engagements like Big Bethel in 1861, Shepherdstown in 1862, Orchard Knob in 1863 and Pickett’s Mill in 1864, as examples.
The 1863 Suffolk Campaign boils down to one mission — responding to the movement of the Union 9th Corps — without taking into account the primary one of securing supplies for the Army of Northern Virginia.
A diligent attempt to assess the Civil War by challenging broad assertions leads to unfortunate generalities of a different sort. Thus, John J. “Black Jack” Pershing warned Allied leaders that Germans must feel the effects of warfare in the First World War in order to dissuade them from attempting a second one, which the actions of Union forces in the Civil War managed to help the United States avoid through the thorough dismantling of the Confederacy.
White Southerners would get the message in 1865 that later societies received in 1945 and consequently never “dared raise a real rebellion after the destruction wrought by Union armies in 1864 and 1865.” Yet, the “wounds of the conflict only began to heal in the 1960s and 1970s, when the white South finally began to rejoin the United States.”
For all of the authors’ efforts to dismantle any validity for “Lost Cause” components, there is no acknowledgment subsequent to the end of the formalized warfare of 1861-1865 represented a second Civil War that threatened the results of the first one.
The authors’ greatest challenge is to reach conclusions that take into account the North’s advantages in resources while considering the Union leaders who put them to use.
“Lee’s masterful fighting withdrawal” in the Overland Campaign “might have eroded the Union’s will to continue the war with a defensive strategy of attrition,” but did not in large meathat actions
“Right to Serve, Right to Lead: Lives and Legacies of the USCT” August 2016 – August 2017
Gettysburg College’s Special Collections and College Archives will exhibit original artifacts documents, and photographs significant to the story of the United States Colored Troops during and after the Civil War. Right to Serve, Right to Lead follow the evolution participation in the both redefined the purpose behind the war, and created a lasting and illustrious military tradition. Curated by 2017 Brian C. Pohanka Intern, Matthew LaRoche, this exhibit draws from the private collection of Angelo Scarlato and local materials from the Adams County Historical Society.
Open Monday thru Friday 1 to 5 PM – also Tues & Weds evenings 6-9 PM - Other times by appointment sure because, as the authors assert convincingly, Grant had the resources to strike at Lee’s army and the will to use them.
Murray and Hsieh maintain that only Joseph Johnston “seems to have had some glimmers that defensive operations offered up substantial possibilities of success at the strategic level,” when William T. Sherman had no intention of allowing that approach to dissuade him in his approach to Atlanta in 1864.
Sherman could avoid Johnston’s strongest defensive positions and absorb his own losses in those instances when he tested them with assault. Furthermore, costly Confederate assaults at Dallas, Georgia, and Kolb’s Farm by Johnston’s troops demonstrated how little the “hope” of Johnston’s defensive endeavors would be allowed to “glimmer.”
Bibliographically, while wanting to streamline their sources for a popular audience, the authors’ omission of standard works will prove troublesome for students in the classroom or scholars hoping to delve more deeply into aspects of the period. Essential examinations and biographical treatments of key
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figures are missing. Murray and Hsieh often appear content to rely on the memoirs of Ulysses Grant — an undisputed favorite — and William T. Sherman, despite legitimate concerns for any overreliance upon such sources.
A Savage War may not represent the corrective to Civil War scholarship that its authors intended, but it builds on the important foundation that the North American conflict lay in a larger historical context which was not limited to the impact of technological innovation. Elements of both ancient and developing influences shaped events as generals maneuvered mass armies and grappled with the enemy while wrestling with logistical challenges. In this regard, the volume offers a provocative and original analysis.
Brian S. Wills, Ph.D. is Director of the Center for the Study of the Civil War Era at Kennesaw State University. He is the author of numerous works relating to the American Civil War, including a new volume The River Was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow.
rosters. The rarer ones tend to be Southern, and fetch the highest dollar, while among the more numerous Northern regimentals can be found serious collector’s items that are much sought after almost regardless of price. Finally, there is the category of books that I have watched progress from new, or slightly used, when I first started reading about the Civil War, to today, when many are now true collector’s items. These are the books published during the Civil War Centennial years of 1961- 65, along with a number of works that were penned in the decades just before, an era of remarkable publishing and publishers, and of authors who could really write. Plus the artwork on the dust jackets of these little jewels is unique and exciting, and unlike anything produced today. (If anyone has a fine-plus copy of Eckenrode and Conrad’s “James Longstreet, Lee’s War Horse,” please give me a call!).
So, now we know what books have value, and why, but exactly how do we determine realistic pricing. In our world, we price conservatively, as we are in it for the long haul and strive for an active turnover of stock. Others are happy to shoot for the stratosphere, and set a price that will almost insure that the book will gather dust while awaiting that rare “Price is no Object” kind of customer. If you have gone to the internet and observed the wide range of prices for the same titles in like condition, you have seen what I mean; an asking price can be very different than a selling price. Our method is first based upon what we paid for it, and secondly, what we sold it for last time. There was a time that Civil War books, like real estate, appreciated in value every year at an almost predictable rate. No more. Except for the true rarity, a first edition signed by an author or veteran, or a general’s autobiography in pristine condition, prices are currently holding steady, and will probably remain so for some time. That is why the best price guide still on the market, in my opinion, is that by Tom Broadfoot, Civil War Books, A Priced Checklist With Advice, Fifth Edition. It is sixteen years old at this writing, but it is a great place to start, and not too far off in most cases, in spite of the passage of time. It is also an excellent aid to identifying first editions, and determining the number of printings a certain title has enjoyed. Then, AbeBooks or Alibris on the internet might be consulted, at least to find out what certain known and reputable dealers are selling the same titles for, and how many copies might actually be available. Spending as much time as possible comparing prices at bookshops, conferences, Civil War shows, and antiquarian book fairs is also a good idea, and always a productive and enjoyable way for the bibliophile to deepen his knowledge, and maybe even get lucky from time to time. My advice when pricing a book that you want to turn into currency of the realm is to find the average price for a particular title, and then price your copy somewhere below that. Finally, when in doubt, think about asking an expert, another bookseller, or maybe an appraiser. Many of us don’t really charge very much, and we always love to share our opinions. The bottom line is, price the books to sell, not to keep, and be happy with a modest markup.
Of course, we have been discussing retail values, with an eye to selling to the general public. If, on the other hand, you think about selling to a book shop or book dealer, be prepared to negotiate a wholesale price, which can vary widely depending, once again, upon the content, quantity, and condition of the book or collection involved; what kind of books, how many, and what kind of shape they’re in, to
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say nothing of the predilections of the particular book buyer with whom you are hoping to do business. To sum up, once again, the true value of a book is the price that it is likely to sell for in the current second-hand book market, either wholesale or retail.
Happy Hunting, and I hope this has been a help. Marc
Do you know the true, current, fair market value of your books? I can help. Give me a call for a general or a detailed appraisal, and I will make sure that you are ready for insurance purposes, charitable deductions, estate planning, or for the sale of your book collection, call:
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Publishers/Authors: Please send your book(s) for review to: CWN Book Review Editor, Stephen Davis 4090 Audubon Drive, Marietta, GA 30068-2605
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From bestselling author Kathleen Ernst comes a new Chloe book of love, lies, and regret in the 1860s — and murder in the 1980s.
The award-winning Chloe series stars a reluctant sleuth, museum curator Chloe Ellefson, and her cop boyfriend Roelke McKenna.
The new mystery introduces his maternal great-grandmother.
Facing the prospect of an oppressive life in her native Germany, 16-year-old Rosina agrees to marry, sight unseen, an immigrant German farmer living in a far off place called Wisconsin.
The American Civil War begins as Rosina sails across the ocean.
The war’s impact, and the secrets she carries into her marriage, lie at the heart of the book — and send mystery and peril echoing through time into the modern lives of Chloe and Roelke.
Chloe books are available as trade paperback and ebooks from independent bookstores, BAM, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.