The Definitive History of Civil War Battlefield Preservation
Altogether Fitting and Proper: Civil War Battlefield Preservation in History, Memory, and Policy, 1861-2015. By Timothy B. Smith. Photos, notes, index, 328 pp., 2017, University of Tennessee Press. www.utpress.org. $39.95 hardcover.
Reviewed by A. Wilson Greene
Let me get right to the point: I loved this book.
Timothy B. Smith’s topic naturally appeals to someone who has spent his entire career preserving, managing, and interpreting Civil War battlefields. But a reader need not be a professional in the field to devour the fruit of Smith’s extensive research into scores of Civil War sites, from Picacho Peak in Arizona to Gettysburg.
Professor Smith is widely recognized as the authority on the history of our nation’s Civil War parks. His earlier books chronicled the establishment of Shiloh National Military Park, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, and the entire “Golden Age” of battlefield preservation in the 1890s. With Altogether Fitting and Proper, Smith contributes the capstone to his previous work in a comprehensive review of the way our Civil War battlefields have developed from Reconstruction to the present.
Smith divides his narrative into seven distinct “eras” of battlefield preservation, not including the erection of monuments and the creation of military cemeteries during the war itself. In the course of this journey, he addresses various legislative endeavors that created policies and laws influencing the way governments and the private sector have gone about protecting our Civil War heritage. Smith reveals the origins of federal, state, and privately managed battlefields and the political and economic imperatives that influenced their existence. He carefully places the evolution of battlefield preservation in its proper historical context, documented by a plethora of sources that will lead interested readers to learn more about their favorite parks.
Certain themes emerge from Smith’s chronological approach, the most obvious of which is, in the author’s opinion, the failure of the federal government to play a more instrumental role in creating and executing a national policy of battlefield protection. Although states—and to some extent local governments—tried to fill the void, it was not until the “Renaissance” period beginning in 1990 that private organizations assumed preeminence in the preservation field, doing “more than all levels of government combined” and picking up “where the government on all levels failed the American people in terms of battlefield preservation.” Chief among these non-profit groups is the Civil War Trust, led by James Lighthizer, for whom Smith has effusive praise.
Some readers might find negotiating the legislative labyrinth involved in creating and administering the parks a bit tedious, but Smith does the best he could with an inherently ponderous topic. He adopts an organizational construct, popular in much academic writing, of summarizing the points of each chapter at the outset and then re-summarizing those points in a concluding section. This redundancy detracts a bit from the narrative flow. Still, Smith’s prose is lucid and free of jargon, making Altogether Fitting and Proper highly accessible to a broad audience. I only detected two editorial slips (Petersburg’s Fort Hell is identified as Fort Hill (p. 57) and the anniversary celebrations of the 1980s are ascribed to the war’s 135th anniversary (p.192), which speaks to the skillful production values embraced by the University of Tennessee Press. Two sections of photographs enhance the text.
Smith’s scope is as impressive as his command of the relevant sources. The research that informs this book is stunning and Smith’s reach extends into practically every preserved battlefield in the country. Although he neglected to address the contributions in the Centennial period of the Lee-Jackson Foundation in the Shenandoah Valley, Smith otherwise untangles the entire universe of initiatives behind the erection of monuments, the construction of visitor amenities, and—most importantly— the preservation of the battlefields themselves throughout the country.
Smith relates a number of interesting anecdotes, such as the origin of the myth of Independence Day celebrations in Vicksburg and a stillborn scheme to build a commemorative highway from Washington to Gettysburg. He also tackles the changes in battlefield interpretation over the decades, from the reconciliationists of the 1890s to the current emphasis on the contributions of African Americans and the centrality of slavery and emancipation in the memory of the war.
Everyone who visits Civil War battlefields or supports battlefield preservation should read this superb book. It stands as the definitive treatment of its topic.
A. Wilson Greene was the first executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites. His book on the Petersburg campaign in June and July 1864 will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018.
An Unsteady Research Guide
Reviewed by Stephen Davis
Darrell Collins, a Coloradan, has compiled reference works on the Army of the Potomac (2013) and Army of Northern Virginia (2016), assembling information from the Official Records in ready-to-use compendia. Here he does the same for the Army of Tennessee.
“This is meant to be a basic foundational reference,” he announces in his Introduction. In essence, Collins intends to spare us a trip to the OR bookshelf when we want to check on the Confederacy’s chief western army as to its organization, strength, and casualties for major battles. These are the three sections of his book.
The Army of Tennessee was not officially so named until late November 1862 by Gen. Braxton Bragg, but it had a couple of earlier names. Thus Collins begins his Section I, “Organization Reports,” with Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee’s Central Army of Kentucky in January 1862. For curiosity’s sake I went to the OR (vol. VII) to doublecheck Collins’ transcription and, alas, found that it is not without error. He lists divisions, brigades, and regiments to be found on VII, 852, but inexplicably omits those printed on page 853 (Buckner’s 3rd Brigade, et al.)
Section I has 39 reports from Jan. 31, 1862 to Apr. 9, 1865. Corps, division, brigade and regimental commanders are all named. A subsection, “Timelines,” lists all of these units with their leaders, “whereby one may see at a glance who commanded what unit and when at any given time,” Collins explains.
Section II offers “Present for Duty Reports,” 1862-1865. Here, more than a hundred reports provide the army’s strength at various times during two and a half years. Once more I selected at random Collins’ tabulation for the army’s strength as of April 30, 1864, checking it with the OR (vol. XXXII, pt. 3, 865-66). First thing I noticed is that he has changed the names of the all-important categories. Most students know the difference in Confederate reports between “Present for duty” and “Effective total present.” For his guide, though, Collins has changed “present” to “effective”—very different categories entirely— then added “Effect off.” and “Effect Men” for a total he terms “Effect Total.” But his numbers don’t correspond to the OR’s “Effective total present,” so he changes the OR total and substitutes his.
If all this sounds confusing… well….You get my point: how dependable is a reference work with this kind of confusion?
I’ve put Collins’ The Army of Tennessee on my bookshelf. I suspect that’s where it’ll stay.
P.S. Why does he give Lt. Gen. James Longstreet the middle initial of “P.” on page 21?
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Fighting in the Shadows: Untold Stories of Deaf People in the Civil War. By Harry G. Lang. Photographs, index, 272 pp., 2017, Gallaudet University Press, gupress.gallaudet.edu, $39.95 hardcover.
Reviewed by Bruce Stewart
The vast majority of current literature dedicated to the Civil War is military in nature, and understandably so. A much smaller portion examines the trials and hardships suffered by civilians, but there is even less which deals specifically with disabilities, whether they are seen on the field of battle or among those still at home.
With copious research and in clear detail, Harry Lang has managed to explain many of the difficulties experienced among those on both sides of the conflict who had to confront the handicaps associated with their loss of hearing. Deaf himself, Lang has uncovered diaries, letters, poems, and photographs which bring to life a group of society often scorned by some and misunderstood by others.
It is not intended to be a military work, but simply to tell the stories of common men and women who had to overcome their inability to hear the spoken word. While the causes of deafness are many, he carefully breaks the end result into three categories: those individuals who are deaf from birth, others who contract the condition later in life, and people who we would classify today as, in some form, hard of hearing.
In order to provide some background, the author begins with conditions across the nation during the antebellum period. This offers insight into the troubles experienced by the African American community as well. Pioneers in education began the process of addressing a need which had as yet gone unfulfilled.
Lang then makes a smooth transition into the economic life of a civilian with a serious affliction. His liberal use of period photographs connects the reader with the story, and the attempt is made to dispel any preconceived notions held by the healthy populace against those less fortunate.
The chapters are concise, thoughtful and well presented, finally closing with twentieth century legislation relevant to the disease. Fighting in the Shadows has great value in the exploration of a field of study which has received minimal attention. It does however, contain one flaw, and it is not with the book itself, but with its preface and introduction. While this is described as the only book of its kind, both the text and the footnotes continue to cite other material by different authors.
The reader is also led to believe that deaf soldiers appeared on the front lines in large numbers, a statement which is later clarified. Lang determined that no two deaf men enlisted in the same company or even the same regiment. Many applicants served as cooks, teamsters, artists, or nurses. In addition, as the author explains, it is not possible to quantify how many men managed to pass cursory medical examinations for enlistment, only to be quickly discharged by their officers upon arrival. Lang points out that despite thorough investigation, recorded observations were not plentiful from deaf soldiers.
It seems that they would be better described as hard of hearing, as there are many examples of men who attained a rank above that of a private. While a soldier could move with his unit, he would certainly be unable to give field commands under fire to even the smallest of contingents.
Fighting in the Shadows should be viewed as a very successful work which will enlighten the general public and give new insight into a subject which has not received the exposure which it deserves.
Bruce Stewart is a former president of the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta, with particular interest in the Western Theater. His book, Invisible Hero: Patrick R. Cleburne, was published by Mercer University Press in 2009.
Lincoln’s Pathfinder – John C. Fremont and the Violent Election of 1856. By John Bicknell. Bibliography, endnotes, illustrations, 358 pp., 2017, Chicago Review Press, www.chicagoreviewpress.com, $26.99 hardcover.
Few American presidential elections have taken place in a more volatile climate than that of 1856. Veteran journalist John Bicknell chronicles this event with a reporter’s flair for entertainingly written political history.
Two issues were at the core of this volatility. First, of course, was the deepening sectional crisis, fueled by the Democratic administration of Franklin Pierce and by the party’s congressional leader, Stephen A. Douglas. They had attempted to quell the slavery controversy with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which would undo the Compromise of 1850 by committing the fate of slavery in the western territories to popular vote. In fact, their effort would only fan the flames.
The second factor was the dramatic destabilization of the political party system. As the Whigs imploded, in part along sectional lines, new parties filled the void. Growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North fueled the nascent Republican Party, while hostility to the recent wave of immigrants, primarily from Ireland, and to the Catholic Church drove the new American Party, popularly known as the “Know Nothings.”
Bicknell plunges into this toxic mixture with page-turning skill. The debate over popular sovereignty surfaced in escalating violence, large and small. The former took place primarily in “Bleeding Kansas,” where both sides undertook murderous violence, including killings by the unhinged abolitionist John Brown. Isolated incidents also occurred—notably the attack by caning on the Senate floor of Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina.
Bicknell deftly covers the political process which evolved in this environment. He describes the machinations which led to the Democrats’ rejection of the incumbent Pierce with, ultimately, the “safe” venerable operative from Pennsylvania, James Buchanan. He does the same for the Republicans, who were new to the national political scene. Bicknell shows how luminaries such as William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Sumner withdrew, probably in part because it was too soon to assume a reasonable chance at winning. Instead, the legendary western explorer, California insurrectionist and largely apolitical John C. Fremont was named to carry the party’s banner against popular sovereignty. Last, the Americans nominated former President Millard Fillmore to represent their anti-immigrant-Church platform, despite Fillmore’s own lack of “know nothing” history.
The author does not ignore other events which helped make the climate for this election unique. He delves into the Dred Scott case which was percolating in the Supreme Court (and which would inflame the country when it was decided in March, 1857). Bicknell also covers the migration by Mormon immigrants from Europe across the Great Plains to Salt Lake City, pushing handcarts on foot and encountering great perils while also exacerbating the prevalent anti-Mormon sentiment. Attention is given, as well, to a committee of vigilantes which used its own brand of justice to impose law and order in San Francisco.
The author’s description of the campaign casts significant light on the role of Fremont’s wife, Jessie Benton Fremont. Daughter of long-time Jacksonian Democrat and Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton (who would oppose his son-in-law’s candidacy) and earnest promoter of her husband’s exploits, Jessie took a surprisingly influential part in the campaign. She inspired other women to do so, as well, even though women would not be enfranchised to vote for president for another sixty-four years. Bicknell also ably writes about the Republicans’ efforts to fight a two-front war against the Democrats and the Americans, notably against the formers’ use of a false assertion initiated by the latter that Fremont was a Catholic.
Ultimately, as Bicknell shows, the Republicans and the Americans combined to outpoll the Democrats, but Buchanan prevailed in the electoral college and became president. The author’s premise, however, is that the 1856 campaign showed the Republicans how to organize on the local level in the North and that a northern anti-slavery strategy could propel them to victory in 1860. His title may suggest more influence on the development of this strategy than the politically passive Fremont actually had, but there can be little doubt that party leaders gleaned a useful roadmap from their defeat.
This is popular history rather than an academic or scholarly study. While Bicknell has not accessed archival collections, he has employed published primary sources and authoritative secondary works. Fittingly for a book about an era in which newspapers flourished and unabashedly involved themselves in politics, Bicknell has relied on a number of contemporary newspapers.
My only criticism is that some sort of glossary regarding the political parties would be helpful to the reader. Disaffected Whigs headed in various directions (including an Illinois Whig named Lincoln who joined the Republicans fairly late in the process) and a splinter group of anti-slavery Americans ended up nominating Fremont, as well. A reader might well want to reach for a roster card at times to keep affiliations straight.
This is an entertaining book which explores the vortex in which America elected a president in 1856. Ironically, the election outcome reflected an urge for stability but merely helped facilitate the country’s greatest crisis. Bicknell’s book is well worth buying.
John Foskett, longtime reviewer for CWN, is a practicing attorney in Boston with a life-long interest in the Civil War. He is descended from Isaac Foskett, who served for three years in the Engineer Battalion with the Army of the Potomac.
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sixty-three line poem, written in galloping octometer, on the subject of “Sheridan’s Ride.” The poem was considerably short of a masterpiece, the best lines going to the horse Rienzi, but as a piece of Republican campaign rhetoric it was unexcelled. Debuted by Murdock at Cincinnati’s Pike Opera Hall on Nov. 1, 1864, “Sheridan’s Ride” took the North by storm and made its bemused subject even more of a household name. When Lincoln swamped McClellan in the presidential election a week later, many observers credited Read’s poem— as much as its inspiration’s achievements on the battlefield—with swelling the rout. Sheridan himself, perhaps ironically, renamed Rienzi “Winchester” in honor of the poem’s famous refrain: “Winchester, twenty miles away.”
Morris suggests that had it not been for Read’s poem, Sheridan’s ride would have been consigned, well, to the dustbin of history. “[G]enerations of schoolchildren as yet unborn would stand before blackboards in northern cities reciting Read’s anthropomorphic epic.” Indeed, the poem won “a place in every elementary school primer for the next fifty years.”8
Eric Wittenberg, historian of Union cavalry, stands apart from the rest of the literature in what Jeffry D. Wert has called “a scathing indictment of Sheridan’s record,” his Little Phil: A Reassessment of the Civil War Leadership of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan (2002). Chapter titles alone indicate the author’s caustic perspective: “Sheridan as Cavalry Corps Commander: Mediocrity Reigns;” “Little Phil in the Shenandoah Valley: A Victorious Campaign Bereft of Decision;” and “Sheridan’s Disobedience of Orders.” As balance to all of this—you guessed it—Wittenberg’s opening pages reprint the complete text of Read’s “Sheridan’s Ride.”9
David Coffey, in Sheridan’s Lieutenants (2005), makes at least passing reference to Read’s poem.10 So does Joseph Wheelan
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in his biography of Sheridan (2012), adding that Read’s poem was “widely reprinted in newspapers across the North.”11
You get the idea. I happen to be a fan of Western films, including John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). One of its characters famously declares, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” In the case of Sheridan at Cedar Creek, biographers and military historians have detailed the memorable events of Oct. 19, 1864. But one may argue that it was Thomas Buchanan Read’s famous poem that allowed Sheridan’s ride to pass from fact into legend.
1. Personal Memoirs of P. H.
2. Frank A. Burr and Richard
3. Henry A. Davies, Gener
4. Joseph Hergesheimer, Sher
5. Richard O’Connor, Sheridan
6. Edward J. Stackpole, Sher
7. Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil
8. Roy Morris Jr., Sheridan:
9. Eric J. Wittenberg, Little Sheridan. General United States Army, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1888), II, 74-92.
J. Hinton, “Little Phil” and his Troopers. The Life of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. Its Romance and Reality: How an Humble Lad Reached the Head of an Army (Providence R.I.: J.A. and R.A. Read, 1888), 233-36.
al Sheridan (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1895), 182-87.
idan: A Military Narrative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 250-54.
the Inevitable (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1953), 226.
idan in the Valley: Jubal Early’s Nemesis (Harrisburg Penn.: Stackpole Co., 1961), 323.
Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 2-27.
The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan (New York: Crown Publishers, 1992), 220.
11. Joseph Wheelan, Terrible
regular contributor to Civil War News and is the Book Review Editor.
Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5-July 18, 1864, was published as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War paperback series.
The Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign From Peachtree Creek To The City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864, was published this Spring.
Sheridan’s Coffey, Lieutenants:Phil Sheridan, His Generals, and the Final Year of the Civil War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 94.
Swift Sword: The Life of General Philip H. Sheridan (New York: Da Capo Press, 2012),
Steve Davis of Atlanta is a
His book, A Long and Bloody
The companion volume, All
New Titles from Stephen Davis
The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5–July 18, 1864 Davis’ narrative history of the Atlanta Campaign is divided into two paperbacks from Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series. Volume One, A Long and Bloody Task, carries Sherman’s forces from Dalton in northwest Georgia to the Chattahoochee River. There the Confederate government was forced to relieve its army commander, Joseph E. Johnston, and replace him with Gen. John B. Hood.
All the Fighting They Want
Small Talk
1. The first Confederate major
2. “General Grant is a great
3. Jefferson Davis had six sec
With the Yankee army five miles outside of Atlanta, Hood promised not to give up with city without a fight— which is all President Jefferson Davis asked. Davis’ companion volume, All the Fighting They Want, describes Hood’s efforts to defend Atlanta. Its fall in early September 1864 was a mortal blow to Confederate hopes for independence and a big boost to Lincoln’s hopes for presidential reelection.
general to die in the war was not from battle causes—just old age. He was in fact the South’s oldest general, born in 1790 and dying on July 15, 1862. While in the old army he surrendered all U.S. property in Texas to secessionists in February 1861. Can you name him?
general. I know him well. He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always.” Who is alleged have said this?
retaries of war; Lincoln had two. Who was Lincoln’s first war secretary?
4. Alexander Stephens, Con
5. Who was the Maryland phy
7. On May 10, 1864, his infantry
8. What was a “shinplaster”?
9. On Nov. 29, 1863, outside
10. “Old Missus marry Will de
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federate Vice President, was imprisoned after the war for five months at a U.S. fort in Boston harbor. Which one? sician who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg on April 15, 1865, was arrested, convicted for complicity in the assassination plot, and served four years of a life sentence? Union general KIA/MW died July 3, 1863, after being ordered to lead his cavalry brigade in a charge against Confederate infantry. Who?
attack, a “lightning foray,” as Gordon Rhea terms it, broke Lee’s line at the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania, and led to Grant’s decision for a bigger attack on May 12. Name the officer.
a) a military jail or brig; b) a soldier’s ration of hard baked bread; c) a monetary note of small denomination; or d) a moist poultice for wound treatment.
Knoxville, Tenn., Longstreet’s Confederates were repulsed attacking a Union fort, hindered by telegraph wire strung among tree stumps, and blocked by a deep wide moat dug outside the parapet. Name the fort. weaber/Willum was a gay deceaber/His face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaber/But dat did not seem to greab er.” These lines are from a lesser known stanza of a song popular in the wartime South. Which song?