Train Collisions, Drowning, Shipwrecks and More
Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War. By Brian Steel Wills. Notes, bibliography, index. 416 pages. University Press of Kansas. kansaspress. ku.edu. $34.95 hardback.
Reviewed by Bruce Stewart
The American Civil War may very well be regarded as the most tragic time in our nation’s history. The loss of life was devastating, as well over 700,000 men and women perished in little more than four years. No region of the country was spared. Historians have taken great care to give an accurate account of the casualties which took place on the field of battle. Lost to the casual reader and often overlooked by the serious scholar was the loss of life from other causes—which carried off two-thirds of the officers and five-sixths of the men in the ranks. Women on the home front were suddenly thrust into a life fraught with danger, and some would suffer the consequences as well.
In Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War, Brian Steel Wills has brought to light the unexpected. Obviously, disease could appear at any time and ravage anyone in its path. Far too often even rudimentary treatments lay decades in the future. But in many cases, Americans met their end in an unforeseen circumstance. Simple accidents were joined by friendly fire, drowning and train collisions. Industrial explosions, naval disasters and disciplinary executions only added to the rolls. Physically, men could see their foe; medically they could not. Even suicide appeared with unsettling frequency.
The sheer volume of sick and dying overwhelmed medical care givers and hospitals struggling to handle the influx of patients. Modern pharmaceuticals were non-existent and the concepts of proper hygiene had yet to be discovered. As the war dragged on the sights and sounds of the suffering seemed to have no end.
Combining copious research among previously unpublished letters and diaries, Dr. Wills has explored not only the complications of daily routine in camp, but also the experiences of Civil War soldiers, using a wide variety of well-documented cases of noncombat death.
Death from contact with the enemy was so much easier to understand. Albert Marshall, a Union soldier serving in the Trans-Mississippi, explained noncombat death this way: “such a serious loss of life in such a manner is far sadder than to see our comrades fall in battle.”
Well written and concise, Wills’ Inglorious Passages is a very thorough revelation of new evidence and will be much appreciated by the entire Civil War community.
Bruce H. Stewart, Jr., is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and author of Invisible Hero: Patrick R. Cleburne (Mercer University Press, 2009).
Contested Loyalty: Debates Over Patriotism in the Civil War North. Edited by Robert M. Sandow. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 328 pp., Fordham Univ. Press, www.fordhampress.com, $65 hardcover.
Most of the Civil War’s 150-plus-year historiography has focused on the battles, leaders and politics that shaped the fouryear conflict between the Union and the Confederacy. The general impression, therefore, left upon many casual readers throughout the decades and newer students was that both North and South were fully united behind their respective causes.
Scholars of the conflict know that nothing could be further from the truth. Both North and South struggled with dissent from almost day-one, as many of each region’s civilians held significantly differing perspectives on what constituted proper patriotism and loyalty. As the war dragged on, both regions were threatened at times with their own violent, internal civil war.
In Contested Loyalty: Debates over Patriotism in the Civil War North, editor Robert Sandow has gathered ten new essays from today’s leading scholars. Collectively these ten historians examine distinctly different northern individuals and groups, and how their backgrounds shaped the way in which they defined patriotism and loyalty.
In general, these competing definitions of loyalty and patriotism centered on the Lincoln administration’s rationales for fighting the war, its alleged transgressions against civilian Constitutional liberties, workers’ rights, and whether or not—and how—to utilize free northern blacks in the war effort. Sandow highlights in his Introduction that for many Americans, loyalty was not nationalism. Instead, one’s loyalty was often manifested primarily toward family, community, region or even ethnicity. To counteract such localized perspectives, social elites and men of means established Union League clubs in both major cities and small towns to dictate what they believed were “proper” nationalistic displays of patriotism and “unconditional loyalty.”
In addition, these essays show how social class differences, religious affiliation, ethnicity, political beliefs, and gender all created their own fault lines as to how one defined loyalty. In numerous instances, these differences were so contentious that they led to homefront violence.
This exceptional volume stretches out far more broadly than the traditional anti-war examination of the Copperheads and/or Democratic Party dissent. Sandow and his authors contend that there were multiple and competing layers of northern loyalties during the Civil War, all of which were heartily contested in speeches, newspaper editorials, sermons, and public letters. That public debate on how one was to properly define and display loyalty is the central thesis of this book.
The ten essays begin with analyses of national and state politics. Melinda Lawson examines what the burgeoning American nationalism truly meant. Matthew Warshauer looks at the Connecticut “Peace Democrats” and their narrow interpretations of Constitutional law, followed by Jonathan White’s study of the war victim compensation debates in the Pennsylvania state legislature.
Julie Mujic and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai follow with two chapters that focus on elite college-educated men and how their station in life shaped their views of loyalty and honor. In a fascinating essay by Mujic, we are offered an in-depth look at competing loyalties through the personal letters of a college-educated Republican abolitionist and his staunch, anti-war Democratic fiancé.
Sean Scott explores religious conscience and public loyalty through the case of an apolitical Protestant minister who adhered to a strict separation between church and state and the consequences thereof.
Loyalty viewpoints of working-class men and women toiling within war-related industries are then examined by Judith Giesberg and Timothy Orr.
The final essays by Ryan Keating and Thaddeus Romansky examine concepts of patriotism and loyalty through the lens of ethnicity and race. Keating discusses Irish-American communities in Wisconsin and Connecticut followed by Romansky’s study of African Americans who served in the Union Army.
As historian Gary W. Gallagher points out in his Foreword, these insightful essays illustrate to us just how tenuous the Union cause was at various stages during the rebellion. Moreover, they offer ample food for thought as to how we, the people, may come to grips with wartime concepts of “loyalty” and “patriotism” within our modern era.
Paul Taylor is author of seven books pertaining to the Civil War era. His newest book is “The Most Complete Political Machine Ever Known”: The North’s Union Leagues in the American Civil War, published by Kent State Univ. Press.
A Prison for Federal Officers
Camp Oglethorpe: Macon’s Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864. By Stephen Hoy and William Smith. Maps, photos, footnotes, index, bibliography, illustrations, prisoner list, 260 pp., 2019. Mercer University Press, www.mupress.org. $35 hardback.
Camp Oglethorpe may not be unknown, exactly, but it certainly is not well-known, even to Civil War enthusiasts. Relying on prisoner accounts, newspaper reports, government documents and numerous secondary sources related to Civil War prisons and other aspects of the war, Hoy and Smith have provided a solid account of this Confederate prison in Macon, Ga.
Camp Oglethorpe, an officers’ prison for most of its history, is not as notorious as, for example, Camp Sumter and Elmira, but like every other POW camp it was an unpleasant place to be, a place where men were underfed and poorly sheltered, a place where all inmates suffered and where many died.
Before the war this patch of land in the central Georgia city was used for militia training and agricultural fairs. When war came the site became an army training ground and a staging facility for Georgia companies leaving home to join the fight. Later the prisoners came.
Located at the junction of two railroads in the Confederacy’s interior, Macon was a logical place to keep prisoners taken in battle. The authorities hastily constructed a fence to enclose some three acres of the fairground just in time for the arrival of the first prisoners; 838 officers and men marched through the gate on May 4, 1862.
Camp Oglethorpe tells much the same story that a history of any Civil War prison camp would tell. Floods of captives overwhelmed the system improvised to accommodate them. From the perspective of the authorities, the questions were how to feed them, house them, guard them? How to treat the many sick and wounded in their midst? And what to do when the breakdown of the exchange system exacerbated the already insoluble problems? And from the prisoners’ perspective, how to survive on the scanty rations, how to stay dry and warm, how to fight the tedium of captivity? And, of course, how to escape?
Hoy and Williams’ book covers more than the prison itself. The reader learns about two cavalry raids, Stoneman’s in the summer of 1864 and Wilson’s the following spring. In addition to his primary mission of wrecking the railroads south of Atlanta, Stoneman tasked himself with freeing the prisoners in Macon and Andersonville. Instead, he and many of his men found themselves captured and penned with the men they hoped to liberate. The chapter on Wilson’s Raid tells of the more successful expedition that ended in Macon as the war reached its conclusion.
No one would deny that prisoner-of-war camps were places of immense suffering. However, in their final chapter the authors advise that prisoner accounts should not be accepted uncritically. “Stories were often exaggerated,” they warn, “and facts embellished.” They quote a Michigan cavalryman held at Camp Sumter, who read several accounts written by his comrades and wrote that he was “surprised at the free-lance recklessness of description.”
According to this final chapter, some 670,000 men were captured in the war. Of these, 400,000 spent at least some time in prisons, and 56,000 of these died. Camp Oglethorpe tells the story of one of these prisons, one of the 150 such places where Americans were held in captivity by their former—and future— fellow citizens.
Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps. By Amy Murrell Taylor. Images, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 368 pp, 2018. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org. $34.95 hardcover.
While seemingly almost every aspect of the Civil War era has received a fair share of scholarly examination, one significant yet largely ignored facet is finally getting much deserved attention. Until recently, outside of a handful of books and articles, a true gulf in scholarship existed on the experiences of those in the war’s slave refugee camps. Jim Downs helped with his book, Sick from Freedom: African American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford, 2012), which explores a specific thread of the camps. Chandra Manning helped fill this void too with her recently published Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War (Knopf, 2016), which examines how the war’s fugitive slaves reworked emancipation as a Union war aim, and then challenged the idea of who was to be considered a citizen in the war’s aftermath. Now, with Amy Murrell Taylor’s new contribution to this growing body of study, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps, even more light is finding its way to this underexposed historical topic.
Referred to during the conflict as “contraband camps,” these often fluid and makeshift settlements popped up in almost every area where the Union military showed its might and held its ground for any length of time. Found in almost every seceded and border state by war’s end, the 300 or so refugee camps could be places of unbridled hope at some points, yet deadly discouraging and dangerous places at other times.
What largely separates Embattled Freedom from previous studies is that in it Taylor provides a more complete groundseye view into the everyday happenings of the slave refugee camps. As one would expect, the experiences varied greatly among the estimated 500,000 men, women, and children who fled slavery and who found varying degrees of freedom during the four years of the Civil War. Refugees encountered a diversity of problems, opportunities, dangers and dilemmas, depending on where they were from, and thus where their refugee camp materialized; when they arrived; what they were able to bring with them, both materially and in skills; whom they encountered and those peoples’ attitudes toward African Americans; and what they were tasked to do for service with the United States military,
Taylor insightfully tackles many of these refugee camp issues by viewing them through the lens of three individual case studies. These three examples not only help the reader better understand the experiences of particular refugees, but also helps show how perhaps the refugee camps may have differed due to geographical location, and most importantly gives us their experiences from their own perspectives. Taylor skillfully weaves the book’s eight chapters around the personal stories of Edward and Emma Whitehurst, wouldbe shopkeepers in southeast Virginia; Eliza Bogan, an army laundress in Helena, Arkansas; and Gabriel Burdett, an aspiring minister at Camp Nelson, Kentucky.
The eight chapters of the book
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discuss the myriads of concerns experienced by refugee men, women and children. In “Securing Work,” the author explains through the Whitehursts’ story that the challenges faced in transitioning from a forced labor system to a monetary wage labor system, especially during time of war, was not always smooth. In “Finding Shelter,” we discover that locations allocated for refugees were the ones least desired by the military, and that finding relatively permanent shelter was a constant struggle for refugees. “Confronting Removal” examines the common occurrence of putting distance between soldiers and refugee communities, often due to perceived negative racial influences. “Facing Combat” shows the many ways that refugees contributed to slavery’s demise, both inside the Union military and out. “Battling Hunger” and “Clothing Bodies” also spell out other practical, yet life-threatening challenges faced by refugees, while finding ways of “Keeping Faith” and “Grappling with Loss,” although perhaps less tangible, were in many cases just as important for refugee survival.
Embattled Freedom: With Journeys through the Civil War’s Refugee Camps, Taylor gives us the book that many of us have been waiting for. Its particular approach to the subject matter, thorough research, and keen writing ensures that it will maintain a place in Civil War history for years to come as a source of better understanding the slave refugee camp experience.
Tim Talbott is the Director of Education, Interpretation, Visitor Services, and Collections at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va. He is currently researching the various combination of elements that led to emancipation.
Match The Number
With The Letter
1. Bohemian Brigade 2. Quaker gun 3. Shoddy 4. Invalid Corps 5. Marye’s Heights 6. Whistling Dick 7. Corduroy road 8. French leave 9. Bombproof 10. Hot shot
A. An 18-pounder smoothbore deployed in the water battery at Vicksburg.
B. An imitation gun made of wood, painted black.
C. Being absent without officers’ permission.
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D. Solid shot heated in a furnace to set fires among wooden targets.
E. A place of refuge from artillery fire.
F. A road surface constructed of small tree trunks, laid down in muddy or swampy areas.
G. An inferior wool that fell apart soon after issue, used in early Union uniforms.
H. Soldiers incapacitated by wounds or sickness but still on duty.
I. An elevated area on the outskirts of Fredericksburg, Va.
J. A nickname for newspaper correspondents who traveled with an army.
Answers found on page 42.
A First-hand Account of the Daily Life of Soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia
A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and his Family 1860–1863. Edited by A. Gibert Kennedy. Maps, photos, notes, index, 360 pages, 2019. University of South Carolina Press, www.sc.edu/uscpress. $49.95 hardbound.
The Foster family first arrived in upstate South Carolina in the 1790s. By the 1820s the family owned a successful (and still-standing) inn and tavern in what is now Spartanburg (John C. Calhoun was a frequent guest) as well as a plantation in Cross Anchor, S.C.
Barham Bobo Foster was born in the tavern in 1817. Twenty years later he was married and had settled down on a plantation near Glenn Springs, S.C. He served in the state militia, the South Carolina state legislature and was a county treasurer.
The letters start with the South Carolina Secession Convention in Charleston in December 1860 and are written primarily by Foster, who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, and by his sons Capt. Lewis Perrin Foster and Corporal James “Tony” Anthony Foster. They are arranged chronologically.
In the earliest letters we see the sons training in Charleston and Columbia. As was typical of letters written in this very early stage of the war, they are full of bravado and optimism. Upon his arrival in Virginia, Lewis wrote, “I have never seen such soldiers than I have of the confederate army. Most of them volunteers for 2 years or the war. They seem resolute and determined to do or die. They never seem to doubt their success and I don’t think such men can be whipped at all.” Interestingly, Lewis makes note of a female drill officer from a Zouave regiment.
But as the war goes on, things did not go as well as the men expected. Perhaps no other topic takes up more of the letters than the subject of disease. The writers and/or the men in their units contracted just about every illness one could imagine: the measles, mumps, typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery, etc., which took the lives of many of their comrades in arms. Also, price gouging was a common occurrence, both at home and in camp, while requests for clothes and swords were frequent. Food was a constant problem as well.
Anyone looking for new insight into any of the major figures of the war will be disappointed, though Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s name is constantly misspelled as “Boureguard.”
The letters to home end on December 10, 1862, prior to the battle of Fredericksburg. Lt. Col. B. B. Foster resigned his commission in late Januaryearly February 1862 for medical
Titles By 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
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.
reasons. Tony was killed in action at the battle of Maryland Heights on September 13, 1862, while Capt. Lewis Foster was killed in action at Fredericksburg. The last letters from Lewis read like they were written by a different person from the one who boasted about the Confederate army a year and a half earlier; the grim realities and uncertainties of war had set in.
On the whole, this collection of letters gives a fascinating and interesting look into the Army of Northern Virginia in the war’s early years from the eyes of men living in camp. Anyone interested in life in the Confederate army should read this book.
Tom Elmore’s family has lived in South Carolina’s upstate for over two centuries, and it is very likely that some of his ancestors knew some of the people mentioned in this book. Currently Elmore is studying the lives of Irish and Scottish immigrants living in his home town of Columbia during the antebellum period.