The Tortured Road to Freedom
Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery. By Joseph P. Reidy. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 506pp., 2019. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org. $39.95 cloth.
Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf
Emancipation may have become law with the conclusion of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment. Yet Joseph Reidy forcefully argues that the process of emancipation and the full enjoyment of citizenship and its rights and privileges did not occur simultaneously. The path to the eradication of the legacy of slavery was long, uneven, filled with successes and failures, and may still be an ongoing process in American society. This volume wraps the struggle for true social, political and economic equality around three themes—time, space and home. Time began long before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. For preceding decades slaves took a central part in their own quest for freedom, escaping or purchasing their liberty, engaging in revolts or work stoppages, and pressing for increased aspects of freedom whenever possible. These methods differed depending on the space occupied by the slaves. In border states the Ohio River loomed as the Bible’s River Jordan. Yet the quest for freedom frequently ended in re-enslavement, punishment, or being sold farther South. This frequently involved splitting up families, destroying the sense of home, whether that was defined as relatives or geographically as the plantation, and alienating slaves from their sense of belonging.
Within this framework politicians, soldiers, abolitionists and slaves themselves chartered a somewhat tortuous path, frequently imbued with disappointment and destroyed hopes toward the full realization of freedom.
During the Civil War the movement of armies frequently dictated temporary freedom or a return to slavery. It likewise destroyed the traditional relationship between owner and slave and caused every American, North and South, to reach for new meaning for society, culture and political control.
Joseph Reidy must be complimented on a thoroughly researched analysis of the path toward emancipation in its fullest sense. His use of primary source material conveys not only the facts but the emotions of the participants in the struggle for freedom.
This volume will undoubtedly stand as one of the most exhaustive and important looks at emancipation and the road to equality. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in slavery, emancipation and the social, cultural and political changes brought about by freeing three million enslaved people.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College in Illinois and the author or editor of twenty-four books on the Civil War, including Two Years Before the Paddlewheel and Heroes and Rogues of the Civil War. He is currently researching primary source material on the life of the common soldier.
Civil War Congress and the Creation of Modern America: A Revolution on the Home Front. Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon. 58 illustrations, notes, index, 232 pp., 2019. Ohio University Press, www.ohioswallow.com. $35 hardcover.
The most common images of the Civil War are ones of grand battles, marching armies, and intense political debates within the United States Congress. Yet often overlooked or even neglected in our study of the war is understanding the long-term impact that Congress’s wartime focus had on the nation’s legal and social fabric. The seven scholarly essays in this volume serve to remind us of the myriad ways that the war’s Congressional legislation fundamentally transformed Northern society and how those laws continue to impact our daily lives to this day.
Co-editor Paul Finkelman sets up his authors’ essays by pointing out that the war enlarged our national government beyond anything imaginable in 1861. This was due in large measure to the
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absence of Southern Democrats in Congress, which allowed Northern Republicans to pass legislation that the dominant Democratic Party had steadfastly refused to support prior to the war, believing such laws were harmful to Southern interests.
Jennifer Weber’s opening essay on the March 1863 conscription act describes how, for the first time in the country’s history, an average man now had a potential life-or-death interest in national politics. This Federal incursion into what had previously been a local or state matter is a common theme throughout this book: the seismic shift, in only four years, of the relationship between the Federal and state governments, as well as between the country and its citizens. These foundational changes, as this book asserts, all emanated from within the halls of the Congress in Washington.
By the end of the rebellion, the nation had been transformed from a primarily agrarian land into a growing industrial behemoth, due in large measure to the North’s need for war supplies. Paying for the war effort cost immense sums and, as Jenny Bourne explains, the war led to the creation of the Internal Revenue Service and a national income tax, paper money known as “Greenbacks,” and massive federal government borrowing with the debt sold directly to the public.
The war also changed how society viewed acceptable “women’s work.” With so many men off fighting, the war created marketplace opportunities for women that previously did not exist. Daniel Stowell tells how the federal government employed large numbers of women for the first time ever to count and scissor-cut Treasury notes, thus freeing those men previously employed in such duty to now wield muskets instead of shears. These socalled “Government Girls” led to
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women becoming an acceptable and permanent part of the Federal government workforce.
In addition to its legislative efforts to help suppress the rebellion, the Republican-dominated Congress passed laws that had little or nothing to do with the war effort. The additional essays discuss how the Department of Agriculture, the Homestead Act, the Land Grant College Act, and enhanced civil rights for African Americans all came into being during 1861–65.
Illustrations and footnotes (far more user friendly than endnotes in this reviewer’s opinion) abound in this slender yet excellent volume. This work is part of the Ohio University Press’s “Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1801–1877” Series, which is currently a seven-volume series that examines the U.S. Congress during the antebellum and Civil War eras. It rightly reminds us how the Civil War remains to this day the foremost event in U.S. history. Its essays specifically illustrate how the war brought forth a revolution in the size and scope of America’s national government that, along with a consequential change in culture and society, still resonates into the 21st century.
Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of seven books pertaining to the Civil War era. His most recent book, “The Most Complete Political Machine Ever Known”: The North’s Union Leagues in the American Civil War, was published by Kent State Univ. Press in 2018. He is currently editing the letters of Union engineer officer Orlando M. Poe to his wife for future publication.
Joseph A. Fry has compiled a comprehensive and thoroughly researched look at the policies of Abraham Lincoln and William Seward that combined threats, caution and compromise that saved the Union. Additionally, these strategies defended republicanism, nationalism and freedom as an example for the world to emulate. Coming from two distinctly different backgrounds— the rural, hardscrabble western frontier of Lincoln and the elitist, wealthy eastern establishment of Seward—these two leaders forged a partnership of respect that aimed to win the Civil War, prevent European intervention in that conflict, and silence domestic critics. Both men suffered through massive political assaults on the home front and from the foreign press, yet never lost sight of their goal of keeping the nation united. Theirs was a vision of an America ever expanding westward, becoming a dominant world power, and enriching Americans as leaders of world production and commerce.
From its first foreign policy decision, supplying Fort Sumter and blockading Southern ports, to its last conference aboard the River Queen, the Lincoln administration was consistent in its demands for a reunited country, no retreat on the ultimate goal of emancipation, and no truce before the end of the war. The South would have to submit to these demands or continue to fight for its existence. Lincoln and Seward would concentrate all of their resources to these ends, economically bearing the cost of the war, politically keeping Europe from assisting the Confederacy, and morally taking the high ground against slavery and for freedom. Lincoln would use his political savvy and Seward his diplomatic skills to achieve these three objectives.
Unfortunately, just as the fruits of four years of diplomacy were succeeding, John Wilkes Booth destroyed their partnership. But William Seward, barely surviving assassination himself, continued Lincoln’s vision through the Andrew Johnson administration. He never retreated from his quest for the end of slavery and full civil rights for freedmen, westward expansion for America, international dominance in commerce, and the spread of democracy around the world. While Seward’s most notable foreign policy achievement was the purchase of Alaska, his goals of building a Panama Canal, opening trade with Asia and acquiring Hawaii, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico became the cornerstone of late 19th- and early 20th-century American foreign policy.
As a contemporary interpretation of the unlikely partnership between Lincoln and Seward, this book does an excellent job of not only illuminating the intellectual and diplomatic skills of the President and Secretary of State, but also fully developing their vision of what a united America could become on the world stage.
At $60, a bit pricey, Fry’s work is worth the cost for those seeking to better understand the nuances of diplomacy abroad and at home during the Civil War era. Additionally, the bibliographic essay at the conclusion supplies a wealth of avenues for further research.
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France and the American Civil War—A Diplomatic History. By Stève Sainlaude, Translated by Jessica Edwards. Photos, notes, chronology, index, bibliography, 285 pages, 2019. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org. $45 hardcover.
During the Civil War’s sesquicentennial historians presented long-overdue re-examinations of the diplomatic side of the war. In the process they showed that the war’s impact was not limited to just North America, but was global. Joining this welcomed new scholarship is Sainlaude’s original and unique examination of the role France played in the war.
Unlike previous historians who looked at the subject from the American perspective, Sainlaude, a history professor at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne, examines it from the French perspective. The result is a fascinating look at the court of French Emperor Louis Napoleon III.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew shared his uncle’s vision of greatness for France, but lacked his intelligence and fortitude. Fortunately, the emperor had two
very capable foreign ministers during the war years. From 1860- 1862 it was Edouard Thouvenel, an experienced and energetic diplomatic who was widely respected for his legal knowledge and writing skills. From 1862 until the war’s end, it was Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys who was also an experienced diplomat known for his writing skills.
However, the relationship between Napoleon and his ministers was awkward. Both ministers often ignored the orders of Napoleon, almost to the point of insubordination because they found his instructions vague and unrealistic. Consequently, Napoleon often went behind his ministers’ backs to conduct foreign matters.
The author argues that Napoleon III early on favored French recognition of the Confederacy, partially because of the way Northern cities had treated him during an 1830s American tour. However, the ministers took a “wait-and-see” approach, believing that the South would only win with outside assistance. They were also worried about potential Confederate expansion into Mexico. Furthermore, both ministers felt that a Confederate victory would be more to England’s advantage than to France’s. Consequently they persuaded Napoleon not to give the Confederacy recognition, though the emperor came close to doing so in 1862 and 1863.
However, the blockade that granted the South belligerency status from Europe created diplomatic problems for the Lincoln Administration, which turned down several offers of mediation by the French ruler. Interestingly, Sainlaude argues that the Emancipation Proclamation had virtually no effect on France’s view or approach to the Civil War and that it was the fall of Vicksburg and not Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg that convinced France’s foreign ministry that a Southern military victory was hopeless.
The author also examines the relationship between France and England. While their approach to the events in America was similar, that was about it. Relations between the two countries were severely strained, thanks in no small part to England’s concerns about French expansionism in Mexico and the Papal States. In fact, the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, personally despised the French monarch.
There are plenty of interesting facts shared in this book, among them that the American Civil War was not a top priority for either England or France and the main reason they gave it what attention it received was because of concerns on how the war affected their respective economies. While the news from America was a hot topic for the British public, in France it received little attention. And for trivia fans, the author points out that it was not until June 8, 1865, that France revoked the Confederacy’s belligerent status.
The research is impeccable; much of the material presented comes from the author’s meticulous research in French archives, citing previously unused sources. The writing is fresh, crisp and balanced.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the diplomatic side of the war needs to read this book. This is easily one of the best books ever written on the war’s diplomatic front and one of the best Civil War books, period, that this reviewer has read in a long time. Do not be surprised if France and the American Civil War—A Diplomatic History appears on the list of book award-winners at year’s end.
Tom Elmore is a Columbia, S.C.- based author/historian. He often points out that the only dwelling on the city’s Main Street to survive the fire that destroyed a third of Columbia on February 17, 1865, was the French Consulate.
Readers of my “Hollywood History” column last month may have wondered why I didn’t mention Glory (1989) in my brief listing of memorable Civil War movies.
Well, it’s because I was looking forward to the 30th Anniversary return of the film to big-screen theaters on July 21.
A bunch of friends from the Atlanta Civil War Round Table joined me for the movie. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, so in many ways viewing it again in a darkened theater was like seeing it for the first time.
…sort of. I knew what to expect: Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew ing Massachusetts troops at Antietam; Governor Andrew offering Shaw the colonelcy of the colored regiment he planned to raise; the long period of drilling and equipping; first action on James Island, July 16, 1863; and the heroic, tragic charge against Fort Wagner two days later.
That’s the familiar outline. But watching it again, I couldn’t help but be moved by some particular scenes: •
*No kidding: a few years ago, my favorite AM-radio station one evening played a tune whose refrain ran, “Only a Ginger can call another Ginger a Ginger.” Wish I knew the artist. But you get what I mean.
What struck me is that Glory focuses on the process by which
By Stephen Davis Special to Civil War News
Frederick Douglass declares that the formation of the 54th will offer dignity for men used to degradation; Major Forbes, Robert’s friend, asking, do you know how popular it will be in Massachusetts to hand guns to a thousand coloreds? (the same Forbes who, later, protests the flogging of Denzel Washington for leaving camp looking for shoes); At training camp, veterans laugh at the “gingers”*; After Shaw announces that the Rebel government has declared that all black Union soldiers captured will be returned to slavery, he allows his men to apply for discharge. The next morning he asks how many are left—then sees the full regiment standing at attention to greet him; When he learns that his men will be paid only $10 a month (instead of $13), Shaw joins them in tearing up his pay voucher.
Shaw’s soldiers in training and drill gradually transform themselves into soldiers—men, as one of them says. As we know, the process of becoming a man is a stop-and-go, very uncertain transition, with back-and-forths all along the way. Thus I noted that after receiving “blue suits,” their uniforms—a hugely important event for the 54th—the soldiers then resort to childish antics when they receive their muskets. (Back-and-forth.)
In preparation for the theater screening, I read John David Smith’s essay on Glory in a new book, Matthew Christopher Hulbert and John C. Inscoe, eds., Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth Century America (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). Professor Smith makes the point that “unlike the caricatures of blacks in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone With the Wind (1939), Glory offered ‘a greater variety of black characters.’” That resonated when I noticed the huge behavioral differences between, say, Sergeant Major John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) and Private Trip (Denzel). Yet the two came together so movingly in the campfire revival scene when the men are singing their hymnal (“Lawd! Lawd! Lawd!”).
The professors got it right, back in ’89. In a review of Glory for the American Historical Review, Gerald Horne, teacher of American Studies in Houston, wrote that Hollywood’s Civil War has been fought by Northern and Southern white men, with black people looking on rather helplessly. “With Glory,” he writes, referring to the 188,000 blacks who fought for the Union, “125 years after the fact, Hollywood finally gets this chapter in history right.”
Noting that most of the men who volunteered for the 54th were not former slaves, James M. McPherson wrote, “That is the real story told by Glory. That is why most of the soldiers are depicted as former slaves. It is a story of their transformation from an oppressed to a proud people.” I noted that in the film, when the 54th marched through Boston headed for the front, Frederick Douglass and Governor Andrew both held their hands over their hearts.
Director Ed Zwick made this point when he was interviewed by film critic Armond White (Film Comment, January 1990). Zwick remarked that he hoped his film would succeed in “redressing historical misperception, providing positive role models” about African Americans in Civil War America. Morgan Freeman, above all, got this. “This is the kind of picture that gives legitimacy to the history of people of color and tells us who we are,” he remarked.
A couple of years ago Civil War Monitor published a special for-newsstand-only issue, The Civil War Almanac. It featured a bunch of cool stuff: “Most Overrated Commanders,” “Best Photographs,” et al. The section on “Best Movies” offered opinions by Profs. Matthew Hulbert, James Marten and Amy Taylor. Not surprisingly, Glory was #1 on their collective list. In its current Summer 2019 issue, Civil War Monitor published Hulbert’s and Marten’s individual “Top Ten” lists; Glory was on both of them.
After the movie my friends and I retired to a local pub to discuss our experiences, especially the scenes that impressed them anew. For Charlie Crawford, it was when Morgan upbraided Denzel for his surly attitude. Loran Crabtree commented on the final charge that demonstrated the soldiers’ courage. Carlton Mullis mentioned the arrival of their uniforms (“If you have ever put on a uniform, you understand the transformation”). Ken Griffiths remembered the pay vouchers. Mary Elizabeth Ellard offered that this was the first time she saw the movie in a theater; back in 1989, she was in veterinary school, and couldn’t spare the time (“So excited to finally see it!”).
Catch this, from Gordon Jones: “My most memorable scene was the one where Colonel Shaw is being dressed by his valet prior to leading the assault on Ft. Wagner. Years ago, when filming an episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?,’ Matthew Broderick told me that the dressing scene was actually his idea. In getting costumed as an officer every day, he was struck by the amount of time it took simply to get dressed, especially with the sash, sword belt, and so on. The music and the build-up tell you that Shaw understands full well what is about to happen. His is the burden of leadership—he has to look and act the part to inspire confidence in his men, even though he is suppressing his personal fear. The man knows he’s doing to die, and he’s dressing for death.”
That brings up my overriding impression from watching Glory again. Premiering in 1989, Edward Zwick’s masterpiece appeared fifteen years after the United States had lost the war in Vietnam. A decade and a half later the country was still embittered by the experience of futile and wasteful war. But here came a film that recast war in its ancient guise—manly combat as ennobling, battlefield death as sublime. (The very title itself, Glory.) The film’s soundtrack heightened that message. James Horner’s soaring score, those haunting choral voices; I thought I was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the beaches of Morris Island. I relived that emotional experience at the theater that Sunday afternoon. (In the credits, I learned that the singers were none other than the Boys’ Choir of Harlem!) Shaw’s father wanted no monument except the ditch, where his son’s body was thrown
The lines are from Robert Lowell’s poem, “Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts’ 54th” (1959), now more famous as “For the Union Dead.” Colonel Shaw did in fact get a monument, though not at Morris Island, nor in Beaufort, South Carolina (where Shaw’s anonymous remains were probably reinterred). It’s in Boston, opposite the State House on Boston Common. In the early 1880s, Bostonians decided to erect a monument to Shaw and his regiment, raised money and commissioned the famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to render the work. Its dedication on May 31, 1897, brought forth magnificent oratory from dignitaries who extolled the bravery of Shaw and his men, shown on the march in Saint-Gaudens’ bronze relief. This is the monument so touchingly shown in the final minutes of Glory, the camera poring over every detail of Shaw and his soldiers. (After the film, we watched Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies explain that it was the Saint-Gaudens monument that inspired screenwriter Kevin Jarre to write Glory.)
This very sculpture was also the inspiration for Robert Lowell’s poem.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean as a compass-needle.
It’s not hard to get the poet’s meaning. Here we are in today’s rat-racing, money-grubbing, Zoloft-popping culture—in Boston, but ‘most everywhere in America—and in stark, “compass-needle” contrast stand Robert Gould Shaw and his men from a long-gone era.
Talk about sublimity! (My point, above.) Lowell’s poem concludes: Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble, he waits for the blessed break. The Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility
Peter Burchard, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment (New York, 1965).
Bruce Chadwick, The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (New York, 2001).
Henry J. Duffy, “Consecration and Monument: Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and the Shaw Memorial” in Kirk Savage ed., The Civil War in Art and Memory (New Haven: 2016), 189-202. Russell Duncan, Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry (Athens, 1999).
Gary W. Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2008). Michael Hofferber, “Bronze Heroes: Augusts Saint-Gaudens’ Civil War Memorials,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 26, no. 7 (November 1987), 32-37.
Gerald Horne, review of Glory, American Historical Review, vol. 95, no. 4 (October 1990), 1141. C. Peter Jorgensen, “The Making of ‘Glory,’” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 28, no. 6 (November-December 1989), 52-59.
James M. McPherson, “The ‘Glory’ Story,” New Republic, January 8 and 15, 1990, 22-23, 26-27.
John David Smith, “Glory: ‘Heroism Writ Large, From People Whom History Had Made Small,’” in Matthew Christopher Hulbert and John C. Inscoe, eds., Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth America (Baton Rouge, 2019), pp. 162-171.
Gregory J. W. Urwin, “I Want You to Prove Yourselves Men,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 28, no. 6 (November-December 1989), 42-44, 46-51 Brian Steel Wills, Gone With the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema (Lanham MD, 2007), Ch. 12, pp. 139-53.
Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions that Defined the Operation. By Lawrence K. Peterson. Maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index, 242 pages, 2019. University of Tennessee Press, www.utpress.org. $29.95 paper.
Reviewed by Gary Ecelbarger
The pivotal, four-month-long 1864 Atlanta Campaign is in the midst of an 11-year renaissance in Civil War book literature. Author Lawrence Peterson has chosen this campaign for the seventh installment of UT Press’s series exploring major decisions made by key commanders on both sides. He presents each case by summarizing the situation, exploring possible options facing the decision-maker, identifying the decision made, evaluating the results and the impact rendered by the decision, and then considering alternate decisions and subsequent scenarios. Although this template repeats 21 times in six chapters for the Atlanta edition, it succeeds as a stimulating read rather than a stale one as it uniquely interprets the campaign. The author’s work is well complemented by period art, photographs, and excellent explanatory maps by cartographer Tim Kissel.
The presentation of each decision appears designed to foster debate and discussion among Civil War enthusiasts and military historians. Peterson succeeds for most of his Atlanta Campaign cases, and in some of them—particularly regarding Sherman’s deliberate decision to wreck railroads instead of chasing elusive armies—the author shines at his brightest.
Where the book hits its darkest spots is in mischaracterized decisions. This includes two of the three decisions surrounding the Snake Creek Gap and Resaca portion of the campaign. In one particular case, General James B. McPherson’s “ninth critical decision of the campaign to retreat all the way to Snake Creek Gap” (page 48) was actually not his decision to make at all; it was part of his mission. General Sherman’s orders to McPherson stresse, “It [the railroad at Resaca] once broken to an extent that would take them days to repair, you can withdraw to Snake [Creek] Gap and come to us or await the development.. .”
Additionally, McPherson was never ordered to seize or hold Resaca, as the author claims in his eighth decision, but rather to make a quick and thorough strike before pulling back to the gap. Despite Peterson’s claim that McPherson worried that Johnston would move rapidly to Resaca once he sensed the threat to his flank and rear, Sherman had expected it and specifically ordered McPherson to be as aggressive as possible that day. On May 5, Sherman instructed McPherson that if he met infantry resistance to his railroad mission at Resaca, he was to strike them hard in the flank: “Do not fail in that event to make the most of the opportunity by the most vigorous attack possible,” in an effort (as Sherman later explained) to induce Johnston to quickly abandon the railroad and his supplies altogether and retreat eastward.
Peterson’s 19th decision states that “Hood made the critical decision to attack the left flank and rear of... McPherson’s army as it marched west from Decatur to Atlanta.” Only the decision to attack is factual. Hood did not expect the Union army to be “on the march and unentrenched” as the author claims. Already aware that McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee was halted and digging in in front, he intended to surprise attack it from behind. Hood’s initial order was to attack it directly in the center rear from Decatur, but it was Hardee who modified and improved the plan to a simultaneous left flank and rear attack.
Nearly two-thirds of the author’s chosen decisions cover the pre-campaign months and the first four weeks of the campaign. It seems unbalanced in that the remaining three months of the campaign are not approached with nearly the same vigor, especially when noting that the final and bloodiest six weeks of the campaign are covered with only three decisions. The author would have enhanced his work had he included other important decisions confronting the commanders from June onward, some more impactful than the ones he chose prior to this. A primary example to include was General Johnston’s controversial decision to abandon the Hell Hole line on June 4 without offering any resistance to Sherman’s reclaiming of the W&A Railroad, and thus sparing Sherman from making a desperate and likely costly attack as the rations for his men were only a week from total consumption. Not to be overlooked is McPherson’s decision not to attack Atlanta from the east on July 20 (arguably more important than the Resaca controversy), Sherman’s endorsement of Stoneman’s desired Macon and Andersonville prison liberations as a distraction from the Stoneman-McCook raid (how would these 30,000 debilitated men make their way to freedom?), and Hood’s endorsement of the impotent Wheeler raid in August (would he have been as surprised as he was about Sherman’s movement to Jonesboro with 5,000 more sets of eyes roaming the region?). These, in my opinion, are but a few examples of decisions that admittedly did not define the operation of the campaign, but would have balanced the campaign study.
The author includes a “Driving Tour of the Critical Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign” as one appendix and a Union and Confederate orders of battle for two others. The two campaign orders of battle are inherently problematic due to brigade and regimental reassignments during the latter half of the campaign and successions of regimental and brigade commanders that go unnamed in the appendix, leaving the impression that the officers named are the ones in charge throughout the campaign. The concept of the driving tour to explain the decisions onsite is a sound one, with several good and inspired choices made throughout. However, it must be noted that Hood’s decision to attack McPherson was not at all associated with the Dexter Niles House site and the historic depot at Jonesboro (the author’s final tour stop) was not the site of the Civil War depot—it actually stood half a mile north of it, adjacent to the Patrick Cleburne Cemetery.
While I applaud the publisher’s thought-provoking concept, I am disheartened that Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign is the same author’s third campaign-decisions book released in just ten months. How many more campaigns with the same template has he already written but are yet to be published? I endorse the author’s general approach to his chosen campaigns but would prefer that he take much more time to research and test his decision topics with campaign historians to produce books subject to fewer points of criticism while still maintaining entertaining points of debate.
Titles By Stephen Davis
The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5–July 18, 1864
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.
Gary Ecelbarger is the author and co-author of ten books and two dozen articles about Civil War topics. He is currently writing his fourth book dedicated to the Atlanta Campaign and its personalities, this one about the May 28,
1864 Battle of Dallas (Ga.)
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.
So they’re talking about removing the seventh U.S. president from the twenty-dollar-bill because he was a slaveowner. What about taking the face of the eighteenth president off the fifty because he was an anti-Semite?
In late 1862 Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant commanded the Department of the Tennessee, a long territorial band stretching from Cairo and Paducah southward down the Mississippi, embracing west Tennessee and all of Mississippi to the Gulf.
On December 17 he issued the following order: GENERAL ORDERS HDQRS. 13TH A.C. DEPT. OF THE TENN.,
NO. 11 Holly Springs, December 17, 1862.
The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.
By order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant: JNO. A. RAWLINS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
I bet you haven’t seen that lately in the Official Records—but yep, there it is in volume 17, pt. 2, 424.
This remarkable order is the subject of Jonathan D. Sarna’s book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews (2012). Professor Sarna, who teaches at Brandeis, explains that perhaps only a hundred people were forced from their homes. Nonetheless some received cruel treatment. A young Jewish trader and his fiancée were verbally abused, had their pockets picked, and were robbed of their horse and buggy. Union Brig. Gen. James Tuttle, commanding at Cairo, told the couple, “You are Jews, and…neither a benefit to the Union or Confederacy.”
Across the country, Jews voiced their outrage. A Paducah businessman, forced to leave his home, wrote directly to President Lincoln. A Cincinnati rabbi appealed to Secretary Stanton. Not lost upon many was the irony of Grant’s timing. On January 6, 1863, the Memphis Daily Bulletin published Grant’s order next to the text of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Negroes would be freed, but Jews had to go.
Carrying out General Orders
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No. 11 proved to be tricky. Did it apply to Jewish soldiers among Grant’s troops? What about Jewish sutlers serving at army posts? Because of officers’ uncertainty over these questions, Sarna explains, enforcement of Grant’s expulsion order was haphazard and spotty. At least one Union general refused to execute Grant’s order—until he was forced to after four days.
The Paducah businessman, Cesar Kashel, who had written Lincoln, followed up by securing a presidential interview on January 3. Lincoln did not know of Grant‘s order. After Kashel asked for presidential protection of Jews, Lincoln told him that “this protection they shall have at once.” The very next day Lincoln had General Halleck direct Grant to revoke his order. Grant complied on January 6. The day after that, a group of Jewish leaders personally thanked Lincoln. The president assured them that he knew “of no distinction between Jew and Gentile.”
Though he had revoked his edict within a month of its issue, Grant was haunted by General Orders No. 11 throughout his life. As he prepared to launch his campaign for president in the summer of 1868, many Jews were reportedly planning to vote against him. After Grant disavowed the measure, the leader of B‘nai Brith declared he would support Grant after all; the New York Times published his letter. Then, during his presidency Grant appointed more Jews to office than any previous U.S. president. He apologized for the order both publicly and privately, Needless to say, he mentioned nothing about General Orders No. 11 in his Memoirs, which he completed just before his death in 1885.
Historian Mark Neely points out that “Grant’s personal anti-Semitism” was reflective of “the deep anti-Semitism of the officer class” in the U.S. Army. He adds, though, that “anti-Semitism in the U.S. Army was a trait shared with other armies in the Western world in the second half of the nineteenth century,” as if that were some form of exculpation.
Professor Sarna points out that while wartime tensions in the North “anathematized Jews,” there was no similar anathematization in the Confederate South. Indeed, he points out that Judah P. Benjamin served throughout the war in Jefferson Davis’ cabinet. Not until Theodore Roosevelt would a Jew be appointed to a U.S. presidential cabinet. Robert Rosen adds more. “The Northern states were not as hospitable as the South to the Jews prior to the Civil War….Southern Jewry [were] more secure in their place in Southern society than their coreligionists in the North.”
It may be worth noting that the first two Jewish United States senators represented states in the antebellum slaveholding South: David Yulee of Florida and Judah Benjamin of Louisiana. Election to Congress, though, did not immunize a member from anti-Semitic slurs. Robert Rosen relates that in the early 1840s John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, the former U.S. president, referred to Yulee, who was representing Florida as a territorial delegate, as the “squeaking Jew delegate from Florida.”
Jonathan Sarna states that “no fewer than five distinguished public figures, including three U.S. senators (one of whom, Andrew Johnson, later became president of the United States), are likewise known to have pilloried Benjamin specifically as a Jew.”
Decades ago, Burton Hendrick related one such incident (admittedly apocryphal). On the floor of the Senate, Benjamin was reviled by a “colleague” as “that Jew from Louisiana.”
The floor was stunned; the gallery hushed. All watched as the perpetually slightly smiling Benjamin rose and raised his hand
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for a point of personal privilege. “Yes,” he declared,
...it is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their ten commandments from the immediate hand of Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of the distinguished gentleman who is opposed to me were herding swine in the forests of Scandinavia.
Additional sources consulted •
Stephen Davis’ most recent article for America’s Civil War Magazine is “’Give Us Hood!’” (September 2019 issue). It tells of the time when Maj. Gen. John B. Hood was placed under arrest after Second Manassas for not giving over ambulances that his troops had captured. Two weeks later, at South Mountain, Md., General Lee pleaded with Hood to apologize so he could be released from arrest and sent in to lead his troops. Hood repeatedly refused. The officer who wrote about the incident after the war, Maj. Richard York, recalled that Lee was so desperate that he actually began crying, when Hood relented (Our Living and Our Dead, June 1875).
Eli N. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (New York, 1988) Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Boston, 1939) Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty and Civil Liberties (New York, 1991) Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates (Columbia SC,
• Lecturer • Author • Course Instructor
2. This fort, at the tip of a pen
3. In the battle of Mobile
4. “Damn the _____! Four bells!
5. Guarding the entrance to
Military Images magazine
TRIAL ISSUES
Mobile, Alabama
was founded in 1711 by settlers from what European country?
insula on the eastern side of the entrance to Mobile Bay, was named for an American Revolutionary hero, Daniel ______.
Bay, Aug. 5, 1864, ranking Confederate naval officer was this admiral, who had commanded the C.S.S. Virginia at Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, until wounded in the leg. Who?
Captain Drayton, go ahead!” was the Union commander’s famous order during the battle of August 5. What did he damn?
Mobile Bay was this large, brick-casemated fort on the tip of Dauphin Island on the west side of the bay. It was named after this career U.S. army officer who is buried in Mobile.
eighteen Federal 7. “Naval history records few
8. Termed the last major bat
9. Who was the Union naval
10. ….and what was the name of
Answers found on page 46.
warships, the Confederates at Mobile Bay had four: the Gaines, Morgan, Selma, and this huge ironclad, named for which state?
contests between forces so unequal in ships, guns and men, and but few in which the weaker party displayed equal heroism.” This was written about the naval battle in Mobile Bay by the Confederate Secretary of the Navy. What was his name?
tle of the Civil War was the Union assault, Apr. 9, 1865, against this Confederate fort east of Mobile. Which?
commander in the naval battle of Mobile Bay?
his flagship in the battle?
A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, Vol. 1—From the Crossing of the James to the Crater. By A. Wilson Greene. Maps, notes, bibliography, index, 720 pp., 2018. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org. $45 cloth.
Reviewed by Chris Mackowski
The Federal and Confederate armies hunkered down in the trenches around Petersburg for 292 days in 1864, locked in a siege that would lead to final victory for the North and defeat for the South.
It has taken me nearly that long to get this review written of A. Wilson Greene’s A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, Vol. 1—From the Crossing of the James to the Crater.
The fault rests not with Mr. Greene but with myself—unless one were to blame Greene for writing an epic so extraordinary in its scope, depth, and analysis. This was a book to be pored over, studied, savored, and best of all, enjoyed—military history as it’s meant to be written. I took my time with A Campaign of Giants because the book deserves—demands—it, and I am much richer for it.
And this is only part one! A Campaign of Giants is the first of three planned volumes, although Greene says in his introduction that he’s “under no illusion that my work is definitive.”
I, for one, think he’s being modest. Greene worked and lived on the Petersburg battlefields for more than twenty-five years. That hands-on, intimate perspective and lived experience have made him the foremost authority on the battle. Admittedly, he says, the company is small because Petersburg gets the short shrift from most students of the war. “[E]ven the most dedicated students of the American Civil War had an imperfect understanding of those 292 days during which the war’s best-known armies grappled over possession of Virginia’s second-largest city,” he writes.
Greene’s book successfully balances the wide strategic context and narrower operational aspects of the campaign with the in-thetrenches perspective of common soldiers on both sides. We spend time with the “giants,” Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, but we spend as much time seeing the soldiers’-eye view, usually far more limited but much more illustrative.
“The first six weeks of the Petersburg Campaign feature a number of controversies that have intrigued scholars and readers for generations,” Greene adds, specifically laying out “[i]ssues such as Robert E. Lee’s measured response to the Union army’s crossing of the James River, the failure of the Federals to exploit their success on June 15, 1864, the futility of Grant’s First Offensive despite the Federals’ overwhelming numerical superiority, and the preparation for and conduct of the Battle of the Crater....”
He tackles each of these in turn, balancing a wealth of information and evidence against his crisp narrative. He never loses the action even as he makes his case, providing readers with a through-thread that brings both the action and the analysis into sharper focus. Adding additional clarity are Edward Alexander’s excellent maps. Alexander formerly worked for Greene at Pamplin Historical Park, allowing them to communicate often about their shared knowledge of the ground—a partnership that resulted in excellent cartography.
Like so many others, I’m woefully undereducated about Petersburg beyond the highlights offered in the National Battlefield’s driving tour and the excellent interpretation offered by Pamplin. If I know anything about the battle beyond that, it’s the experience of the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery. The men of the regiment came from areas back in Maine I know well, and the regiment had its baptism of fire at Harris Farm in Spotsylvania on May 18. At Petersburg, the Heavies had the unfortunate distinction of being the regiment with the highest single-loss of any unit on any battlefield during the entire war: 632 of the 900 men fell as casualties during their June 18 assault. “You aught to have seen us kill them,” one Alabamian boasted.
Greene’s account of the attack lets us do just that, or as nearly so as a book can. In this one spot where I knew a little bit about the action, I could see Greene’s experienced hand conveying the action deftly, deeply, and in detail. He knew his stuff, and here, in this one spot at least, I knew he knew his stuff. I figured Greene would bring his A-game to this book but, wow, did he bring his A-game. A Campaign of Giants has that same eye for detail, storytelling, and accuracy in its entirety. It is a marvel.
Greene has not only helped me better understand events at Petersburg but, more important, better appreciate their importance. It’s a mistake to think of Petersburg as a big, monolithic one-size-fits all thing but, rather, an evolving series of events that leads to the slow unwinding of the Confederacy.
Not that we’d know that without the benefit of historical hindsight. At the end of A Campaign of Giants, Grant is vexed by his loss at the Crater, which he called “the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.” “[T]he question in my mind,” writes a Massachusetts soldier, “is Grant going to raise the siege and fall back a whipped man.”
It is a fitting closing thought for Greene to end his book with—because, after all, this is only the end of volume one. In the historical moment, the end of the Petersburg Campaign looks anything but inevitable, and it is a credit to Greene’s storytelling that he leaves us wanting more.