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’ series exploring major decisions made by key commanders on both sides. He presents each cas by summarizing the situation, ex ploring possible options facing the decision-maker, identifying the decision made, evaluating th results and the impact rendered
sidering alternate decisions and subsequent scenarios. Although this template repeats 21 times i six chapters for the Atlanta edi tion, it succeeds as a stimulati read rather than a stale one as uniquely interprets the campaign The author’s work is well complemented by period art, photographs, and excellent explanator maps by cartographer Tim Kissel. The presentation of each decision appears designed to foster debate and discussion among Civil War enthusiasts and mili-
for most of his Atlanta Campaign cases, and in some of them—particularly regarding Sherman’s deliberate decision to wreck rai roads 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
ass Produced too Quickly? McPherson’s “ninth critical decision of the campaign to retreat all the way to Snake Creek Gap” (page 48) was actually not his de cision to make at all; it was par 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 t make a quick and thorough strike before pulling back to the gap.
flank: “Do not fail in that event make the most of the opportunity by the most vigorous attack possi ble,” in an effort (as Sherman la er explained) to induce Johnston to quickly abandon the railroad and his supplies altogether and retreat eastward. Peterson’s 19th decision state that “Hood made the critical decision to attack the left flank a rear of . . . McPherson’s army as it marched west from Decatur to
tack 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 attac it directly in the center rear fr Decatur, but it was Hardee who modified and improved the plan to a simultaneous left flank and rear attack. Nearly two-thirds of the au-
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 men were only a week from total consumption. Not to be overlooked is McPherson’s decision not to attack Atlanta from the e on July 20 (arguably more im-
portant than the Resaca controversy), Sherman’s endorsement of Stoneman’s desired Macon
but a few examples of decisions that admittedly did not define t operation of the campaign, but would have balanced the campaign study. The author includes a “Drivin 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
the latter half of the campaign and successions of regimental and brigade commanders that go unnamed in the appendix, leaving the impression that the offi cers named are the ones in charg throughout the campaign. The concept of the driving tour to explain the decisions onsite is 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
Jonesboro (the author’s final to stop) was not the site of the Ci War depot—it actually stood half a mile north of it, adjacent to Patrick Cleburne Cemetery. While I applaud the publisher thought-provoking concept, I am disheartened that Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign is the same author’s third campaign-decision book released in just ten months How many more campaigns with the same template has he already written but are yet to b
lished? I endorse the author’s eral approach to his chosen paigns but would prefer t he take much more time to earch and test his decision ics with campaign historians produce books subject to fewer nts of criticism while still ntaining enlightening and ertaining points of debate.
George N.The Barnard’s Atlantaphotographs Campaign of the Atlanta Campaign The American Civil War was the first used entrenchments, repeating rifles, communications.
It was also the first American War to While Mathew Brady, Timothy Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and T having made iconic photographs in the O’Sullivan and a few others won fame George N. Barnard deserves to be rank work in the war’s western theater.
A civilian photographer hired by Gen. as photographers of the American take pictures of fortifications aroun them in and around the city in the fa Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s Civil War’s eastern theater, George N. 1864. Thus far, no comprehensive, definitiv Barnard earned a reputation as the key work. The Library of Congress has 130 image Point, New York, has at least 98 phot cameraman of the war’s western area. Other repositories, such as the Gilde New York City, have smaller collectio Evidence of this is Barnard’s hundreds For this book we have chosen a hundre
We hope that this work will stimulate of photographs taken of Atlanta Barnardiana, and that other scholarly
Campaign scenes. Some were published in 1866, but many more have
appeared in the countless pictorial histories of the Civil War.
A Long and Bloody Task The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee Ri May 5–July 18, 1864
All the Fighting They Want The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrend July 18–September 2, 1864
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. Paperback, 192 pages.
To order a signed copy from author Stephen Davi
Davis’ narr Campaign is backs from Civil War S and Bloody forces from
to the Chat Confederate relieve its Johnston, a John B. Hoo
orders, are hereby expelled fro the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt this order. Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be nished passes and required to leave, and any one returning af ter such notification will be a rested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit fr headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters fo the purpose of making personal application for trade permits. By order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant: JNO. A. RAWLINS, Assistant Adjutant-Genera
I bet you haven’t seen that ly in the Official Records—but yep, there it is in volume 17, 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 verball abused, had their pockets picke and were robbed of their horse and buggy. Union Brig. Gen. James Tuttle, commanding at
Cairo, told the couple, “You ar Jews, and…neither a benefit to
the Union or Confederacy.” Across the country, Jews voiced their outrage. A Paducah businessman, forced to leave hi home, wrote directly to Preside Lincoln. A Cincinnati rabbi appealed to Secretary Stanton. No lost upon many was the irony of Grant’s timing. On January 6, 1863, the Memphis Daily Bulletin published Grant’s or-
der next to the text of Lincoln Emancipation Proclamati Negroes would be freed, but Jew
No. 11 proved to be tricky. Did it apply to Jewish soldiers amo 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 hap hazard 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 protecti of Jews, Lincoln told him that “this protection they shall hav once.” The very next day Lincol had General Halleck direct Gran to revoke his order. Grant complied on January 6. The day aft 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 iss Grant was haunted by General Orders No. 11 throughout his li As he prepared to launch his ca paign for president in the summ of 1868, many Jews were reportedly planning to vote against h 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, dur his presidency Grant appointed more Jews to office than any pr vious U.S. president. He apologized for the order both public and privately, Needless to say, 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-Sem itism in the U.S. Army was a trait shared with other armies in the Western world in the sec ond half of the nineteenth cent ry,” as if that were some form exculpation.
Professor Sarna points out t while wartime tensions in the North “anathematized Jews,”
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 th first two Jewish United States senators represented states in th 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 Joh 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 o 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
Additional sources consulted • Eli N. Evans, Judah P. Ben The Jewish Confederate (Ne York, 1988) • Burton J. Hendrick, States of the Lost Cause: Jeffers Davis and His Cabinet (Bos 1939) • Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fa of Liberty and Civil Liber (New York, 1991) • Robert N. Rosen, The Jewis Confederates (Columbia SC, 2000)
Stephen Davis’ most recent artic for America’s Civil War Magazine is “’Give Us Hood!’” (September 2019 issue). It tells of the tim when Maj. Gen. John B. Hood was placed under arrest after Second Manassas for not giving over ambulances that his troops had cap tured. Two weeks later, at South Mountain, Md., General Lee plead ed with Hood to apologize so he could be released from arrest an sent in to lead his troops. Hood peatedly refused. The officer wh wrote about the incident after t war, Maj. Richard York, recalled that Lee was so desperate that h actually began crying, when Hood relented (Our Living and Our Dea June 1875).
Programs for Civil War Round Tables and Historical Societies
Mobile was founded in 1711 by settlers from what European country? This fort, at the tip of a insula on the eastern side the entrance to Mobile Bay was named for an American Revolutionary hero, Daniel ______. In the battle of Mobile Bay, Aug. 5, 1864, ranking Confederate naval officer this admiral, who had commanded the C.S.S. Virginia at Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, until wounded in leg. Who? “Damn the _____! Four bell Captain Drayton, go ahead! was the Union commander’s famous order during the ba tle of August 5. What did damn? Guarding the entrance to Mobile Bay was this large, brick-casemated fort on th tip of Dauphin Island on t west side of the bay. It w named after this career U. army officer who is buried Mobile. Against eighteen Federal
Since 1979, MI has been America’s only publication
dedicated to historic photo of soldiers and sailors.
warships, the Confederates at Mobile Bay had four: th Gaines, Morgan, Selma, and this huge ironclad, named which state? Naval history records few 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 ba tle in Mobile Bay by the Confederate Secretary of t Navy. What was his name? ermed the last major battle of the Civil War was t Union assault, Apr. 9, 186 against this Confederate f east of Mobile. Which? ho was the Union naval commander in the naval bat tle of Mobile Bay? ….and what was the name of his flagship in the battle
e Davis is the Civil War N Review Editor. an be contacted by email a
A Giant of a Book 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
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 v tory for the North and defeat fo the South. It has taken me nearly that l to get this review written of A. Wilson Greene’s A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersbur 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
studied, savored, and best of al 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 three planned volumes, although Greene says in his introduction that he’s “under no illusion tha my work is definitive.” I, for one, think he’s being modest. Greene worked and lived on the Petersburg battlefields f
more than twenty-five years. Tha 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
Greene’s book successfully bal ances 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 fo generations,” Greene adds, specifically laying out “[i]ssues su as Robert E. Lee’s measured response to the Union army’s crossing of the James River, the failu 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 th preparation for and conduct of the Battle of the Crater....” He tackles each of these in turn, balancing a wealth of infor mation 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 for-
ing 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 th excellent interpretation offered by Pamplin. If I know anything about the battle beyond that, it’ the experience of the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery. The men of the regiment came from areas back in Maine I know well, and the
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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 durin
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 nearl so as a book can. In this one spo 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, 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 accurac 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, rath 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 hin sight. 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.”
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 i a credit to Greene’s storytelling that he leaves us wanting more.
A Southerner in the Union Army Pays a Price The War Criminal’s Son: The Civil War Saga of William A. Winder. By Jane Singer. Illustrations, notes, bibliogra index, 275 pages, 2019. Potomac
Brigadier General John H. Winder, commander of the Confederate prisons east of the Mississippi River and commandant of Camp Sumter (the notorious Andersonville prison), died by natural causes February 6, 1865. Consequently, Captain Henry Wirz, a mid-level bureaucrat, went to the gallows instead of Winder as a scapegoa for the horrors of Andersonvill According to historian Jane Singer, however, Winder’s death “was only the beginning of the descent of the Winder name into perpetual infamy and irretrieva darkness.” In The War Criminal’s Son, Singer tells the story of Capta William Andrew Winder, John’s son who remained in the Federal army despite his family’s support for the Confederate States America. Questions about his po litical sympathies followed him
for the rest of his life. The b includes background on such top
ics as Andersonville, Civil War California, and Allan Pinkerton
spies. As with Singer’s Confederate Dirty War and Lincoln’s Secret Spy, the author writes in a hum istic style that allows the rea to feel both the times and the
presence of the younger Winder. Singer writes in a complex way that draws the reader along, while avoiding trying to say too much when too little information survives. Some Southerners did remain in the Union, such as John Meck Cuyler, James Moore Wayne, and General George H. Thomas, but that topic does not find a place here. Robert E. Lee had to make that decision and a study of the inclusion of the influence of wives would make interesting reading. (Winder’s wife was the daughter of the Republican governor of New Hampshire.) William A. Winder lived an improbable life. Failing six times get an appointment to the United States Military Academy, he received a commission of second lieutenant for bravery as a civil ian at the battle of Buena Vista in the war with Mexico. In 1853, on the ill-fated San Francisco, h became a hero, saving lives while contending with a hurricane and cholera victims. Winder eventually served across the continent from Maine to Florida and west to Missouri and California. He also became an artist and a physician, as wel as having a major role in the cla sic California novel Ramona. Winder long pleaded for help for the Indians and, despite advanced age and ailments, spent his last years as agent for the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Winder found himself a victim of circumstance. Aside from his father and other close relatives in the Southern army, William’s grandfather William Henr Winder gained notoriety as the scapegoat for the defeat of the
Civil War Artillery Projectil For more information and ho
American forces at Bladensburg in 1814, leading to the subsequen British capture of Washington. Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton posed the question of how could the Federal government trust a Southerner who would fight against his home and family. Then Allan Pinkerton’s spy network, searching out Southern sympathizers, caught Winder allegedly voicing support for the South’s cause. Other Winders found themselves in custody on charges of conspiracy and treason against the United States, including even William’s eighty-four-year-old grandmother. William A. Winder returned to California after failing to obtai a position in the war in the east He found that the fears for state security also followed him back to the military prison at Alcatra where he served. Most of the book follows Winder in Civil War California, including his involvement in the C. J. Chapman and the Sutlej affairs. Whatever Winder did, however, always drew suspicions because of his family ties to the Confederacy. After he retired from the army, h struggled financially, tried to s vage his reputation in spite of b ing a Winder, and promoted San Diego. The War Criminal’s Son thus serves as a history of this promi nent Maryland border state family in the Civil War.
Professor Davis manages, at Wallace State College, Hanceville AL, a center for Civil War resear He has authored several books including Ghosts and Shadows of Andersonville.
The Half Shell Book. order visit the om or call
Statistical Look at a Union Army The Army of t Cumberland: Organization Strength, Casualties, 1862– 1865. By Darrell L. Collins. Notes, appendices, bibliograph index, 193 pp., 2019. McFarlan
The Army of the Cumberland (and its predecessor, the Army the Ohio) was the second-largest Federal field army in the Civil War, exceeded in size on by the Army of the Potomac. It participated in some of the war’s most crucial battles at Shiloh, Perryville, Stones Riv Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, Franklin and Nashville. It was incubator fo leaders such as Don Carlos Bue William S. Rosecrans, George H. Thomas, John M. Schofield, Philip H. Sheridan and Arthur MacArthur, among many others. Many fine histories have bee written about the Army of the Cumberland’s battles, and more are on the way. Darrell Collin
War Artillery Projectiles – alf Shell Book cover.
takes a different approach, looking at the army from a statistica and organizational standpoint. After a short introduction he starts on the data. The first sec charts the army’s evolving order of battle, starting September 30, 1861, and tracking units until the summer of 1865. A second section covers strengths over the same period, while a third and fi nal section outlines casualties f all the major engagements of the army. Readers will also find information on the Department/Army of the Ohio, which the force was called before late 1862. The organization section also demonstrates something often overlooked in histories, namely that the army had garrison responsibilities over wide parts of Tennessee throughout its existence. Collins also follows the Army of the Cumberland units (XIV and XX Corps) that formed the Army of Georgia, which with the Army of the Tennessee participated in the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign— something not usually included in discussions of the Army of the Cumberland after September 1864. That said, the book does have some flaws. First, despite the ti tle 1862–1865, there are entries for 1861, which may cause confusion. The author’s coverage of the Army of the Cumberland’s Tennessee-based units in 1865 is quite limited. He appears not to have consulted sources beyond the Official Records. Typographical errors sometimes appear, and the formatting makes the data seem crunched together. But these limitations ultimately do not cancel out the book’s over all usefulness. Collins’ work shines additiona
light on an army that needs more attention. He has done what he set out to do, which was compile
a handy one-volume statistical reference of this army and its or ganization. It is not recommended as anything more.
Chris Kolakowski works as a historian in Norfolk, Virginia. He i the author of four books on the American Civil War and World War II, and is a contributor to t Emerging Civil War blog.
My dearest Will, Without you life is difficult we miss you terribly, but we are managing with the help of our family, our neighbors, and our merciful and powerful God. Your fine young sons have cheerfully taken on the duties of men; your daughter too is a constant help; I am now a farmer rather than a farmer’s wife and have managed to harvest the crop, tend t the livestock, and make sure the family is fed, clothed, shod and sheltered. We are proud of you and will continue to get by unti you return in victory. I am fore your loving and faithful wife,
Dearest Jane, Your letters are a constant source of comfort in this trying time. I look forward to better days when I am with you and the children, but for now I have an even higher duty. Soldiering is not pleasant but my brave comrades and I endure the hardships willingly. Our country has calle us in her hour of need; we have answered and will be steadfast til our work is done. Your lovin husband, Wi P.S. Please thank your dear father for his kind and generous help. I know Pap does not want or expect re-payment, but I inte to do so as soon as I am able.
etters by 17-Year-Old fficer Give New Insight into letters between the farm and the front, right? Maybe in an ideal world, but the letters we read in “This Infernal War” contain no lofty words of encouragement, no noble expressions of patriotism, no reticence to voice complaints or to dwell on the hardships of war. Jane and Will did not live i an ideal world; they were not ide al people; and Pap was not an ide al father-in-law. This large collection of letters, capably edite by Western Illinois University’s Timothy Mason Roberts, pulls back a curtain on a very real world, at times a vulgar and grub by one, a world inhabited by an unenthusiastic middle-aged soldier and his weary and troubled wife, a man and a woman who have a little interest in saving Union but none whatsoever in freeing the slaves. William and Jane Standard were Illinois farmers, both with roots in the South. They were Democrats and Copperheads to boot. They loathed Lincoln and they loathed Lincoln’s war. Why did Will volunteer? At his age, 40, he surely could have avoided service with no dishonor. He was “sensitive to his reputation the community,” the editor speculates, plus he was in debt and sought to postpone the day of reckoning. From the tone of the letters I judge the second motive to be the stronger one. Will signed up in August 1862, served as a sergeant in the 103rd Illinois Infantry, and at the end of the war was promoted to lieutenant. The regiment saw relatively little action unti Missionary Ridge in November 1863, then campaigned with Sherman to Atlanta, on to the sea and through the Carolinas. Will’s letters are mostly about camp life, foraging, hopes for furloughs, complaints about delinquent pay and constant plans to get out of the army, by one means or another. Will is often ambivalent about his service. Should he try for a promotion and get better pay? Should he seek a commission in a black regiment, and get even better pay? Or should he desert, sell out, and leave Illin for California? Jane writes in detail about th crops, the livestock, tenants, boarders, high prices and creditors. We learn of her dismay when she discovers that Will left behind some serious debts. He hadn’t told her before he went a-soldiering, and was less than forthcoming when she confront-
The letters also paint a portra of their community in the Little Egypt section of southern Illinois Will was not the only reluctant soldier. At one point Jane writes of armed resistance to efforts to capture deserters sheltering in Fulton County. In another letter she tells of a vehement argument between her father (a Republican) and another local man, a Democrat whose views are aligned with the Standards’. Pap and his one-time friend nearly came to blows. Jane and Will were not highly educated people, but neither were they unschooled. Will, in fact, ha once been a schoolteacher. Both were facile with pen and ink, and were able to write clearly and expressively. The numerous letters are a rich source of information about a soldier’s life, the civilian community he left, the army community he joined, and the attitudes he and others held about the war, politics, Lincoln, blacks Black Republicans, secessionists and much else besides. The letters are also a very good read. One final item, if the book review editor will permit after this already over-long review. Your English teacher would have been apoplectic had you turned in a paper with the grammar and spelling employed by the Standards. However, for anyone interested in linguistics, their writing provides insights about how people of their class and region used the American language in the middle of the 19th century. In her first letter to Will, the month after he signed up, Jane wrote: I wish you was here to eat supper with us. I am in the parlr a-writing at the big table. Almira is over to the Worley’s. George and Perry is off a-playing somewhere, I do not know where. Freeman is upstairs as usual a-squealing and thumping around. What they had to say makes “This Infernal War” worth reading. So does the way they said it.
Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta and the author Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different aspects of the Civil War and has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at
This Will Make a Man of Me: The Life and Letters of a Teenage Officer in the Civil War. Edited by James M. Scythes. Photos, notes, bibliog phy, index, 2016, 181 pp. Lehig
Although estimates of the number of boys who enlisted in Civil War armies before their eighteenth birthday vary widely most agree that tens of thousan of these young men filled Union and Confederate regiments. Such youths most frequently fought as enlisted men. Herein lies th value of 2nd Lieutenant Thomas James Howell’s wartime letters. This Will Make a Man of Me presents the sixty-five letters a seventeen-year-old lieutenant in the 3rd New Jersey Infantry from February through June 1862. Howell’s correspondence, capably edited and annotated by James M. Scythes, provides readers with unique insight int the experiences and motivations of a teenage officer in the Uni army. In the book’s introduction, Scythes cites Benjamin Gould’s 1869 study of soldiers’ ages to show that Howell represents one of only perhaps a dozen commissioned officers under the ag of eighteen. Howell was born in Camden, N.J., in 1844, into large and prominent family. His father—an outspoken abolitionist and devout Christian—died in 1859. He was classically educated at a local school, where he achieved proficiency in the French language and on the pi-
essay on chivalry and the noble nature of death on a battlefield before the Civil War began. Scythes argues that Howell joined the Union army both from a desire to financially support his family and to pass from boyhood into manhood. Through his family’s political connections, Howell received a commission in February 1862, just four months after his seventeenth birthday. After joining the 3rd New Jersey in Virginia, he began a frequent correspondence with several members of his family. The majority of these letters reveal th Howell fought primarily to prove himself a man to both his family and his comrades. In his effort to live up to th ideals of a “Christian gentleman, Howell repeatedly expressed disgust with the officers of his reg iment who swore, smoked, and drank freely. Such vices, Scythes notes, “were to be avoided by an honorable gentleman.” Howell’s letters reveal a young man’s yearning for approval from both his men and his superiors—but never at the expense of his own morality and honor. Alcohol, he wrote, “is a bad thing. And which prove the ruin of a great number. Howell described the voyage from northern Virginia down the Chesapeake Bay to the Union lines outside of Yorktown, where he first encountered the brutal realities of combat in the form of wounded men being brought back to hospitals. There he heard rumors of Confederates’ slaves murdering a helpless Federal soldier as he begged for quarter. The “black Rebels called y’all th d—n Northerners, and they shot the Zouave dead on the spot,” he wrote. Howell opined that the only punishment for such an enemy was to “shoot them like dogs.” The 3rd New Jersey participated in the Army of the Potomac’s plodding campaign towards Richmond in the spring of 1862, and Howell’s letters belie the co fidence of his youth. He predicted that the Confederates would evacuate Richmond as they had done at Yorktown and optimistically hoped that he would be home for the Fourth of July. General George B. McClellan reviewed Howell’s brigade in May “amid the most tremendous cheering I ever heard. . . . I co
