Ezra Carman led the 13th NJ at Antietam, and having reenacted with the 13th NJ, I naturally was interested in reading this book. was rewarded by finding that Bvt. Brigadier General Carman literally wrote the book about the battl of Antietam, having spent many years after the war writing lette to participants. He also served a the historical expert for the boa that created Antietam National Battlefield.
Joseph G. Bilby and William C. Goble, “Remember You are Jerseymen!”, Hightstown, NJ, Longstreet House, 1998. Being a Jerseyman, and being interested in the Civil War, I ha to get this book. It is the prime source of information on all the units raised in New Jersey during the Civil War.
Joseph E. Crowell, The Young Volunteer, Falls Church, VA, NOVA Publications, 1997. Again, my interest in the 13th NJ Volunteer Infantry led me to this book. Joseph Crowell served in the ranks with the 13th NJ through much of the war, and his humorous first person accounts are well worth reading.
Bruce Catton, The Army of the Potomac Trilogy, NY, Doubleday & Co., 1951–53. My first book about the Civil War was the American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, which was also written by Bruce Catton. I still have it, and prob bly always will, but my love for
the book led me to Mr. Catton’s magnificent trilogy, which still holds up as an excellent overview of the war. Other authors have exceeded him in some ways, but his command of the language, as brought to bear in his writings, will probably never be matched.
R.S. Rosenquist, Martin J. Sexton, Robert Buerlein, Our Kind of War, Richmond, VA, Hailer Publishing, 2009. My father served with the Marine Raiders during WWII and I inherited this book about the outfit after he passed away. It i a great look at a real “Gung Ho” fighting outfit.
Wilbur F. Hinman, Corporal Si Klegg and His Pard, Ashburn, VA, J.W. Henry Publishing, 1997. A very humorous book that has the ring of truth throughout. Mr. Hinman takes us from enlistment to discharge with every way station in between. A classic.
John R. Scales, The Battles and Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest. 1861–1865. Savas-Beatie, 2017. This well researched text not only chronicles Forrest’s exploits but illuminate the maneuvers in the Western Theatre that are often neglected. Gary W. Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon (eds). New Perspectives on the Union War. Fordham University Press, 2019, 260 pp. A wonderful collection of
essays that reevaluate the causes of the Civil War, its ramificatio and the legacy that we endure today.
Walter Brian Cisco. War Crimes Against Southern Civilians. Pelican Publishing Co., 2016. This book portrays the extent to which the Civil War was waged with brutality, persecution, terr destruction and murder against a civilian population, both white and black.
Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, Treason on Trial, The United States v. Jefferson Davis. Louisiana State University Press, 2019. A thoroughly researched account, from a lawyer’s perspective, for the legal maneuvering that kept Jefferson Davis from being brought to trial. Each character is exposed for his personal loyalties, political ambitions, and legal competence. University Press of Kentucky, 2019, 244 pp. A succinct account of how two adversaries grew into friends while conducting foreign policy with an eye toward public opinion at home.
Joseph A. Fry. Lincoln, Seward, and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, 2019. A succinct account of how two adversaries grew into friends while conducting foreign policy with an eye to the public opinion at home.
Janet Elizabeth Coon (ed.) The War Outside My Window: The
Civil War Diary of Leroy Wiley Gresham, 1861–1865. SavasBeatie, 2018. A day-to-day account of a crippled boy’s view o the war from his perspective in Macon, Georgia, complete with rumors, societal changes, lost neighbors, and the collapse of t world as he knew it.
Steve Davis. 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign. Historical
2019. Invaluable photographs by George Barnard, who was hired by Gen. Sherman’s Chief Engineer Orlando Poe to photograph the fortifications around Atlanta. These incredible views allow the reader to see Atlanta Sherman saw it in 1864.
Jack W. Melton, Jr. Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half-Shell Book. Historical
2018. The bible for understanding artillery in the Civil War, from its manufacture to its use, design, and effectiveness.
Alan Levine, Thomas W. Merrill and James P. Stone Jr. The Political Thought of the Civ War (eds.) This series of essays explores why the Civil War still speaks to us. Many of the forces that led to war—slavery, race moralism, and constitutional interpretation in a multicultural ciety are examined.
Edward H. Bonekemper III. The Myth of the Lost Cause. Regnery Historical Publications.
Christian B. Keller, The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy, Pegasus Books, New York, 2019. The author is a U.S. Army War College professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy. He examines the joint strategic decision-making and value of personal relationships “among senior leaders for organizational survival,” amid the complicated and “complex historical context that served as the backdrop for their partnership and that so strongly influenced how and when they thought and acted;” and of course Lee wore many hats including advisor to Jefferson Davis.
Marianne Monson, Women of the Blue & Gray: True Civil War Stories of Mothers, Medics, Soldiers and Spies, Shadow Mountain Publishers, Salt Lake City, 2018. This is a follow-up book to this author’s “Frontier Grit,” and includes well known individuals, but also some less recognized figures which makes for added interest in examining these unlikely ‘heroes’ during wartime; some of incredible daring. Photographs add to these mini-biographies.
ovember 2019 Digital Issues of CWN are available
George N.The Barnard’s Atlantaphotographs Campaign of the Atlanta Campaign The American Civil War was the first war in used entrenchments, repeating rifles, ironc communications. It was also the first American War to be ex While Mathew Brady, Timothy Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy having made iconic photographs in the Civil O’Sullivan and a few others won fame George N. Barnard deserves to be ranked in work in the war’s western theater. A civilian photographer hired by Gen. Willi as photographers of the American take pictures of fortifications around Atla them in and around the city in the fall of Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s death Civil War’s eastern theater, George N. 1864. Thus far, no comprehensive, definitive list Barnard earned a reputation as the key work. The Library of Congress has 130 images; the Point, New York, has at least 98 photograph cameraman of the war’s western area. Other repositories, such as the Gilder Lehr New York City, have smaller collections. Evidence of this is Barnard’s hundreds For this book we have chosen a hundred imag other students may wonder at some of our se
We hope that this work will stimulate furth of photographs taken of Atlanta Barnardiana, and that other scholarly volum
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 River May 5–July 18, 1864
All the Fighting They Want The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender 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 Davis
Davis’ narr Campaign is backs from Civil War S and Bloody forces from to the Chat Confederate relieve its Johnston, a John B. Hoo
The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina. By Philip Gerard. Selected sources, bibliograph cal references, illustrations tographs, index, 327 pp., 201 University of North Carolina
story of the Civil War in Nor Carolina, through the eyes of those who lived it”—meaning, through their letters and dia along with communications of commanders on both sides. And that it is. War is personal o levels, and it is not an easy to write as if events were ha pening at the present moment,
as accomplished by this North Carolina author. The Last Battleground is composed in 43 clear and concise vi gnettes as the long journey from secession to surrender. For thos of us who have visited battlefields in Virginia, Pennsylvania North Carolina, and elsewhere, where Tar Heel regiments fought, it can’t help but leave an indel impression. This overview of Civil War North Carolina is told by inhabitants, soldiers, military commanders, blockaders and blockade runners, politicians, desert ers and the deserted, bummers and the bummed out, planters and farmers, and “contraband” (General Butler’s word), fort defenders and attackers, news reporters and editors, medical and religious people, tradesmen and railroaders. It also involve the Old North State’s band of Unionists that the author calls “Jefferson Davis’s worst nightmare come true”—the enemy
make for an ideal read, particularly for North Carolinians in these 327 captivating pages.
Joan Wenner, J.D. is a longtime has a special interest in Civil naval operations and is presentl based in eastern North Carolina.
Saving the American Experiment New Perspectives on the Civil War. Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon. Illustrations, notes, index, bi ography, 260 pp., 2019. Fordham
Gary W. Gallagher’s excellent book The Union War clearly defined the importance and meaning of Union to Civil War participants. He now unites wit Elizabeth Varon to present eigh essays by noted historians that plain how the fight for the Uni and the destruction of the domestic aristocracy of the South along with the institution of s ery, took on a myriad of opinio among individuals. While seeking to preserve the Union, they exhibited widely diverse politi cal, economic, religious and cu tural differences. Two of these essays stand out for their treatment of
Feel the Passion in Thei Lone Star Valor: Texans of the Blue & Gray at Gettysburg. By Joe Owen. Bibliography, index, 155 pp., 2019. Gettysburg Publishing.
individuals beset by internal con flicts over the meaning of Union, the support for democracy, and the means used to achieve victory. In the first, “Edward Bates and the Disunionist Dangers of Radical Rhetoric,” Jesse GeorgeNichol cogently details how Bates, the conservative icon of Lincoln’s cabinet, tried to moder ate Lincoln’s use of inflammatory phrases which he felt only fueled the fears of Southern secessionists and made compromise more difficult. He was continuously trying to keep Lincoln out of the radical abolitionist camp and
pushing toward a compromise that was the hallmark of antebellum political strategy. He de-
sired to preserve the Union the Founding Fathers designed and avert a fratricidal war. While he was ultimately unsuccessful, his quest illustrated the division in the Republican Party and the nation as a whole on what a united Union should look like. Should Bates have been the Republican nominee in 1860 would Civil War been averted and another compromise fashioned to preserve the Union? Michael T. Caires’ essay on Salmon P. Chase sheds new light on Chase’s vision for the creatio of a national banking system to bind the states together into a stronger, more interdependent Union. National banking became a step toward not only centralizing political and economic control in Washington, but also fostering a sense of nationalism tha would be stronger than prewar states’ rights allowed. Thus the drive to preserve the Union set the rhythm and pulse of political
It is strange to start a revie recalling a running skit done by the late great Steve Allen, but i dawned on me about a third into this book how appropriately it fits. Steve would grab a copy of the newspaper and read the letter to the editor with the passion an anger in which they were written. He would pound the desk and get the audience involved. Once I recalled this running skit, I then started reading the first third again. It seemed to m a whole new experience. I was now visualizing the veterans as they told or wrote these stories. The words jumped out at me with their pain, confusion and feeling of disrespect for their time uniform. The key in this book is that M
economic and cultural thought in the United States until the present. The remaining essays illustrate a wide continuum of perspectives that vividly point out that not al Americans shared in the Lincoln administration’s view on how or why the Civil War was necessary. Political parties were divid ed on the reasons, methods and values the country should stand for. These differences are manifest today in the states’ rights vs. federalism concept of the
Constitution’s meaning, the definition of citizenship, and the judicial battles over civil rights.
Each essay contributes to a better understanding of the wide differences of opinion during the Civil War and in the decades that followed. Each essay included is thought-provoking, well written, and comprehensively annotated. New perspectives from the common soldier, the press, religious leaders, social reformers and politicians add to the understanding of the role each played in saving the Union and forging a lasting reconciliation. Thus it is easy to recommend this volume to the intellectual historian seeking a fresh look at patriotism and senti ment during the Civil War.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College in Illinois and past presi dent of the Lincoln-Davis Civil Wa Roundtable. He has written numerous books and articles on the Civi War and is currently seeking diari and letters of common soldiers for a better understanding of the orde they faced during the conflict.
Owen includes men who fought for the North or South in numerous regiments. What ties these men together is that they all settled in Texas after the war. Owen also allows the reader to decide on the validity of the stories on their own, with only a few exceptions. One example is the story told by Howard Diven; the author found no record of his service. Readers will find amazing recollections of the pain of prisoner of war camps, the loss of comrades, and Confederates’ need to figure out why their actions faile at Gettysburg. One can read in their own words the confusion they felt about why they lost the battle. Many “lost cause” items are
H Lone Star . . . . . . . . . . . see page 45
