A Look at Secession as a Global Movement in the Antebellum Era
Continuing the recent, and much welcomed, trend of books looking at the American Civil War as a global event is this one that examines various separatist movements throughout Europe in the first half of the 19th century. While the quest for Irish independence is well known, many of the ones featured here, including the Hungarian and Polish are not as famous.
The author, a history professor at Middle Georgia State University, looks at these various movements and tries to show what they had in common with each other and the quest for independence in the southern United States. Ultimately, he fails. While European secession movements were centered on ethnic groups that had legitimate cultural, linguistic, or religious differences, the secession movement in the South was based primarily on economics and politics.
Eichhorn tends to gloss over things and often mentions people, places, and events without full or proper context in either the text or the notes. This reviewer had to look up several things that were mentioned in passing. Conspicuously missing is any mention of the Italian unification movement, a major headache for many European leaders in the 19th century. The book also lacks maps, that would have helped a reader understand the geo-politics in Europe at the time or any images of the people and events mentioned.
Perhaps most disappointing is that the author did not try to show any parallels between the 19th century secession movements and the ongoing debate over the future of the European Union and its powers over member states. The fact that there is no comparison between events of the 19th century and 21st century Brexit or the recent Scottish independence movement, is a lost opportunity.
Ultimately, European secession movements had come to fail by the mid-to late-1800s due to lack of money, organization, numbers, and international support. Many movement leaders were arrested, exiled, or executed. It would not be until the 20th century that Ireland, Hungary, and Poland took their places among the nation-states of the world. Eichorn’s flawed book serves as an introduction to this often overlooked aspect of history, but not much else.
Tom Elmore will be spending much of March 2020 sharing tales of Columbia, S.C.,’s Celtic past while enjoying many pints of Guinness.
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The Story of Civil War Medicine: Divided by Conflict, United by Compassion, by Terry Reimer. B/W and color photographs, maps, 74 pp., The NMCWM Press, $12.95 softcover.
The second book in this series is The Story of Civil War Medicine: Divided by Conflict, United by Compassion. Authored by Terry Reimer in 2004, it has been reprinted by the NMCWM Press. This book serves as an introduction to both Civil War medicine and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Inc. The main structure of this thoroughly modern old-fashioned museum is in downtown Frederick, Md. It extends to the Pry House on the Antietam battlefield, then moves south to Washington, D.C., to the Clara Barton Office of Missing Soldiers.
Each museum is different in the story it tells as well as in its geographic location. Weaving together a history of Civil War medicine with a history of the creation of the museum, Reimer’s book gives a thorough overview of both.
At the main museum office in Frederick, the letters of Private Peleg Bradford, 1st Main Heavy Artillery, are highlighted. Visitors can follow him from his first illness in camp to being wounded in battle. His recovery in the Union hospital system shows the average care most soldiers received. This museum site also hosts conferences and award ceremonies as well as being part of a vital, thriving downtown Frederick.
The Pry House and Hospital, a large, open-air museum near the
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Antietam battlefield, is where Dr. Jonathan Letterman’s medical and logistical innovations were used for the first time at a significant Civil War battle. The dual focus at this site includes the effect war had on the civilians in the battlefield area. The Pry family itself never recovered financially from the battle and its aftermath. An annual Plein Aire painting weekend anchors the variety of events hosted by this site.
The Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum is a fascinating place with its own story. Found accidentally prior to demolition, the entire three floors are curated to tell the story of Miss Clara Barton and her efforts on behalf of Union soldiers. The space, located in downtown Washington, D.C., has multiple uses. It has hosted beer tastings, wine-and-food pairings, musical events, and receptions for historians and authors. The novel, effective use of museum space adds to its public value.
The Story of Civil War Medicine offers a brief-but-accurate overview of medical practice before and during the war. Highlighted, of course, are the changes in battlefield care implemented by Major Jonathan Letterman. This small volume, packed with photos and facts, is worth far more than the $12.95 cost. It ends with practical information concerning taxes, stewardship, employment, volunteer and educational opportunities, and directions to and from each site.
Both books are reprints and thank goodness for that. May more information become available, and may the reprint process continue. Our gratitude is both personal and professional.
Meg Groeling received her Masters degree in Military History, with a Civil War emphasis, in 2016, from American Public University. Savas Beatie published her first book, The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead, in the fall of 2015, and she has written First Fallen: the Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, which Savas Beatie has contracted for publication sometime within the 2020-2021. She is a regular contributor to the blog Emerging Civil War.
What It Meant to be “Disabled” During and After the Civil War
Any Civil War film or TV show that strives for historical accuracy always shows the horrors of a field hospital limb amputation. From the safety of our living rooms, we, the viewers, are enthralled by the lack of sanitation and pain medication as we await the wounded soldier’s inevitable anguished cries. We wonder how those men could endure such agonies and their resulting disability. Within our collective consciousness, that missing limb is what comes to mind when we think of how a disabled Civil War soldier struggled quietly through life in the post-war years.
In Sarah Handley-Cousins’ absorbing new work on the nature of Civil War disability, she lays this fact out as a baseline, but then sets forth to explain how the war damaged men’s bodies and minds in a myriad of other, often-understudied ways. For example, the author examines what happened officially within government and then, culturally, within the soldier’s local society when he claimed to be disabled but bore no obvious physical scars. Furthermore, we learn how his claims played out within the era’s notions of what the author terms “martial masculinity” as well as the era’s definitions of honorable manhood. Handley- Cousins explains how the era’s standards for martial masculinity dictated the proper manner in which a disabled warrior should behave. Men who failed this subjective cultural test garnered society’s opprobrium.
In this concise book’s six chapters, the author’s goal is to give the reader a broader social and cultural understanding than heretofore of war-related disabilities in the Civil War North; an understanding that goes well beyond amputations for that obviously visual wound did not raise the same questions about legitimacy and manliness as less clearcut injuries, whether physical or psychological.
Within each chapter, and by using specific cases culled from the war’s medical and pension records, she examines conditions that ranged from the physical and mental, temporary to chronic, as well as from illness to injury. The author rightly considers illness to be within the parameters of disability. Soldiers who were seriously ill could not march or fight which thus disabled them, and circumscribed their utility to the military. The War Department even categorized serious illness as a disability and discharged men under that reason. Lastly, the Pension Bureau viewed the effects of debilitating illness to be a pensionable category. As the author points out, disability and illness were not synonymous, but neither were they mutually exclusive.
Disabled soldiers often faced an uphill battle in their fight for benefits. Despite the government’s lofty rhetoric about patriotic sacrifice, it often seemed that the primary goal of surgeons, officers, and civilian bureaucrats was to prevent disabled soldiers from becoming dependent “paupers,” which arose from the era’s ideas about what proper masculinity should entail. The result was that many ill or disabled Union soldiers became wholly at the mercy of the military justice system and medical authorities. Both the pension bureau and the public became entangled in a bitter battle of mistrust.
In spite of a burgeoning Federal bureaucracy that, like today, often seemed to place fiscal savings over proper care of its wounded warriors, those men soldiered on, living lives as dignified and meaningful as their circumstances allowed. Kudos to Sarah Handley-Cousins for shining a bright light into a previously dark corner of Civil War history.
Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of seven books pertaining to the Civil War era. His forthcoming book is titled “My Dear Nelly”: The Selected Civil War Letters of General Orlando M. Poe to Eleanor Brent Poe and will be published by Kent State University Press.
Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America. By Thomas J. Brown. Photos, endnotes, index, bibliography, 384 pp., 2019. The University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.org, $29.95 paperback.
In this carefully researched and well written work, University of South Carolina’s Thomas J. Brown offers readers a detailed survey of monument-building from the Civil War to the present. The book’s five chapters and its epilogue contain in-depth discussion of these works of art and the changing American society that produced them. The many excellent photographs allow us to examine the memorials for ourselves and better comprehend their meaning.
Brown’s book focuses more on Northern memorials than on Southern ones, and is heavily weighted toward the grand works created by famous artists with names like French, Saint- Gaudens, and Borglum, works that were often part of grand civic spaces.
For the scores of memorials that are covered, readers are led from their genesis to their final completion and beyond. We learn about the visions of artists seeking the commissions; the organizations raising the money and picking the sculptors; and the verdicts of art critics and others with positive and negative views of the works.
The monuments, of course, took numerous artistic forms. There were statues of anonymous soldiers, military commanders (often mounted), civilian leaders, and allegorical figures. Other memorials took the form of obelisks, arches, fountains, pyramids, and a few “utilitarian” structures such as libraries.
As the physical characteristics varied, so did the messages they conveyed. Many, especially the early ones, were principally expressions of the profound grief felt by millions. Others praised the soldiers’ valor and were dedicated to the survivors as well as to the fallen. Some celebrated triumph; others praised and justified a cause that was lost. Some expressed thanks for peace and sectional reconciliation. A few contained an anti-war message.
Little of the book relates to the second part of the title, the militarization of America. There is no analytical discussion of this militarization, or even a definition. As the term has no single definition, the reader expects to be told what the author means, precisely, when he asserts that America was militarized, but this expectation is unmet. The book does not present a systematic argument connecting monument-building with militarization.
Sometimes issues of race and (less often) gender enter the discussion. No doubt these can be relevant questions. Even so, the author from time to time strains a bit. He writes that “The Newburyport [Massachusetts] statue signaled a deepening concentration on race as the fundamental bond between the community and its armed champions.” Three paragraphs later this same point is repeated. The bronze soldier looks like the flesh-and-blood soldiers who left Newburyport for war. That is to say, he is white. Is this in any way remarkable? Is the author over-interpreting? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
In the book’s epilogue, “Toward a New Iconoclasm,” Brown presents an account of recent controversies that have resulted in the removal, by his count, of 33 Confederate monuments in 23 communities. For the most part this discussion is straightforward and objective. However, there are signs of subtle bias. One sentence reads: “This iconoclasm indicated that ordinary Americans who sacrificed their lives at the call of the state were morally wrong.” Does this iconoclasm so indicate? Or does it rather indicate that the icon-breakers held this opinion about the soldiers’ actions? There is a difference.
In the same epilogue we read that the recent Confederate monuments, erected in the last two or three decades, were the work of “defiant whites.” Not ordinary men from ordinary American towns who wished to honor their ordinary ancestors who fought and died, but “defiant whites.” Brown’s documentary research is very thorough, but nothing in the book indicates he has spoken with any of the people who built these monuments.
The author skillfully weaves the myriad elements of this complex story into a learned—and highly readable—narrative through which we journey from the 1860s to the present day. As we travel we discover much about the ways Americans have remembered the Civil War and how remembrance has changed over the decades.
Finally, I like a book that sends me to the dictionary. “Filiopietistic,” “choragic,” “diaphanous,” “himation,” and “pasquinade” are now part of my lexicon. But “quadrigia”? How does this medical condition, which results in the inability to bend a finger, relate to Civil War monuments? Ahhh, it’s a (tiny and uncharacteristic) typo, I learned as I kept searching; a “quadriga” is a fine thing to put on a monument, if you can afford it.
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The Inside Story of the 16th Michigan Infantry
The 16th Michigan Infantry Regiment In The Civil War: Revised and Updated. By Kim Crawford. Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, and Index, 404pp., 2019. Michigan State University Press, msupress.org. $40.95 Cloth.
Reviewed by David Marshall
The 16th Michigan Infantry Regiment was originally formed by Colonel Thomas Stockton and called Stockton’s Independent Regiment. The original controversy of this unit concerned that the founding officer had been a slave owner, was related by marriage to Confederate General James Longstreet, was a Democrat, and started by him over the protests of Michigan’s governor, Republican Austin Blair, even though President Abraham Lincoln wanted the Colonel to lead the regiment in the spring of 1861. These men were from places like Detroit, Saginaw, Lansing, and many other small towns and fought with the Army of the Potomac in many important battles and campaigns such as Gaines’ Mill, Second Bull Run, Gettysburg, The Overland Campaign, and was at the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House.
The high point of the success of the 16th Michigan was on Little Round Top, July 2, 1863,
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during the Battle of Gettysburg. Here, Crawford makes excellent points depicting a second significant controversy about this regiment. Lt. Col Welch and some men panicked when the Texans and Alabamians flanked them; instead of holding their ground as they had done in earlier battles, more than forty men departed without command, leaving an estimated 200 men while this crucial moment of the battle raged. While this happened Col. Patrick O’Rorke and the 140th New York, came to the assistance of the 16th Michigan in this brief and intense fight, O’Rorke was killed but the Confederates who had just outflanked the 16th Michigan now found themselves flanked. Additionally, the author points out that when the 16th Michigan’s line broke, their brigade commander, Colonel Strong Vincent, was moving toward them to halt their breaking from their line. At that moment he was hit by a bullet that struck him in the groin and fatally wounded him. If Welch had held his position, then all his men would have been viewed as heroes.
While Colonel Welch would pay with his at Popular Groves Church, or Peeble’s Farm, Va., on Sept. 30, 1864, redeeming his personal reputation, a kind of code of silence concerning what happened at Little Round Top was accepted by the regiment’s survivors. In the end, the regiment’s original Colonel Stockton never received his promotion to brigadier general but was successful in business and in life. One of the combatant’s youngest volunteers, George Sidman was issued the Medal of Honor on April 6, 1892. The surviving soldiers were extremely successful in politics and in business.
and used throughout allows students and academics to walk in the shoes of the soldiers, relate to their experiences in camp, during marches, and in battle as well as better appreciating the decisions made in this struggle. Additionally, the author reveals the diversity of men who made practical decisions that allowed them to contribute to the Union cause.
The 16th Michigan Infantry In The Civil War was originally written in 2002 by Kim Crawford, then revised, updated and published by Michigan State University Press in 2019. It contains 88 helpful photographs and illustrations of the many brave men who fought with this regiment. The author provides a brief overview of the battles that these soldiers fought in, followed by an examination of these men’s contribution to the army’s success and failures. His vivid descriptions of the combat at Little Round Top held me spell-bound.
This is historical writing at its best. The writer takes the readers through the regiment’s entire term of service and on into the postwar years. This is a finely-crafted regimental history. I would have preferred to see a list of maps for easy reference. The roster is presented in a simple alphabetical order rather than the more standard company by company listing. Neither of these criticisms detracts from this fine history. The writing is entertaining, informative, and well sourced; after every chapter I wanted another.
Additionally, it contains an important appendix with a roster of the 16th Michigan Infantry Regiment plus valuable notes, and an index. The author has used a huge variety of primary and secondary sources to provide a fantastic chronicle that relates the untold Civil War story of a Michigan regiment. Students and scholars will greatly appreciate the research and scholarship of this excellent writer. Expensive but worth the purchase.
David Marshall is a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-three years. A lifelong Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Round Table Book Club. In addition to numerous reviews in Civil War News and other publications, he has given presentations to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Common Soldier.
Visionary Leader or Curmudgeon?
The Life and Loves of Thaddeus Stevens. By Mark S. Singel. Illustrated, bibliography, index, 199 pp., Sunbury Press, 2019, $19.95 softcover.
In this short volume, the author chronicles the life of Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the fiery politician who was the uncompromising opponent of slavery and the apostle of equality for all men. From his earliest days on the Gettysburg City Council and as a new congressman representing the congressional district of President James Buchanan, he was viewed by his contemporaries as unwaveringly self-reliant, fiercely committed to his own moral compass, and consistently a defender of the disadvantaged and oppressed. But he was also a hater. He detested Masons, Southern plantation owners, and those who sought compromises to save the Union.
The focus of his crusading work was the promotion of equality and the abolition of the peculiar institution. This zeal earned him the labels of “The Old Commoner” and the “Scourge of the South.” His fanatical ideas, marked by passion and no compromise, were precisely the reason the South felt secession their only salvation after the election of Abraham Lincoln; a new President who even Thaddeus Stevens felt too soft on slavery.
Where did this passion come from? Two incidents that may have helped shape Stevens’ mission in life were the murder of Dinah, a pregnant mulatto woman in Gettysburg, and the possible consort of Stevens. The press of the day questioned his involvement in her murder and the stigma of his possible connection to this case lingered for decades. Secondly, his long-standing love affair with Lydia Hamilton Smith, Stevens housekeeper, a mulatto woman and probable common law wife. A much more complete analysis of these “loves” of Stevens can be found in Fawn Brodie’s Thaddeus Stevens—Scourge of the South. Here she characterizes Stevens’ indignation as serving him well, “instead of love, and a sense of injustice was his substitute for hope.” Stevens eventually saw his lifelong mission realized by the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments, losing only the political battle to convict Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial.
Mark Sigel does a competent job of reviewing Thaddeus Stevens’ life, yet fails to provide more than a superficial rehashing of the highlights of his career. Brodie’s book is far more comprehensive as is also Richard Nelson Current’s Old Thad Stevens: A Story of Ambition. Two historical errors are present. Kentucky was not a “secesh” state but remained in the Union; President Andrew Johnson was from Tennessee not Kentucky. Additionally, the votes of Democratic senators to acquit Johnson in the impeachment trial are not mentioned. Despite these few shortcomings, the book can be recommended for those who want a cursory overview of Stevens’ life rather than true analysis or comprehensive answers.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College, past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable, and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War. His current research is lost letters that reveal the intimacies of a soldier’s life.
Prologue to Change: African Americans in Medicine in the Civil War Era, by Robert G. Slawson, MD. Bibliography and Index. 50 pp., The NMCWM Press, $14.95 softcover.
Every historian knows that, without reprints, we would all be floundering around waiting for digital copies or wringing our hands in frustration. We are lucky to live in a time of almost instant reproduction of primary sources and the quick turnaround of print-on-demand. Dr. Robert G. Slawson’s Prologue to Change: African Americans in Medicine in the Civil War Era is one of the treasures that has returned to readers through the reprint process.
Initially released in 2006, Slawson’s book has been reprinted by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) as part of their ongoing effort to return to the public valuable and exciting parts of Civil War medical history. The information Prologue contains has been enlarged upon since the first printing. What little is there, compared to other books about Civil War surgeons, truly highlights the difficulty inherent in obtaining information about the contributions made by black men during the war.
Thirteen professionals have been established as definitely belonging to the Union army in a medical capacity. Author Slawson provides a brief history of medicine to place these
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healers properly within their time. Medical training was scarce under the best of circumstances, and many of these men trained in colleges that no longer exist or whose records have disappeared altogether. Gleaning information from official records, diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts, Slawson teases forth the stories of these unusual people. Some had diplomas, some experience. More educated than their African American peers, many were also involved in anti-slavery and abolitionist societies. Some do not even have images to reproduce.
One by one, each man is highlighted: known medical school graduates, possible medical school graduates, doctors without a degree, those who became commissioned officers in the Union Army where the rank of a surgeon was Major, and those who served as contract surgeons. Remarkably, a small window into African-American life opens. The reader is introduced to individuals who “against overwhelming odds and restrictions made personal accomplishments and contributions to society.” according to Carl W. Mansfield, MD, FACR, FACNM, in his Foreward. What makes this short book so surprising is putting it into context. So little work has been done on medicine in the Civil War compared with military and social topics that the subject alone makes this book a rarity. When added in that this book examines the lives of black men who have beaten almost every odd and still managed to remain unknown should, for every reader, deepen the appreciation of the rediscovery of these rare few.
This book should never again go out of print.
In Their Letters, In Their Words: Illinois Civil War Soldiers Write Home. Edited by Mark Flotow. Maps, photos, notes, appendices, index. 302 pp. Southern Illinois University Press, 2019. www.siupress.siu.edu. $26.50.
Reviewed by Jonathan W. White
In Their Letters, In Their Words is a wonderful book; I wish it had been in print when I was working on my own books about common soldiers (one on their dreams, and one on their views of emancipation). Editor Mark Flotow has pulled together a remarkable collection of excerpts from Illinois soldiers’ letters describing nearly every aspect of their experience during the Civil War, sleeping and eating, combat, prison life, disease, drill and discipline, camp life, encounters with southern civilians (both white and black), and more. Buried within the letters are engaging stories, such as when Union soldiers found a piano in abandoned Confederate earthworks near Jackson, Miss.
Very few letters are published in their entirety. Instead, the editor reproduces excerpts from letters written by 165 soldiers and sailors, organizing the excerpts into topical chapters that cover various aspects of military service. Some excerpts are only a few words, while others run a page or more. Most range from a couple of sentences to a paragraph. The editor provides brief background information with each excerpt, such as the name, regiment, and home county of the author; the name and relationship of the recipient; and when and where the letter was written. An appendix provides a brief biography of each soldier-author.
The correspondence provides pointed commentary on politics and the war. Much of what they wrote will be familiar to readers of Civil War News, but their uncensored language can be poignant. Wrote one soldier stationed near Cairo, Illinois: “I dont think I can get use to this nasty river water it is so yellow it looks like Piss and tastes worse I have had the Military Shits for a day or two and feel weak.” Another soldier described how the girls of his community encouraged enlistments. One young lady called upon a man she “used to go and see” and “asked him to put down his name. fancy the poor fellow as he hung between yes and no but the former did come and who could have refused a girl they loved.” The soldier then added, “not I.” Another soldier expressed his deep infatuation for a southern belle in 1861 but three years later wrote, “there are some Lovely young Ladies here but I have lost all my former (Love) for that class of God’s Creation.”
While the organization of the book enables readers to look for writings on particular subjects, it also has its drawbacks. Sometimes the excerpts are repetitive. It can also be difficult to feel like you are getting to know any of the soldiers well because their words are spread out throughout the volume. When I came upon particularly captivating excerpts, I often found myself thumbing through the index to locate other writings by the same soldier.
At times, essential context is missing because of how the letters have been split apart into multiple excerpts. For example, on Oct. 31, 1864, one soldier wrote
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his brother, “You must be for the Union or against it.” This letter appears in Chapter 2 (“Illinois Citizens Become Soldiers”). Upon reading it, one recognizes that the letter must be about the presidential election of 1864, just over a week away. But in order to understand the excerpt, one must check the index and find other pages with excerpts from the same soldier. It turns out that other portions of the same letter appear in two separate places in Chapter 8 (“Officers, Generals, and ‘Old Abe’”). The second excerpt gives the soldier’s views of Gen. William T. Sherman. Finally, in the third excerpt the reader finds the soldier’s views of Lincoln and the presidential election. These excerpts should not have been separated, they clearly belong together.
Most of the penmen were ordinary soldiers and are completely unknown today. Taken together, their writings offer a wonderful social history of the Civil War and will be essential reading for anyone working on common soldiers. The book is also recommended for undergraduate courses on the Civil War.