Fighting For The Union and a Pension
An Immigrant Story. By Kenneth E. Burchett. Illustrated, Index, Notes, Amity American Publishing, 2020, 167 pp., softcover. Amity America.
Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf
Henry Schaumann was a typical German immigrant who left a war torn Germany, migrated to the United States in the 1850s, and found himself shortly after an eager enlistee in the Union Army under Gen. Franz Sigel. Henry enlisted on October 14, 1861, two months after the Union defeat at Wilson’s Creek. He joined Captain Michael Laux’s Company A, 1st Regiment, Missouri Artillery, Reserve Corps Volunteers. Assigned to the District of St. Louis and later Rolla, Missouri, he was stationed at Camp Hamilton and basically performed artillery garrison duties until one fateful day less than a year later when, carrying water back to camp, he stumbled into a ravine, struck a tree stump, and developed a debilitating femoral hernia. This led to his honorable discharge on Nov. 24, 1862. None of his war time letters apparently exist to shed a more personal light on the otherwise sterile military records.
Aside from his brief, uneventful military career, and his untimely death from cholera in 1866, public records catalogue his marriage in 1863 to Margareth and the birth of his son Henry shortly afterwards. The remainder of this book focuses on his widow’s nearly three decades-long battle to receive a widow’s pension and a pension for his son. This effort ultimately failed, in large part due to a confusion of names, dates, nature of injuries, and bureaucratic hurdles. Kenneth Burchett’s genealogical research is admirable and provides Henry’s ancestors with a valuable resource for preserving their family heritage. The research is thorough, does not make unwarranted claims, and is readable and comprehensive considering the records available. However, a Civil War historian would find the paucity of war service, the lack of letters that could document a private soldier’s life, or accompanying editorial work about events in which his unit was engaged, as limiting its potential marketability. For the genealogical enthusiast this book certainly provides an excellent template for how to do family research, but this also limits its value as contributing to Civil War literature.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and the author of over twenty books on the Civil War including Two Years Before the Paddlewheel and The Last Civil War Scout. He is past president
missions is the 20th of each month.
Grant’s Victory: How Ulysses S. Grant Won the Civil War. By Bruce L. Brager. Stackpole Books, 2020. 166 pp. $27.95.
Reviewed by John D. Fowler
Books praising General Ulysses S. Grant have developed into quite a cottage industry over the past forty years. In fact, it is nearly impossible to peruse a Civil War book selection without finding a number of works outlining Grant’s expertise and excellence. Most of these put forth similar claims, but author and ghost writer Bruce L. Brager veers off this path a bit to offer a more nuanced and realistic portrayal of the general. Brager writes better than most authors and far better than most academics.
While the work is entitled Grant’s Victory: How Ulysses S. Grant Won the Civil War, in reality, the book is less a volume on Grant and more a study of the Civil War’s Eastern Theater, primarily from the Union perspective. The bulk of the book (seven of eleven chapters) covers the Union’s many defeats in the East and injects merely a bit of Grant’s commentary.
Only with Grant’s 1864 arrival in the Eastern Theater does the book actually begin to focus on the title subject. In the four remaining chapters, Brager chronicles the general’s struggle to defeat Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and thus destroy the Confederacy’s only successful commander and army. In the end, Brager concludes that Grant was, indeed, the right general to put an end to the Civil War.
It is hard to argue with Brager’s assessment. Grant did defeat Lee and end the war. While the basic premise is true, it does not present an adequate and comprehensive view of the situation. The 1864 Army of the Potomac should have beaten the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s army was half the size of the Union force and woefully undersupplied. The fact that Lee kept Grant at bay for more than a year is a testimony to his skill as a general, not Grant’s. Moreover, the book’s dustcover states that “two of the greatest themes of the Civil War are how Lincoln found his war-winning general in Ulysses S. Grant and how Grant finally defeated Robert E. Lee.” The author argues that while Union generals in the Eastern Theater had faced defeat after defeat, “In the West, Grant had been refining his art of war at places like Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga.” Yet, we never see this development of Grant in the West, and there is no analysis or explanation of his many failures in the West. The author should have examined Grant in the context of his rout at Belmont, his surprises due to overconfidence at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, his many failed attempts at Vicksburg, and his accidental victory at Chattanooga that owed more to the Army of the Cumberland’s men’s valor than anything planned or executed by the general. The Grant we see
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emerging late in Brager’s story in Virginia is a formidable commander, and yet, is it not just his willingness to take casualties in a war of attrition that eventually wears down the Confederates? Here, Brager unapologetically departs from many academic historians to argue that the answer to that question is “yes.” That is exactly how Grant won the war. This honesty is refreshing considering that over the past decades a forest of trees has been turned into paper with the purpose of recording how brilliant Grant’s generalship was when in reality it was based on the simplest of facts…he had more men and equipment.
This is a popular history written for a general audience of Civil War buffs. The footnotes are thin as is the norm with books of this type, although the bibliography is larger than those generally found in popular press works. I wish I could say that the volume offers nothing new to the scholarly community. However, given that military aspects of the war are being neglected in the training of new professors, this volume could be useful to a wide audience. In sum, while it is another in a long line of hagiographical tributes to Grant, it is written better than most, and its conclusions are sounder than most.
Reviewed by Jonathan A. Noyalas
While many fantastic works of scholarship have appeared in recent decades examining the Civil War’s many dimensions, complexities, and importance, arguably no single book published in at least the past two decades packs as great a punch than this latest volume from one of the nation’s most distinguished, important, and accomplished historians, Gary Gallagher.
This collection of seventy-three essays, all but three of which initially appeared in Gallagher’s regular column in Civil War Times dating back to early 2009, provide a sweeping examination of an array of topics related to the Civil War era. Organized into six sections, this thought-provoking and magnificent collection addresses such broad themes as memory, generals, film, the importance of battlefields, the impact of various Civil War authors and historians, turning points, and ways to bridge the gap between academic and nonacademic historians.
While this splendid collection of essays can certainly serve as an introduction to an array of topics for someone with a freshly ignited passion for studying the Civil War era, one of this book’s most valuable elements is that it compels individuals to reexamine aspects of the conflict that have become so engrained in the popular consciousness of American society. For example, Gallagher’s essay “Gettysburg in Perspective” reexamines Gettysburg “as the great turning point of the Civil War.” While significant, Gallagher cogently argues, based on a critical analysis of primary sources, “both sides saw it [Gettysburg] as an important but not decisive battle.” Similarly, Gallagher revisits the Gettysburg Address. Although the words Lincoln uttered at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19, 1863, have today become legendary and oft-quoted, the speech that is acclaimed as one of the greatest in American history, made, as Gallagher convincingly contends, little impact on those at the moment. While Gallagher’s conclusions about such iconic moments might raise the ire of some, Gallagher’s point is not to diminish these moments, but to illustrate the value of placing historical moments into the context of how individuals at the time understood them.
In addition to essays that encourage individuals to examine the Civil War through a contemporary historical lens rather than a modern one, some essays in this remarkable volume center around the theme of division. Sometimes the discord Gallagher examines focuses on aspects of the conflict’s memory, for instance the tension that existed in the postwar years between the editors of the Southern Historical Society Papers and the Southern Bivouac. While both publications dedicated their efforts to the Confederate story, Gallagher highlights how the two publications took different approaches to telling that history. The Bivouac, for example, took a much more critical approach to Robert E. Lee, something that Gallagher notes raised the ire of former Confederate General Jubal Early who chastised one of the Southern Bivouac’s co-editors, former Confederate General Basil Duke.
Gallagher’s discussion of division extends beyond those who fought in the conflict and extends to a rift that has existed between academic and nonacademic historians as to what sort of Civil War history is most important. “Far too many nonacademic historians care for little beyond commanders and battles and soldiers in the ranks, while almost all academic historians nourish a resolutely dismissive attitude toward military history,” Gallagher notes. He contends, and I enthusiastically concur, that all aspects of Civil War era history matter. If one is to gain a fuller understanding of the conflict Gallagher notes that “a diet of books” on the conflict’s military and non-military aspects is essential.
Additionally, Gallagher makes the point in his essay “Battlefields as Teaching Tools,” that battlefields are a critical element in that balanced diet. Despite, as Gallagher writes in the book’s introduction, the belief among “some skeptical academics” that battlefields are not worth preserving, because they view “them as sites that glorify war and cater to a militaristic streak in American society,” Gallagher convincingly argues that battlefields provide the ideal venue to bridge the gap between academic and nonacademic history. As someone who regularly makes use of the battlefields around Winchester, Va., with my students in Civil War Era Studies at Shenandoah University, I wholeheartedly agree with Gallagher’s assertion. Battlefields are not only places to study a battle’s ebb and flow or its strategic consequences, but as Gallagher points out are “useful for exploring how the military and nonmilitary spheres intersected.”
This outstanding and diverse collection of essays, has wide appeal, is well-written, soundly argued, and offers much food for thought about some of the conflict’s most significant moments and actors, assessments of various books and films, the war’s memory, and how individuals might consider approaching the study of the conflict. Furthermore, Gallagher’s exceptional essays serve as a useful reminder of the Civil War’s value and the importance of examining its nuances and complexities through an objective lens.
Jonathan A. Noyalas is director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute in Winchester, Virginia, a professor in Civil War Era Studies
Many will argue that the beginning of the end for the Confederacy was the siege and capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, 1863, by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. When the town fell, control of the Mississippi River was entirely in Union hands. This, in effect, also split the Confederate States in two.
Edited by Steven E. Woodworth, one of the leading experts on the War in the west, and Charles D. Grear, an expert on Texas in the Civil War, this book consists of eight essays that examine in minutia different aspects of the siege. Among the topics covered are Grant’s staff officers, the role of sharpshooters, and the use of mines.
Though all the essays are excellent, two in particular stand out. The first is by Scott L. Stabler and Martin J. Hershock about the use of African-American soldiers during the siege, examining how their impact and story has been underreported. In light of recent events, it is a very timely piece.
The other is by Grear on the effect of the fall of Vicksburg on the Trans-Mississippi region. While the effects of the city’s capture on the east side of the river has been well documented, there has not been as much about how those west of the river reacted. Grear argues that after Vicksburg was captured, morale among soldiers from the western-most parts of the Confederacy serving in the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee fell dramatically. A major reason for this was the inability to receive mail from home. This and fears for friends and family led to mass desertions in the two armies.
This book is a welcomed addition to the scholarship of one of the most important sieges in U.S. military history. Anyone with an interest in the siege of Vicksburg, or the Civil War in the west in general should read this book.
Slim Volume but Packed with Information
Politician in Uniform: General Lew Wallace and the Civil War. By Christopher R. Mortenson. Photos, notes, index, bibliography, 283 pp., 2019. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press. $34.95.
Reviewed by Salvatore Cilella
Henry David Thoreau wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”; not Lew Wallace. Reading Christopher Mortenson’s excellent treatise on Wallace’s army career during the Civil War, brought to mind the cliché. That is not to say Mortenson’s narrative is cliché ridden. On the contrary, it is a fine example of taut, economical clarity of language. No, the worn out thought in reading Wallace’s “arc of history” brings to mind the obvious: “he was his own worst enemy.”
The author employ this phrase only once in the conclusion (page 191). The most glaring, and in some respects, comical example was immediately after Shiloh, with his division still on the field in late April. He was visited by “three well-dressed officers” who he didn’t know (his first mistake). He offered them his hospitality of “biscuits, whiskey and cigars.” During the conversation, he managed to disparage Henry Halleck and then discovered as the officers left to return to their command, that they were members of Halleck’s staff. Wallace had ridiculed Halleck’s “plans of operations,” and he realized much to his regret and much later, that was no different than mocking the man. “…and that is just what I did,” he later wrote (page 73).
He not only disparaged Halleck, but practically everyone up and down the command chain, from Grant, to Sherman, Brigadier General Charles F. Smith, Don Carlos Buell, Secretary of War Stanton, and Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton. He aimed most of his vitriol at West Pointers. When he testified before the congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, he criticized both Grant and Halleck for lack of energy and inept communications in the western theater (page 80). Although he was indeed a Politician in Uniform, his utterances were impolitic. Still, Mortenson more than adequately, reveals Wallace’s innermost political skills and attributes that served him well in his multidimensional life span and particularly in his army career. He performed admirably as commander of the Middle Department (Maryland primarily); played a role in the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson; saved Washington in 1864 by delaying Jubal Early’s troops at the battle of Monocacy; sat on the court that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators; headed the court that tried and executed Andersonville’s Henry Wirz, attempted to influence the Mexican/French entanglement, dealt with Billy the Kid after the war in the Arizona territory, and then authored Ben Hur.
As tempting as it is to wander, Mortenson sticks to Wallace’s career during the war. Of course the centerpiece is Shiloh. Grant, according to some accounts, had been surprised by Albert Sidney Johnston’s and P. G. T. Beauregard’s attack the morning of April 6, 1862. Grant had ordered Wallace to bring his division down to Pittsburg Landing from Crump’s Landing. Grant wanted him to take the River Road, closest to the Mississippi and land in the middle of the Union line so that his troops could be deployed left or right or stay put in the center. Wallace, always the contrarian, took the Shunpike, farther west and, by the time he reached the lines, he found himself on the union far right almost behind the Confederate left. Therein lay the problem that vexed our hero the rest of his life. Did he misread Grant’s orders or did he willfully disregard them?
At every opportunity, Wallace persisted in explaining, describing, interpreting, depicting, and otherwise portraying his actions that day at Shiloh. That is the beginning of the Wallace story and the central thesis of Mortenson’s argument, namely Wallace’s search for manly, military glory; a goal that eluded him during his civil war career. When he was sent back to Indiana after Shiloh, the governor ordered, or asked him nicely, to travel the state recruiting, which he reluctantly did. He was sent to Cincinnati when Morgan’s raiders threatened the city and nothing happened; then there was his tour of duty with the Middle Department in Baltimore. He craved the action on the field and wanted a field command. Instead his political skills landed him desk jobs. Even his attempt to claim some notoriety in the Mexican affair and his hope to broker a deal to end the war in the West fell through. His delaying loss at Monocacy brought him nothing but grief until it didn’t. Belatedly, Grant, Stanton, and Lincoln realized that Early really was a threat to the capital and that Wallace’s fight at Monocacy bought just enough time, allowing Grant to move the VI Corps from the siege lines at Petersburg to reinforce the home guard at Washington.
Mortenson has done an admirable job in sticking to the subject. This is not a biography, it is exactly what the title indicates, a politician in uniform; Lew Wallace in the Civil War. Writers would do well to emulate Mortenson’s focus, exposition, clarity, and understanding of this complicated man. The chapters are few, ten; and only 198 pages of text including his conclusion, brings it all together nicely. This slim volume is a welcome addition to the volunteer/ politician/soldier literature of the Civil War.
Salvatore Cilella is retired after 43 years in the museum field. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars, University of Kansas Press, 2009, and editor of The Selected Correspondence of General Emory
Maine at War, Volume I: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg. By Brian F. Swartz. Illustrations, photos, chapter endnotes, bibliography, military units index, general index. 2017. 471 pp. Maine Origins Publications, w w w.Maine.Origins.com. Paperback. $30.
Reviewed by John Michael Priest
Printed originally between 2011 and 2014 as monthly articles in the Bangor Daily News, then continued as online blogs, this fascinating book consists of fifty, thoroughly documented articles about Maine’s involvement in the Civil War. Brian F. Swartz’s love of history and attention to detail emanates throughout the book. Each entry builds upon the foundation laid by the previous one.
Easy to read, and full of personal stories of the men and women who served Maine throughout the war, Swartz
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delves into the accounts of sacrifice and loss these individuals endured. I particularly found the pieces about Sarah Sampson and Isabella Fogg, who with other female volunteers, treated the sick and wounded at home and in the field.
Swartz’s detailed descriptions of the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles around Richmond filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. He also did excellent work with Maine’s role at Cedar Mountain. I particularly enjoyed his coverage of the 10th Maine in Antietam’s East Woods, a long-overlooked area of the battlefield that is now getting closer attention.
Maine at War also details Maine’s home-front, local, and national politics. Swartz has an interesting account of the 6th Maine when “A little poor rum brought out all the baser passions” of the regiment and the drunken soldiers spent the night of July 16, 1861, in the streets of Portland fighting and hell-raising while trying to dodge the city’s outnumbered police force.
The brief chapters, ranging from four to fourteen pages each, make this a book an individual can read at leisure. As a researcher, this volume is packed with primary sources, making it a treasure trove of new material to explore. I am very anxious to see the following two volumes.
Mike Priest is author of Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle (1989) and Before Antietam: The Battle of
Reckoning With Rebellion: War And Sovereignty In The Nineteenth Century. By Aaron Sheehan-Dean. Notes, Bibliography, and Index, 204 pp., 2020. University Press of Florida, upress.ufl.edu. Cloth. $40.
Reviewed by David Marshall
Reckoning With Rebellion compares and contrasts the American Civil War economically, militarily, politically, and socially with other nineteenth century national conflicts; the 1857 Indian Sepoy Rebellion, the 1863 Polish Insurgency against Russia, and the 1850– 1864 Chinese Taiping Rebellion. Aaron Sheehan-Dean weaves an excellent story that shows how Northerners and Southerners were well aware of other global conflicts happening at the same time and used the messages and experiences of other nation states and insurgents to support their objectives of preserving the Union, ending slavery, or attempting to establish a new nation.
This important modern study goes beyond traditional interpretations of the Civil War and Reconstruction by evaluating the international consequences of uprisings and conflict, as well as different points of view concerning war, revolt, and establishing a new nation, establishing a wider historical framework for the North American war. Sheehan-Dean makes a convincing argument throughout this slim volume that the Civil War cannot be completely comprehended without the implications in a worldwide structure.
In the years preceding the start of the American conflict, then as the North and South fought against each other, the world became smaller due to communication and news sharing. This allowed combatants in other struggles of national freedom to be aware of what was occurring in each other’s wars. Consequently, Sheehan- Dean reveals that individuals involved in these struggles understood the commonalities and differences found among each. Furthermore, he makes the important point that events in one country, and their outcomes were characterized, grasped, and shaped what transpired in the others. While nations were diplomatically meeting with each other, they came to realize that their destinies were tied together.
This author’s purpose is to enlighten readers with a non-traditional approach for evaluating the American Civil War. He successfully includes many people from the nineteenth century who analyzed and commented on the four conflicts studied in this treatment. Sheehan-Dean’s extensive research allows students and scholars to not only agree or disagree with his conclusions, but offers opportunities for future study and research. He asserts that by comparing the four wars and the reasons why India, Poland, China, and the Confederate States of America lost in their attempts for nation-building, readers will gain a better understanding of what external forces contributed to the victorious outcomes by Great Britain, Russia, Qing Dynasty China, and the United States of America.
Reckoning With Rebellion’s first chapter; What Kind of War Is This, concentrates on the methods of fighting, what it meant to contest as an insurgent, and how this went against the difficulties involved in creating a new functioning country. The second of three chapters; All Wars Are World Wars, focuses on the difficulty of each combatant’s legitimacy by evaluating what Great Britain, France, and Russia felt was important and how their goals as world powers formed their willingness to intervene in geo-political conflicts. Their fates rested not just on their own successes but on what happened with other groups fighting around the world.
Finally, chapter three; The Center Holds, concludes with the relationship between sovereignty and power. Sheehan- Dean contends that the countries in this work had an anxious coexistence as well as shared experiences. He asserts that old guard countries viewed Northern success in the Civil War as proof of the order of law rather than the foolishness and confusion of separating from the Union. Finally, he makes the important point that ultimately, the pursuit of self-rule in the late nineteenth century shifted authority from monarchs to the people and in the process advanced human freedom but saw it slowed or reversed in the world and in the United States.
Sheehan-Dean makes important connections among countries in Asia, Europe, and North America that will surprise students when evaluating what is generally accepted concerning the Civil War and the USA’s and the CSA’s diplomatic relationships with other countries. His analyses provide readers with a different interpretation of the origins and problems of the Civil War and its relationship to global issues during the age of revolutions and spread of democracies.
Reckoning With Rebellion: War And Sovereignty In The Nineteenth Century’s greatest strength is that it is very readable, provocative, impressively researched, approachable, and informative. This reviewer was not able to put down this monograph until finished. Highlights were the five insightful political cartoons as well as the helpful bibliography, notes, and index. Overall, while expensive, Sheehan-Dean’s work is a positive contribution to the history of the time-period, and will make an excellent addition to the reading list of any serious student, including both those already knowledgeable or just starting to become interested with this important moment in United States and world history.
David Marshall is a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School District for the past thirty-four years. A lifelong Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil
Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia. By Eric J. Wittenberg, Edmund A. Sargus, Jr., and Penny L. Barrick. Illustrated, Appendices, Bibliography, Index, Savas Beatie Publishing, 2020, 268pp, cloth, $32.95.
In this volume three eminent constitutional lawyers combine their talents to produce an historical and legal analysis of the founding of West Virginia. Economically, socially, and politically, the counties west of the Allegheny Mountains were closer to Ohio and Pennsylvania than to Richmond, Va. In 1860 the counties comprising West Virginia today held only 18,000 slaves out of Virginia’s total of 490,000. The ethnic makeup likewise differed with English heritage dominating eastern Virginia while Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and German comprised a majority in the western counties. Additionally, the western counties believed they suffered political inferiority and oppressive taxation. These differences led to a schism that the Civil War ignited and provided an opportunity for the western counties to demonstrate fidelity to the Union when they voted to secede from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
This decision set up a legal conundrum for the Lincoln administration. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution clearly states that the legislature of Virginia must consent to the secession of its western counties. This obstacle was overcome when the 2nd Wheeling Convention, consisting of delegates from 38 western counties and five counties east of the Alleghenies, declared themselves the rightful legislature of Virginia and this fiction was accepted by the Lincoln administration. Abraham Lincoln decided the creation of West Virginia was a necessary war measure to protect Unionists in the western counties and to safeguard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a vital Union supply line. Thus, on June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state in the Union.
But this did not stop Virginia from rescinding its “consent” to the formation of West Virginia. The Commonwealth voted to sue in the Supreme Court for the return of the western counties. After a lengthy delay, on March 6, 1871, the Court ruled West Virginia was legally created, ending the constitutional questions surrounding its founding.
The authors have included several appendices that include the views of Lincoln’s entire cabinet on the constitutionality of creating West Virginia, the complete Supreme Court decision in the case of Virginia vs. West Virginia, the 1911 Supreme Court case over the apportionment of the public debt between the two states, and finally, a 2020 legislative proposal by West Virginia to add Franklin County, Virginia, to the state. All the appendices allow the reader to appreciate the constitutional nuances surrounding the founding of West Virginia and are a valuable primary source for the scholar.
This book is highly recommended for its readability, inclusion of primary source documents, accuracy, and relevance to contemporary America’s secessionist ideas that are still being proposed. Finally, the book is thoroughly researched, legally sound, and historically enlightening. Any Civil War scholar should add this book to their library.