Lifeline of the Confederacy
Suppliers To The Confederacy Volume Four: From Brass Pins, Pistols and Swords to Warships. By David C. Burt. Illustrated, bibliography, appendices, BookLocker Publishers, 2020, 375pp., hardcover.
Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf
This is the fourth and final volume of a series tracing the vital impact British goods had on sustaining the Confederacy by supplying its military and civilian needs. The supply effort was all done within a politically divided nation where slavery, economics, and moral values made Confederate support a difficult proposition. This volume includes all the title’s items, as well as newly discovered artifacts, that did not make it into the first three volumes. This text expands Burt’s research into the vital ports of Liverpool and Birkenhead, the spy networks of both North and South, and contains over 250 new photographs and illustrations showing soldiers and their British made equipment.
Individual chapters deal with building and selling warships to the Confederacy, the history of imported swords and knives, bullet molds, pistols, and gunpowder. Newly discovered accoutrements, artifacts, and household items are included in additional chapters. Appendices add a complete listing of ships that were victims of the Shenandoah, a manifest of the sailors aboard this last Confederate Navy raider, registered blockade runners, and the proceedings of the Alabama claims dispute.
David Burt has done a commendable job of weaving the history of the firms, e.g. S. Isaac Campbell Co., Robert Mole & Son, Wilkerson Sword Co., Tranter Co., E.&A. Ludlow, Ross and Co., G. Wostenholm etc., into how their goods were manufactured, exported, principally through Caleb Huse, Confederate Quartermaster and Ordnance Agent, and performed in the field. Many never published before photographs supplement every company’s wares, with material from museums and private collections. Notes at the end of each chapter lead the historian to original sources of additional material.
The author also relates where artifacts were purchased, usually Civil War shows, or which relic hunter was fortunate enough to find a prized British relic. These tidbits add a human touch to the story which hopefully encourages greater Civil War show attendance and increased documented relic hunting to enhance the history of the Civil War.
While the author claims this volume is the last in the four volume series, hopefully he will provide a fifth and sixth when new finds, photographs, and documents are located detailing the enormous role Britain played in supporting the Confederacy’s war effort. It is extremely well written, accurate, and voluminously illustrated, an indispensable tool for historians today. It, along with the first three volumes, is highly recommended to anyone who collects Civil War artifacts or wishes to understand how the Confederacy survived four long years
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College, past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable and the author of numerous articles and books including the Last Civil War Scout and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel.
Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd, Joseph Johnston’s “Old Guard.” By W. Clifford Roberts Jr. and Frank E. Clark. Illustrated, Notes, Bibliography, Index, Mercer University Press, 2020, 526 pp., hardcover, $39.00.
Reviewed by Keith Bohannon
Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd chronicles the service of the 42nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry, a regiment raised in March 1862 during a statewide militia call. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown called on volunteers to defend their country or “be subject to the draft which will then and there be made.” Brown also appealed to the racial fears of Georgians, particularly non-slaveholding whites, by conjuring apocalyptic images similar to those he had used to argue for secession. The Lincoln administration, he warned, would “arm the negroes, and incite them to destroy our wives and children.”
After organizing and training at Camp McDonald in Big Shanty, Georgia, the 42nd headed to eastern Tennessee, seeing battle for the first time at Cumberland Gap in May 1862. The regiment then marched several hundred miles in that fall’s Kentucky Campaign before ending the year in Mississippi. A portion of the 42nd participated in the Confederate victory at Chickasaw Bluffs on Dec. 29, 1862, before spending the remainder of the winter as part of the Vicksburg garrison.
The authors of Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd contend that the regiment’s worst performance of the Civil War came at the battle of Champion’s Hill on May 16, 1863. Much of the blame for the Confederate disaster in the battle focused on the Georgia brigades commanded by Generals Alfred Cumming and Seth Barton; the 42nd served in the latter organization. The stigma of this defeat, the authors point out, tarnished the reputation of the Georgians for quite some time.
Following Champion’s Hill, the 42nd served as part of the besieged garrison of Vicksburg, surrendering there on July 4, 1863, with General John C. Pemberton’s Army of Mississippi. When the 42nd reorganized in the fall of 1863, the authors write that not all Vicksburg parolees returned to the regiment, claiming that some were too physically debilitated to do so, while others were unwilling to fight. The reviewer wishes the authors had offered statistics of how many members of the regiment never returned, as a survey he did of six companies of Vicksburg parolees from North Georgia revealed that between 32% and 46% did not rejoin the Confederate Army after being exchanged. How did the 42nd compare to these of other Georgia regiments? How many men who never returned to the 42nd went on to serve later in home guard organizations?
The bloodiest day of the war for the reconstituted 42nd was at the battle of Resaca, Ga., the first major engagement of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. In subsequent engagements during the campaign, particularly at New Hope Church and Atlanta, the regiment performed well. The regiment’s July 22, 1864, charge in the battle of Atlanta is immortalized in the Atlanta Cyclorama. While the 42nd missed the battle of Franklin, Tenn., at the end of November 1864, it acted admirably on the second day of the battle of Nashville and in subsequent rearguard actions during Hood’s retreat out of Tennessee.
Like most of Hood’s ill-fated Army of Tennessee, the veterans of the 42nd Georgia ended their service in North Carolina, seeing battle for the last time at Bentonville. The 42nd was one of the largest regiments in its brigade at this point in time, but the authors don’t really explore why this was the case. Did the 42nd have better officers than other regiments in the same brigade? Were conditions on the home front not as bad in the counties where the 42nd had been raised compared to the home counties of other regiments?
While the chapters of Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd covering the 42nd Georgia’s wartime service are solid, the final two chapters on the postbellum era offer a somewhat disjointed and largely celebratory account of veterans’ survivors’ organizations, parades, and reunions. The focus is almost exclusively on the regiment’s surviving field officers, several of whom had successful political and business careers. It would have been interesting to know more about the postwar lives of enlisted men, many of whom faced poverty and debility in their old age as revealed in state pension applications.
The postbellum chapters would also have benefited from being informed by modern scholarship on the Reconstruction and Gilded Age eras rather than relying primarily on accounts written by ex-Confederates and their sympathizers. Describing postbellum Atlanta politics as a “free-for-all” is overly simplistic and saying that the Klan only intimidated potential African American voters while Union League militias threatened violence against freed people if they didn’t vote for the Republican ticket misrepresents the central role that the latter organization had in mobilizing freed people to support a party that clearly championed their interests.
The authors of Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd deserve praise for mining a wide array of primary sources, including letter collections, diaries, memoirs, and newspapers. The regimental roster is also impressive, exhibiting information culled from compiled service records, pensions, the census, and cemetery records. Overall, the first nine chapters of Atlanta’s Fighting 42nd comprise one of the best regimental histories of an Army of Tennessee unit to appear in recent years.
Keith Bohannon is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia and author of numerous essays and articles dealing with various aspects of the Civil War. One of his most recent essays, entitled “The Fatal Halt: Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Cedar Creek in John B. Gordon’s Reminiscences,” appeared in Gary Gallagher and Stephen Cushman, editors, Civil War Writing New Perspectives on Iconic Texts published by Louisiana State University Press, 2019.
Two-hundred Letters from an Engineer to his Wife
My Dear Nelly: The Selected Civil War Letters of General Orlando M. Poe to His Wife Eleanor. Editor by Paul Taylor. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press 2020). Notes, bibliography, index. Hardcover. 337 pp. $55.00
Reviewed by Christopher L. Kolakowski
Orlando M. Poe may not be a famous Civil War name, but he served in some of the War’s most well-known actions. Starting as colonel of the 2nd Michigan Infantry, he led his regiment and later brigade from the Peninsula through Second Manassas and Fredericksburg. Failing to win a general’s star, he resigned and moved West as an engineer officer. He was chief engineer of the Knoxville, Tenn., defenses, followed by service as General William T. Sherman’s Chief Engineer during the Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, and Carolinas Campaign. He was present for the Confederate surrender at Durham Station, North Carolina.
Poe and his wife Eleanor (Nelly) kept up a lively correspondence during the war years, stopping only when she visited him in camp. They wrote each other frequently, sometimes daily, and Poe often sent her documents for archiving. After Poe’s death, Nelly donated their
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correspondence and papers to the Library of Congress in the early 20th Century. Paul Taylor encountered them while researching his biography of Poe titled Orlando M. Poe: Civil War General and Great Lakes Engineer.
As a follow-on to his book, Taylor selected nearly 200 of the couple’s letters and compiled them into this volume. Almost without exception, the book contains transcriptions of handwritten letters from Poe to Nelly, footnoted with key details to help understanding. Given the various positions he held, Poe was in a position to observe many different parts of the war; as a result, his voluminous correspondence covers many topics. Readers will find accounts of his activities and campaigns interspersed with commentary on the people and places he encounters. Poe’s pithy remarks are often quite illuminating and bring fresh perspectives.
That said, the book does have some limitations. The author admits that it is a “companion” to his Poe biography, and readers not familiar with that work may not have important information about Poe and some characters in the book. Repetitive headings of letters add little to the text. Lastly, the book needs maps to help readers follow Poe’s travels. Knowledgeable readers will be able to work around these concerns, but more casual readers may find them daunting.
Nonetheless, this is an important and vivid new primary source from a senior Federal leader. It offers a vivid look into the Union Army and some of its key leaders and events. Poe’s letters should be incorporated into any future study of the campaigns he participated in or the places he was stationed.
The reviewer works as a historian in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of four books on the American Civil War and World War II, and is a contributor to the Emerging Civil War blog. The views contained herein are his own.
How Nice it is to Have a Face with the Name
Faces of Civil War Nurses. By Ronald S. Coddington. Johns Hopkins University Press. jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu, 2020. Hardbound. 424 pp. Black and white photos. $32.95.
Reviewed by Richard J. Blumberg
Ron Coddington, publisher of Military Images magazine, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Chronicle of Philanthropy, is no stranger to Civil War News. He authored the Faces of War column from 2001–2016. Each issue featured a soldier’s story including original wartime images of that person.
The purpose of this work, like Coddington’s preceding four volumes, is to humanize the Civil War by providing stories of real women who worked and served in the medical field. These mini-essays give readers insight
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into what life was like. The ladies came from all walks of life: some served as trained nurses and others were aid workers or vivandieres.
Photography was about twenty years old at the outbreak of the Civil War. Images were prepared in four different processing formats: cartes de visites; ambrotypes; tintypes; and daguerreotypes. Cartes de visites were popular during this time as they were about the size of visiting cards. Proper social etiquette required individuals leave contact cards with the host as a social grace. Additionally, the cartes de visite were small and inexpensive. This made them popular with soldiers who could easily mail them to loved ones. Ron compares the cartes de visite used as a visiting card as the1860s version of social media.
Thirty-eight of the seventy-seven images used in this volume were from the Foard Collection at the Library of Congress. Ron, a collector of military memorabilia, met fellow collector Chris Foard in 2014. Mr. Foard, a nurse, collected many nursing related images via the cartes de visite format. These images, along with other primary source images located at the United States Army Heritage and Education Center, made these ladies’ stories come to life.
The short essays tell each woman’s story and are drawn from personal diaries/letters and pension records. The description of each woman is about two to four pages long, making it an easy read and each story/image stands alone. This work provides valuable insight regarding the contributions to medical care made by these women. It is thoroughly researched and provides insight into women’s studies, photography and medical care during the Civil War. I give it a strong recommendation to anyone looking for works in any of these areas.
Richard has served as a Book Reviewer for over eighteen years. He has published three articles for Civil War News. He is currently conducting research for an article on logistical operations in the Civil War.
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Growing up in Oklahoma, one’s world view certainly includes the Wild West. I participated in schoolyard reenactments of the Oklahoma Land Run, watched Bonanza and Maverick, and dreamed of the day when our family would finally move to California. Little did I know the hold between truth and imagination was so tenuous. Paul Ashdown and Edward Caudill, joint authors of Imagining Wild Bill: James Butler Hickok in War, Media, and Memory, have clarified much, and maybe muddied some.
As historians, it is easy to say we need facts and sources before we believe, but the reality is not so clear. Most of us have, even if it is hidden, a romantic, sepia-colored view of history. We want our heroes to be heroes; we want their deeds to be essential and real. Then comes “The Wild West,” and things get murky. Imaging Wild Bill explains the impact pulp fiction has had on the phenomenon of creating western heroes. I had heard of Ned Buntline (Edward Judson) and others, although I had no idea that Lincoln’s third secretary, William Stoddard, became a pulp writer.
Much like today’s television “events,” dime novels were consumed by many and taken for truth. Of course Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane hooked up; Hickok killed many other gunfighters and only fired after he was fired upon; Hickok was killed because he broke the “Code of the West” and sat with his back not against the wall. He definitely held the “Dead Man’s Hand” of eights and aces, everyone knows that, or did he? Or do they? Excavating the truth is what this book is about. This excellent volume should come with a pin for balloon-popping.
As it turns out, the truth is sometimes a little dull. It does not create the excitement of imagination that written fiction, radio, television, and movies do. That is why we cling to the legends. We want America to have a glorious, heroic history. That history may not have happened that way lands with a thud in our hearts. Readers of any age will find something to relate to in the thorough work of Paul Ashdown and Edward Caudill. I particularly remember all the television shows mentioned, and many of the songs. That is the magic word, remember. What people claim to remember is specious at best. Memory and history are undoubtedly intertwined topics in current research; and, of course, don’t forget the outright storyteller.
One of the most compelling, and easiest to research, accounts is Hickok’s participation in the Civil War. Most of us have done at least a rudimentary examination of existing military records or perused a unit history. When it comes to “Wild Bill,” these trusted sources come up short. Some writers claim, with great authority, that Hickok was a Union sharpshooter who had over one hundred kills to his credit, or that his nickname “Wild Bill” came when he stopped a mob from killing a saloon owner while on his way to recapture a military wagon train stolen by Rebels near Independence, Mo. About all that can be pieced together as truthful is that Hickok’s military duties included scouting, spying, sharpshooting, and driving wagons. The rest is a combination of conjecture and lies told by many, including Hickok himself.
If everything known about gunslinger Bill Hickok is wrong, why does he figure so largely in American history? Never underestimate the power of myth. Myth drives much of our past, and it is one of the most dynamic subjects
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being re-examined. The Lost Cause, the Wild West, the New World, Manifest Destiny, all have had their day at the top of the myth mountain. More and more historians are wrestling with this topic, and if it is one in which interest sparks, Imaging Wild Bill is a great place to start one’s reading. This book is well-written and filled with new information. It is broad in scope, considering Wild Bill in the press, the East and the West, in literature, movies, radio, and TV. The assessments are fair and balanced, and the conclusion of the book, taking place in Deadwood, where all good Hickok groupies wind up at one time or another, puts the subject in his historical place.
There is more, much more. This reviewer’s only issue with Ashdown and Caudill is that the subject is by no means finished. There are rabbit holes everywhere, and the reader will want to explore them all. Suppose one is interested in examining public memory. In that case, Southern Illinois University Press and Emerging Civil War should be your go-to source for intelligent, probative writing on a subject that concerns most of us. There is an old saying, “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” Imagining Wild Bill: James Butler Hickok in War, Media, and Memory turns that saying on its head. Readers will question just how much real history is actually known!
Meg Groeling received her Master’s 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. Her biography, First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero, will be published by Savas Beatie. She is a book reviewer for LSU, Civil War News, and a regular contributor to the blog Emerging Civil War. She lives in Hollister, California, in a 1928 bungalow with her husband, her cats, and a lot of books and roses.
Stonewall Jackson, Beresford Hope, and The Meaning of the American Civil War in Britain. By Michael J. Turner. Notes, index, Louisiana State University Press, 2020, 334 pp., hardcover.
James Beresford Hope, leader of the pro-Southern lobby in England, Member of Parliament, owner of the Saturday Review, and staunch admirer of Stonewall Jackson, served as the window through which the British people viewed the American Civil War. A thorough analysis of Beresford Hope’s articles and speeches are used to answer the question, “Why so any people in Britain sympathized with the South?” Beresford Hope constructed a thorough basis for why socially, culturally, politically and religiously the South’s independence was justified and would benefit Britain in the long run. While Northern support was evident in England during the Civil War, Hope financially and politically supported the Southern cause and idolized Stonewall Jackson for his religious fervor, military talents, and moral habits. He gave Britain Stonewall Jackson as exemplifying British values of ordered liberty, self-determination, and constitutional government. Stonewall Jackson was the living embodiment of the struggle for independence and religious commitment. His love of country, fear of God, courage, dash, and military ingenuity reflected British ideals of the hero and ideal citizen.
In contrast, the North was seen as riddled with machine politics, scandals, tariffs, patronage, bribery and anti-British tabloid sentiment. The South exemplified conservative moderation and was orally and socially superior to the North. Slavery was seen in the South as on the road to gradual emancipation with assistance to the freed slaves to make freedom meaningful and whole. Slavery was not seen as the cause of the war. Rather self-determination, states rights, free trade, and the absence of restrictive tariffs forced the South to separate to preserve their natural virtues, economic growth, and political power. With the end of the Civil War, Beresford Hope continued until his death in 1887 to defend secession, help fund the Stonewall Jackson statue unveiled in Richmond in 1875, and be regarded as a good man who supported a questionable cause.
This book is very well written, thoroughly researched, replete with primary source documentation, and objective in presenting divergent British viewpoints. For a treatise on British sympathies during the American Civil War, the reasons for these views, and the impact on British-American relations, this volume is a most welcome addition. Every historian should add this highly recommended book to his must read list.
Dr. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College in Illinois, past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable, and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including Two Years Before the Paddlewheel and The Last Civil War Scout.
“There is as yet too much to be forgotten—too much to be forgiven.” – Cornelia Phillips Spencer of North Carolina
We know from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography that Cornelia Phillips Spencer’s father, James Phillips, was an English educator and immigrant. She married law student James Munroe Spencer at age 26 and, upon his early death, returned to her father was then living in Chapel Hill. She was a prominent journalist, social historian, poet, and prolific writer of bibliographies from 1853 to 1900; during her long life (1825–1908), she also penned what was published by C. Deems, editor of The Watchman in 1868 as The Last Ninety Days Of The War In North Carolina. (Digital edition: https://docsouth.unc.edu/true/ spencer/menu.html) This article is as close as we may ever get to an extremely detailed glimpse of the Civil War in western North Carolina by a female whose world it was and as she writes:
“That North-Carolina accepted a destiny which she was unable to control, when she ranged herself in the war for Southern independence, it is a fact which can not be disputed though none the less ardently did her sons spring to arms, and none the less generously and splendidly did her people have a great army that poured forth from her borders; though none the less patient endurance and obedience government was theirs; yet it is also a fact, indisputable and on record, that North-Carolina was never allowed her just weight in councils of the Southern Confederacy, nor were the opinions or advice of her leading men either solicited or regarded too lenient, and
rebels must look out for consequences and ordered the torch to be applied.”
“While the raiders were in the Yadkin river-bottom, they were detained three days by freshets. Small parties scoured the country, carrying off all the horses and mules, and burning the factories. There seemed to be no systematic plan of destruction while some mills and factories were burned, others in the same neighborhood and quite as easily accessible were spared and depended on the personal character and disposition of the commanding officer of these detachments. If he were simply a brute dressed in a little brief authority, even injury was inflicted, accompanied with true underbred insolence and malice. The privates always followed the lead of the commander.”
“Leaving Wilkesboro on the thirty-first day of March, General Stoneman [Union cavalry comander] moved over into Surry County, in the direction of Airy, and thence into Virginia, aiming for Christiansburg, on the Tennessee Railroad. A portion of the command being at Wythville, was met near that place by General Duke’s cavalry, and repulsed, but rallying, took the town and destroyed supplies there. Having effectually destroyed the road above Wytheville, between the New River and Big Lick, General Stoneman turned back upon North-Carolina, reentering it from Patrick county [sic], Virginia, and marching rapidly through stokes county [sic], suddenly in Salem and Winston on the tenth of April. Here he sent out various detachments to cut the North-Carolina and the Danville and Greensboro Road, destroy bridges, supplies, etc., etc. One of these parties, as I have said before, missed capturing the train conveying the whole Confederate government in its flight to Greensboro.
They burned the bridge at Jamestown, and were about to fire the depot, but upon a sudden false alarm left precipitately without finishing their work. At High Point they burned the depot and large quantities of government stores and seventeen bales of cotton belonging to Francis Fries of Salem. The public buildings and stores at Lexington and Thomasville were saved by the arrival of a body of Ferguson’s cavalry [probably Samuel Wragg Ferguson], who chased the raiders back to Salem. The grand purpose of the whole raid seemed to contemplate the destruction of stores and the cutting off of communications without risking a battle.
At Salem and Winston private property was protected, no pillage being permitted. This was
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flags of Tennessee: the stories of the women who stitched them, the regiments that bore them, and those who served under them and carried them.
probably owing to the inhabitants having had notice of the approach of the raiders, sent a deputation to meet them and make a formal surrender of the town. I am not aware that a demand for surrender was made of any place during the entire raid, or that any place besides Salem and Winston, which may be regarded as one, offered a surrender. The first notice of the presence of any enemy was given by the unlooked-for arrival of the advance-guard galloping in and taking possession.
At Mocksville, a number of the citizens, supposing it was only a small squad that was hurrying through the country plundering, prepared to give them a warm reception, and a short distance from town fired upon the advancing column and realizing their mistake, they retreated. Threats of burning the village for this audacious thought of resistance were made, but as General Stoneman was pressing forward with all speed there was no time for any such exchange of compliments.”