Albert Castel: An Appreciation
Quick! Name a prominent historian of the Western theater!
If you didn’t think of the late Albert Castel, you’ve been drinking too much Virginiacentric Kool-Aid.
Albert Edward Castel III was born in Wichita in 1928. At the age of thirteen he went to a theater to watch Gone With the Wind. As he wrote decades later, he fell in love with the movie, to the point that in the next few weeks he saw GWTW five times and read Miss Mitchell’s novel twice. From there it was to the library. He checked out the fourth volume of Battles and Leaders and gorged himself on the Atlanta Campaign.
Albert was fond of saying it was Gone With the Wind that led him to become a Civil War historian. In other words, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler (1939) led to Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (1992).
There were plenty of other books in between. And considerable education: Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (1950, 1951) from Wichita State University, and the doctorate from the University of Chicago (1955). Clearly Dr. Castel was headed for a career as a professor of American history; but his hobbies involved drawing and classical music (Renaissance Man!). After a stint in the Army, he taught at UCLA a few years, then in 1958 settled into Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, where he taught until retirement in 1991.
I count at least a dozen books in Dr. Castel’s curriculum vitae, not to mention a hundred articles and 250 book reviews in professional journals. In college I used his essay on Fort Pillow (Civil War History, March 1958) for a term paper I wrote for Dr. Wiley at Emory. His observation that Forrest did not order a massacre there because he didn’t need to (given the composition of the Union garrison, half blacks and half Tennessee tories) has stuck with me all these years.
His first book, A Frontier State at War: Kansas, 1861–1865 (1958) stemmed from his doctoral dissertation. In a new edition (1997), the author explains how he researched his topic in the fall of 1954:
“Every morning, Monday through Saturday, I left my room at the YMCA, ate breakfast at a nearby restaurant, and then walked the short distance to the Historical Society where I waited for the front door to open at 8 A.M. Once inside, I worked without pause, not ceasing for lunch, until the society closed at 5 P.M., whereupon I returned to my room, took a short nap, and then hustled over to the Senate Cafeteria for supper. Usually I spent evenings sorting notes before going to bed where I would fall asleep while listening to a portable radio.”
The young scholar’s work stayed mostly out west. William Clarke Quantrill (1962) and Sterling Price and the Civil Warin the West (1968) were followed by a study of Andrew Johnson’s presidency (1979). His opus, DITW (as he liked to call it) consumed years of research. Albert sent me chapters to read; years later he thanked me for informing him that the town southwest of Atlanta was Newnan, not “Newman.”
Albert and I were friends, corresponding frequently in the early 90’s (he typed his letters; I handwrote mine). After I contributed a review essay for the Georgia Historical Quarterly in mid-’93 on four recent works on Sherman,—including my high praise for DITW—I sent it to him. This, from his letter of August 22: “In the note attached to the copy of your review essay, which arrived yesterday, you say ‘l hope you’re satisfied.’ No, I am not. I am in contest for the title of ‘The World’s Greatest Egomaniac’ and by not being satisfied with what you say about DITW I will be almost sure to win it!”
Albert knew he had a reputation as Sherman-basher, based on such pieces as “Liddell Hart’s Sherman: Propaganda as History” in The Journal of Military History, April 2003. More famously he wrote “Prevaricating through Georgia: Sherman’s Memoirs as a Source on the Atlanta Campaign.” In the essay, published in the March 1994 issue of Civil War History, Castel pointed out “careless slips,” exaggerations, and petty denigrations of Hooker and Thomas. Among the convenient omissions in his Memoirs, Sherman didn’t even mention the bloody Federal repulse of the attack he ordered May 27 at Pickett’s Mill—“It is as if it never occurred,” Albert writes—which omission angered more than a few Union veterans, to judge by their complaints published in the National Tribune. Among the flatout lies was Sherman’s claim that Generals Thomas, McPherson and Schofield all agreed with him on the need to launch the frontal attack at Kennesaw Mountain, June 27.
(Castel’s “Prevaricating” draft was so red-hot that the editor of CWH arranged for it to be accompanied by a rebuttal from Dr. John Marszalek, author of a recent (1992) Sherman biography. Albert wrote me that he thought this was the first time that the esteemed journal, edited by John Hubbell, had published “a rebuttal along with the article being rebutted.” He added that in a visit to Starkville, Mississippi, and staying with the Marszaleks, he had discussed his planned “prevaricating” piece; Marszalek agreed that Sherman suffered from “selective memory.”)
Dr. Castel rounded out his publishing career by repackaging some of his published essays: Winning and Losing in the Civil War (1996) and Articles of War (2001). In the former, there appeared one of my faves, “Mars and the Reverend Longstreet” (Civil War History, June 1987), in which he pointed out the four essentials of a successful Civil War flanking attack—and because these factors so rarely came together in battle, Castel thus explained why so many hoped-for flank attacks turned into bloody frontal assaults.
While researching DITW Albert found at the Ohio Historical Society the diary of Lt. James E. Graham, 80th Ohio, which he kept from July 1863 to April 1865, including his chronicling of the Atlanta Campaign. In Winning and Losing, he notes, “I have perused hundreds of Civil War diaries, yet never have I seen one like this one” And for good reason, as the twenty-two-yearold Graham confided in its pages how he had courted any number Georgia lasses (and even married women). Here, July 30: “Called on Miss Buckner in the evening, and had no one to bother, spent the entire evening with her, had a splendid time, enjoyed myself bigly.” July 30: “Made love to Jule.” August 5: “Kissed Mollie about eleven or twelve times after supper.” August 13: “Mrs. Mattie Austin came in today, formed her acquaintance & before she left could well & truly say I knew her.”
Much has been made of Southern women’s Confederate loyalties and their hostility toward Yankees. At least in Jimmy Graham’s experiences, this was not the case.
Dr. Castel had indeed read hundred of Civil War diaries. When I was reading his draft of DITW in the summer of 1990, Albert told me that he had researched beyond Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, into its occupation by Union troops. He had once thought of including in his book the Federals’ two months spent in Atlanta, and had accumulated research material on the occupation; but by then he had sufficient text already for a sturdy volume. Subsequently, in the rarest display of scholarly generosity I have ever encountered, Dr. Castel sent me his photocopies of Union soldier’s’ manuscript letters and diaries concerning the occupation, most from Northern libraries and archives that I could never hope to visit. I used them all in my work on Sherman’s bombardment and wrecking of Atlanta.
What I remember best about Albert was his quiet sense of humor. In an article appearing in Dave Roth’s Blue & Gray (June/ July 1996), Castel pointed out the factual inaccuracies in Gone With the Wind. Dave took a lot of flak when readers wrote in to denounce Castel for writing the piece and for being a Yankee. One complainer called Albert out for stating that Margaret Mitchell was wrong: Scarlett could not have made a supper out of just one crayfish. The letter-writer hailed from Louisiana, where he claimed crawdads were so big that one could indeed provide a good meal. “At first I was inclined to believe him,” Castel writes, “as was the editor of Blue & Gray.”
But a phone call by the latter to a famous New Orleans restaurant elicited word from its chef that he never had seen a crayfish of such magnitude, and some research undertaken by me in encyclopedias revealed that while there were giant-sized crayfish, they were to be found only in Tasmania!
Albert Castel died on Nov. 14, 2014, three days after his 86th birthday. I wish he were still alive so I could thank him for all of the ways he touched my life.
Stephen Davis is author or editor of nine books on the war, seven of which pertain to the Atlanta Campaign. His next one, “I Thank the Lord I Am Not a Yankee”: The Wartime and Postwar Journals of Eliza Francis Andrews, will be published later this year by Mercer University Press.
