May 2023
Contemners and Serpents: The James Wilson Family Civil War Correspondence. Edited by Theodore Albert Fuller and Thomas Daniel Knight. Bibliography, index, photographs, map, footnotes. 304 pp., 2023. Mercer University Press, www.mupress.org. Hardback, $45.00. Reviewed by Gould Hagler
For nearly two decades, starting in 1834, James and Eliza Wilson labored for the Lord as Presbyterian missionaries in India. Five children were born to the Wilsons during their time in that faraway land. In 1852 James and Eliza, with their three youngest children, returned to the United States, where the two oldest had already been sent to boarding school. The return was meant to be an extended, but temporary, leave of absence. However, the Civil War intervened, altering the course of the Wilsons’s lives as it did the lives of nearly every family in the nation.
This capably-edited collection contains approximately 85 letters
GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS In Honor of a Fallen Nation Gould B. Hagler, Jr.
This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.
written by all seven members of the family, plus a few penned by others, during the Civil War and a short time before and after.
Although both Reverend and Mrs. Wilson were born in the North, they had ties to the South as well, especially Mrs. Wilson. When the country began to split apart most family members were residing in what would soon become the Confederacy. When it came time to choose, all seven, with varying degrees of fervor, chose the South. All four sons served in the Confederate army, three as soldiers and one as a chaplain. The father, for a time, worked as a hospital chaplain. Mrs. Wilson and daughter Bessie lived much of the time with relatives in the South.
The letters reveal a close and loving family, whose members were widely separated and frequently on the move. Wherever they were, and however often they changed locations, they were linked together by the mail. The book’s single map shows about 75 locations where different family members lived, fled to, camped, battled, or were imprisoned during the war and after.
In these letters James, Eliza, Jimmy, Joseph, Lute, John, and Bessie shared news about major goings-on and about personal matters; they described living conditions in camp and on the home front; they expressed their views about the political and military issues of the day; and they offered and sought financial aid and other kinds of help as needs dictated.
The three soldiers had relatively little to say about the battles they fought. Far more common were expressions of their faith and their confidence in divine providence.
It is interesting to note that the two editors never met or communicated in any way. Fuller died in 1990, his work unfinished. Knight began his part of the job two decades later when Fuller’s daughter offered him the opportunity to complete the work. While it is unclear which editor did what, it seems that Fuller wrote the text, interspersed with the letters, which orient the reader and provide context. The detailed information on the numerous friends, relatives, colleagues, and comrades mentioned in the letters is, I believe, Knight’s work.
All survived the war. Two soldier brothers made it through without a scratch. The third was seriously wounded and lost a foot. The fourth brother preached in two Tennessee churches until 1864, when he joined the army as a chaplain. Father struggled much of the time to find adequate employment as a preacher. Mother and Bessie, housed most of the time with well-todo relatives, supported the cause with enthusiasm.
Contemners and Serpents concludes with a chapter that summarizes, in a concise narrative, the stories of all the family members. This helpful recapitulation gathers up the bits and pieces scattered throughout the letters and the numerous footnotes. The chapter also carries the story forward through the family members’ post-war lives. The war threw their lives off course, but all survived the ordeal and, with varying levels of success, continued on.
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Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War. Edited by Jon Tracey and Chris Mackowski with a foreword by Michael Kraus. 336 pp., 2022. Savas Beattie, www.savasbeatie.com. Hardback, $29.99.
When Upton’s Regulars, the 121st New York State Volunteer infantry, decided to memorialize their participation in the Battle of Gettysburg, they agreed they would take on the task of raising the money and designing the sculpture or statue themselves. The state had authorized all eighty-two regiments and batteries that had represented the state at Gettysburg to design a monument to mark their position on the battlefield. The rest was up to the survivors.
The 121st swung into action immediately. The aggressive deadline of July 3, 1888, to execute the design and implementation of the project was missed by the 121st, but by 1889 they had succeeded. The state provided a subsidy of $1,500 and in the end, the 121st committee raised another $1,000, a considerable amount of money today. James Cronkite, one of the unit’s last commanders, wrote that the Gettysburg Battlefield would be covered with “such a collection of monuments, as the world has never seen together. We do not expect to erect another memorial to our regiment” and he expected it to “stand forever’ guaranteeing that “your descendants will not be ashamed.”
The survivors picked the north slope of Little Round Top where the regiment came to rest on the early evening of July 2, 1863, after a forced march of some 30
miles. The final design included a panel honoring their esteemed commander Brigadier General (then colonel) Emory Upton. The monument was topped off with a sculpture of a soldier at “place rest,” leaning gently on his musket, while intently watching the approach of the enemy and awaiting the order of battle. The soldier was no anonymous prototype but a depiction of one of their own, private Frank Lowe who donned the uniform and gear to pose as the regiment’s model in perpetuity.
The intent or motivation of the establishment of the regiment’s monument was clear from the start; it was meant to honor its most illustrious commander and mark the spot on the most famous battlefield of the war where the boys from upstate New York stood during that famous encounter. Nothing more, nothing less.
Lately, monuments, particularly those related to our “Great Tragedy” have become the center of controversy reaching boiling points in many communities. The deadly riot that occurred in Charlottesville in 2017, was but one of the many new controversies over memory and monuments in the American landscape.
For the past decade, the history of memory has taken first place among practicing historians, both professional and amateur. An outpouring of books, seminars, lectures, and articles have looked at the history of memory from all angles. As I wrote in my review of Peter Cook’s Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States Since 1865, “I don’t know who invented the history of memory, but David Blight’s, Race and Reunion did for Civil War history of memory what Michael Kammen’s Mystic groundbreaking 1991 Chords of Memory did for the general history of American memory and tradition.” Jon Tracey and Chris Mackowski’s editing of 39 separate entries on nearly every aspect of history and memory touch on all the bases in their book Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War. Several chapters take on the monumentation of Gettysburg.
A majority of the entries were originally published as blogs at
Today, the reputation of Ulysses S. Grant is changing from that of a successful but mostly lucky general with a drinking problem to a man now considered to be a model of outstanding American military leadership. Jack Hurst, author and retired newspaperman, gives readers a valuable look into how a man from the lower ranks of American society gained this eminence. America’s Hardscrabble In General, he demonstrates how Grant’s humble beginnings and equally humble values better prepared him to lead volunteer American soldiers into battle and on to victory.
Most officers in the American Army came from families of wealth and privilege; however, Ulysses Grant came from humble beginnings that included a father
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who began his own business and a mother who was not well educated. Grant grew up on a farm in Ohio and only attended West Point because his father saw it as an opportunity to gain a college education for his son at public expense. Young Grant served in the Mexican War but resigned from the Army (in disgrace) when he was posted far away from family and friends. He then experienced farm and business failures until the Civil War broke out, when Grant reenlisted. He was given command of a rowdy volunteer regiment, the 21st Illinois. His style of command, nothing like the usual imperious West Point method, turned the 21st into a model regiment.
Hurst gives readers a detailed view of Grant’s early years, from his Ohio youth to the Battle of Shiloh. Other authors rarely examine these years. Instead, Hurst focuses on this period entirely, explaining with detail how every event in Grant’s life added to his future success as a general who, by his nature, fought his Army in a manner Carl von Clausewitz would have recognized. Rather than relying on maneuvering and winning a place on a map, the cornerstone of Grant’s strategy concerned moving forward and beating the Confederate armies into submission. The argument is made that Grant’s military understanding came not from West Point but from his Ohio roots, his place in America’s nascent middle class, and his powers of observance and common sense.
America’s Hardscrabble General pays particular attention to Grant’s service as quartermaster of the U.S. 4th Infantry in the Mexican War. During this time, Grant saw how a successful army, in this case, led by Major General (and future president) Zachary Taylor, really worked. Taylor’s leadership style contrasted with General Winfield Scott’s, but Grant watched both generals win a war. He observed how the average soldier should be treated and noted the importance of supplying his troops. Pages 67-76 analyze Grant’s Mexican War experiences in a way usually reserved for his Civil War exploits. Hurst puts in context Grant’s decisions in many situations, firmly basing them on observed and participated-in experiences in that earlier war. This terse analysis sets Hurst’s work apart from other Grant biographies.
The depth with which Grant’s early career is examined is invaluable. Many are familiar with Grant’s work at the end of the Civil War, but this book puts those experiences in their proper place as the outcome of Grant’s earlier life. His “rookie mistakes” at Forts Henry and Donaldson, and even Shiloh, his evolving feelings about warfare and the plight of newly-freed slaves, all are examined. So is his ability to handle not just alcohol but the rumors concerning its consumption being spread as far as Washington. Grant’s friendships with U.S. generals Sherman, McPherson, and “Old Brains” Halleck, as well as his issues with political general John McClernand, and eventually with Halleck are given equal importance in the evolution of the General Grant, who led the Union to a complete victory in the American Civil War. If any reader considers him/herself a true Grant enthusiast, this book must be in the bookcase, preferably toward the front.
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 second book, First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Herowas published by Savas Beatie in 2020. She is a book reviewer for LSU, CivilWar 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.
The Mississippi River:
Highway of the Poor
Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875–1930. By Gregg Andrews. Illustrated, Notes, Bibliography, Louisiana State University Press, https://lsupress.org, 2023, 323 pp., hardbound. $39.95.
Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf
Gregg Andrews uses the Mississippi River bottom towns and squatter settlements near the St. Louis levee to tell the stories of the Mississippi River’s poor and their unique culture. While poverty reigns in these camps, a vibrant culture is evident. The author uses the stories of these “forgotten” people to reveal the life of those whose stories are seldom told. These were the “river rats,” water gypsies, and river trash whose life on the Mississippi was a struggle but was not devoid of a vibrant culture all their own. From black roustabouts, river nomads, and white shantyboat travelers, they consisted of former slaves, day laborers, wanderers, and vagrants, drawn to the waterway by unique circumstances. Yet, they had one thing in common; The regimentation, bureaucracy, and industrialization gripping America in the late 19th Century had no appeal to them.
St. Louis provided a window through which the lives of these river poor could be viewed, how their lives were shaped and what mark they left on American history. One of their principal traits was the credo to always help fellow boats and their inhabitants when in need, clannishly protecting each other from outsiders or trouble-makers. Their livelihood depended on the river; whether they captured driftwood, sold cut lumber, fished, told fortunes, searched for pearls, or became moonshiners, they seldom left the river life they loved.
Their shantyboat settlements swelled with industrialization and the depressions of 1873, 1882, and 1893; yet all was not without danger. Violence occurred on the riverfront. Police and politicians harassed roustabouts and local boatsmen, fines were levied, and the notorious workhouse beckoned for t hose who could not pay. Gambling, prostitution, and drinking were a way of life. Labor strikes resulted in physical confrontations with ship captains.
Additionally, mother nature tried the nerves of the river rats. Storms, tornados, floating ice sheets, floods, disease, and river snags reminded wharf residents that nature was not to be taken lightly. Life on the river was not for the faint of heart yet the roustabouts and residents endured its hardships, created a blues, ragtime, and jazz culture to sing its praises while they eked a living from its waters. Their writings told of medicine boats, mission boats, river preachers, swamp healers, and showboat minstrels that added to the mystique of living on the Mississippi. It was a colorful life that added a great deal of “common folk” heritage to American culture.
The life of roustabouts and steam packets virtually disappeared by 1930 when industrialization and technology transformed Mississippi’s river culture. Houseboats and yachts filled the spaces formerly occupied by shantyboats. Work disappeared as the lumber industry folded. Wharfs were getting a middle and upper class facelift. City planners and politicians began transforming the river front. The old days faded to rural river areas where the depression breathed new life into old frontier traditions.
This book, although not directly Civil War related, combines voluminous primary source material into a fascinating picture of life on the Mississippi, the life line of the Confederacy and the home of a culture of poverty enjoyed by river folks. It is very readable, engaging, comprehensive and would make a great addition to an historian’s library to understand the culture of the river.
Dr. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College, the past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable, and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War, including the Last Confederate Scout and Heroes and Rogues of the Civil War.