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Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War. By Robert W. Hatcher III. Maps, images, bibliography, index, 288 pp., Dec. 2023. Savas Beatie
Travel Tip: If you are among the quarter million or more of Americans who plan to visit Fort Sumter this year, you would do well to read Robert Hatcher’s new history of that iconic fort before you embark. Even i you have been there, this book merits reading. The author is the retired, long-time historian of F Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. There
is no better authority to write the definitive history of F Sumter, beginning with its origin in the aftermath of the W of 1812, through its pivotal role in the Civil War, and fin to its transfer to the National Park Service after WW II. Like government projects generally, the construction of Fort Sumter was slow and sporadic. In fact, it spanned decades. Construction was still ongoing on the eve of the Civil War. Built on a small artificial island in Charleston Harbor, this pentagonal masonry fort was designed to mount 135 guns with a garrison of 650 officers and men, although it never realized those dimensions in either guns or men. Roughly 80 percent of Hatcher’s book details activities connected with Fort Sumter or its vicinity during the Civil War. That account begins in late December 1860 when Maj. Robert Anderson’s 1st U.S. Artillery occupied Fort Sumter surreptitiously and then held it tenaciously during bloodless Confederate cannonade that persisted for about 34 hours in mid-April 1861. Only when prospects for resupply dissipated did Anderson yield up the fort to the enemy and sail North with his command. Once Confederates occupied Fort Sumter, they held it for almost four years with a grim determination that bordered on fanaticism. The first two years of Rebel occupation went mostly untested, allowing the Confederates time to shore up the fort’s defenses. Things changed abruptly on April 7, 1863, when nine Federal ironclad warships steamed towards Fort Sumter, only to be driven back by a lethal crossfire from gunners posted at Fort Sumter and other Confederate batteries ringing the harbor. Five of the ironclads were disabled and another subsequently sank. This failed naval attack proved only the beginning of a 22-months-long siege by land and sea of Charleston, Fort Sumter, and the city’s other outer defenses. During this si the defenders of Fort Sumter endured a sustained artillery bombardment that, by September 1863, had virtually eliminated Fort Sumter’s offensive capability, effectively transitioning the fort from an artillery to an infantry out By the time its garrison quietly joined the Confederate exodus from Charleston in mid-February 1865, Fort Sumter
had withstood the impact of more than 46,000 solid shot an shells, totaling approximately seven million pounds of iro that left the fort a heap of earthen and masonry rubble. Federal reoccupation of Fort Sumter witnessed the grand spectacle of Robert Anderson’s triumphal return and his raising the U.S. flag on the fourth anniversary of his surrender of the fort. Despite the war’s proof of the vulnerability of stationa forts to artillery, Washington decided to reconstruct Fort Sumter. The former commander of Federal forces in South Carolina, Gen. Quincy Gillmore, remained in the Corps of Engineers after the war and oversaw reconstruction efforts from 1870 until shortly before his death in 1888. Several hurricanes and the devastating 1886 Charleston earthquake impeded progress. Undeterred by nature and slow congressional funding, Gillmore doggedly persisted to the point he came to resemble Captain Ahab, with Fort Sumter as his Moby Dick. By the early twentieth century, the reconstructed Fort Sumter had morphed into a concrete artillery battery that was officially designated Battery Isaac Huger in honor of a local Revolutionary War general. Battery Huger was regarrisoned at the outbreak of WWII, and new guns were added in 1943, but never fired at an enemy. The development of long-range naval guns and heavy bomber aircraft during WWII made Fort Sumter’s once strategic location in Charleston Harbor irrelevant. Fort Sumter was closed in 1947 and transferred to the National Park Service the next year. Today the fort is part of the Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. Fort Sumter is the focal point of this book, but some other famous events that occurred during the Civil War in Charleston Harbor and its environs come in for commentary, including the assault on Battery Wagner led by the 54 Mass. Inf. (and celebrated in the movie Glory), the bold commandeering of the CSS Planter by its enslaved crew, and the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the Confederate submarine, the H. L. Hunley. Robert Hatcher tells a good story well. Hatcher enlivens his account with excerpts from the private correspondence of soldiers who garrisoned Fort Sumter, both Rebs and Yanks. The lengthy bibliography testifies to the painstaki research Hatcher put into writing this book. Physically, this book is a joy to hold and read. The tex set in large, double-spaced type, making for easy reading. Footnotes are nicely placed at the bottom of pages instead being huddled into the back of the book. Three well-drawn maps and a variety of photos and other images enhance the book’s readability. Prospective visitors to Fort Sumter as well as readers interested in Civil War forts or the war in the Charleston area will find this book worthwhile. I recommend it highly
C. Michael Harrington is a retired lawyer, residing in Houston and Galveston. The author of several published articles on South Carolina soldiers, Mike has lectured to Civil War organizations in Houston on multiple topics, including Yale’s Confederate alumni and South Carolinians in the war. Mike is also a past president of the Houston CWRT.
A New Look at Two Atlanta Campaign Controversies
The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864. Robert D. Jenkins, Sr. Acknowledgments, introduction, exhibits, maps, road number key to maps, photographs, drawings, bibliography, index, 384 pp., 2024,
Ever since Gen. Joseph Johnston evacuated Cassville, Ga., the evening of May 19, 1864, soldiers, politicians, a historians have been researching, arguing, and wondering exactly what happened while the Confederate Army of Tennessee occupied the village during 18-19 May. The two controversies evolve around a surprise attack that Lieutenant General John Bell Hood’s Corps was supposed to have launched against an unsupported wing of Gen. William T. Sherman’s Federal armies, and later a defensive battle that Joe Johnston was supposed to have fought from lines just south of Cassville. The circumstances around th decisions caused such a controversy that years after the w while the two were traveling on a steamboat, Sherman asked Johnston what it was all about. The long and the short of what was known, until publication of The Cassville Affairs, was that Hood did no attack because Federal cavalry appeared in his right rear due to a road left unguarded by Gen. Joe Wheeler’s cavalry Secondly, Joe Johnston issued an order to be read out to his army, that he was going to make a stand in Cassville t defeat the Federal Army and stop them going further into Georgia, but shortly after that order, Johnston retreated south. The author does an excellent job of setting the stage o how the Confederate Army was forced back to Cassville. His best work, however, is covering the two affairs using primary sources, especially maps either not used or availa Civil War News Magazine | July-August 2024
previously. The author has lived close to the battlefield many years (forty-five minutes by his recounting) and know the area intimately. The rural road network and the actual names of certain roads are key to much of the controversy as are differing, often self-serving, primary sources. One example is that an earlier version of Hood’s report on the campaign dated February 13, 1865, was printed in the March 25, 1865, Richmond Enquirer and reprinted in the New York Times on March 29, 1865. This is a slightly different vers of the report found in an appendix to Hood’s Advance and Retreat. The Cassville Affairs is heavily researched by the autho and will be the definitive work on the subject for many years, possibly forever. It is hard to imagine any new sou that will not confirm the author’s findings or add anythin but local color to the history of the Cassville Affairs. I excellent history and will be of especial interest to thos with an interest in the Civil War in the west and the Atla Campaign. It is very highly recommended.
CAPT Joe Derie is a longtime Civil War buff with a special interest in Civil War naval history and the Civil War in the West. He is a retired USCG officer and a licensed officer of the Merchant Marine, currently self-employed as a marine surveyor and marine accident investigator in Portland, OR.
Editor of Update Calls Letters “Clear-eyed, Candid, Informative” Through Blood and Fire: The Civil War Letters of Major Charles J. Mills, 1862–1865, Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by J. Gregory Acken. Maps, photographs, bibliography, footnotes, index. 312 pp., 2023. The Kent
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Gregory Acken is an independent historian specializing in the writings of Civil War soldiers. In addition to the boo under review, he has edited three collections of letters and diaries of other Federal officers. In this work, Acken presen 118 letters written by a Boston blueblood who served in the Army of the Potomac. Charles J. Mills was a member of a well-to-do Boston family and a Harvard graduate, class of 1860. Failing in his effort to secure an army commission, Charley enlisted as a private in a Massachusetts militia unit which, unfortunately, was disbanded almost as soon as he signed up. He tried again to earn a commission by recruiting men for a regiment of volunteers, but failing to bring in enough recruits, he wa again disappointed. His efforts finally paid off when, in August 1862, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. Lt. Mills’s first letters home describe the difficult marc he and his new comrades endured as they moved toward the battles in Northern Virginia and Maryland. The regiment was not engaged at Bull Run, but was in the thick of things at Antietam, where, after serving only one month, Mills was severely wounded by a shot which passed through both thighs. For most men, such a wound would mean a one-way ticket home and a permanent goodbye to the military. However, after a year, Mills re-entered the service, even though his wounds left him partially lame. From the fall of 1863 through March 1865, he served as a staff officer, first under a regimental commander, then at the division level, and ultimately at the headquarters of the IX and then the II Corps. Charley’s letters home, most to his mother, some to his father and a few to others, offer good descriptions of the movements of the army and the fighting; they comment on the qualities of the generals in charge and other officers nearer to his own rank; they express opinions on the larger issues military and political; and convey news about his college friends and others who served in various capacities. From time to time, Charley showed his opinionated side as well as his superior attitude toward people not of his cla and education. He preferred the company of gentlemen to that of roughs and had a rather odd prejudice against Pennsylvanians. He also had a low opinion of black soldiers and often, in a very casual way, used an impolite word in lieu of “black.” The reader also learns about his literary an sartorial preferences from the list of items he requests from home. The last letter written by Mills was penned on March 31, 1865, addressed to his mother, hours before he was struck by a solid shot and killed instantly. How this book came to be is an interesting story. In 1977, Gregory A. Coco bought a collection of artifacts that once belonged to Major Mills. Among the collection was a leather case of letters. Coco transcribed and edited the letters, whi he self-published in 1982. The originals have been lost, both the 118 Coco published and the 80 or so others. Coco’s edition (only 300 copies) has been used by historians: I quickly found the 1982 edition listed in the bibliographies of four books on my own shelves. Aken’s edition builds on Coco’s original by providing useful footnotes and detailed
editorial comments which add context to Mills’s account and supply information on the many characters who appear in the letters. With the publication of this book, the l of Maj. Charles J. Mills can be read by a much wider ran of Civil Warriors.
Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. He has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at
Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln And Spurred The Civil War. By Jon Grinspan. Advance copy with only notes. Bloomsbury Publishing, bloomsbury.
Little did Hartford, Connecticut, 19-year-old clerk Ed Yergason, and his five fellow clerks, realize that they had started a movement that would help propel Abraham
Lincoln to the White House. When they sewed their first
black capes and caps, stole a few parade torches, and le peaceful parade for the protection of anti-slavery speak Cassius Clay, they set in motion the phenomena known as the Wide Awakes. This militaristic-looking movement was composed primarily of white, working-class youths but al
included Northern anti-slavery adherents, radical Europe immigrants, xenophobic Know Nothings, and later women, freed slaves, and even anti-slavery Southerners. They became Lincoln’s political army and worked for Republica
victories against a Democratic Party they felt was dominat by slave-owning Southern extremists. This new “army” reflected the rough and tumble politics of antebellum America. It was an outgrowth of the politica behavior characterizing the first half of the 19th Century and, in many aspects, reflected the political turmoil stil evident in today’s political arena. Wide Awakes were known for the acute imagery they portrayed and their oblique ideals, anti-slavery, pro-democracy, and pro-labor versus old aristocracy and exploiters of class hostilities. To ac their aims, they dressed alike to promote their equality, organized companies to maintain order, elected officers in a democratic manner, drilled in military style, and cheere in unison. Some estimates placed their membership, which grew rapidly before the 1860 election, at 500,000. After achieving electoral victories at the state level, and then the presidency, they continued by making up the first Union volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War, volunteered their clubhouses for recruiting stations, and encouraged enlistments to crush the Southern slaveholders. The Wide Awakes had become a symbol of everything Southerners feared about the North. Coincidentally, Northerners were ready to disregard Southern visions of Northern aggression. At the same time, Southerners were willing to follow through on their threats of secession. T the greatest political movement in U.S. history brought about a Republican victory and simultaneously a terrible Civil War. Jon Grinspan’s book is exceptionally well written and creates the sensation that the reader is actually caught up in the marching Wide Awake rallies. It is extensive in its documentation and well infused with primary source material. The only missing elements are the lack of photographs and newspaper accounts, all easily obtained, which would add immensely to the visual enhancement of the book. It is highly recommended for anyone desiring a thorough history of Wide Awakes and their impact on the 1860 election. Dr. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and Past President of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He has written several books and articles on the Civil War including Heroes and Rogues of the Civil War, The Last Confederate Scout, and Two Years Before the Paddlewheel. He frequently lectures at Civil War roundtables and events and extensively researches the life of the common soldier.
