The Fall of the House of Dixie:
How the Civil War Remade the American South

Bruce Levine

Random House, 2013, 464 pp., $30.00

           
Review by Gordon Berg

Accolades come easily for Bruce Levine's latest book.  His research is exhaustive, his arguments erudite, his anecdotes illuminating, and his prose crystalline.  The result is an exemplary work of historical synthesis, tracing “the origins and development of America's 'second revolution.'”     

Levine sets antebellum Southern society firmly on the shoulders of slavery.  His spokespeople, many of them elite Southern women, describe a system they deemed benevolent, permanent, ordained by God, and sustained by economic necessity.  But the social and political fissures that brought down the House of Dixie, Levine argues, existed throughout the antebellum years because they were part and parcel of the region's economy and culture.

Sustaining a long and bloody conflict stressed these fissures to the breaking point.  “A war launched to preserve slavery,” Levine observes, “succeeded instead in abolishing that institution more rapidly and more radically than would have occurred otherwise.”

Southern elites failed to understand the indomitable spirit of their slaves, determined to achieve freedom for themselves.  As the war dragged on, white supremacy and a rigid caste system led non-slave holding and poor whites to question why they were fighting to sustain a planter aristocracy of privilege and pride.  And the doctrine of states rights insured that the parochial interests of the individual states regularly trumped the collective needs of the Confederate nation. 

The evolution of Union war policy also contributed to Dixie's fall.  Levine traces Lincoln's conservative social and military war aims that evolved into a revolutionary policy to liberate and emancipate America's slaves   The Emancipation Proclamation, issued as a war measure, allowed former slaves and free blacks to fight in the Union Army.  Northern soldiers would now carry the promise of freedom and citizenship in their knapsacks.  Many Northerners also changed their understanding of the war, believing that only by destroying slavery could a new, more perfect, Union be created and preserved.

 

Was it worth all the spilled blood and expended treasure?  Levine uses the words of Frederick Douglas who wrote “The world has not seen a nobler and grander war.”  Those who fought to bring down the House of Dixie, Douglas proclaimed, were “writing the statutes of eternal justice and liberty in the blood of the worst tyrants as a warning to all aftercomers.”

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Gordon Berg is a past President and member of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia (www.cwrtdc.org).  His reviews and articles appear in the Civil War Times and America's Civil War, among other publications.

Kennesaw Mountain:
Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign
 

Earl. J. Hess

University of North Carolina Press, 2013, 344 pp., $35.00


Review By Gordon Berg

         

In the summer of 1864, two great armies engaged in a deadly, red-dirt minuet through the hills of North Georgia.  Union General William T. Sherman, had his sights set on Atlanta; his opponent, General Joseph E. Johnston, had his sights set on Sherman.

Their dance macabre halted on June 27 before the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain, near Marietta.  Frustrated by weeks of non-decisive flanking movements, Sherman broke from form and hurled 15,000 hard western men against a well-positioned, deeply entrenched, foe.  When the day ended in blood and rain, the troops who fought there would be forever changed by their experiences.  Their story is told in a succinct battle narrative by veteran Civil War historian Earl J. Hess with clarity and dignity as befits the uncommon valor he describes.

Hess's monograph reads like a staff ride organized by an officer intimately familiar with the area's topography, so important to the battle's tactics and the campaign's strategy.  Maps and photos help provide a sense of place but readers without some familiarity of the Atlanta Campaign might become overwhelmed with the many gaps, ridges, rivers, roads, and creeks that define the geography of North Georgia.

 

Hess recounts that the ball for this part of the campaign opened at Kolb's Farm on June 22.  It was a small Union victory and John Bell Hood's attack drew criticism from other Confederate officers involved in  the battle.  But Hess concludes that “Despite the mistakes and the needless sacrifice of one thousand men...Johnston would have been forced to evacuate his Kennesaw Line on June 23.”  Evaluating the larger tactical picture, Hess concludes that “Sherman once again was stymied in his efforts to compel the enemy to leave his Kennesaw Line.”  The inconclusive action at Kolb's Farm prompted Sherman to try and break the logjam five days later.

For the fighting men, Hess contends, “Kennesaw Mountain loomed large in the lexicon of battle as much for its challenges to the campaigning life of the common soldier as for the threat of injury and death from bullets or shell fragments.”  By deftly interweaving his own piquant analysis with experiences recorded in diaries and letters of the combatants, Hess makes a convincing case for the importance of this still unappreciated battle and argues for a new interpretation of  long-maligned Joe Johnston's tactics.

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Gordon Berg is a past President and member of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia (www.cwrtdc.org).  His reviews and articles appear in the Civil War Times and America's Civil War, among other publications.

A Civil War Round Table Quiz Book

Dave Smith

Potomac Books, 2013, 400 pp., $24.95

Review by Gordon Berg

It's probably happened to every Civil War round table president at one time or another.  The scheduled speaker cancels at the last minute.  What to do?  Have a Civil War quiz session.  Who knows enough questions to ask?  Dave Smith does.

 Born as part of his own round table's monthly meetings, Smith has gathered hundreds of interesting questions (and their answers) and topically arranged them for easy reference.  If this were a game, it would be advertised as "holding hours of wholesome fun for experts and novices alike" and "makes an outstanding gift for all your Civil War enthusiasts."  But it's not a game and many of its users may well have significant expertise on a variety of Civil War subjects, both mainstream and arcane.  Smith's book stands up well under the most scholarly scrutiny.

 To his credit, Smith seems to have vetted his answers from reputable sources among his personal 450 volume Civil War library, avoided the obvious slippery slopes found on the Internet, and, like a reporter he once was, requires multiple confirmations to substantiate his facts.  The answers are thorough and reflect the complexity of historical knowledge inherent in long ago events.  Nevertheless, Smith rightly reminds readers "Even the books of respected scholars are not totally free from errors.  Let the reader beware."

     

Smith gets it right, mostly.  The questions range from battles and leaders to bridges and railroads.  He covers the war on the water and the war on the home front.  There are nine questions about Joneses and 10 about Smiths.  Union General George Gordon Meade gets a whole quiz to himself; Ben Butler gets two.  There's even a vocabulary quiz.  The answers to many will send even the most enthusiastic buff scurrying to reference books indexes.   However, the only person to substantiate Oliver Wendell Holmes' claim to ordering President Lincoln off the rampart of Fort Stevens during Jubal Early's raid on Washington was Holmes himself.  And the leading scholar on the Lincoln assassination strongly doubts that Edwin M. Stanton or anyone else said "Now he belongs to the ages" when the president died.

      A word to writers looking for interesting topics to research.  Smith's book is filled with interesting anecdotes that could be expanded into articles.  So, round table presidents, share this interesting volume with your members.  Just make sure you get it back.

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Gordon Berg is a past President and member of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia (www.cwrtdc.org).  His reviews and articles appear in the Civil War Times and America's Civil War, among other publications.