The Stones River and Tullahoma Campaigns: This Army Does Not Retreat

Christopher L. Kolakowski

The History Press, 2011, 160 pp., $17.95

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

            Reading Chris Kolakowski's monograph on the Stones River and Tullahoma campaigns in Tennessee is like being on a well organized staff ride led by a thoroughly briefed officer.  If all the volumes in The History Press' series honoring the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War are as deftly organized and clearly written as this one, they will be a worthy addition to the historiography of what Robert Penn Warren rightly called “for the American imagination, the great single event of our history.”

            But don't let Kolakowski's conversational tone fool you.  Beneath it lies a keen strategic and tactical analysis of these two frequently overshadowed campaigns.  Kolakowski explains why they were decisive precursors to the more widely known battles that would later open the heartland of the upper South to a relentless tide of blue-coated invaders.    

            The book's first two chapters set the stage for the initial clash between the newly formed Union Army of the Cumberland and the newly named Confederate Army of Tennessee along a clear, limpid stream 30 miles south of Nashville.  Both Union Major General William S. Rosecrans and Confederate Lieutenant General Braxton Bragg had the same New Year's Eve 1862 battle plan; hold on the right and turn the other's left flank.  

            Bragg struck first and, for most of the day, the situation looked bleak for the boys in blue.  But a makeshift defensive line anchored at a place that aptly became known as “Hell's Half Acre,” and strung out along the Nashville Pike, eventually stemmed the gray tsunami..  The next day, both armies salved their considerable wounds under a cold, driving rain.  On the afternoon of Jan. 2, 1863, a poorly planned and disastrously executed Rebel attack on the Federal right at McFadden's Ford against a wall of expertly directed artillery fire ended what was to be the war's bloodiest battle in proportion to the number of troops engaged.  

            The battle of Stones River reflected the personalities of each army's commander.  Rosecrans was at the height of his powers; proud, profane, and personally courageous.  Bragg was rigid, aloof, and personally arrogant.  Kolakowski rightly characterizes the failings of the Confederate command structure in the West,  from Jefferson Davis on down, as a continuous psychodrama that plagued the Rebel armies in the West for the rest of the war.  

            Both armies then went into winter quarters.  Bragg, at Tullahoma, spent his time squabbling with his superiors and subordinates while Rosecrans, at Murfreesboro, reinforced and resupplied his battered army.  After 169 days of rest, and considerable prodding from Washington, Rosecrans was ready to resume campaigning.  Because of momentous events occurring in other theaters (Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and Grant's final assault and capture of Vicksburg), the Tullahoma Campaign rarely earns a historiographical footnote.

            The long blue lines marched out of Murfreesboro on June 24, into “one of the wilder and latest-settled areas in Tennessee.”  The roads were bad and the weather was worse.  It rained for 14 of the next 17 days, leading one of Rosecrans' brigade commanders to observe “The roads seem to have been lost, as we passed through woods with bottomless mud.”  But Rosecrans had two secret weapons, accurate maps and Captain William Emory Merrill to draw them.  First in his class at West Point in 1859, Merrill was now in charge of the army's topographical department.  He left nothing to chance.   Maps produced by his topographical engineers allowed commanders to study the roads leading to the Tennessee River, calculate their capacities and limitations, and pinpoint locations where they could find water and forage.  Map making for the Army of the Cumberland had become an integral part of its war making capability.

            “Rosecrans's conquest of the region,” Kolakowski concludes, “had been amazingly cheap.”  At a cost of less than 600 casualties, “The Army of the Cumberland now controlled Middle Tennessee and threatened Chattanooga itself.”  The roads to Alabama, Georgia, and East Tennessee were now open.  

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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.

Enduring Legacy:
Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause

By W. Stuart Towns

University of Alabama Press, 2012, 208 pp., $37.50

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

            The Lost Cause, like Faulkner’s past, is not dead and, according to W. Stuart Towns, it’s not even past.  In his incisive exploration of the rhetoric and ritual associated with the South’s most enduring myth, Towns maintains “that twentieth-century white southerners learned much of how they were going to think about race, about the North, about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and about themselves from the rhetoric of the Lost Cause.”

            A former communications professor at Southeast Missouri State University, Towns examines the public oratory that formed the bedrock of southern ideology after the end of the Civil War.  His prose is clear, concise, and unfailingly direct; his hypotheses are boldly stated and scrupulously supported with evidence; and his conclusions are solidly based in logic and data. 

            Towns is non-judgmental about the post-war South's white supremacy ideology.  His aim is to show how ceremonial speaking and other forms of public address  were    the “primary vehicles for creating and disseminating the Lost Cause to the South's oral culture.”  Speeches at Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies, regimental reunions, and monument dedications extolled the valued heritage of a white society destroyed by the war.  For the formerly ascendant class, Lost Cause ritual and oratory “created a sense of order and community out of the chaos, uncertainty, and despair of defeat.”

            Many of the orators Towns investigates are not household names today.  But prominent people like Tennessee Senator William B. Bate, Florida Governor Cary A. Hardee, and veteran John Warwick Daniel, known as the “Lame Lion of Lynchburg” were regular speakers at civic gatherings like the 1910 reunion at Little Rock, AK that drew 150,000 spectators to watch 12,000 Confederate veterans and 14 bands pass in review.  

            The idea of redemption was an essential component of Lost Cause ideology.  It gave white Southerners the hope of setting things right again after their long night of radical, black dominated, Reconstruction.  “This redemption,” Towns argues, “was strongly reinforced by southern speakers in words that echoed for several generations as a cornerstone for the white-controlled, absolutely segregated, 'Solid South.'”

            Towns argues, persuasively, that Lost Cause orators spread their social vision so effectively and so persuasively “that they are still alive today and will remain so well into the future.”  In the desegregation and civil rights decades of the 1950s and 1960s, Towns maintains, Lost Cause rhetoric “justified, vindicated, defended, and explained states’ rights and white supremacy as enduring and fundamental planks of the ‘southern way of life.’”  Towns finds a clear and direct link between the “right of secession” and “sacred honor” rationales offered by former Confederate generals John Bell Hood and John Brown Gordon in the 1870s and the code words of “states’ rights” and “constitutional liberty” used by governors Ross Barnett and George Wallace in the 1960s.

            Towns hopes that the sesquicentennial commemoration will be used by people North and South to discuss and more fully understand the rhetoric underlying what Robert Penn Warren called “the great single event of our history.”

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

America’s Great Debate:
Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas,
and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

By Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2012, 398 pp.

Reviewed by Publishers Weekly

In this vivid, insightful history of the bitter controversy that led to the Compromise of 1850, journalist Bordewich (Washington: The Making of the American Capital) reminds us that Southerners dominated all branches of the federal government until 1850.  Every president had owned slaves except the two Adamses, and Southern states still made up half of the Senate.  The territorial bonanza after the 1845-1847 Mexican war threatened their control because California and New Mexico's governments excluded slavery.

Outraged Southern leaders refused to accept this, paralyzing Congress for months. A compromise designed by an aged Henry Clay failed, but was quickly revived and passed thanks largely to Stephen Douglas.  It admitted California as a free state, put off the status of the remaining territory, and strengthened the fugitive slave law. Despite narrow passage and wildly abusive debate, it was a dazzling achievement that temporarily staved off civil war. Political history is often a hard slog, but not in Bordewich's gripping, vigorous account featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs.

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Fergus Bordewich is a member of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia (cwrtdc.org).  His other books include America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union and Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.  Additional information about Mr. Bordewich and his books, articles and other publications is available on his website http://www.fergusbordewich.com/books.html

NEW ON DVD

Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray:

Faith Under Fire in the American Civil War

Indigo Films Entertainment Group, Inc.  88 minutes

Mosby’s Combat Operations
in Fairfax County, Virginia

HMS Productions, Inc. 90 minutes

Reviewed By Gordon Berg

Ten thousand Jews fought in the Civil War; 7,000 for the North, 3,000 for the South.  Although largely ignored in the traditional historiography of the period, “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray,“ a deftly produced, visually compelling DVD from Indigo Films, capably fills void.

Using the Ken Burns-like approach to documentary film making (expert talking heads interspersed with period graphics and contemporary video), the DVD is chock-full of interesting facts and compelling anecdotes about how Jews reacted to the coming of the war and the exploits of individuals on the battlefield and the home front.  

Profiles include Judah P. Benjamin, a lawyer and pre-war senator from Louisiana, who was the second most-powerful official in the Confederate government, serving as Secretary of War and later as Secretary of State. Abraham C. Myers served as the Confederacy’s Quartermaster General and Moses Ezekiel, the first Jewish cadet at the Virginia Military Academy, fought with his classmates at the battle of New Market in June 1864.

Union Brigadier General Frederick Knefler was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Civil War; Captain Isaac Moses was the war’s first aerial battle observer, reporting on Confederate positions at Williamsburg, VA in 1862; and Sergeant Leopold Karpeles of the 57th Massachusetts was one of five Jews to receive the Medal of Honor.  

The video also describes what it calls the most blatant anti-Semitic act in American history, Ulysses S. Grant’s infamous General Order 11 of December 1862 that ordered all Jews to leave the territory under his command within 24 hours.  The order caused a furor throughout the North and, under pressure from Jewish leaders, President Lincoln ordered it rescinded.

Screenwriter and director John Milius, whose Jewish ancestors rode with rebel partisan rangers in Missouri, provides a clear narrative voice to move the action along and actor Sam Waterston confidently voices the words of President Abraham Lincoln.

In the early days of television, actor Todd Andrews portrayed the Confederacy’s most successful mounted partisan ranger, John Singleton Mosby in muted shades of black and white.  Now, six enthusiastic Mosby historians from Northern Virginia revive the exploits of this colorful cavalier by visiting 42 locations where he jousted with perennially frustrated Union horsemen.

While “Mosby’s Combat Operations in Fairfax County, Virginia” lacks some of the production values of professional video company, the historical expertise of the producers overcomes many unavoidable liabilities such as often shooting in locations that long ago succumbed to suburban sprawl.  Eric Buckland, Tom Evans, Don Hankerson, Charles Mauro, Stevan Meserve, and Mayo Stuntz also make effective use of period illustrations and each provides insightful on-camera commentary.   

A handsome map accompanying the DVD will allow modern day battlefield trampers to revisit the sites of Mosby’s exploits, now armed with the cogent commentary provided by this informative documentary.




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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.

Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally:
Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky

Elizabeth D. Leonard

University of North Carolina Press, 2011, 432 pp., $40.00

 Reviewed By Gordon Berg          

If you happen to be writing a book about Joseph Holt, Abraham Lincoln’s Judge Advocate General and prosecutor of those who conspired to assassinate the martyred president, stop right now.  Elizabeth Leonard has already written the definitive biography of this worldly, wealthy, and erudite Kentuckian who suffered political disappointment and family ostracism because of his passionate anti-slavery beliefs and commitment to preserving the Union.

Leonard writes with clarity, energy, and assurance; much as her subject did. When only 17, Holt declared “While we tolerate slavery, we are only feeding and nourishing our own destroyer…”  Holt maintained that slavery was “contrary to every principle of justice, every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honor” and he held these beliefs throughout his life.  These views ran counter to those held by most of his family and friends.

A successful lawyer and rising star in the Democratic Party, Holt became Secretary of War in the waning days of James Buchanan’s administration.  By accepting this appointment, Leonard maintains, he “boldly, courageously, and with unshakable commitment chose the Union over Kentucky, over the states, over the South, and -- potentially -- over slavery.”   After the fall of Fort Sumter, Holt wrote to former president Buchanan and declared  “Now that the South has begun an unprovoked and malignant war upon the U.S., I am decidedly in favor of prosecuting the struggle until the citizens of the seceded States shall be made to obey the laws as we obey them."

Leonard reveals that after the fort fell, Lincoln called on Holt and asked him to return to their native state and undertake “an all-out effort to ensure Kentucky’s fidelity and… to transform its supposed neutrality into active military support.”  He crisscrossed the state giving speeches, supporting the recruitment of men loyal to the Union for military service, and clandestinely arranging to supply them with arms.      

Although Holt had no military experience, Lincoln appointed him judge advocate general of the army in September 1862 because, Leonard maintains, he was “a brilliant, rational, stunningly articulate, painstakingly careful attorney, and because he was a fearlessly determined supporter of the Union.”  With thousands of cases to evaluate, Holt was in almost daily contact with the president.  Some of the most interesting cases this former slave owner handled involved the legal, civil, and human rights of slaves and former slaves.  Holt evaluated the evidence evenhandedly, even when the crimes appeared to be perpetrated against white.

Holt vigorously supported Lincoln’s decision to suspend habeas corpus, Congresses enactment of the Second Confiscation Act, and the Emancipation Proclamation, believing them all to be legal as necessities of war.  His intention, Leonard concludes, “was to support the president and his policies unwaveringly…and to make use of all the legal means at his command to move immediately and boldly against the nation’s enemies…”  

One of these legal means was the right of black men to enlist and serve in the Union army.  At the request of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Holt issued an opinion that the Constitution held that men of African descent were people, not property, and therefore could be called upon to bear arms “in defense of the Government under which they live and by which they are protected.”  Holt also held that after the war, black veterans should enjoy all the rights that the Constitution bestowed upon its citizens.

During the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, Holt’s primary task was to gather evidence establishing the guilt of the eight defendants.  He also issued the opinion that they should be tried by military tribunal, not a civilian court.  He sought, in vain, to establish a link between the conspirators and members of the Confederate government.

After the turbulent tenure of Andrew Johnson, Holt looked forward to the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.  In spite of a continuing heavy workload, Congress was determined to shrink the national army and its attendant bureaucracy.  It reduced the staff of the Bureau of Military Justice.  While some politicians and military officers advocated closing the bureau, Holt staunchly defended its existence.  “Some such establishment,” he declared, “is certainly necessary in every civilized country that proposes to submit its military administration to the guidance and limitations of law.” 

Holt remained a hard-working judge advocate general until 1875.  When he died in 1894, he was buried with full military honors in the family cemetery in Stephensport KY, next to relatives who had scorned his devotion to the Union.


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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.