Book Reviews - The Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia

Battle of Stones River:
The Forgotten Conflict between the
Confederate Army of Tennessee

and the Union Army of the Cumberland

Larry J. Daniel

LSU Press, 2012, 344 pp., $38.50

Review by Gordon Berg

Three book-length studies of the battle have been written since 1980. Nevertheless, Larry Daniel contends “that the mention of Stones River frequently brings puzzled expressions to those beyond the region” and that a new analysis of the battle is needed. Indeed, a comparison of the various bibliographies indicates that he made extensive use of letters, diaries, and manuscripts not previously examined. Using his considerable experience with Western campaigns, Daniel meticulously documents what was the war's bloodiest battle in relation to the number of combatants involved.

A good battle narrative is difficult to write. It weaves precise information about individual actions, unit movements, and anecdotal accounts into an evocative story that provides both expert and generalist with a clear understanding of the battle's pivotal events. Daniel meets all these criteria. Sometimes, however, he lets his enthusiasm for the trees obscure the forest. Daniel's specificity regarding the location of the battle's many units, the precise distance between so many places, and the exact time events occurred, can overwhelm the non-expert. This is especially true when he narrates the actual fighting. The book's thirteen maps help, but not enough.

The plans of each commander were mirror images of the other's. Union Major General William S. Rosecrans and Confederate General Braxton Bragg each planned to attack the right wing of the other while holding firm on the left. Bragg struck first at dawn on Dec. 31, 1862. The Union lines broke and swung back like a gate on a rusty hinge. But the hinge was held by the brigade of Colonel William Babcock Hazen and it held the end of the Union line at a place that came to be known as “Hell's Half Acre” with uncommon valor. Hazen's heroic stand in the face of repeated Confederate attacks allowed broken units to reform and probably saved the Army of the Cumberland from an ignoble rout. A perfunctory Confederate attack on Jan. 2, 1863 across Stones River against the Federal left was broken up by massed artillery superbly directed by Captain John Mendenhall.

The fight was a tactical draw but Rosecrans held the battlefield and Bragg retreated. The Emancipation Proclamation thus went into effect with news of a Union “victory” rather than under the cloud of the decisive Union defeat at Fredericksburg earlier in the month.. Daniel concludes that “the battle proved to be the first step in a drive that would lead the Federal Army toward Tullahoma, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and ultimately Atlanta.” The carnage at Stones River, like that at Shiloh, convinced New Yorker George Templeton Strong that the North was willing to engage in a prolonged war of attrition to preserve the Union. He concluded that “The South could not win such a war.”

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

The Best Station of Them All:

The Savannah Squadron 1861-1865

By Maurice Melton

University of Alabama Press, 2012, 632 pp., $69.95

Review By Gordon Berg

The conventional wisdom among most historians is that the Confederacy didn't have much of a navy. So most of them, William N. Still excepted, haven't written much about it. But Maurice Melton has looked harder and, where others found mostly dross, he found "the best station of them all." Many years in the making, this meticulously researched and stoutly written account details, for the first time, the rise and fall of the South's first brown water fleet.

Melton's story takes place along the Atlantic Coast between Cape Fear, NC and Savannah GA. It was a defender's nightmare; a porous maze of barrier islands, marshes, rivers, and creeks. He describes the region's unique topography like an expert pilot reading a nautical chart.

When Georgia seceded, Savannah native and aged naval hero Josiah Tattnall had the task of trying to defend this area with a ramshackle flotilla of a few coastal steamers and tugs that became known as "The Mosquito Fleet" because of the swarms of pesky insects that bedeviled the ships' crews. In the war's first months, Melton maintains, Tattnall's coastal guardians "plied the river from the city docks to Tybee and Cockspur Islands and occasionally ran to Port Royal and Charleston." They rarely saw an enemy vessel.

This changed dramatically when Tattnall's band of makeshift mariners encountered the largest armada ever assembled by the United States off Port Royal Sound in November 1861. Melton describes the Union's first naval victory by carefully balancing the tactical strategies of the combatants with compelling anecdotes about some of the conflict's lesser known personalities. The result clearly illustrates why combined army/navy operations for both sides proved difficult at best, disastrous at worst, throughout the war. Nevertheless, all the barrier islands between Port Royal and Savannah were soon under Union control.

Major General Robert E. Lee arrived in Georgia for his first field assignment on the day Port Royal fell. He quickly ascertained that "there were not enough men and guns to defend all the South Atlantic coast." His recommendation, according to Melton, "was to abandon most of the coast, leave the barrier islands and the smaller port cities to the enemy, and concentrate forces to save Charleston and Savannah." Lee left for Virginia in March 1862 but the Yankees were on the coast to stay.

Melton also describes the symbiotic and often contentious relationship between naval affairs and blockade running and the critical role played by African American pilots, both slave and free, in guiding ships over sandbars and along swampy river banks. He has mined the voluminous records of the Savannah River Squadron along with personal letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts to chart the history of the unit and its relationship to the people of wartime Savannah.

After General William T. Sherman captured their home port and Wilmington, the Confederacy's last operating seaport, fell to a Union land/sea operation in January 1865, the sailors of the Savannah River Squadron became soldiers. They joined the Army of Northern Virginia and fought as infantry until they were captured at Sailor's Creek on April 6, 1865, an ironical end for a hardy band of mariners.

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This Wicked Rebellion:

Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers Write Home

Edited by John Zimm

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012, 226 pp., $22.95

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

There are more than 11,000 of them. Carefully organized and pasted into large folio scrapbooks, they are copies of letters written by Wisconsin soldiers and published in newspapers throughout the state. Edwin B.Quiner collected them for use as reference materials for his magisterial military history of the state's role in the Civil War. Then, in 1867, he donated them to the Wisconsin Historical Society and, over the years, they have been quoted in scores of books and articles.

They presented John Zimm with the daunting task of making "selections I thought would give the clearest snapshot of the part played by Wisconsin's men and women in the variety of situations and challenges they faced." The letters reproduced in This Wicked Rebellion: Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers Write Home show that Zimm has succeeded admirably. The letters are eloquently written and contain a treasure trove of information.

The letters are organized categorically rather than chronologically, thus enabling the reader to become immersed in the experiences of the soldiers in various situations. For instance, a soldier camped along the upper Potomac River declares "This is a great country to stay in." He recounts days spent berry picking, foraging, playing poker, and "calling on the country belles..." But a member of the 8^th Wisconsin stationed in northern Mississippi complains "of lizards, snakes, and varmints by the million..."

A member of the 8^th Wisconsin at Hamburg TN in April 1862 gives a graphic description of his camp after the Battle of Shiloh. "All I can say is the ground we cover extends 13 miles in length," he wrote, "and three miles in width, all one entire camp, and the river is lined with transports, for miles each way, loaded with troops." As a veteran, he knowingly reports that "Men get lost in the camps, and it is almost impossible to find the way back, if one goes far from home."

The routine of camp life is relieved by picket duty. A soldier identified only as "Stew" writes from Camp Griffin, VA in the dramatic style to, perhaps, impress the paper's editor. Beyond the picket reserve, he writes, is "the dark woods. I know every every track here; many a long hour have I spent on those bleak hills. Many a time have I traced those winding paths in storm and darkness."

Wisconsin soldiers served in all theaters of the war. The letters Zimm has selected describing their experiences on the battlefield are searing in their intensity and heartbreaking in their candor. Writing a week after Shiloh, Sgt. Calvin Morely of the 18^th Wisconsin recalls "In a field fronting the peach orchard...a variety of bullets might have been gathered...as they were lying about on the ground like fruit from a heavily leaden tree after a storm."

A letter from Arthur MacArthur, father of General Douglas MacArthur, written after the capture of Missionary Ridge, emphasizes the glorious feeling of battle that most soldiers had lost by 1864. "I immediately took the colors and carried them the balance of the way," he wrote to his own father, "and had the honor of planting the colors of the old 24^th Wis., on the top of Mission Ridge, immediately in front of Bragg's old headquarters." With an ego he clearly passed on to his son, MacArthur boasted that he "showed the old flag to Gen. Sheridan immediately upon his arrival upon the top of the ridge."

Some of the most telling letters Zimm selects reveal the feelings of Wisconsin soldiers when they encounter African Americans and confront the realities of slavery and emancipation. After seeing the "peculiar institution" for himself, a letter writer from Leavenworth, KS in early 1862 admits that "never yet have I found one contented, and never yet seen one that was loyal to his master; and the stories of their careless happiness are forgeries, I firmly believe." A soldier camped near Lake Providence in Louisiana opined that arming former slaves is "a great thing, and will be a great lever in helping to crush this rebellion." But S.R. Knowles, writing from a hospital ward in Newport News, VA spoke for many in 1862 when he declared "I have not seen a soldier, officer or private, but despises them and wishes them off the continent."

After walking across the Prairie Grove battlefield, Sidney H. Nichols expressed the sentiments of many when he asked "When will peace, a peace satisfactory to us, overshadow our country..." Taken together, these letters paint an intimate picture of the 80,000 men from Wisconsin who went to war and of the 11,000 who never returned home. They speak eloquently to us of a time when uncommon valor became a common virtue.

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When General Grant Expelled the Jews

By Jonathan D. Sarna

Shocken, 2012, 201 pp., $24.95

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

The general never mentioned the order in his Personal Memoirs. His wife, however, was not so reticent. She called it "obnoxious" and in her memoirs declared that "he had no right to make an order against any special sect."

The order was General Order 11, issued by Major General Ulysses S. Grant on Dec. 17, 1862. The "special sect" referred to by his wife, Julia Dent Grant, was the Jews living within the military department commanded by her husband. In what has been described as the most anti-Semitic government document ever issued in America, the Union's most successful field commander and future president of the United States declared that all Jews "are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order." The order also explained the reasoning behind Grant's edict. "The Jews, as a class," the order read, were "violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department."

Although the order was ordered quickly and quietly rescinded by President Lincoln and directly affected only a small number of Jews in Kentucky and Tennessee, its brief and tumultuous life energized the Jewish community throughout the North and came back to haunt Grant during his run for the presidency in 1868. The story is told with scholarly analysis and in a clear, concise narrative style by Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor at Brandies University and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Sarna recounts the first life of the order in a concise 50 pages. His retelling of Paducah, KY merchant Cesar Kaskel's odyssey to Washington, DC to inform President Lincoln of the injustice being done to a group of loyal citizens judiciously balances a few facts and a bounty of apocrypha that surrounds this impromptu White House call. What's known for sure is that Lincoln quickly ordered Henry Halleck, general-in-chief of the armies, to countermand the order. Choosing his words carefully, Halleck ordered that "if such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked." On Jan.6, 1863, just a few days after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, Grant revoked his ill conceived directive.

But why did Grant issue it in the first place? Unless he was a religious and cultural bigot, which he wasn't, there must have been forces beyond his control that pushed him into action. While it's hard to discern what goes on in a person's mind, Sarna investigates several possible motives, including the involvement of Grant's father, Jesse, in a speculative and possibly illegal scheme to trade in valuable contraband cotton. Grant's relationship with his father was always complicated and the fact that his father's partners were Jewish probably exacerbated the general's frustration.

But it was what the order implied rather than what it did that really caused alarm throughout the Jewish community. "Fault for many of the other evils inevitably associated with war --" Sarna explains, "smuggling, speculating, price gouging, swindling, and producing 'shoddy merchandise for the military – was similarly laid upon the doorstep of 'the Jews.'" Singling out Jews "as a class" rekindled memories of centuries of persecution and Jewish organizations throughout the North were galvanized into action as never before.

The story now shifts to 1868 when Grant became the Republican nominee for president. As an overwhelmingly favorite to win, his opponents looked for anything that could damage him. General Order 11 was resurrected and again became a hot button issue. Grant weathered this storm, too. In fact, Sarna asserts, that "Having apologized for his anti-Jewish order in 1868, he became highly sensitive, even hypersensitive, to Jewish concerns." Sarna points out that Grant "appointed more Jews to public office than any of his predecessors. He sought to bring Jews (as well as Blacks) into the mainstream of American political life. He acted to promote human rights for Jews around the world."

For a man who did so much to atone for one hasty, ill conceived, order issued under the stress of significant military and administrative responsibilities, it is probably best that he never knew that the tomb in which he and his wife rest, on Riverside Drive in New York City, was modeled after the mausoleum of the Roman emperor Hadrian, the same emperor who brutally put down the Jewish revolt against Rome and killed Jews by the thousands. Even great men can do little to escape the ironies of history.

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George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel

By Brian Steel Wills

University Press of Kansas, 2012, 585 pp., $39.95

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

Historian Bruce Catton believed George Henry Thomas was "certainly one of the four or five best soldiers on either side in the whole war." Reading Brian Steel Wills' definitive biography of the blue Virginian makes it clear why Thomas is now ranked among the pantheon of Civil War generals.

Known as "The Rock of Chickamauga" to history and "Old Pap" to his men, Wills vividly documents the personal complexities of the man that contributed to his capabilities as a soldier. Thomas left no personal papers but Wills has diligently mined previously untapped bibliographic source material to present a nuanced, evenhanded evaluation of the soldier William T. Sherman called "true as steel."

Born into a slave-holding family in Southampton County, VA, Thomas witnessed Nat Turner's great servile uprising of 1831 as a teenager and fled with his family through fields and marsh to reach the safety of the county seat. "The event," Wills maintains, "surely presented him with a starkly drawn firsthand picture of the volatility and dangers inherent in a system of forced labor."

Thomas graduate West Point in 1840 and embarked on a military career that would last the rest of his life. He fought the Seminoles in Florida, Mexicans along the Rio Grande, and Kiowas and Comanches in Texas. He also found time to court and marry Frances Lucretia Kellogg of Troy, NY and return to West Point as an instructor.

When Virginia joined the Confederacy, many wondered what Thomas would do. For him, there was never any question. His loyalty to the uniform he wore and dedication to the nation it represented was strong, steady, and unwavering, much like the man himself. His decision cost him dearly; his sisters never spoke to him again.

Thomas' success on the battlefield is unrivaled. He gained the Union's first significant victory at Mill Springs, KY, reminded his commander that "this army doesn't retreat" at Stones River, stood steadfast on Snodgrass Hill and saved the Army of the Cumberland from destruction at Chickamauga, vowed to hold Chattanooga "'til we starve," proudly watched his men storm Missionary Ridge, and achieved the closest thing to a battle of annihilation by destroying the Army of Tennessee at Nashville.

Thomas was not given to making speeches, but when he bid farewell to his beloved army, his praise was heartfelt and eloquent. "We have not only broken down one of the most formidable rebellions that ever threatened the existence of any country," he said, "but the discipline of the Army of the Cumberland alone has civilized two hundred thousand valuable patriots and citizens."

Wills poignantly recounts Thomas' unsettled postwar years. He refused to play the political games practiced in the peacetime army nor would he become a self-promoter for post or rank. His ire was aroused, however, when his achievement at Nashville was questioned.

Thomas died at his post at the Presidio in San Francisco on March 28, 1870 while serving as commander of the Division of the Pacific. In 1879, his comrades in the Society of the Army of the Cumberland unveiled a magnificent bronze statue of Thomas in Washington, DC. He is mounted on his horse, sitting ramrod straight, hat off, surveying the country he did so much to save.

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