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

Barksdale's Charge:
The True High Tide of Confederacy at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863

Phillip Thomas Tucker

Casemate, 2013, 315 pp., $32.95

Review by Gordon Berg

Conventional Civil War wisdom has it that Pickett's Charge represents the Confederacy's "high tide" at Gettysburg. But Phillip Thomas Tucker's thoroughly researched, if highly over-written, analysis of the attack by Brigadier General William Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade against Union forces in the Peach Orchard on the afternoon of July 2 presents substantial evidence for his claim that Barksdale's attack "came closer to achieving decisive success and winning it all for the Confederacy than any other assault of the battle."

Tucker has clearly spent substantial time in the Mississippi Department of History and Archives unearthing interesting, if not always informative, anecdotes about the 1,600 officers and men of the 13th, 17th, 18th, and 21st regiments, four of the eleven Mississippi regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia. Veterans of every major engagement in the east since the war's opening salvoes, the yeoman farmers and sons of Mississippi's planter elite had "acquired a reputation for ferocity, combat prowess, and lethality" at the mouths of Union cannons on Malvern Hill and in the rubble strewn streets of Fredericksburg.

They were led by a successful lawyer and politician with an egalitarian sensibility. Sprung from humble roots, Barksdale's only previous military experience was as a staff officer during the Mexican War. Nevertheless, he quickly became a successful combat commander and a firm disciplinarian with a reputation as a soldier friendly officer who could always be found at the front of his men. At the end of the Seven Days campaign, Robert E. Lee declared that Barksdale exhibited "the highest qualities of a soldier."

The sweltering afternoon of July 2 found Barksdale's Brigade, part of James Longstreet's First Corps, in the cool shade of Pitzer's Woods facing Joseph and Mary Sherfy's peach orchard. What they saw across a gently rolling field was a field commander's dream: an entire Union Corps, Daniel Sickles' Third, thrust out in a salient "hanging in the air," and vulnerable on three sides. Tucker correctly concludes that "More than any other Southern unit because it directly faced the Peach Orchard, the Mississippi Brigade was now in the key position to exploit the tactical vulnerability of Sickles' salient." After breaking through Sickles' front, Tucker contends, "the successful assault could be continued east all the way to Cemetery Ridge and the fulfillment of Confederate dreams."

Tucker insightfully conveys the feelings of Barksdale and his men as they waited impatiently for the order to advance. When the order finally came, Tucker asserts, "it was Barksdale's charge more than any other that would reap the fruits of victory, or else signal the failure of Confederate strategy." What happened next and why has been the subject of debate among old soldiers, historians, and Civil War enthusiasts ever since. Those questions include whether the honor of achieving the Confederate high water mark. In addition to Pickett's Virginians and Barksdale's Mississippians, some historians bestow the honor on the Georgia regiments of Brigadier General Ambrose Wright. All agree, however, on the bravery of the Mississippians in the face of superior numbers and overwhelming artillery fire. The Brigade lost about 800 officers and men, including its commanding general.

Unfortunately, Tucker's scholarship is often overtaken by his purple prose. He seems to have never met a cliche he didn't like or an adjective he didn't use. An editor with an old fashioned red pencil would have benefited author and reader alike. Nevertheless, this monograph takes a detailed look at an event in a battle about which so much has been written.

______________________________________

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.

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.”

______________________________________

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.

______________________________________

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.

______________________________________

President Lincoln's Recruiter:
General Lorenzo Thomas and the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War
Michael A. Eggleston
McFarland, 2013, 208 pp., $39.95

Review by Gordon Berg

When the Civil War began, Colonel Lorenzo Thomas was a paper pusher; as the army's adjutant general, much of his work involved processing resignations from officers planning to join the Confederate States of America. If this were the extent of his wartime activities, he would have hardly merited Michael Eggleston's earnest, if uneven, effort to document his life. But when Edwin M. Stanton was appointed Secretary of War in January 1862, Thomas' life changed dramatically. His duties during the rest of the war more than justify documenting his vital contribution to the eventual Union victory.

Stanton and Thomas instantly disliked each other and, in March 1863, Stanton ordered his nemesis to the Mississippi Valley to get him out of Washington and to recruit African American men into military service as permitted under terms of the Emancipation Proclamation. Eggleston rightly concludes that Thomas "was not simply a senior recruiter, but a man charged with initiating a new Union policy, breaking down opposition to African American soldiers and resolving issues with the new policy." It was a big job and Thomas proved to be just the man to carry it out. According to Eggleston, "he managed to recruit and organize 41 percent of the African Americans who fought in the Civil War."

Eggleston does an excellent job describing how the troops were raised and the process that was created to select and train white officers to lead the black regiments. He rightly concludes, though, that Thomas' job involved much more. Thomas had to address issues about unequal pay, the care and feeding of the women and children who frequently accompanied the men into Union camps, finding physicians to treat the sick, procuring quality equipment, and providing remedial education and training for an illiterate soldiery. Eggleston quotes from Thomas' final report dated Oct. 3, 1865, in which Thomas admits, "I entered upon the duty by no means certain at what I might be able to effect." Thomas' effect was indeed substantial; by the end of the war, African Americans comprised 12 percent of the Union Army's strength.

The end of the war did not end Thomas' military service or his contentious relationship with Stanton. Thomas resumed his duties as adjutant general until February 1868, when he inserted himself into the bitter confrontation between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress. Johnson asked Thomas to serve as Secretary of War, replacing Stanton. Thomas accepted, with the provision that he be restored to his wartime rank of major general. This arrangement violated the Tenure of Office Act, legislation passed by Congress to hamstring Johnson from filling his administration with supporters of his plans to reconstruct the South. Thomas' appointment and the attempt to remove Stanton from office gave Radical Republicans the justification they needed to initiate impeachment proceedings against Johnson.

Thomas testified before the Senate to the effect that his actions were designed to test the Act's legality in the courts. According to Eggleston, "Lorenzo Thomas may have turned a number of Radicals toward acquittal." Johnson was acquitted by a single vote and Thomas' poor performance on the stand made him a pathetic laughingstock to many. He returned to the position of adjutant general until he retired in 1869. Thomas died in Washington, DC in March 1875.

Unfortunately, several sections of Eggleston's book do not seem germane to the story of Thomas as a "Recruiter of United States Colored Troops." For example, Eggleston describes the significant battles fought by the USCT and the mini biographies of African Americans who received the Medal of Honor, which smack of padding. He also includes a "Biographical Dictionary," which takes up 14 pages with irrelevant personalities, including John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Benito Juarez, Sylavanus Thayer, Carl Schurz and James Monroe. In addition, Eggleston reproduces all 11 Articles of Impeachment, which could easily have been summarized in the text. Last, Appendix B, "Early Recruiting Efforts," documents claims of African American participation in the Confederate Army, which includes sources that readers should investigate and evaluate before drawing any conclusions.

Lorenzo Thomas deserves a comprehensive, scholarly biography. To Michael Eggleston's credit, he understands Thomas' important contributions to the Union cause and his monograph should be used by future biographers as an appropriate place to begin their investigations.______________________________________

HEADER LINK BANNER

Review by Gordon Berg