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Review - "Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country" by Fay Yarbrough
[Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay A. Yarbrough (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Hardcover, 10 maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:207/280. ISBN:978-1-4696-6511-5. $32.95]
In a flurry of diplomatic maneuvering during July and August 1861, the Confederate government successfully signed alliance treaties with nearly all of the most populous nations of Indian Territory, chief among them the Muscogee (Creeks), Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. It was a stunning turn of events. Only three decades had passed since the Indian Removal Act of 1830 initiated a mass migration across the Mississippi1, yet those same peoples were willing to risk their prosperous renewal in order to ally themselves with a rebellious new nation founded by the very same Deep South states (in the case of the Choctaw, Mississippi and Alabama) that were instrumental to the process of traumatic displacement. After the recalcitrant Cherokee of the dominant Ross faction and a host of other Indian Territory and Southern Plains peoples and bands finally agreed to alliances of their own later in the year, all of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" had become Confederate allies, though the Muscogee and Cherokee in particular remained violently split. In the century that has passed since the publication of Annie Abel's pioneering work on slaveholding Indian participation in the American Civil War, the motivating factors behind those alliances have been explored in numerous books and articles, but Fay Yarbrough's Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country represents the first book-length study of what was behind that tribal government's earnest participation in the war.
Yarbrough dutifully restates the most commonly cited reasons behind Choctaw willingness to ally themselves with the Confederacy, among them the federal government's sudden abandonment of forts in the region, financial insecurity, Choctaw society's gradual transformation into one bearing significant cultural affinity with the Deep South, and concerns both present and future for the preservation of slavery. Choctaw leaders held justified fears that the federal government's war priorities would cause it to default on the financial parts of its treaty obligations, and the war itself would directly threaten tribal investments held in trust (the greater balance of which was invested in southern states). Over the several generations preceding the American Civil War, the Choctaw's traditional matrilineal social organization and clan culture became heavily altered both legally and socially, gradually taking on many characteristics shared by their white southern neighbors. Associated with that cultural process were gender role reversals. With fewer prospects for war and less dependence on wild game hunting by the early 1800s, Choctaw males took up many of the agriculturally related duties that Choctaw women had typically performed. All of these changes drew the nation closer to the American, and, in more specific ways, Southern agrarian culture and economy. Choctaw laws and government institutions enshrined in their post-Removal constitution also mirrored the American political system in many ways (especially that of the Deep South). Of course, a major element of the aforementioned affinity with southern culture was slavery. The Choctaw had enslaved blacks since the early eighteenth century, and by 1860 slaves represented up to 14% of the Choctaw population in Indian Territory. In the book, Yarbrough discusses similarities and differences between the slave systems of the Choctaw and white South, and she finds clear evidence that the Choctaw defense of slavery (rhetorically, socially, legally, etc.) corresponded in many ways to that of the Deep South.
The author makes her greatest contributions to our understanding Choctaw Confederate motivations by paving new ground in two additional areas, those involving issues of Choctaw sovereignty and masculinity. According to Yarbrough, Choctaw leaders gambled that secessionist and Confederate ideology grounded in localism and States Rights might better preserve their own tenuous sovereignty. Those leaders certainly had good reason to be wary. The presence and strength of militant abolitionism right across the border in Kansas was widely seen as a clear menace, and the Kansas governor himself expressed a desire to expedite the elimination of Indian title to lands in the territory with a view toward creating another free state. Secessionist promoters from Texas and Arkansas also eagerly reminded the Choctaw of William Seward's comments during the 1860 election season that Indian Territory lands should be seized by the government and opened to white settlement. Militant abolitionist threats and those made by the incoming president's right-hand man must have disturbed many Choctaws who were wavering. Generous financial promises along with favorable military and political concessions further made joining the Confederacy a risk Choctaw leaders were willing take. Some have suggested that the Choctaw reluctantly succumbed to outside pressure, but it is clear from Yarbrough's research in Choctaw rhetoric, legislation, and volunteerism that their pro-Confederate enthusiasm was very real and very ardent.
Yarbrough also convincingly argues that reclaiming a lost, or much faded, source of manhood in the form of traditional warrior culture (and all that stemmed from it, including important naming rituals) was a major part in motivating Choctaw men to fight alongside the Confederate Army. Obviously, as one might argue that that end could also have been served by fighting on the other side, this factor went hand in hand with the others outlined above. White settlement of traditional Choctaw lands severely restricted opportunities for Choctaw men to (literally) make a name for themselves through intertribal warfare and successful long-range hunting expeditions, and they were forced to redirect masculine expression through other more peaceful and domestic outlets. The Choctaw were able to preserve some of their martial traditions through the paramilitary organization of light horsemen (an interesting judicial and social policing force that is well documented in the book), though membership in that group was very small. Thus, many Choctaw men leapt at the opportunity to join the first Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment2.
With the notable exception of W. Craig Gaines's groundbreaking history of John Drew's Confederate Cherokee regiment3, the popular and scholarly publication of unit histories continues to overlook the many battalions and regiments sourced from Indian Territory nations that fought for either side. Though Yarbrough's book cannot be thought of as a proper unit history of the First Regiment, Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles (which was organized in the summer of 1861 and led by former Indian agent Col. Douglas Cooper and mixed-blood Choctaw Lt. Col. Tandy Walker), it does provide notable insights. The author's extensive examination of enlistment and service records heavily reinforce the conclusion that Choctaw support for the war was not coerced. With letters and diary sources sparse, the service records and attached notes provide the best available insight into the wheres and whens of Choctaw enlistment. They also help explain absences. Some demographic insights (ex. the average Choctaw recruit was slightly older than the average white Confederate volunteer) can gleaned from those records as well. Even before the treaty with the Confederacy was confirmed, nearly 800 men had volunteered for the regiment, and many hundreds more were added to the rolls during the first half of the conflict. Yarbrough's very brief summary of the regiment's active service over a wide geographical area of operations that included parts of Indian Territory, Missouri, and Arkansas along with her noting of a precipitous drop in enlistment during the second half of the conflict both reinforce the common view expressed in the literature that the July 17, 1863 Battle of Honey Springs, a disastrous Confederate defeat, marked a turning point in home and fighting front morale and support for the war among the allied nations of Indian Territory. Others have suggested that the sharp increase in desertion preceding Honey Springs in May-June 1863 (which was rare before then) was also indicative of growing disaffection among the Choctaw, but Yarbrough offers up a possible, and reasonable, alternative explanation that seasonal crop demands might have had as much or more to do with the exodus from the ranks during that particular time. Regardless, it is made clear in this study that the soldiers of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw were as steadfast as most white Southern volunteers in their adherence to the Confederate cause and willingness to fight for it..
An extension of Yarbough's excellent contribution to the essay anthology Civil War Wests4, the book's final section explores disputes over the Emancipation Proclamation's application to Indian Territory and Choctaw resistance during the Reconstruction period and beyond toward granting full citizenship rights to the nation's freedpeople. That latter process dragged on for twenty years after the end of the Civil War and has restrictions for descendants that to this day spark controversy and legal challenge.
Fay Yarbrough's Choctaw Confederates is an award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee. Similarly, in the scholarship's discussion of pro-Confederate Indians the Watie faction of Cherokee garners the lion's share of popular and scholarly awareness, and Yarbrough successfully redirects attention toward the native people that proved as a nation to be the most thoroughly Confederate. The book very effectively draws social, cultural, and ideological parallels between the Choctaw state and southern states that seceded from the US, arriving at the undeniable conclusion that the Choctaws were as deserving of the "Confederate" label as, for example, the average Mississippi volunteer. The volume also serves as a major contribution to the study of the black enslavement views and practices of Indian Territory nations. Finally, one can hope that Yarbrough's more broadbrush treatment of military events might spark some future scholar to write a full history of Choctaw military participation in the Civil War as well as the first comprehensive treatment of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment's wartime service. Both would be welcome additions to a Civil War military literature that fully embraces coverage of previously understudied participants but still continues to sideline the profound experiences of Indian Territory nations that fought in the war in notable fashion from the conflict's very beginning.
1 - An often overlooked aspect of the removal treaties such as the one signed by the Choctaw is that individuals were given the option to stay, giving up their tribal sovereignty in exchange for US citizenship and land from the state. In the case of the Choctaw, almost a third of the population elected to remain in Mississippi when the rest of the nation relocated to Indian Territory in the early 1830s. Though outside the boundaries of Yarbrough's research, it would be interesting to read about the experiences of the remaining "Mississippi Band" of Choctaws during the lead-in to the Civil War and learn more about what they did during the conflict.
2 - The Chickasaw are related to the Choctaw by language and culture (and lived among and adjacent to them in Indian Territory), but they successfully resisted outside pressure to become a part of the Choctaw nation and remained independent. Their story, and their relationship as fighting comrades in the First Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment, is touched upon briefly but is generally beyond the purview of Yarbrough's narrative.
3 - Follow the link to read a review of W. Craig Gaines's The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew's Regiment of Mounted Rifles, Updated Edition (LSU Press, 2017). First published in 1989, this landmark study was reissued in paperback nearly three decades later, unchanged but with a new preface.
4 - See Yarbrough's essay "Dis Land Which Jines Dat of Ole Master's': The Meaning of Citizenship for the Choctaw Freedpeople," in Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, ed. by Adam Arenson & Andrew Graybill , 224-41 (Oakland, University of California Press, 2015).
Labels: Book Reviews, Reviews - Civil War Society, Reviews - Indian Conflicts, Reviews - Politics
Various book news items
1. Civil War political generals (or "politician generals" as one recent author prefers) came in all stripes, but I am guessing that one of the rarest birds was the West Point graduate who served in the US House or Senate before the war. Maybe there are more, but without researching it or having a better memory I can only think of one. Samuel Ryan Curtis, who graduated from West Point in 1831 and resigned from the army soon after before briefly returning to uniform as a Mexican War volunteer officer, was in his second term as US Representative (R) of Iowa's first congressional district during the secession crisis. In 1861, Curtis resigned his House seat to accept the colonelcy of the Second Iowa and later that year a brigadier general appointment in the Union Army. Though he won laurels as the victor of the Battle of Pea Ridge, was quickly promoted to major general, and went on to lead district and department-level posts in the Trans-Mississippi, Curtis never became of focus of a full biography. For many years it has been known to us that historian Bill Shea was plugging away at a much-anticipated Curtis life and career history, but no concrete news about its actual publication has emerged until now. Scheduled for a November 2022 release from Potomac Books, Shea's Union General: Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West should finally reward the general with the major biographical treatment he deserves.
2. Before historian Timothy Smith recently launched his own multi-volume series, no other Vicksburg Campaign writing project has come close to matching the comprehensive breadth of the classic Ed Bearss trilogy. Rather well detailed in Bearss's books, the Chickasaw Bayou and Mississippi Central components of the late-1862 phase of the Vicksburg campaign, though both large in scale, have not been revisited at comparable depth in any later publication. However, that will change very soon. The history of those operations, due for an update, will be the focus of Smith's next installment Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25-December 31, 1862 (Kansas, May '22). Ever since Smith made known his plans for this series, this was the volume I have been looking forward to most of all.
3. McFarland has two more southern railroad studies currently scheduled for release in 2022. Things may change, but Walter R. Green's The Nashville and Decatur in the Civil War: History of an Embattled Railroad currently has a May publication window. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad in the Civil War: The Struggle for Control of the Nation's Longest Railway from Dan Lee is also supposed to be released this year. Maybe we'll get a wartime history of the Memphis & Charleston RR sometime down the line, too.
Labels: Book News
Review - "The Laird Rams: Britain's Ironclads Built for the Confederacy, 1862-1923" by Andrew English
[The Laird Rams: Britain's Ironclads Built for the Confederacy, 1862-1923 by Andrew R. English (McFarland, 2021). Softcover, photographs, illustrations, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:v,158/212. ISBN:978-1-4766-8276-1. $45]
While native southern industry clearly possessed a limited but significant capability of converting existing craft into ironclad warships or even constructing such vessels entirely from scratch, Confederate naval planners nevertheless quickly realized foreign sources, particularly the shipyards of Britain and France, would need to be tapped if the southern coastline was to have any chance of being adequately defended. Of course, much attention has been paid to British-built ships purchased by the Confederate Navy such as the commerce raiders CSS Alabama and Shenandoah, but even more formidable ships were funded though ultimately not delivered into Confederate hands. Andrew English's The Laird Rams: Britain's Ironclads Built for the Confederacy, 1862-1923 tells the full history of two such vessels contracted by the Confederacy but seized by British authorities before they could leave the country, the controversial double-turreted ironclads that came to be known as the "Laird Rams."
The biographies and activities of Confederate purchasing agents sent to Europe have been well documented in the very recent Civil War literature. The best man the Richmond government had in Britain, James D. Bulloch, has been the subject of at least two biographies published within the last ten years, and he is the Confederate representative most closely associated with the Laird Rams. English does a fine job of recounting the story of the Laird Rams from the military, economic, and political perspectives of all the primary stakeholders: the Confederate government, the US government, the British imperial government, and the Laird shipbuilding firm. The Laird company very willingly collaborated with Bulloch in trying to keep Confederate ram construction and ownership secret, but both truths were exposed early on and the business deal threatened to cause a major rift in relations between the United States and Great Britain. Though largely willing to look the other way at first, the British government by 1863 was engaged in a great deal of diplomatic back and forth with the US when it came to the fate of the two rams. Finally, after seeing its best interest in avoiding war with the US, British authorities seized both ships in 1864 and arranged for them to be purchased by the Royal Navy.
Throughout the first half of the book, English clearly illustrates the delicate (and often shady) balance struck between the British government's enforcement of its own neutrality laws and policies on the one side and on the other its general lack of willingness to impose itself upon private business dealings. As all of the best works on trans-Atlantic Civil War diplomacy have also noted (and there has been a number of them published in recent years), this study appropriately stresses US superiority over their Confederate rivals when it came to diplomatic appointments, intelligence networking, funding, and cause messaging. As outlined in the book, skillful and unrelenting US pressure in the matter of the rams eventually succeeded, but it is also recognized that their Confederate opponents labored under major diplomatic handicaps. As others before him have done, English traces the ways in which Confederate agents, due to their unofficial status, could never gain access to important diplomatic channels available to their US foes.
The most interesting design features of the ships themselves, which were called Nos. 294 and 295 during construction and HMS Wivern and Scorpion in 1864, are well explained in the book, as are their strengths and weaknesses stemming from the many compromises associated with building warships to specific tasks (ex. to reduce draft for coastal service, the rams were flat-bottomed and thus did not ride or handle well in stormy, mid-oceanic conditions). The author also informatively contrasts the turret design implemented in the Laird rams with that of Ericsson's US monitors. Neither ram fired its guns in anger, so we'll never know how the ships might have fared against the US Navy or against the ships and shore fortifications of any foreign power at war with Britain.
In meticulously documenting the long Royal Navy careers of the Wivern and Scorpion, the second half of English's study convincingly refutes the popular opinion commonly expressed then (by the British government, navy, and press) and now by many modern observers who have taken their cue from the past that the ironclads were "failures." Purchased and designed for harbor defense and for breaking the Union Navy's inner blockade of the Confederate coastline, the ships were never intended to spend the bulk of their service cruising the oceans, so much of the criticisms leveled at their awkward seaworthiness as part of the Royal Navy are rather misplaced. In being assigned the role of port guardian at key locations across world, especially in the Pacific and Caribbean, the ironclads fulfilled an important task by freeing up for active service Royal Navy warships more suitable to patrolling the empire.
Overall, English's narrative very effectively situates the long history of the Laird rams (the Scorpion sank at sea while under tow in 1903 and Wivern was finally scrapped in 1923) within the context of an age of very rapid changes in warship design and technology. During the decades between the launching of the first ironclads and the emergence of steel warships, innovation was so fast paced that basically every vessel could be considered experimental and design features that were state of the art during construction were arguably obsolete by commissioning. Used to seeing readily identifiable ship classes, those who observed any large concentration of Royal Navy ironclads during the decades following the American Civil War frequently remarked about how very different they all looked from each other. The book is very convincing in its thematic claim that the Laird rams should be regarded not as failures but rather as important naval architectural and technological waypoints in the transition between the last generation of wooden ships of the line and the pre-Dreadnought battleships that ushered in the Great War's "castles of steel."
Labels: Book Reviews, Reviews - Naval, Reviews - Politics
Booknotes: First Fallen
New Arrival:
• First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North's First Civil War Hero by Meg Groeling (Savas Beatie, 2021).
Every Civil War reader is familiar with the May 24, 1861 death of Col. Elmer Ellsworth of the 11th New York "Fire Zouaves" at the hands of an enraged Alexandria hotel owner. Being the first Union officer killed in the conflict immediately vaulted Ellsworth into the ranks of national martyrdom, and his avenger (Pvt. Francis Brownell, who shot and bayoneted to death Ellsworth's killer) achieved a measure of fame of his own. However, while Ellsworth's death is one of the most famous events of the early war period, it's been over sixty years since a full-length biography was published. Meg Groeling's First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North's First Civil War Hero thus stakes claim to being the "first modern biography."
Before his death, young Ellsworth had already achieved a degree of national renown as one of the leading figures of antebellum "Zouave Fever," which he parlayed into command of a 90-Day Zouave regiment. From the description: "Ellsworth and his entertaining U.S. Zouave Cadets drill team had performed at West Point, in New York City, and for President, James Buchanan before returning home to Chicago. He helped his friend and law mentor Abraham Lincoln in his quest for the presidency, and when Lincoln put out the call for troops after Fort Sumter was fired upon, Ellsworth responded. Within days he organized more than 1,000 New York firefighters into a regiment of volunteers."
Indeed, Ellworth's personal relationship with the Lincoln family remains a major part of his historiographical and reader appeal. More from the description: "When he was killed, the Lincolns rushed to the Navy Yard to view the body of the young man they had loved as a son. Mary Lincoln insisted he lie in state in the East Room of the White House."
The older biography referenced above is Ruth Painter Randall's Colonel Elmer Ellsworth: A biography of Lincoln's friend and first hero of the Civil War (1960). As is the case with nearly every Civil War topic updated after such a long period of time, "new information has been found that gives readers and historians a better understanding of the Ellsworth phenomenon and his deep connections to the Lincoln family." "(G)rounded in years of archival research, " First Fallen "examines every facet of Ellsworth's complex, fascinating life." If you're interested in taking a deeper dive than ever before into Ellsworth's life, this looks like the book for you.
Labels: Booknotes
Booknotes: Thunder in the Thickets
• Thunder in the Thickets: Shiloh's Soldiers Speak by Mark Russell Richardson (Author, 2021).
Of course, there are already a healthy number of full-length Shiloh operational and tactical battle histories from which to choose, all worthwhile. However, Mark Richardson's Thunder in the Thickets: Shiloh's Soldiers Speak was not created to compete with those type of works from Sword, McDonough, Daniel, Cunningham, or Smith. Instead, Richardson's book "rehumanizes the combatants of the late American Civil War by recreating Shiloh exclusively through raw excerpts from firsthand accounts and memoirs. Experience the bloody conflict through a tapestry of real-time personal narratives and supporting information drawn only from sources immediately available to frontline troops during the events of April 6–7, 1862."
According to the author's preface, the ground-level perspective presented in Thunder in the Thickets depicts Shiloh as "a contest between individual men," its collection of quotes written by those "personally immersed in the thick of the battle" (and mostly from captain and below). In common cause with the traditional descriptions of Shiloh as a ferociously fought `soldier's battle´ between armies consisting largely of green troops, this book seeks to convey to readers the picture of a desperate battle during which a lack of training and experience was compensated for somewhat by "sheer will and stubborn resolve" on the part of those on the front line.
Officer and soldier quotes are presented in indented, bold-faced paragraphs (with parts consisting of information that could only have been known after the battle excised), and these are connected together by the author's two-part (Union and Confederate) bridging narrative. All of the material is annotated. From a quick glance through the bibliography, it appears that roughly 75 individual accounts were used. The final chapter offers information, where available, about the post-Shiloh lives of the contributing writers.
More from the description: "Not simply another American Civil War history, Thunder in the Thickets: Shiloh's Soldiers Speak is an entirely unique and innovative exploration of the human experience amid fierce combat."
Review - "Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War" by Lawrence Lee Hewitt
[Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt (University of Tennessee Press, 2021). Hardcover, photos, maps, image credits, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:xl,392. ISBN:978-1-62190-483-0. $49.95]
Lawrence Lee Hewitt is the professional historian most closely associated with Louisiana's Port Hudson Campaign. In addition to serving as the first manager of the Port Hudson State Historic Site and authoring one of the best books on the topic (from LSU Press, 1987's Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi)1, Hewitt has been collecting photographic images from the campaign for more than forty years now. The collection has reached such a high content number that Hewitt long believed Port Hudson to be the war's most photographed battlefield before challengers intervened and successfully convinced him otherwise. Still, being the third-most photographed battlefield2 is notable for one of the conflict's less-heralded campaigns, one that remains greatly overshadowed by its celebrated companion operation conducted just up the Mississippi. A great many of these carefully curated images are compiled in the stunning new volume Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War.
The answer to the question of why so many Port Hudson photographs involves many factors, including the operation being the war's longest siege and the battlefield's relatively short distance from New Orleans affording both access to photographers and abundant time for them to perform their laborious work. Hewitt organizes the book chronologically, with sections devoted to the biographies and activities of the six Port Hudson photographers that left their rich collections to posterity. The most notable contributions were made by William D. McPherson and his partner A.J. Oliver. Though initially drawn to the area for commercial reasons, McPherson and Oliver came to be hired directly by Union army commander Nathaniel Banks and were granted wide access to the front to photograph the siege and its aftermath. The author suggests that there might have been ulterior motives behind General Banks's desire to thoroughly and publicly document the operation, and that does seem like a very strong possibility. It has often been said that Banks craved the presidency, and images that powerfully conveyed both the immense strength of the Port Hudson defenses and the general's own successful siege efforts in overcoming them could be very useful to him for future political campaigns.
In a background section that critically informs readers of erroneous captions and common mistakes made (such as horizontal flipping of images), Hewitt provides readers with a very helpful analysis and appraisal of Port Hudson's photographic legacy in the existing literature. Also of interest is the author's discussion of the many trials involved in getting a book like this published. Obviously, a tome containing all of the hundreds of Port Hudson Campaign photos collected by Hewitt could not be affordably printed and priced (especially given the king's ransom demanded by some rights holders for reproduction), the Hewitt graciously credits the team at University of Tennessee Press for successfully negotiating the process and providing him the opportunity to make available a still pretty hefty 173 figures. Some of the originals are in rough shape but are included for details that can be seen and for their historical significance.
The part of the collection that was able to be published is remarkable in its range. In it readers will find numerous CDVs and photographs of individuals and groups along with equally numerous images of officer quarters, unit encampments, hospitals, graves, churches, civilian buildings, soldier barracks, earthworks of all kinds (among them trenches, lunettes, detached works, forts, and siege batteries), battle detritus, both intimate and panoramic views of the riverfront and battlefield landscape, and loads and loads of cannon. Hewitt organizes this assemblage into smaller groups that he in turn identifies and labels on clear maps for reader orientation. Captions are extensively researched and provide both historical context and fascinating discussions of technical and artistic achievements. The latter go far in justifying the merits of the book subtitle's claim regarding the collection's exceptional importance.
Of particular historical noteworthiness are many of the McPherson and Oliver photographs. According to Hewitt, the pair captured the only image we have of a Confederate army surrender ceremony in progress (see Fig. 23). Their work also affords early examples of skillfully executed combination printing and, as the author alleges, attempts at nighttime (or very low light) and time-lapse photography. While the equipment technology of the period did not allow actual movement to be shown without ruinous blurring, Hewitt believes a group of their photos represent the first photographs of troops "engaged" in battle. Photographs in figures 6-11, 13-17, and 19-22 were all taken during the active siege (thus, in Hewitt's estimation, technically "in action"), and Fig. 17 depicts infantry manning a trench cavalier separated from the enemy by only 40 yards. Port Hudson was not the first time black troops saw combat during the war, but the May 27 assault was the first major battle that they participated in, and the book contains a valuable photographic record of the men of the Louisiana Native Guard and where they fought. A photographer also captured images of the Port Hudson school for black soldiers established there.
A sturdy hardcover securely bound in landscape format of roughly 8" x 10" dimensions and printed on heavy, photo-friendly paper stock, the book gets a handsome presentation worthy of its significance. The publisher also deserves a great deal of credit for releasing it at a price point affordable for libraries and individual collectors alike.
Port Hudson should appeal to many readerships. First off, it is an essential new contribution to a Port Hudson Campaign historiography that still lags well behind that of its Vicksburg partner. The book is also a uniquely valuable addition to the libraries of Civil War photography enthusiasts, researchers, and collectors. Additionally, students of Civil War fortifications and artillery will reap major benefits from the volume's rich collection of images along those lines. Very highly recommended.
1- The standard campaign overview remains Ed Cunningham's The Port Hudson Campaign, 1862-1863, which was published in 1963 and remains in print today in paperback format. While Cunningham's classic is very bare bones by today's standards, David Edmonds's The Guns of Port Hudson (2 Vols, 1983-84) is exhaustive by comparison. You can count yourself fortunate to have that long out of print set in your home library, though in the 25 years since I first encountered them I haven't given the pair a second reading to see how well they hold up. From 1986, there's also William Spedale's Where Bugles Called and Rifles Gleamed. After a long gap, more recent developments include a 2012 title from Dennis Dufrene Civil War Baton Rouge, Port Hudson and Bayou Sara: Capturing the Mississippi, content from Donald Frazier's Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi (2015), and Russell Blount's The Longest Siege: Port Hudson, Louisiana, 1863 (2021). I have not read or even seen the Spedale, Dufrene, and Blount books, so I can't comment on any of those. All of this plus Hewitt's books together comprise a pretty solid library, though there remains room for an updated comprehensive treatment along the lines of what Timothy Smith is currently doing for Vicksburg.
2 - According to the author, in conjunction with establishing an unexplained set of rules and discussions with Civil War photography archivists and experts, Chattanooga, with its thousands of battlefield photographs, is the clear winner of the crown. Brandy Station (surprisingly) comes in second place making Port Hudson a very close third, although Hewitt believes that developments subsequent to those determinations might have already pushed Port Hudson past Brandy Station. It would be interesting to hear what other parties have to say about this.
Labels: Book Reviews, Reference Books/Research Materials, Reviews - Campaigns and Battles, Reviews - Photographic Studies, Reviews - Theater - West
Booknotes: A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky
• A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter edited by John David Smith and William Cooper, Jr. (UP of Ky, 2021).
Eighteen years old at the start of the war, Lexington's Frances D. Peter resided in a divided Border State city. The daughter of US army surgeon Dr. Robert Peter (who worked in the area's military hospitals), she resided in a well to do section of town, her house scarcely a block from that of the secessionist Morgan family that raised Confederate cavalry general John Hunt Morgan. Portions from her 1862-64 diary were published in 1976 under the title Window on the War. Adding a new scholarly introduction along with "more than two hundred additional diary entries, and hundreds of new annotations," John David Smith and William Cooper's A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter represents a major expansion and modernization of the material. Originally published in hardcover in 2000, this is the 2021 paperback reissue (seemingly unaltered). The information provided in the Peter diary and who wrote it are important additions to Civil War local, military, social, and women's history studies.
Beginning in January 1862 and ending in early April 1864, Peter's "candid diary chronicles Kentucky's invasion by Confederates under General Braxton Bragg in 1862, Lexington's monthlong occupation by General Edmund Kirby Smith, and changes in attitude among the enslaved population following the Emancipation Proclamation. As troops from both North and South took turns holding the city, she repeatedly emphasized the rightness of the Union cause and minced no words in expressing her disdain for 'the secesh.'" Like many other Kentucky Unionists, Peter was a stalwart supporter of the war effort. Though she had no use for Peace Democrats, Peters initially opposed many Lincoln administration policies, including emancipation (though she came to accept it by the fall of 1863).
An epileptic who ultimately succumbed to the condition in 1864 (a seizure event that August led to her death at the age of 21), Peter was often confined to her home, though she did receive an excellent local academy education, visited friends, and attended outside events before and during the war. When she was stuck at home, Peter actively sought news and information about the war beyond her window and relied on a combination of northern newspapers and a local network of female friends and acquaintances to provide it. Indeed, the greater focus of her diary is not on family life but rather outside social and war-related events.
More from the description: "Peter's descriptions of daily events in an occupied city provide valuable insights and a unique feminine perspective on an underappreciated aspect of the war. Until her death in 1864, Peter conscientiously recorded the position and deportment of both Union and Confederate soldiers, incidents at the military hospitals, and stories from the countryside." According to Smith and Cooper, the Peters diary also notes examples of the "assertiveness and empowerment of women necessitated by wartime conditions."
2021 - The CIVIL WAR BOOKS and AUTHORS Year in Review
BOOK OF THE YEAR
1. PORT HUDSON: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War by Lawrence Lee Hewitt (University of Tennessee Press).
A product of decades of persistent toil in image acquisition and in forensic photography research and analysis, Hewitt's book is a unique and important contribution to the historiography of the Port Hudson Campaign as well as the study of Civil War battlefield photography more generally. Even those readers with a high degree of familiarity with the published Port Hudson literature will be viewing the great majority of these images for the first time, and the book's documentation and presentation of the collection are both superb. [For more thoughts on this title, see the full Review (1/6/22)]
The Rest of the Year's TOP TEN (in no particular order)
2. Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay Yarbrough (University of North Carolina Press).
Yarbrough's book is the first truly expansive study of the Confederacy's staunchest ally among the nations of Indian Territory. Drawing parallels with the southern states, it illuminates both common and unique factors involved in Choctaw willingness to fight in the Civil War and details their profound commitment to defending slavery and controlling the parameters of tribal citizenship during Reconstruction and beyond. [Review forthcoming]
3. The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe (Louisiana State University Press).
In comprehensively assessing the impact of the elements on the war's fighting and home fronts, Noe creatively assigns weather what amounts to co-belligerent status and convincingly illustrates the ways in which Union superiority in coping with its effects played a major role in victory. [see the full 5/6/21 Review]
4. Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Course of the Civil War, June 23 - July 4, 1863 by David A. Powell and Eric J. Wittenberg (Savas Beatie).
By any measure a first-rank example of Civil War operational history writing, Powell and Wittenberg's full-length treatment finally propels the Tullahoma Campaign toward the wider appreciation it deserves as a critical component of the summer 1863 series of major Union victories that collectively altered the course of the war. [see the 2/4/21 Review]
5. "We Gave Them Thunder": Marmaduke's Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford (Ozarks Studies Institute).
In addition to being by far the best historical account of the operation, this book usefully documents the transition period between the end of realistic Confederate hopes of establishing a permanent presence in Missouri and the raiding strategy they employed during the second half of the war. [see the 6/8/21 Review]
6. The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23-July 4, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith (University Press of Kansas).
Of course the books fully deserve it, but I might as well just reserve a spot on the year-end list for every new title in Smith's Vicksburg Campaign series. [see the 9/29/21 Review]
7. Radical Sacrifice: The Rise and Ruin of Fitz John Porter by William Marvel (University of North Carolina Press).
In quite sympathetic yet still evenhanded fashion, Marvel provides readers with a superior treatment of Porter's Civil War career, his court martial, and his long personal quest after the war to restore rank and reputation. [see the 4/2/21 Review]
8. Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies by Earl J. Hess (Louisiana State University Press).
An excellent companion volume to his earlier book on military transportation titled Civil War Logistics, Hess's follow-up rigorously explains how each side addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) the steep challenges involved in supplying large armies on a continental scale. Also clearly explained is how superior Union leadership and management fostered victory in ways that cannot be accounted for by manpower and material superabundance alone. [see the 3/25/21 Review]
9. Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station: The Army of the Potomac's First Post-Gettysburg Offensive, From Kelly's Ford to the Rapidan, October 21 to November 20, 1863 by Jeffrey Wm. Hunt (Savas Beatie).
While Kent Masterson Brown's excellent 2021 study of Meade at Gettysburg (which could easily have made this list as well) showed the general's leadership qualities at their best, Hunt's detailed account of Meade's first offensive campaign reveals the army commander's strengths and weaknesses in a way that does not diminish his achievements yet raises critical concerns about the general's capacity to finish the job against Lee's army in Virginia. [see the 6/24/21 Review]
10. Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas–New Mexico Borderlands by James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely (University of Oklahoma Press).
Though a mini-flood of recent publications examining the Civil War-era American Southwest in ways both large and small has emerged in recent years, Blackshear and Ely's book documenting the war years in the trans-Pecos occupies a novel and important geographical and historical niche within that burgeoning literature. [see the 12/15/21 Review]
[Note: Some of the year's best titles can be found among the volume of 4Q releases. Those books become eligible for the following year's list (thus the reason why several 2020 books are in this compilation).]
Labels: Reading Lists
Coming Soon (January '22 Edition)
**NEW RELEASES1** Scheduled for JAN 2022:
• South Carolina in 1865 by Karen Stokes.
• Sons of East Tennessee: Civil War Veterans Divided and Reconciled by Jack Brubaker.
• When the Southern Lights Went Dark: The Lighthouse Establishment During the Civil War by Clifford & Clifford.
• Chicago to Appomattox: The 39th Illinois Infantry in the Civil War by Jason Baker.
• The Carnage was Fearful: The Battle of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862 by Michael Block.
Comments: I received a copy of the Stokes book already (see the Booknotes entry here). I recall hearing about the lighthouse book quite a while back (maybe a couple years or more), and it appears like the long-delayed release is finally imminent.
1 - These monthly release lists are not meant to be exhaustive compilations of non-fiction releases. They do not include non-revised/expanded reprints of previously published books, special editions not distributed to reviewers, and digital-only titles. Works that only tangentially address the war years are also generally excluded. Inevitably, one or more titles on this list will get a rescheduled release (and they do not get repeated later), so revisiting the past few "Coming Soon" posts is the best way to pick up stragglers.
Labels: Coming Soon
Booknotes: Suffering in the Army of Tennessee
• Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville by Christopher Thrasher (UT Press, 2021).
Suffering in the Army of Tennessee is very different from most volumes in University of Tennessee Press's Voices of the Civil War series in that it "doesn't just draw upon one single diary or letter collection, and it does not use brief quotations as a way to fill out a larger narrative." Instead, "across eight chapters spanning the Atlanta Campaign to the Battle of Nashville in 1864," author Christopher Thrasher "draws upon a remarkably broad set of primary sources—newspapers, manuscripts, archives, diaries, and official documents—to tell a story that knits together accounts of senior officers, the final campaigns of the Western Theater, and the experiences of the civilians and rebel soldiers who found themselves deep in the trenches of a national reckoning."
Over the past couple decades, Civil War readers have finally been gifted with a relative abundance of book-length coverage of the marching and fighting that occurred in Tennessee and Georgia during the 1864 campaigning season. However, there is always room for new angles, and Thrasher's book lays claim to being the first to offer "what amounts to a sweeping social history of the Army of Tennessee—the daily details of soldiering and the toll it took on the men and boys who mustered into service foreseeing only a small skirmish among the states."
The book will undoubtedly touch upon many common themes found in modern Civil War soldier studies, and though the history of the fighting men of the Confederacy's principal western army has not been neglected (see Larry Daniel's 1991 book Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee: A Portrait of Life in a Confederate Army) it will be interesting to see what thesis develops from Thrasher's more detailed concentration on the late-war period. It's also a generously illustrated book, with 18 maps and a host of photos, tables, and other figures.
Just be happy you don't have to do picket duty today!
Booknotes: The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War
• The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War edited by Lorien Foote and Earl J. Hess (Oxford UP, 2021).
As its title reveals, The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War is part of the Oxford Handbooks series, the installments of which "offer authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research."
For this volume, editors Lorien Foote and Earl Hess have gathered together a star-studded cast of historians to pen 39 essays, all of which revolve in some way around the book's unifying theme "that operational military history is decisively linked to the social and political history of Civil War America." From the description: "Every time Union armies invaded Southern territory there were unintended consequences. Military campaigns always affected the local population -- devastating farms and towns, making refugees of the inhabitants, undermining slavery. Local conditions in turn altered the course of military events. The social effects of military campaigns resonated throughout geographic regions and across time. Campaigns and battles often had a serious impact on national politics and international affairs. Not all campaigns in the Civil War had a dramatic impact on the country, but every campaign, no matter how small, had dramatic and traumatic effects on local communities. Civil War military operations did not occur in a vacuum; there was a price to be paid on many levels of society in both North and South."
The book is almost 700 pages in length and breadth of coverage is wide. "The (39) chapters cover all three major theaters of the war and include discussions of Bleeding Kansas, the Union naval blockade, the South West, American Indians, and Reconstruction." All of the largest campaigns, east and west, are in some fashion incorporated into the anthology. The war in the trans-Mississippi, stretching to both the desert Southwest and the Great Plains is also addressed. Like all good military history books, cartography is a feature, not an afterthought, here. There are 51 maps included. Notes and bibliography are placed at the end of each chapter. While this kind of book can certainly have a wider appeal than others in the series, institutions and professionals are the target audience (and it's priced accordingly).
More from the description: "Each essay offers a particular interpretation of how one of the war's campaigns resonated in the larger world of the North and South. Taken together, these chapters illuminate how key transformations operated across national, regional, and local spheres, covering key topics such as politics, race, slavery, emancipation, gender, loyalty, and guerrilla warfare."
Review - "Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War's Most-Told Stories" by Scott Hippensteel
[Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War's Most-Told Stories by Scott Hippensteel (Stackpole Books, 2021). Hardcover, photos, tables, illustrations, appendix section, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:v,263. ISBN:978-0-8117-3997-9. $29.95]
Many Civil War stories and expressions have become so entrenched in both the published literature and popular imagination that they're often repeated without much in the way of reflection. Employing a variety of methods, Scott Hippensteel's Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War's Most-Told Stories employs a quantitative approach that reexamines a number of those popular Civil War assumptions, claims, and phrases. Seven chapters examine such "tropes," and they do so in three stages. First, the "oft-repeated historical claim" is defined as narrowly as possible and meticulously detailed. To counter arguments that the author might be stacking the deck against the myth, Hippensteel to his credit attempts to formulate often nebulous assumptions in a way that is as favorable to the myth as possible while remaining within the parameters of evidence found in the literature (anecdotal as it may be). Some readers might find the often high number of examples provided to be repetitive and a bit tedious, but it's largely necessary to establish the trope. Second, "the background scientific principles are introduced and explained in a nontechnical manner." In each case, the author develops a quantitative method to examine the myth. The third and final section is reserved for "analysis and evaluation" of the claim and the science employed for testing it. In addition to "studying and discussing the potential reality of the antiquated trope," this section also suggests "alternative and more realistic scenarios" for the rejected historical claim (pg. 5). Both stages two and three are well stocked with photographs, contemporary illustrations, figures, and tables that augment and/or visually illustrate the analytical process in a very clear manner.
Civil War sharpshooting has received increased attention of late (with some excellent published work from Fred Ray and a number of other writers and historians), and much of it is incorporated into Hippensteel's focused examination of three famous (or infamous) sniping episodes from two major battles. Though 'impossible' and 'highly improbable' are used a bit too interchangeably in the discussion of assumptions and results, the volume's rational and well-illustrated approach to sniping mythology offers a really excellent treatise on the extreme difficulties involved in achieving a first-shot kill beyond 500 yards under battlefield conditions while using even the best long-range rifles and crude scopes of the period.
Every Civil War reader has encountered countless quotes or passages that create a mental picture of the aftermath of fighting over a particular patch of ground (often large open fields) using colorful phrases like a "carpet of death" or describe the ability of a person to fully traverse a corpse-stewn part of a battlefield without touching the ground. In another example, the volume of enemy fire is very often described as a "hailstorm" of lead. In rethinking those tropes, Hippensteel uses novel spatial and meteorological analysis to completely discount such scenarios having any basis in reality (though for the former, it is conceded that corpses can conceivably be concentrated enough within the most tightly confined spaces). Though cognizant that such widespread use of the same words and phrases can be indicative of period lexicon not meant to be taken literally (and most readers and writers are surely aware of that as well), the author still insists that too many authors remain credulous and those that aren't too often pass them on to their audience without qualifying statements.
The post-battle collection of thousands of abandoned rifles that contained multiple loads in their barrels has attracted several explanations, the most popular of which involve poor user training and the stresses of battle. The fact that this phenomenon continued throughout the war among veteran armies and keeping in mind that the technology itself was subject to relatively frequent misfires, Hippensteel suggests a better explanation. The scenario is as follows: (1) a misfired weapon (for whatever reason) is discarded for another dropped by a killed, wounded, or fleeing comrade, (2) another soldier needing a replacement weapon picks up the inoperable rifle, assumes it has been fired already, loads it, and pulls the trigger, (3) that soldier then discards the rifle when it obviously doesn't fire. This process is then repeated any number of times leading to thousands of weapons with three or more loads in the barrel. Though others have surely independently arrived at the same possibility, this is a scenario that is far more convincing than the ones most commonly raised in the literature.
A large volume of ink has been spilled debating the merits of Civil War rifle-musket superiority over older technology and whether it had a revolutionary impact on the battlefield. Hippensteel's analysis agrees with that of Earl Hess, Paddy Griffith, and others, arguing that the Springfield and Enfield rifle-muskets in the hands of Civil War soldiers had only a marginal (not revolutionary) impact on Civil War battlefield tactics and casualties.
Through the pioneering work of William Frassanito and others, it has been demonstrated that Civil War photography was frequently staged, altered, or given fraudulent captions by practitioners more concerned with appealing composition and profits than in creating an authentic historical visual record. Using knowledge of the photographic process, forensic techniques, and geology (the author's own professional expertise), Hippensteel establishes a useful "hierarchy of manipulation" that he employs in the book to quantitatively assess fraud, finding that one-third or more Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg images show clear evidence of manipulation. Thus, Civil War photography did not at all possess the fabled journalistic and historical truthfulness so often extolled at the time. This has been revealed for some time already, but arriving at a numerical evaluation of its scale is insightful.
The book ends with a "realism vs. romanticism" examination of popular Civil War art. Rather than getting into arcane arguments involving uniform and weaponry minutiae, Hippensteel selects three readily quantifiable elements of "realism" for his comparison. These are (1) the ratio of firing to reloading soldiers, (2) the amount and quality of smoke in the frame, and (3) the presence and extent of muzzle and vent flash. Using those metrics, the author determines that the popular art of the 1980s and 90s (exemplified by the prodigious output of leading lights such as Dale Gallon, Don Troiani, Keith Rocco, and Mort Küntsler) is indeed, as claimed, generally more 'realistic' than that produced by previous generations of painters and illustrators.
Of course, readers can come up with a host of additional tropes that could easily fill up another volume, and many solid candidates are mentioned in the book's conclusion. In the series of topics addressed in the appendix section, Hippensteel offers more information on means available for comparing rifle knockdown power, looks at how effective hand-held revolvers were in Civil War combat, discusses common 'farbiness' in reenacting, and reflects on how poorly Civil War projectile ballistics and wounds are portrayed in cinema and on television.
Some of the topics covered by Myths of the Civil War aren't myths by the strict definition of the word or are really quite harmless to any quest aimed at obtaining a mature understanding of the war, but the ways in which Hippensteel applies math and science to test the range or limits of reality when it comes to popular figures of speech, feats of sharpshooting, the alleged firearms revolution, and Civil War art are unique and fresh. Its contributions to ongoing debates about Civil War rifled shoulder arms and ballistics are arguably the volume's most important contributions. The book usefully reminds us that it is always good to periodically step back and more objectively question long-held assumptions, and the author creatively demonstrates a host of relatively simple tools and methods one might employ in doing so. Scott Hippensteel is two for two now when it comes to creating books that approach the Civil War in fascinating ways we've never quite seen before (see also 2019's Rocks and Rifles), and one can only hope that his authorial aspirations will continue on in this distinctive vein.
Labels: Book Reviews
Booknotes: Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers
• Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John M. Sacher (LSU Press, 2021).
During my time running this site, I've come across enough questionable claims about publishing 'firsts' (or firsts in a long, long time) to not always accept them at face value. My initial reaction to reading that John Sacher's Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers "serves as the first comprehensive examination of the topic in nearly one hundred years" was a skeptical one. But after wracking my brain and tapping my keyboard for a bit, I couldn't come up with another candidate. I can recall (as Sacher also does in his introduction) Walter Hilderman's They Went into the Fight Cheering!: Confederate Conscription in North Carolina (2005), but it is obviously a study of more limited scope. Given conscription's important and controversial role in the war, the fact that a book the dusty vintage of Albert Burton Moore's Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (1924) remains the standard work on the topic is a bit surprising. Moore's book, which was reissued in paperback in 1996 by University of South Carolina Press with a new introduction, is also yet another early twentieth-century classic unread by me.
Accepting the challenge of formulating an up-to-date modern reexamination of Confederate conscription, Sacher work promises "fresh insights" into the South's draft system and "new conclusions." From the description: "Often summarily dismissed as a detested policy that violated states' rights and forced nonslaveholders to fight for planters, the conscription law elicited strong responses from southerners wanting to devise the best way to guarantee what they perceived as shared sacrifice. Most who bristled at the compulsory draft did so believing it did not align with their vision of the Confederacy. As Sacher reveals, white southerners' desire to protect their families, support their communities, and ensure the continuation of slavery shaped their reaction to conscription." Popularly regarded as the most "hated" of the Richmond government's war policy measures, Sacher finds that most Confederate supporters recognized that it was necessary to maintain the fighting strength of the army and believes the evidence shows conscription to be rather more accurately described as the most "debated" measure.
More: "For three years, Confederates tried to achieve victory on the battlefield while simultaneously promoting their vision of individual liberty for whites and states' rights. While they failed in that quest, Sacher demonstrates that southerners' response to the 1862 conscription law did not determine their commitment to the Confederate cause. Instead, the implementation of the draft spurred a debate about sacrifice―both physical and ideological―as the Confederacy's insatiable demand for soldiers only grew in the face of a grueling war."
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Reviews Coming Soon:
►► Their Maryland: The Army of Northern Virginia From the Potomac Crossing to Sharpsburg in September 1862 by Alexander Rossino.
►► A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter ed. by Smith & Cooper.
Reading Now:
► After Vicksburg: The Civil War on Western Waters, 1863-1865 by Myron Smith.
On the Shelf:
► First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North's First Civil War Hero by Meg Groeling.
► Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville by Christopher Thrasher.
► The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War ed. by Foote & Hess.
► Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John Sacher .
► Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands by William Kiser.
► William Barksdale, CSA: A Biography of the United States Congressman and Confederate Brigadier General by John Douglas Ashton.
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For further information about this role, please download and review the recruitment pack.
This mission is supported by the organisation's values: Accountable, Innovative, Caring, Community Focused.
Due to upcoming retirements, SBHG is looking to appoint two new Board Members to ensure that SBHG is governed economically, efficiently, effectively and complies with the requirements of legislation, the Regulator of Social Housing and best practice.
The Group is looking for individuals with experience of managing a multi-disciplinary customer-focused service, or of leading and delivering large scale and complex digital and culture-based transformation programmes. Current or previous non-executive experience is essential, but applications from those with non-housing backgrounds are welcomed.
The closing date for applications is 9:00am, Monday 13th August 2018. The job reference code is ALT217.


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A mask for every face: Two NH businessmen team up with Rotary clubs for this weekend's mass mask distribution in Nashua
By Dean Shalhoup - Senior Staff Writer | May 13, 2020
Courtesy photo The Common Man CEO Alex Ray's "Maskmobile" is, naturally, wearing a mask during the mask giveaway in Plymouth.
NASHUA – Calling all unprotected faces: The Maskmobile is coming. And it's headed right for Nashua.
So named for its cargo – tens of thousands of "lightweight, washable, reusable, double-woven cloth facemasks" – the Maskmobile is due in Nashua Friday for a three-day visit during which teams of volunteers, chiefly local Rotarians, will be handing out the masks free of charge to anyone who asks for them.
The distribution site, at Nashua High School South, will be open from 3-7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday.
Those who plan to go will see signs directing them to the site once they turn onto Riverside Street. Drivers and passengers will remain in their vehicles, and pull up to the distribution site as directed by volunteers.
The energy behind the mass mask-distribution project comes from a pair of gregarious New Hampshire businessmen, who, quite wisely, reached out to members of Rotary clubs for assistance in planning, implementing and coordinating the large-scale giveaways.
The businessmen – longtime Rotarians Alex Ray, CEO of The Common Man restaurants, and Steve Rand, third-generation owner of the historic A.M. Rand Hardware store in downtown Plymouth – ordered some 67,000 masks from Honduras, and when the shipment arrived in Miami, the two headed south to pick them up.
A 24-hour road trip later, the masks were in the Granite State awaiting distribution at various sites.
Greeting mask-seekers in Nashua will be volunteers from Nashua Rotary, Nashua Rotary West, and Souhegan Valley Rotary.
Ray and Rand call their masks-for-everyone campaign "Mask Up NH!" Additional information can be found at www.maskupnh.com.
According to Ray, the Maskmobile is actually his Common Man Trolley, which he repurposed for use at the giveaways.
The Maskmobile made its debut at the first giveaway, which took place in Plymouth two weeks ago in partnership with volunteers from the Plymouth Rotary Club.
"Rotarians understand that wearing a mask in public places and social distancing are the two most important ways that everyday citizens can help contain the spread of the coronavirus and keep our communities healthy and thriving," Ray wrote in a statement that was posted on Facebook.
"Every person who wears a mask is announcing his or her effort to help contain the virus."
Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This content is being provided for free as a public service to our community during the coronavirus outbreak. Please support local journalism by subscribing to The Telegraph at https://home.nashuatelegraph.com/clickshare/checkDelivery.do;jsessionid=40C089D96583CD7318C1C1D9317B6162.

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China's recently completed "Hualong One" (华龙一号) is now the world's largest nuclear power plant construction project, and is advertised as safer and more environmentally friendly than nuclear domes and reactors of the past. Marking a new development in nuclear technology, Hualong One represents China's increased push for nuclear power sophistication and expansion of nuclear energy. This project has the potential to make around 30 billion yuan (approx. 437 billion USD) as an original and innovative Chinese export as China's nuclear efforts go international. Both Argentina and France have already made agreements with China this year to have their own "Hualong One" power plants constructed, as one of the latest "Made in China" commodities.
This video clip as well as the one above illustrates the new safety features of the Hualong One, such as a double outer shell for increasing general workplace safety and efforts to prevent disasters such as the explosions of the Fukushima Daichi power plant in 2011. With increased concerns of breakdowns and explosions, the safety and viability of a new nuclear power plant is under more scrutiny than ever before.
This latest nuclear project right is on track for the development plans that China laid out earlier this year, which includes increasing exports of nuclear power-related products, completing current nuclear power structures, as well as beginning construction on new reactors and plants both on the coast and inland. In addition to the most recent Hualong One, as of April this year China has also put a floating nuclear power plant in the South China Sea. But why does there seem to be such a big push for new nuclear power structures coming from China, especially when worldwide use of nuclear energy has been falling?
One driving force stems from the large amount of pollution that coal-powered plants produce in China that create unsafe air quality. This problem is usually combatted by wearing different types of surgical masks that filter out harmful particles in the air. This has now become a daily reality for people living in large cities, and so some people monitor the daily air quality index (AQI) using cellphone apps that rate the air quality on a 0-500 scale (where 300 and above represent human health hazards). Data presented in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study links about 1.2 premature deaths in China to air pollution. Chinese documentaries such as "Under the Dome" have gone viral in the past few years as the push for healthier environments and clean energy gain more global traction. Coal and other fossil fuels accounted for around 70% of Chinese electricity production in 2015, and the demand for a decrease in the use of all fossil fuels as well as growing economies in China and a need for energy to be closer to developing sites have made the push for nuclear energy a part of formal government policy. China's growth of cities in just the past 20 years has been astounding, with some cities growing by over 1000%. With such an intense and large expansion of multiple cities throughout the country, there will be an increasing demand from the citizens of these expanding cities for electricity. Building more nuclear reactors and power plants can meet that energy demand, and increased safety means they can be built closer to human populations to provide quicker access to that energy with less potential risks.
Other potential factors driving these nuclear expansions include economic and military gains for China. Estimates have put the return on nuclear power at approximately 4% greater than the returns on coal and gas-powered plants, making nuclear energy the more economically favorable option. Projects such as the recently launched floating nuclear power plant in the South China Sea "[provide] an inexpensive source of electricity and fresh water for both military and economic gains, as well as [ensure] China's strategic dominance in the South China Sea". Having cheaper sources of energy that are easy to access can effectively meet the worldwide increasing demands for electricity, as well as legitimize China's sovereignty in highly contested waters. The aforementioned deals with Argentina and France regarding Hualong One would also be in an incredibly large source of revenue for the government.
The Unites States is currently the largest producer of nuclear power in the world, but this is likely to change by 2026. Nuclear power appears to be following the global trend and stagnating in America, partially because it takes up to 25 years to get a new reactor approved in the U.S., as opposed to the mere 2 years that a Chinese nuclear reactor can be approved. The actual energy amount of nuclear power in the United States that is used for electricity is lower than that of China's in general. Nuclear energy accounts for only 19.7% of U.S. electricity production as of 2016. This slowing phenomenon is most likely also due to several problems and closure risks with existing older power plants around the country (the average age of a reactor in the United States is 35 years old). Public support for nuclear energy in the U.S. has also dwindled, especially since the Fukushima Daichi power plant explosion. Renewable energy is also becoming more increasingly affordable in the United States, leading to even more closures of power plants across the country. This reflects a general trend in the decline of fossil fuels as the most viable and affordable energy source, as harnessing wind and solar energy is even becoming more affordable than coal and natural gas.
Even with all of this focus on renewable energy sources and an overall worldwide decline in nuclear energy use, the International Energy Agency predicts that in the future, world nuclear capacity will start and continue to grow again. As the environmental conditions on this planet change, different nations will look for alternatives to the finite and harmful potential of fossil fuels. Despite various serious risks involved with creating and maintaining a nuclear reactor, the amount of accidents is dwindling as advances in safety and technology are made. New nuclear technology such as Hualong One represents an opportunity for economic growth, while simultaneously meeting the increasing energy needs of China's population as cities continue to expand. Perhaps China is looking to get ahead of this projected nuclear curve and work to reduce coal emissions while promoting newer, cheaper, and safer ways to acquire energy.
More information on nuclear power in the world today can be found here.
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New York Times: Seeing Its Own Money at Risk, China Rails at U.S.


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Courtesy of Jo Johnson Overby/ TikTok
Mom Goes Viral On TikTok After Posting About Her "Strawberry Breast Milk"
"I figured if I could share with a few moms then they would not go through the same panic I had initially experienced."
The first time Jo Johnson Overby looked down and realized her breast milk was pumping out pink, she panicked. At the time, the new mom was only a few months into breastfeeding and pumping. And up until now, her milk had never resembled anything close to the color of strawberry milk.
"I was shocked at first because I hadn't been in pain or experiencing anything that prepared me [for the change]," the 28-year-old tells Romper. "I immediately called my sister to see if I should be concerned enough to call my doctor."
What she learned was that pink breast milk is not uncommon. In fact, breast milk can appear yellow, orange, blue, green, and even brown depending on a number of different things. For Johnson Overby, the culprit was blood. "I had had some bleeding on my nipples from adjusting to exclusively pumping and so I thought that was the culprit but I wanted confirmation from another mom for sure," she says. "She reassured me that it was actually common."
Last month, Johnson Overby took her pink breast milk public, sharing her experience in a TikTok video that has since gone viral. "Nobody told me that whenever I had a baby, that if I chose to breastfeed my milk would come in an array of colors," Johnson Overby said in the video, which has gathered more than 14 million views, 2 million likes, and more than 24,000 shares.
In the video, Johnson Overby then holds up a bag of white breast milk. "Exhibit A. The color you'd expect, right?" she said before putting the bag down and picking up a bag of breast milk that has a definite pink tint. "Exhibit B. And why is it pink?" she asked the camera. "It's blood."
Typically, blood in breast milk isn't something to be concerned about. It's often a sign of bleeding nipples (as was the case with Johnson Overby), broken capillaries, a benign growth in the milk duct (known as an intraductal papilloma), or increased blood flow to the breasts (known more commonly as rusty pipe syndrome). But blood in breast milk can also be a sign of mastitis or even breast cancer and those who don't see their breast milk clear up within a few days should contact their doctor, according to Very Well Family.
What's more, babies won't be harmed by drinking breast milk that has blood in it, according to the non-profit breastfeeding education and advocacy group La Leche League International. In fact, Johnson Overby tells Romper her daughter, 5-month-old Gardner, didn't react any differently to drinking pink breast milk than white. "I figure if I had been nursing I wouldn't have even known!" she says of Gardner's lack of reaction.
She shared her experience in hopes of helping other new parents avoid a similar panic should they one day find their milk has come in a different hue. "I figured if I could share with a few moms then they would not go through the same panic I had initially experienced," she says.
As for going viral thanks to her strawberry-hued breast milk, Johnson Overby says she's loved seeing other parents come together in her video's comment section to share their own stories of breastfeeding. "There is so much about motherhood and postpartum that isn't shared," she says. "Something that seems relatively natural and that we should all know about but none of us did — the whole thing has made me feel a lot less alone in my cluelessness."
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Customer worked with a custom machine fabricator to develop a proprietary method for extruding, forming, and cutting a dough product. This was an upgrade to a previously designed machine from 2004. Logicon was approached to use the original machine's program as a base design for developing a new program that matched the capabilities of the new machine. This included upgrading to the latest technology standards in use by the customer.
System configuration consisted of distributed I/O on ControlNet, PowerFlex VFDs on DeviceNet, Kinetix 6000 servo drives on Sercos, and command messaging to the Ultrasonic generators over RS232 using ASCII codes.
Due to the confidential nature of the machine, the specific process cannot be discussed. The machine extrudes the product continuously into the machine. Based on a recipe selection, individual ultrasonic knives are activated to form a cut pattern on the dough. They are presented into the product and retracted from the product in time with the process via a virtual axis and Position CAM instructions in the ControlLogix. The recipe also controls the amplitude and on/off timing of the ultrasonic to form a balance of product quality and ultrasonic blade longevity.
Interlocks to the process include the firing of a card feeder machine and the application of topping via a vibratory feeder. Logicon also provided complete process line integration for machine interlocks. Machines in the process line include the card feeder, process machine, checkweigher, wrapper, conveyors, metal detector, case sealer, and label applicator.
Logicon provided the upgraded control system design, programming, and panel construction as well as all onsite installation and start-up support. In addition to the machine development, Logicon was able to provide additional design and programming services for other custom designed equipment such as the product feed pump system, a card feed system, and the downstream conveying system. The completed machine design was a success and has a higher OEE than its predecessor due to the functionality and troubleshooting upgrades added by Logicon.


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Free meals would be expanded to many schools by legislation
By Maryland Reporter · March 27, 2015 · Comments Off on Free meals would be expanded to many schools by legislation
By Rebecca Lessner
For MarylandReporter.com
Legislators are moving to dish out free meals to hungry schoolkids, who are too embarrassed by living below the poverty level to eat free lunches in front of peers.
The Hunger-Free Schools Act of 2015 would abolish the current enrollment process of singling out low-income students with paper applications.
To accomplish this, SB 334 creates a free meal plan for the entire student body of a qualifying low-income school. The bill already passed unanimously in the Senate and was heard by the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.
"It alleviates some of the stigma…some students don't eat because they are ashamed to qualify," said Del. Mary Washington, D-Baltimore City.
The beauty of the bill, according to its sponsor Sen. Richard Madaleno, D-Montgomery, is it would be paid for by the federal government and would have no or minimal impact on the state budget.
School systems that qualify for federal reimbursements under the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) meet a minimum of at least 40% of students documented under the federal poverty line.
According to Madaleno, this program can be administered on a school-by school basis, or even by combining all county schools (high school, middle and elementary) into one equation.
Currently 366 schools in Maryland qualify for the CEP program, and of that number only schools with a low-income level of 55 percent are likely to choose to participate, which totals 195 schools.
There are 150 schools in Baltimore City alone that qualify.
Somerset County does it for all schools
"We quickly realized that this program would benefit not only our students but our community," said John Gaddis, superintendent of Somerset County Public Schools.
Somerset County, perhaps the poorest county in Maryland, enacted CEP in all of its 10 schools last year.
"In 26 years as an educator, the best decision I ever made was to enroll in this program," Gaddis said.
Somerset County has found the largest percentage of kids not eating in previous years were high school students, too embarrassed to even enroll in a free or reduced meal plan.
Somerset county schools reported serving 77,037 more meals than last year through the new program.
Maddis is learning from local teachers that their students are more attentive and are performing at higher levels than previous years.
"We can all agree, when your stomach is growling you're less likely to focus on benchmark tests," said Maddis.
"Are you worried about being audited? Nobody is in the habit of giving away free money," said Del. Jay Walker, D-Prince George's, skeptical of the fiscal impact.
The program is technically already in place, thanks to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was amended the federal National School Lunch Act in 2010.
Maryland, like some other states, hasn't been implementing it fully due to the "administrative burden" of paperwork, Madaleno said.
With that taken out, Madaleno believes more and more schools will try to qualify for CEP.
The ways to qualify without turning in individual applications will vary based on the school. Districts can choose from a variety of options including using USDA food stamp data, or by using numbers from the previous year. The bill is simply giving students and parents more options.
A similar bill passed through the Senate last year but died in the House. Originally presented by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) last year, Madaleno believes the bill is in better shape to pass after his aid in the re-drafting process.
RebeccaAnnLessner@gmail.com
MarylandReporter.com is a daily news website produced by journalists committed to making state government as open, transparent, accountable and responsive as possible – in deed, not just in promise. We believe the people who pay for this government are entitled to have their money spent in an efficient and effective way, and that they are entitled to keep as much of their hard-earned dollars as they possibly can.	Contact the author.
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@BryanRenbaum bryan@marylandreporter.com Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday proposed more than $1 billion in tax cuts for Maryland retirees. "Today we're taking a major
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Maryland Senate passes budget →


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Georgia government says it has halted suspected coup by Army
Thread starter RackMaster
Sounds like this was probably incited by outside influence... :uhh: Gee, I wonder who would have done that... Maybe the Russians? I have a feeling we'll see more of this shit going on in that part of the world.
Georgia government says it has halted army mutiny
Updated Tue. May. 5 2009 12:32 PM ET
TBILISI, Georgia -- Georgia said it had ended a brief mutiny Tuesday at a military base near the capital and thwarted a plan to disrupt NATO exercises.
The Interior Ministry first announced that the mutiny was part of a Russia-supported plot to overthrow the government, and that the suspected organizers had been arrested the night before.
But the ministry later backed off and said the plotters were intent mainly on disrupting NATO military exercises set to begin Wednesday in Georgia.
The several hundred soldiers at the base handed over their weapons and surrendered after speaking to President Mikhail Saakashvili, who suggested that force could be used against them if they refused to give themselves up to police, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Saakashvili said in a televised address that the mutiny was an isolated case and the situation in the country was fully under control.
"The plan was to have military riots at different places all over Georgia," Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said. "To make sure that at the minimum the NATO training will not happen and at the maximum there is a full-scale military riot in the country."
Russia's NATO envoy Dmitri Rogozin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the allegations of Russian involvement were "crazy."
Russia's Foreign Ministry said the Georgian government was engaged in its "latest anti-Russian prank." The ministry statement said, "Russia in principal does not interfere in the internal affairs of Georgia."
An official in Saakashvili's office said the intent of the mutineers seemed to be limited to disrupting the upcoming NATO exercises. There was no evidence, he said, that they planned a coup attempt. Neither is there any evidence of Russian involvement. He spoke on condition he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia last year, has sharply criticized the exercises, which it said would encourage Saakashvili to rebuild its devastated army.
The Georgian president has been the target of more than three weeks of street protests by opposition demonstrators demanding he resign. His government has accused Russians of supporting the opposition.
The official in Saakashvili's office said the mutiny was inspired by a small group of disgruntled officers who were involved in a similar action at the same base in 2001.
Opposition leaders said the reports of the planned coup were made up; some called it a "virtual coup" and a "staged play."
"It's nothing but a tall tale, and we've heard so many of them already," said Georgy Khaindrava, a former Saakashvili ally. "Saakashvili could not make up anything smarter."
Utiashvili, the Interior Ministry spokesman, had said the suspected coup plot was organized by a former special forces commander, Georgy Gvaladze. Gvaladze and another former military commander have been arrested, and other suspects were still being sought, he said.
He also had said the ministry has a video of Gvaladze talking to his supporters about the planned coup, and that he is shown saying that 5,000 Russian troops will come to support the coup, and that it was planned for Thursday.
A ministry statement released later said Gvaladze was accused of organizing the military mutiny.
Defence Minister David Sikharulidze said earlier that he had been blocked from entering the military base in Mukhrovani, about 30 kilometres from Tbilisi, the capital. The base's tank battalion of about 500 army personnel had announced that they would refuse to follow orders, he said.
Among the mutineers were civilians who had no relation to the battalion, he said.
The soldiers from Mukhrovani were bused to another base, where they were to be questioned.
The NATO exercises, which continue through June 1, were originally planned to include about 1,300 personnel from 19 NATO and partner nations.
But some former Soviet republics have recently decided not to take part.
Among the countries to back out was Armenia, which is dependent on Russia for its economic survival. Four other former Soviet republics -- Estonia, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Moldova -- and Serbia also had decided to pull out, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported Tuesday.
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