Review: "Looking For Lincoln"

The Jess and I spent some time recently watching "Looking for Lincoln", which aired on PBS Wednesday night. I usually reserve my reviews for books, but will begin expanding my portfolio with this TV show.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates takes the viewer on a 2 hour meditation of Abraham Lincoln and the many facets of his historiography. In producing this work, Dr. Gates adds a valued addition to what I will now refer to as "courageous history". This concept started with my review of "This Republic of Suffering" and introduced the idea of history-writing as a gutsy endeavor where the writer presents a topic in completion, allowing both themselves and the reader/viewer to have their ideas and understanding challenged.

Make no mistake, this is a very difficult and scary thing to do. We find solace in our interpretations of historical events, and will have a visceral reaction when that safety is challenged. Abraham Lincoln is a perfect representation of this concept; the scope of his life and presidency, the complexity and acuity of the issues he faced, and the fact that he was assassinated allow everyone from schoolkids to PhDs to form rock-hard opinions and defensible theories. To support this point, I remind you that 14,000+ books have been written about this one man, and countless other have addressed him.

Like the rest of us, Dr. Gates has his own ideas about Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator", and his journey is on display for all of us to see. In an investigation that is remarkably broad in its scope, "Looking for Lincoln" is strikingly honest in what he finds.

I want to stay faithful to my book-reviewing style wherein I stay away from a blow-by blow description of content, you don't need me for that. This television review shall be approached in the same vein. The program walks through Lincoln's early years, his feelings on race, slavery, and emancipation, the Civil War itself, and the memory of Lincoln today as seen through the eyes of scholars, reenactors, Lincoln Memorial visitors, and members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Before the journey begins, Gates spells out his preconceptions of Lincoln that he's had since childhood, and as he moves through each iteration of his quest, he is very open about how his feelings are challenged, supported, and sometimes changed. He is also exceedingly candid about facts that change his mind and alter his perceptions of President Lincoln.

That, my friends, is gutsy.

Think of what it would take for you to challenge your own conceptions about, well, anything, do it of your own volition, and make it public. Not only that, but to solicit input from those at the top of the field, the general public, and those who's opinions are your polar opposite.

Again, gutsy. That's what it takes to truly learn from the past and apply it to our world. That's what courageous history is all about.

Book Review: "This Republic Of Suffering"

I've waited months to read Drew Gilpin Faust's "This Republic of Suffering", and now that I'm done, wish I'd read it immediately. This book has been nominated for a few major awards and the accolades were well-deserved. I want to add my two cents to the legion of reviews that followed this book's release last year.
Writing history takes courage. The act of recording events and providing analysis may sometimes require a researcher to cover material they find sad, abhorrent, embarrassing, inexcusable. The true scholar has the fortitude to minimize their personal concerns and emotions and provide a clear and unabashed view of the subject in question.
Most of those who first studied and analyzed the American Civil War unfortunately did not have this intrinsic strength and insight. People like Early, Gordon, Pendleton et al instead let their own interests, grievances, and shame influence their writing, with the inevitable result being the mythology of the Lost Cause.
The next wave of historians who wrote books that would carry into generations of students that followed, men like Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, and Douglas Southall Freeman, lacked the skill and vision to present the war in its full, gruesome reality. Instead, leaders were glorified and charges were immortalized, intentions were obscured and fables were propagated. The illustration of an entire nation's suffering was a secondary priority.
Now, there is a new tide in the historical analysis of the Civil War and historians of recent years are finally showing the acumen and stoutheartedness that considering such a destructive and horrible thing as war requires. Dr. Faust and "This Republic of Suffering" are at the forefront of this effort. Her truly unique analysis of death in the Civil War helps fan away the obfuscating haze of romanticism and mythology that still surrounds our understanding of the Civil Warand shows just how horrible, painful, and all-encompassing the slaughter was.
There is no nobility here, no heroic charges praised in painting and re-enactment. This is a comprehensive look at how those who lost a loved one, those who faced death, and those who dealt it handled these enormous burdens. This is the first time this subject has been treated so comprehensively (only took 140-something years) and for that fact alone, this book is important.
In addition to its unique subject matter, this is just damn good historiography. From sourcing to writing, this book is how it is done.
More than anything else, "This Republic of Suffering" is just tremendously sad. Sad for the men who didn't want to die, sad for the families who could never find their son's body, sad for those who had to kill. Sad for those who would craft an entire mythology around the war so they could better cope with what they had wrought.
It is exactly this book's emotional slap in the face that makes it such an important work. This story is our story, how we killed each other, suffered, and grieved during a terrible time in our nation's history. Here, finally, is a book that focuses solely on just how painful this war was for our society.
Nothing is sugarcoated and there is no glamour. There is no brawling over who was a better leader, who was more religious, who was or wasn't inept, any of the goofiness that so many post-war writers and subsequent historians brewed up to help us escape from the fact that fully 6% of our nation's population was dead. It is because those who first sat down to write the war's story, and the Freemans, Footes, and Cattons who followed them with thick tomes of bloviating and myth didn't have the onions to include this gritty subject matter. By abdicating this responsibility, these "historians" have left our society to deal with a tremendous amount of misunderstanding.
It is because there are historians like Faust with the courage to write the war's hard reality and folks who buy, read, and discuss "This Republic of Suffering" that we will continue to find a truer understanding and memory of the Civil War, and, hopefully, a better conception of who we are as an undivided society.

The Confederate Battle Flag And Civil War Memory

The debate and emotion generated by the Confederate flag flying in Tampa not only captures what a hot-button topic this symbol still is, but how comprehensive our disconnect with the actual history of it. Example: while this flag is referred to as "the" Confederate flag, there actually was no national flag of the Confederacy until maybe 1863. This flag was also not the battle flag of the entire Confederacy, late in the war it was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. From this it has metamorphosed into a political hot potato, a divisive insult, beach towel kitsch, and a NASCAR staple.
Okay, clearly this subject requires more study, and thankfully I think I found the resource at Point Loma books in San Diego (a smashing addition to the list of San Diego used/independent bookstores). John Coski, the director of the Museum of the Confederacy, wrote a book called "The Confederate Battle Flag" which provides a comprehensive discussion of the history of this flag's cultural evolution. Don't let preconceptions about the Museum of the Confederacy fool you, Mr. Coski is a scholar of a high order, and his interview on NPR in 2005 (which you can listen to by clicking here) gives evidence of that fact.
I'm going to try something a bit different with this book; instead of reviewing it en bloc when I'm done, we'll take it piece by piece as I move through it. Feel free to get a copy for yourself and join me.

The Massacre In Hamburg, South Carolina

Let's pick up where my post about Stephen Budiansky's book "The Bloody Shirt", left off and begin an exploration of a shocking and little-known moment in our nation's history.
It was July 4, 1876, in a no-longer extant South Carolina town called Hamburg that this episode begins. Two white farmers were driving a buggy into the center of town when they found the roads occupied by African-American soldiers who made up Company A of the Eighteenth Regiment of the South Carolina National Guard. These troops, who were on parade in celebration of Independence Day, were requested to move by the two farmers, and after the farmers demanded they step aside, opened a path for the two carts.
The next day, the two farmers went to court, presided over by an African-American judge, to swear a complaint against the commanding officer of the regiment. The judge, Prince Rivers, ordered an adjournment until July 8th, on which day roughly one hundred armed white men, mostly members of the notorious "rifle clubs" appeared at the courthouse. The officer and his men did not come to the courthouse.
The gang of men found the militiamen in a nearly structure called the Sibley Building and demanded that they relinquish their arms, that blacks had no right to carry arms. When the militiamen and their officer refused, they, as Budiansky put it "knew they had a war on their hands".
For hours the building was pounded by small arms and artillery fire as the militiamen tried to hold their position on the second floor. Their return fire, though limited, struck a 25 year old rifle club member named McKie Meriwether, killing him instantly. Eventually, the rifle club men stormed the building and took the bulk of the miltiamen prisoner.
These men were marched to an patch of ground, now lost to history, but known as "The Dead Ring" after the circle formed by the captors around their prey. In the end, four of the African-American prisoners were executed, and at least two others were killed trying to escape.
I provide you with a link to the official report from the South Carolina Attorney General, as well as a letter to now-President Ulysses Grant from the South Carolina governor. The endgame of this affair (without getting into the wholesale slaughter that took place in Ellentown, SC in September, 1876) was that seven men were indicted for murder, but after the election of Democrat and famous Confederate general Wade Hampton, all charges were dropped. The massacre galvanized both North and South, and was a pivot point in marking the end of Reconstruction and formation of the Compromise of 1877.
There are, of course, many more sordid and far-reaching components to the Hamburg Massacre, but for the sake of brevity and with confidence that you will search out the information for yourselves. One particularly frightening figure worth reading about is Ben Tillman.
Let's move to the point of how well this part of our past is remembered (or not). Please recall the name of the white man killed at the beginning of the battle, McKie Meriwether. In 1916, a monument was built to commemorate a man who "perished for the cause of liberty" in "The Battle of Hamburg". The town of Hamburg subsequently has disappeared from the maps after a series of floods, the building of a dam, and the construction of a golf course in 1998.
The monument, erected in a town called North Augusta, still stands today, and when the town celebrated its centennial in 2006, it was recognized as a monument "to the only resident of Hamburg to be killed in the Hamburg riot of 1876."
To reinforce, this was two years ago.
The obelisk itself, which can be viewed here, has inscriptions on its four sides, which I encourage you to read, especially the east face.
Having read that, keep in mind that no monument, tablet, marker, or memorial exists for the 6 African-American men murdered that day.
Now that you've read this missive, take a moment and reflect on what we know, understand, learn, and teach about the period of our nation's history called Reconstruction.

Book Review: "The Bloody Shirt"

Right up front, I'll make something plain; Stephen Budiansky's book "The Bloody Shirt" does not attempt to break new ground about the Reconstruction era. Instead, this book is designed to revive and retell the stories of a few individuals to illustrate the experiences of many. To his credit, Budiansky does not claim to be writing an authoritative study of Reconstruction, his intention is to show the impact that terrorism had in a few places and on a few persons in the South after the war as part of a larger reflection of the post-Civil War South.
He does a good job of not trying to pretend the book is more than it is, and should be regarded as such. Some criticisms of the book I've seen harp on various perceived shortcomings, but this is not Foner, Stampp, or Fitzgerald writing a definitive history of Reconstruction. "The Bloody Shirt" is a storyteller bringing nonfiction to life in the words of those who lived it, with the footnotes and bibliography to prove it.
To that end, the book is roundly successful; the personalities are well-described and evocative, the references utilize primary sources like letters and newspaper clippings, and the stories themselves are emotive, powerful, and sometimes unbelievable.
Where the book is most successful; however, is in throwing water on the idea that Reconstruction is universally understood today as a time of domestic terrorism, subversion, and racism. In his critique of this book, Professor Blum of San Diego State implies that the subject matter of Reconstruction is already well-traveled and universally accepted. Would that this were true!
Budiansky helps us see just how far we still have to go (and how wrong the idea that Reconstruction is well-understood) in the final vignette of the book where he explores an event called "The Massacre at Hamburg". This subject deserves and will receive its own post, but just by bringing it to life in the words of the victims and witnesses, then showing the recurring responses over the decades, including a striking one in 2006, Budiansky has written an important book.
His narrative technique is sometimes a bit jumpy and fragmented, and the chronology gets muddled up, but this does not detract from the larger issues at hand. Budiansky's book is a reminder of the spasms that wracked the post-war South and the racism, violence, and depredations that plagued African-Americans and Republican whites. More importantly, he illustrates how this painful history, despite a recent surge in Reconstruction scholarship, continues to elude common sensibilities. A primary example will be presented in a few days, so stay tuned!

Book Review: "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant"

The journey of General James Longstreet through history is a remarkable insight into the fickle response of history to those who help make it. Few officers were more important to the Confederate war effort, arguably no officer was more beloved by General Robert E Lee (who called him his "war horse" and camped next to him every night), perhaps no commander had a better grasp of defensive and counter-offensive warfare.
More important than all of these plaudits is the fact that, despite this incredible war record, no single Confederate general has been more smeared and defamed by the Lost Cause mythology than General Longstreet. It is this evolution that William Piston takes on in his book "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant".
Piston does a strong job working through Longstreet's war record and his incredibly close relationship with Lee during the war. He also captures an interesting point; despite his successes and leadership, his popularity paled in comparison to Virginians like Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Stonewall Jackson. The point is made, successfully for that matter, that because Longstreet was not from the state of Virginia, he never captured the heart of the Old Dominion and would be plagued by this separation long after the war was over.
Despite this, when the war was over, the initial writings about Longstreet were filled with praise and respect for his efforts. A few years later, Piston shows us an intersection of events that brought Longstreet to the forefront of the battle over the war's memory and the rise of the Lost Cause;
#1: the death of General Lee in 1870.
#2: Longstreet's becoming a Republican and publicly voicing support of the Reconstruction government.
#3: General Jubal Early, William Nelson Pendleton, and Reverend John Jones launching a public relations campaign, starting with Early's speech to Washington College on January 19, 1872, that would become "one of the cleverest orchestrations of innuendo and unsubstantiated accusations in American historiography."
With Lee's death in 1870 before he'd written even a manuscript of his memoirs about the war , there was a surge of interest in capturing and celebrating his memory. Piston carefully introduces us to the characters that took in upon themselves to elevate Lee to the beatific status he enjoyed for over one hundred years, as well as the techniques they used to do it.
Simply put, just like Newton's Third Law tells us, the action to elevate Lee required the opposite action of defaming Longstreet. Piston (and many authors who have tackled this subject matter described the development of Longstreet as Judas Iscariot to Lee's Christ-like status.
This is best illustrated by the "Longstreet Lost the War at Gettysburg" myth, all based on a lie perpetrated by William Pendleton (stay tuned, a post on this phenomenon will be forthcoming.) Longstreet made an easy target, not just because he wasn't a Virginian, but because he openly supported the Republican government, was thought to be betraying the tenets of the Confederacy he had fought for. Longstreet's clumsy and arrogant responses to these men did little to help his cause.
This book is less an apologia for General Longstreet as it is a scathing indictment of the personalities and agendas that set about smearing him as a part of the larger construction of the Lost Cause mythology. Piston is sometimes quite unsympathetic towards Longstreet, especially regarding his responses to those who would defame him; but this does not subtract from his pointed study of the manipulation and dishonesty perpetrated by men like Early et al, as well as influential historians that followed in the decades after the war, first among them Douglas Southall Freeman.
This all starts with the title of the book. By calling his work "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant", Piston is clearly co-opting the title of Freeman's "Lee Lieutenants", a work which went a long way towards cementing the fables created around the Confederacy after the war. Piston carries us through not only the nitty-gritty of how a Confederate war hero became defamed and despised, but also how that myth perpetuated itself through the near 150 years since. From the United Daughters of the Confederacy applying pressure on schools regarding textbook content to Freeman's lavish use of hearsay and editorial comment, Longstreet's reputation never had a chance.
General Longstreet is as good a general as the Confederacy had; a fact recognized during and immediately after the war. In the years that followed, he would fall under the heels of the Lost Cause and its veneration of Lee to the point where he bore the blame for Gettysburg and bore yoke of Confederate defeat. Piston's text does a wonderful job of detailing and describing this evolution, leaving the reader to shake their head in disbelief at just how powerful a force the Lost Cause mythology was and still remains.

Book Review: "The Darkest Days of the War"

I launched into this book by Peter Cozzens as a continuation of my exploration of the fighting in the Western Theater. The campaigns conducted west of the Appalachians were incredibly complex, and the appellation "Western Theater" is wholly inadequate. I have a theory about why this oversimplification exists, but that'll be covered in another post.
Mr. Cozzens opens up the battles of Iuka and Corinth, fought in September/October, 1862, to the rigors of current historical method, and a rich mine they are. Long forgotten, these battles were a tipping point in the fighting in Mississippi in 1862, and aside from launching and ruining more than a few careers, opened the path towards Vicksburg for the Union Army.
The battles themselves were brutal, clumsy affairs marked by terrifyingly inept decisions made by personalities like Van Dorn, Price, Bragg, Rosecrans, Ord, and Grant. The conditions were ghastly-hot, with water and rations at a premium on both sides. The casualties relative to numbers of men engaged were unreal, and Cozzens brings us right into the thick of the fighting with a tremendous array of primary citations from fighting men on both sides.
Cozzens does a most solid job meeting the various requirements of a good campaign history, but really sets himself apart by using contextual analysis exceptionally well. A primary theme of this book is the pivotal nature of these comparatively small-scale battles and the tremendous consequences of their outcomes; Cozzens illustrates this theme well by wrapping this story into the larger issues of the concomitant Confederate invasions of Kentucky and Maryland. This way, we can easily fit the battles of Corinth and Iuka into the larger strategic picture.
There are also no punches pulled when it came to describing the ineptitude of commmanders at the top of both armies. Cozzens seems to take particular interest in showing the bizarre and foolhardy behavior of Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn, as well as presenting the genesis of the schism between Union Gen. William Rosecrans and Gen. Ulysses Grant.
I would have liked to have seen some more discussion about how the Union and Confederacy responded to these battles at the political and social level. Were they lost in the shuffle of Lee's defeat at Antietam and Bragg's retreat from Kentucky? Did the population of Mississippi reply with anger, resignation, frustration? This perspective of the aftermath of these campaigns is only minimally explored.
The battles of Iuka and Corinth had been mostly forgotten until "The Darkest Days of the War". This text provides us with a rigorous accounting of these struggles and helps remind the student of the Civil War of the tremendous tactical and strategic import of these clashes. If you wish to engage this subject matter, look no further than this book

Book Review: "Isn't This Glorious!"

When I was putting together my lecture to the San Diego Civil War Roundtable last month about the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, or Harvard Regiment, at Gettysburg, I happened upon a text I had not known existed. Prior to my discovery of "Isn't This Glorious!" by Edwin Root and Jeffrey Stocker, I thought my library had all of the pertinent materials I needed.
As soon as this book arrived in the mail from the publisher, I knew I had been mistaken, as this book had a treasure trove of new photos and personalities to examine. It was put to use as a resource, and after the lecture, I've gone back and read it as it is supposed to be; a treatment of the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments at Gettysburg that will bring their memory up to an equal level with other, more celebrated forces that participated in the battle.
There is no shortage of books providing analysis of various regiments and their exploits at this most famous of American battles; "Isn't This Glorious!" is particularly unique because it's investigation does not end with the battle or even the war's conclusion.
The first part of the book introduces us to the men of the regiments, the bloody paths that brought them to Gettysburg, and focuses us in on the essential role they played in the battle: the sealing of the southern portion of the Confederate breathrough at the Copse of Trees. The detail is tremendous, as the fighting is told straight from the eyes and mouths of the men, and not just the officers, either. We learn about the brutal dealings from the rank and file, brought out in vivid and anxious detail. There is also no shortage of photos of the men from whom we are hearing, so we can almost see their faces through the battlesmoke.
The fighting in this small section of the battlefield was just as chaotic as it was pivotal, and the tension provided by the authors as the men surge towards the Confederates at the Copse of Trees is palpable. Bringing this home in a more tangible form are some of the best battle maps I've seen. These foldout pages do not present the battle as a whole, but the the small piece of the action these regiments took part in. The value and uniqueness of these maps comes in their kinetic ability to show the lines of the regiments move from a disciplined front on Cemetery Ridge to a mob charging north towards the Copse of Trees. The Confederate forces have no marking at all, they come forward in the maps as a ravening horde, an irresistable tide plunging toward the Union forces.
The actual detail of the battle I'll leave to you, but this little-discussed segment of the battle, fought just below the Copse of Trees by men with carbines, pistols, swords, and bare hands, will leave you quite shaken.
The second section of the book takes us on a journey quite unique in the regimental histories pertaining to Gettysburg. After we spend much time investing in the men and their sacrifices, the authors take us through the sometimes sordid history of the monuments placed on the field to commemorate these sturdy men. In this portion, we see how this story became almost lost in contemporary Gettysburg history and how the men of these regiments faded from memory.
The historiography of the Civil War is spoken of frequently in this space, and this section of the book is an example of historiography at the highest level. We are walked through events that occurred over decades and shown how decisions were made and how they have influenced our current conceptions of the battle. There was quite a struggle over these regiments, and I learned, quite to my dismay, that the marker of the Harvard Regiment on the field today is in the wrong place! This story is a perfect example of how the reality of the past is frequently altered subject to the exigencies of the present.
As the various markers and monuments are shuffled around, it can become difficult to follow. We are well-served by the map that shows the previous and current locations of the structures, as well as another collection of photos of the site as well as the monuments themselves.
The stroke of genius in this book is in its ability to remind us why we care about these monuments and showing how closely the men whom they represent were so closely tied to them after the war. It's clear why these monuments maintain a hold on our imagination and why the pictures in the book are so evocative.
At the book's end, the author's stated goal, to elevate the memory of these Massachusetts men back to a level field with the more celebrated units that fought at the Copse of Trees and repulsed Pickett's Charge, is fully realized. In closing, we are reminded by the authors just what these men dealt with not only to achieve victory, but also to survive the sometimes tragic lives that awaited them after the war. The diary entry of one James Tenney, an enlisted man in the 15th Mass. as pertaining to the battle, is a telling conclusion to this story.
You will undoubtedly close this book with saddened eyes and a newfound appreciation for these men who helped win the battle of Gettysburg. If you have any interest in this battle or in Massachusetts regiments, this book will be an asset to your learning. Best of all, you can acquire it and still remain faithful to our commitment to supporting independent booksellers. I refer you please to the book's website, where you can order directly from the publisher.

More Analysis Of "The Peculiar Institution"

I reviewed Kenneth Stampp's seminal treatment of slavery, titled "The Peculiar Institution" here several months ago. I'm pleased to see Rene Tyree, who runs Wigs-Wags, one of the best ACW blogs out there, reading and considering this book. Please take a look at his new post about it, the comment that I entered is below. I'm keen to see his response and please chime in on this issue whether you've read the book or not.
"I was struck, when I read the book, how Stampp used the work “positive” to describe those incentives. I don’t think it was for lack of a better term, I think he used it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. He knew full well how disgraceful it was to treat another human being like this, but managed to keep such editorial comment out of his book, which is one of it’s strengths. In using the word “positive”, I think he’s venting a little bit to show how there’s nothing at all positive about slavery"

Book Review: "Shiloh: Bloody April"

In writing a campaign history about the Battle of Shiloh, author Wiley Sword, in "Shiloh: Bloody April" has tackled an incredibly complex battle that took place on a massive scale with far-reaching repercussions. The primary one being the fact, because of the nearly 24,000 casualties and savage nature of the fighting, forever changed the way this nation looked at war.
Sword has done an excellent, though not flawless job of presenting this campaign to the reader. We get a solid introduction to the events preceding the battle and the how and why the opposing forces came together as they did. Each of the primary officers involved; Johnson, Bragg, Beauregard, Grant, Sherman, Buell, get an adequate treatment that is clearly foreshortened for the sake of brevity. The text is well-balanced and liberally sprinkled with references from both sides of the battle lines. There is a wonderful grasp of the themes surrounding the campaign, and they are laid out in a clear and concise fashion.
The book ended with a series of individual questions that address all of the important issues: Beauregard's withdrawal order the night of April 6th, the death of General Albert Johnson, who was the commanding officer for the South at Shiloh, with both the short and long-term consequences addressed, the fighting at the Hornet's Nest and the possibility of a Confederate breakthrough, Grant's attack order of April 7th, and, interestingly, a section entitled "Tactical Lessons of the Battlefield." This last one was truly unique, and left me wanting a much longer treatment of this issue.
The strength of the book, and the reason it is regarded as a classic treatment of the Battle of Shiloh, is Sword's ability to put the reader right in the midst of the battle amidst the noise, chaos, and violence. We vividly see how the troops were by-in-large inexperienced, the terrain was by turns rocky, swampy, flat, forest, shrub-covered, all the while split by ravines, the weather was marked by torrential rain, and the fighting was up close, personal, and particularly savage. Sword does not sanitize the battle and does not shy away from the blood and death, with the effect of reminding us, over and over again, that there is no glory in such destruction and that what the troops had to go through is just unforgettably horrible.
Shiloh was a hellish place, and the battlefield was unbelievably confused. In order to follow such a battle, the text is not enough. All of the names, terrain points, regiments, etc get jumbled together without a frame of reference. The solution is to have accurate, consistent, and plentiful maps. The maps in this book, however, are its biggest weakness. First, there is no single battlefield reference map with all of the locations and initial troop dispositions available to look back at. There is a map at the beginning, but it's totally incomplete. The maps are inconsistent, ie, the notations change from division to brigade to regimental level. Also, when looking at different parts of the lines on a map, everything else is excluded, so it looks like the action is happening in a vacuum.It takes a bit of flipping back and forth, which is at times frustrating, but the ebb and flow of the battle can be followed.
This battle was a national catastrophe that shocked the people of both North and South, both in its scale and its brutality. After Shiloh, there was no argument that this was going to be a long and difficult war. Sword's effort does a fantastic job of capturing the broad scale of the campaign, as well as the horror of the fighting at its most basic level. This is not a flawless regimental history, but "Shiloh: Bloody April" gets a strong recommendation. You will come away not only with a greatly enhanced fund of knowledge about this campaign, but also with a heavy heart.

What Makes A Good Campaign History Book?

There is another fascinating piece to the Lost Cause mythology that we will soon be examining, and that is the emphasis that was and still is placed on the war in the Eastern Theater with the primary combatants being the Union Army of the Potomac vs the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. To the detriment of this bias has been attention to the fighting and events that took place in the Western Theater, which encompasses the Trans-Mississippi and Tennessee Departments (among others) of both North and South. I have a solid background in the battles in the West, but not on par with my knowledge of the fighting in the East. To remedy this, I have lined up a nice array of campaign histories which I will review as I work through them, the first of which is Wiley Sword's "Shiloh, Bloody April" which I recently finished and will review soon. To follow are works by Peter Cozzens and Noah Alan Trudeau, among others. There are multiple requirements to satisfy in crafting a complete and accurate campaign history. Here are a few which we'll be using in our analysis of these books.
1. establishing a good context for how the battle came upon the opposing forces, and what the goals of each army where for the campaign.
2. providing a succinct introduction into the personalities leading each force, their idiosyncracies, motivations, foibles, etc.
3. having plenty of accurate, detailed, and readable battle maps to follow the flow of the action, otherwise the regiments, brigades, landmarks, rivers, etc become one big jumble in the text.
4. presenting a complete order of battle as an appendix, to figure out which element was under who, and what the chain of command looked like.
5. giving a view into the common soldier's view of the fighting, ie, put the reader on the ground with the men in the smoke and fire. It's one thing to read a general's after-action report, but the real emotion and power comes in learning about how young men bore up under such extreme and terrifying circumstances.
6. balance, balance, balance. There must be equal attention paid to both sides. A good campaign history should be neither trumpeting the victors nor an apologia for the losers. These battles are so complex, it's importance that the errors and bravery on both sides have a moment of clarity.
7. having a clear presentation of the aftermath of the campaign; were aims met, was anything in particular precipitated by the action, where would the armies go from there.
Keeping these properties in mind will help give a foundation for analysis in moving forward with these texts; I know there are probably other thoughts, please add them by putting in a comment.

A Seminal Moment In Civil War Research

I recently became a member of a fantastic organization known as The Society of Civil War Historians, and what a good move it was. Aside from filling up on the free quarterly newsletters (may I refer you to the summer 2008 newsletter where there is an article on how the Internet has influenced Civil War learning and teaching), I received three issues of the society's journal entitled "Civil War History."
You may recall in my review of "Bitterly Divided", I referenced an article by Joseph Glatthaar entitled "Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army" from the September, 2008 issue of this outstanding publication as an example of the difference between using anecdotal evidence and some amount of statistical rigor to prove a hypothesis. Let's take a more thorough look at what could well be a seminal study that changes the way we look at a key component of Civil War history.
This article is the equivalent of what is known in the medical literature as a retrospective study, wherein the records of groups of individuals who are alike in many ways, but differ by a certain characteristic, are compared to look for a specific variable. In a well-designed study, the numbers can be a very powerful and convincing tool, far more so than any collection of anecdotes.
Dr. Glatthaar's study evaluates the question of whether the wealthy and slaveholding component of the Confederacy, after building the secession crisis and launching the war, stood by while the poorer strata of Southern society bore a disproportionate share of the warfighting. Thus, it compares a group of individuals (soldiers and officers in Gen. Lee's army) who are alike in many ways, but differ by a certain characteristic (wealth and/or slaveholding status) to look for a certain variable (did a disproportionate number of poor men serve in the army as opposed to wealthy men and/or slaveholders, remembering the key is proportionality, not absolute numbers, as the poor vastly outnumbered the wealthy).
The study is built around a stratified cluster sample of Lee's army, basically a data mining of a cross section of the service records and census data for troops in the various branches of the army, ie infantry, cavalry, artillery. This sample technique is extremely accurate based upon using 95% confidence intervals, and you can review the raw data if you wish to double check.
Without getting into too much detail (though I encourage anyone interested to read the study), Dr. Glatthaar successfully demonstrates that this was "a rich and a poor man's fight. Rich people were, in fact, greatly overrepresented in Lee's army, and not just at the officer level." He goes on to demonstrate with solid statistical accuracy that "troops in that army possessed powerful ties to slavery, and they came out in force to defend their precious institution. Slaveholders served in all ranks, deserted less frequently, suffered more injuries - in short, they risked it all for Confederate independence."
Please take a moment to let these two quotes sink in, because this is important, even groundbreaking stuff. Think of the number of places you've read, heard, or been taught that this war was started by the Southern rich, fought by the Southern poor, and slavery and slaveholding had nothing to do with it. This study debunks that theory, pervasive though it may be.
As we try to undo damage wreaked by decades of unchallenged assertions and reams of anecdotal or secondary evidence backing up the common understanding of the Civil War (again, the Lost Cause mythology being the primary example), we must bring modern investigative tools to bear. Dr. Glatthaar uses cutting edge research technology and advanced statistical methods to demonstrate how, as the author puts it "together, the rich, middle, and poor in Lee's army embraced the institution of slavery, and their tenacity in war indicates the broad strength of commitment to Confederate independence."
I know that for this to happen, this article and its findings need to reach a wider audience, as well as be disseminated as a reference in future investigations. One can only hope that in the same way Douglas Southall Freeman mined the perversely biased and inaccurate "Southern Historical Society Papers" in his research for what have been some of the primary texts on the war, this study and similar ones to come will form the backbone of a new and more accurate understanding of the Civil War.

Book Review "Bitterly Divided"

I'm thoroughly enjoying doing these book reviews, and am really starting to find and refine my style and approach. There are lots of ways to break down a book, and for an alternative tack that is very effective, please avail yourself of the Civil War Librarian's efforts or those of Brett Schulte at TOCWOC. I've been following these blogs for some time and find the book reviews to be very well done. Onwards to today's effort...

Dr. David Williams new text, entitled "Bitterly Divided" brought with it the promise of a discussion of dissent within the Confederacy and an examination of the effects of this turmoil on the Confederate war effort. This was a topic I felt had been heretofore underserved in my reading and education on the Civil War, and I thus proceeded with great anticipation.

In his introduction Williams asserts "between 1861 and 1865, the South was torn apart b a violent inner civil war, a war no less significant to the Confederacy's fate than its more widely known struggle against the Yankees." So we have a text setting out to not only illustrate southern dissent, but to show how it had a striking effect on the war's outcome. He then sets out to prove this ambitious hypothesis by working through: the battle over secession, the struggle at home and women's revolts, draft evasion by the rich, desertion and Unionism, emancipation and black resistance, and finally, Indian insurrection.

Dr. Williams takes on a substantial task with his premise not only of a Confederacy riven by dissent, but that this same dissent spelled doom for the Confederate effort. He has a tall order to fill, and we are provided with reams of anecdotal data to establish this hypothesis. By anecdotal, I mean letters, diaries, individual quotes, editorials, etc. These anecdotes do a reasonable job of painting a picture of dissent throughout the South, but let us remind ourselves of the import and relative strength of an anecdote.

While it is a primary source, and thus strong in that respect, an anecdote is the isolated opinion or action of one or a handful of people. They can be very emotive and descriptive, and are used to great effect in many aspects of historical writing (not to mention in today's local and even national news broadcasts.) That said, they are not adequate for describing the overall effect or opinion of a larger body, ie, they are not generalizable. We cannot ascribe the opinion or action in an anecdote to an entire army, population, race, etc. To illustrate from another profession; in the medical literature the anecdote is the weakest form of evidence for proving the efficacy of an intervention.

This same weakness is present in "Bitterly Divided." For example, we are given his descriptions of deserters being tortured, maimed, and killed, women rioting over food, troops writing about their reason for desertion. While these anecdotes are provocative, sad, and illustrative of parts of Southern society struggling with itself, there is no way to generalize that behavior across the Confederacy. What is needed is some data collection and interpretation to help prove this general discord. Why not a map of the Confederacy with locations of food riots pinpointed? How about tables showing anticipated muster numbers with discrepencies and numbers of deserters? Show me the research and the hard data, the population studies and large-scale analysis, this is supposed to be an academic effort!

Each of the components of southern dissent addressed carry multiple anecdotes, but we finish each segment not just without the backing of data, but without any link to outcome either. Recall that Dr. Williams' hypothesis is that this dissent had a tremendous effect on the war's outcome; however, he does not tie these events to reverses in the field or seminal, destructive changes in Confederate policy or war aims. Yes, this dissent existed, but a causal link to the final endpoint of Confederate defeat is not established.

To be sure, Dr. Williams attempts to provide this sort of evidence, but time and again, he places an unsupported statement without footnote or reference into the text. That is something I cannot take seriously. An example: on page 55 in discussing absence from General Lee's army, Williams states "thousands of men like Atkins abandoned the army that fall and winter, but few were volunteering to take their place." No reference is given.

But most egregious is not the fact that these bold statements are not just unsupported, they are inconsistent as well. In addressing the issue of southerners fighting for the Union Army we have the following, all without footnote or reference:

"...the Union may not have been preserved, that chattel slavery may not have ended when it did, without the service of nearly half a million southerners in Union blue." (Pg 7)

Then we have this, "In total, about three hundred thousand southern whites joined the Union armies." (Pg 150-151)

Finally, and in the last sentence of the book, Williams writes, "And so the Confederacy was defeated, not only by the Union's military - nearly a quarter of which was comprised of southerners - but also by southerners on the home front." (Pg 250)

Simply put, the tremendous inconsistencies and lack of references in this series of quotes puts the veracity of the whole premise into serious question. (Note: for some excellent examples of how a rigorous academic analysis is done, please see Joseph Glatthaar's article "Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army" in the 9/08 edition of "Civil War History", or the appendix of Gordon Rhea's "Cold Harbor".)

As I moved through the sections and saw these same issues of anecdotal glut and broad, unsubstantiated statements, I was hoping that the final chapter called "Defeated...by the People at Home" could somehow tie this all together. Unfortunately, Dr. Williams managed to send this whole train off the tracks when he wrote, without context, notation, or proof:

"Certainly defeats on the battlefield sapped the Confederacy's will to fight, but those defeats came largely because so many soldiers had already lost their will to fight and deserted the army." (Pg 243)

Dr. Williams doesn't prove his hypothesis with good data, and then launches an absurd assertion in the tail end of his book. All I could say when I read that was "What?!" All Confederate General George Pickett would have said (and did say in regards to the Confederate defeat) is "I think the Army of the Potomac had something to do with it."

This book does give voice to the idea of Southern dissent both in the antebellum period and during the war itself, and it is an important voice. Dr. Williams does demonstrate that the South had significant internal strife to deal with, and this is a worthy topic. His effort would have been much better spent in perhaps linking it to our memory of the South today and the Lost Cause mythology. Instead, he attempts to link it to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy and, on the basis of poor and unsubstantiated data along with some downright bizarre assertions, comes up far short.

Book Review: "Lee Considered" Plus An Examination Of Robert E. Lee In The Lost Cause

When I found "Lee Considered" by Alan Nolan on the shelves of the Adams Avenue Bookstore with a pristine book jacket and plastic cover, I knew I had a winner for the collection. I was optimistic going in that I had a winner for my continued study of the Lost Cause mythology as well. The author of "Lee Considered", the late Alan Nolan, was an expert on this subject with a number of related books and essays to his credit. Now that I'm finished, I'm pleased to say this is an excellent discussion of Robert E. Lee the man, the general, and the tradition.
That said, I'm also a little bit irritated.
Given that this review will also be covering what is known as the Lee Tradition within the Lost Cause mythology, I'm going to fold this into our ongoing discussion of the Lost Cause, and again refer you to my previous posts on the subject to get yourself up to speed. Also this post has some meat to it, so please take your time and hang in there, there is some important stuff at the end.
So here is the Lee Tradition in a nutshell (as an exercise, try to recall what you learned about Lee in school, perceptions of Lee you have, and representations of him you've seen in movies, art, books, etc). He is broadly remembered as an ardent anti-secessionist who only joined the Confederacy because he couldn't draw his sword against his native Virginia and was forced into making a choice, as a man against slavery despite being a slaveowner himself, a great conciliator in the post-war period, and most importantly, one of the greatest, most talented military leaders in history, and certainly the premier general officer during the Civil War. Basically a man who's record and reputation stand untarnished and unchallenged, a great man and brilliant general with his name on schools, buildings, and famous cars on TV.
Sound at all familiar?
Mr. Nolan sets out to demystify the man and explore each of these features of his reputation individually. He starts by explaining the genesis of the title "Lee Considered" instead of reconsidered; that despite piles of books on the subject, no single text has done. Nolan reminds us, in the words of Samuel Eliot Morison to the American Historical Association ,"The fundamental question is what actually happened, and why?..After his main object of describing events "simply as they happened, the historian's principal task is to understand the motives and objects of individuals and groups...and to point out mistakes as well as achievements by persons and movements." His point in writing this book is that this sort of attention has (and I agree) not been given to General Robert E. Lee.
In a stepwise fashion, Mr. Nolan moves us through the different tenets of the Lee Tradition, starting with Lee and slavery. Nolan works through Lee's prewar views, his opinion on arming and enlisting slaves into the Confederate army, and his postwar statements concerning his earlier beliefs. This is a skillful way to break down a difficult question based on the understanding that Lee was born into being a slaveholder and was in a society were it was taken for grant. We read letters from Lee's hand where his level of racism is no different than that pervading most people, North and South. We are also shown how Lee jumped on the post-war bandwagon trying to dissociate slavery as the primary reason behind secession and war. The point of this chapter is not that Lee was a hardened slave driver who forever hated black people, but that the answer is much more nuanced than, as the mythology would have us believe. This chapter really demonstrates well the lack of historical attention paid this man and the complexity of the issues surrounding him.
Nolan then moves to the secession question where the Lee Tradition would have us believe that Lee was against secession to the bitter end, but was tragically and honorably driven into fighting for the South and for his home state of Virginia. Thus, we are told, Lee has no accountability for his actions, that he was subject to "tragic forces". In a handful of pages, Nolan completely debunks this and uses Lee's own writings to show that Lee's loyalty was ambiguous at best. He does this by taking us through the timeline of Lee being commissioned a colonel in the US Army to his resignation 20 days later and accepting the commission of the newly seceded Virginia's commission as major general two days after that. This rapidity superimposed on the timing of the secession crisis and Virginia's secession, shows that Lee knew exactly what he was doing and that he made a conscious decision about where his loyalty lay. The point again is that when rigorously studied, Lee is far more flawed than our popular understanding.
The central section of the book analyzes Lee's war record and massive, rarely challenged reputation as the preeminent Civil War general and one of the best generals in American history.
This is the cornerstone of the Lee legend and one that brings up sharp opinions and feelings. Nolan is smart here in that he doesn't get bogged down dissecting campaign after campaign, or getting into the mire of comparing him to one general or another. He steps back and expands the context in which Lee, and any general officer should be evaluated (and most great ones, Eisenhower, Patton, Schwartzkopf, etc have been subjected to). He examines whether Lee's strategy at the tactical level matched with and furthered the overall strategic goals of the Confederacy.
Lee made his reputation for audacity and aggressiveness, and won fame on fields like Chancellorsville and Second Manassas. Nolan shows how this same tendency not only systematically bled his army white, but how consistently offensive warfare also went in contravention of the South's need to prolong the war as long as possible until the North gave it up (which came very close to happening on several occassions.) The view of Lee as an unfailingly brilliant general does not hold up under this sort of examination, so it follows that another part of the Lost Cause mythology was that, as the name suggests, the Confederacy was doomed to defeat from the beginning of the war, thus Lee was in charge of an army with no hope of victory, and he pushed the Union as hard as possible. Nolan makes his point and shows how the mythology of Lee as a superior general also doesn't stand up to close or broad examination.
The book doesn't fail to address the idea of Lee as conciliator and a quiet gentleman detached from the turbulent post-war period that the mythology teaches us. It is clear that he was quite active not only defending his actions and the actions of the South, but took an active role in writing and developing what would become the Lost Cause mythology; his correspondence with Jubal Early are solid proof of this.
The final chapter of the book, titled "The Lee Tradition and Civil War History" is simply a masterful summary of the Lost Cause, the role of the Lee Tradition within it, and how our perception of the Civil War has been so long and so comprehensively skewed. The fault here is not Lee's, it is those who would pervert his actions to further a goal, and those who would allow it to happen. Again, the question of the history of Civil War history is absolutely fascinating and should be the subject of academic treatment, but I digress...
In the final pages, Nolan writes that "the facts contradicting the Lee tradition...are not newly discovered. They are not obscure." Nolan's point is that for the early writers of Civil War history these facts "are exorcised, disregarded, or rationalized." Nolan then writes:
"The distortions of fact that mark the Lee tradition are not unique in Civil War history; on the contrary, they are suggestive of a larger and more widespread problem. Fiction - in the form of misinterpretation or the form of outright misrepresentation - is endemic to the study of the history of the Civil War...These fictions have ousted teh facts and gained wide currency, so that what is treated as the history of the Civil War is instead a legend, a folk epic told over and over again."
This is a premier study done by a clear expert on the man as well as historical method. It is well-written and challenging, with a great flow and rhythm to it. That said, Nolan has a bad habit of when quoting a primary source, he adds italics to the text and writes afterwards "emphasis added". Also, he continuously brings up the work of Douglas Southall Freeman, to the point where that name leads off more than one chapter.
My irritation I mentioned above comes from the fact that I felt a bit manipulated by all this: there is no need for added italics to prove a point. If you, to borrow a bit of poker parlance, have the nuts, then why jazz it up? There's no room for that in rigorous historiography and few are the authors that do it. The continuous invoking of Freeman, even leading off a few chapters with his name, lent a certain clumsiness to the discussion. Yes, Freeman's books are a substantial part of this mythology, but aren't the sole part. The constant bashing away at one entity was a bit heavy-handed and awkward, like there was some personal grudge being exorcised. The examination was of the Lee Tradition as a whole, not one author's role in building it.
These issues are not major detractors from the overall quality of the book, nor change the facts regarding the Lee Tradition and Lost Cause. The damage done by this mythology is slowly being undone and this text pushes that movement and learning further by leaps and bounds. Highly recommended.

Book Review: "The Impending Crisis"

It's been awhile since my last book review, and it's because I was tackling "The Impending Crisis" by David M. Potter. It is a massive and thorough analysis of the years 1848-1861 and the multiple complex issues, ideas, personalities, and events that formed the kinetic and challenging antebellum period. This book is, in short, a masterwork of historical method and covers a huge and complex expanse of our nation's history in a brilliant and staggering way.
There are three principles that Potter adheres to most vigorously as he crafted this tome:
1. a commitment to primary sources and rigorous citation, thus giving credibility and immediacy to the issues under investigation.
2. drawing the reader into the moment being discussed while at the same time keeping the scope of that moment broad, so as to demonstrate the multitude of variables at work.
3. a strict avoidance of editorializing or bloviating, he lets the facts do the talking.
This first point is one that is incredibly striking in nearly every chapter, you are pulled into the moment and the immediacy of the issue because you are reading just what was said at the time. As Walter Cleamons of Newsweek said, "The rejection of hindsight, with the insistence of trying to see events from the point of view of the participants, was a governing theme with Potter...watching him apply it is a revelation." As you are taken through, for example, the Lecompton crisis, you are presented with the records of what was said, by whom, and what the direct effects of each action was, it's as close as you can get to a time machine.
The second point is one that always keeps us in touch with the larger context as minutiae is explored. We are always reminded of the ramifications of an issue throughout the Union and beyond, for example, Potter points out the virulent anger in the Midwest over secession as it would jeopardize access to the Mississippi; find that point in any other text.
By sticking to the third point, Potter is able to maintain his credibility as an objective writer. He does not inject himself or his biases into the discussion, we are left newly informed and free to draw our own conclusions.
With this understanding of his approach, we can really look at how the author structures his approach to the myriad issues in the period. Potter takes the turbulent years of 1848-1861 and breaks them into pieces based upon theme, not time. There are chapters on John Brown, Dred Scott, the secession crisis, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, etc. This thematic structure gives significant chronological overlap, so you really get a flavor for how much people were trying to digest and deal with at any one time, from the farmstead to the White House.
Each theme chapter has a similar structure: Potter sets the context and introduces a few of the primary characters, then skillfully dissects the minutiae of the issue in question. This latter part he does masterfully; he is clearly at the top of the heap in addressing legislative history and Constitutional law. To watch him break down and analyze a legislative agenda (an example being the Compromise of 1850) is really quite incredible. He closes each chapter not by a gray recitation of facts, but by putting us again in historical context, discussing the repercussions of what has just occurred, and setting the stage for the end game.
In taking this approach, Potter builds the suspense quite brilliantly, as we see issues that are disparate in nature slowly being pulled towards a single conclusion through the overlap of time and attitude. Potter shows us clearly how for example the end of the Mexican-American War and the Dred Scott decision, though separated by years, personalities, and issues, were part of the inexorable tide that brought Civil War. We are drawn into the final chapters where we see the election of 1860, secession, and eventual war, and all of the pieces fit together. We are shown plainly and without judgement how the United States came to its darkest years. The chapter entitled "The Nature of Southern Separatism", for example, is a brilliant summary of the Southern attitudes and rationalizations towards the Republicans, Lincoln, abolitionists, and secession and is, for me, the most evocative section of the book.
This is a tremendous book, plain and simple, and paints an amazing picture of this incredible time in our nations' history. Make no mistake, it is a long read and takes time to properly digest, but don't let that daunt you. If you find your way to this book and read it, you will not only have an amazing understanding of the antebellum period, but will have shared in a magnum opus of American history. Highly recommended.

Book Review: "Ghosts of the Confederacy"

OK, now we're getting into some seriously dense academia with this effort from LSU professor Gaines Foster. There is a broad selection of texts written for the ACW-interested public, and this effort falls on the more rigorously academic side. This is not a problem, unless you're looking for the readability of a McPherson or Ambrose, because the data is wonderfully presented, just lacking in color.
"Ghosts of the Confederacy" is a study of how the post-Confederacy South and the Southern memory of the Civil War took shape in the period directly after the end of the war through 1913. We are walked meticulously through the adaptation of the South to the evolution of its society and economy in post-bellum America and the formation of soldier's groups, advocacy organizations, and memorialization movements, first in Virginia, then throughout the entire south.
This is a story of a beaten people trying to find some redemption in the dregs of defeat through the growth of the Lost Cause movement, all the while chasing and intercalating the culture of the victors in the birth and nascency of the New South. Foster shows us how the two moved in lock-step with each other; for every step southerners made in moving forward, be it politically, socially, economically, there was a proponent of the Lost Cause ready to denigrate them for the purpose of elevating Confederate memory.
There was real muscle behind this movement, as Foster meticulously demonstrates the growth of Virginia-based movements such as the Southern Historical Society and Association of the Army of Northern Virginia. He is not shy about showing how they were unable to mobilize the entire South and then moves to groups such as Lee Camp and United Confederate Veterans. These were the groups that brought in much more attention and money as the 19th century drew to a close; Foster shows clearly the political maneuvering that made this possible and how these groups pushed the memorialization movement further, including the erecting of monuments to Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis.
Foster's real strong suit comes in his ability to illustrate the reconciliation between North and South. This detente was instrumental in the cementing of the South's conception of the Confederacy in wartime and in the Lost Cause. This is an amazing story that deserves much more robust treatment than I will give here, but the idea that the two sides came together as quickly and peacefully as they did is quite remarkable. From Joshua Chamberlain and his troops saluting the defeated Confederates at Appomattox to the return of captured Confederate battle flags to the South, gradually the New South moved towards the validation it wanted: the public concession by the North of the honor and nobility of the Confederate's fight. This would finally be cemented, but it would take another war to do so.
Foster's strongest chapter and best argument comes in his analysis of the Spanish-American War and it's effect on reconciliation. When President McKinley moved the nation towards war in 1898, the powerful leadership of groups like the United Confederate Veterans called upon the South to join the fight. Southerners joined Northerners in the blue uniform of the national army and marched off to war and "the obliteration of all sectional distrusts" together. Foster even posits that this joining together of North and South was one of McKinley's war aims. Apocryphal or not, this is exactly what happened.
"The Spanish-American War, in sum, allowed southerners to affirm their loyalty to the union and, of equal importance, to demonstrate their courage and that of the Confederate soldier."
With this approval, the ideas of a war fought over Constitutional issues and states rights instead of slavery, and suppression of opinions that did not glorify the Confederate soldier and leadership became the standard throughout the now truly United States.
I would have liked Foster to take this discussion a bit further and investigate the effect of the next major war the United States fought in; World War I. It remains unclear if sectionalism was even on the table when America entered the war in 1916, and Foster does not explore past 1913. Perhaps an opportunity missed.
Another hole in Foster's narrative is that he does not address the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period, and I believe this to be a mistake. This was a tangible, albeit small, reaction in the South to the defeat of the Confederacy and certainly had a larger role in decades to follow. Some discussion of the birth and development of this group as well as it's role in the suppression of opinions and even an entire race unsavory to the New South would have been in order.
The book is completed with a final chapter that begins to explore the challenge that historians faced (and continue to face) in collecting and recording an accurate history of the Civil War. The field of history. At the turn of the 20th century, the professionalization of history was in full swing, as scholars trained in the North and overseas and skilled in the rigorous application of primary versus secondary sources and using a balanced view on an issue turned their attention to the Civil War.
One can easily imagine how this approach would clash with the approach taken in the South (recall our previous discussion of the Southern Historical Society Papers) and Foster just begins to scratch the surface of this collision. He posits, and I tend to agree, that the losers of this battle in the South and really throughout the nation as a whole at the turn of the century, were the professional historians. It was the histories presented by the Southern Historical Society, United Confederate Veterans, and Daughters of Confederate Veterans that would hold sway in the general public, and launch the southern conception of the war and the Lost Cause into the national consciousness.
This is a provocative argument, and certainly one that merits an in-depth study; sort of a history of Civil War history, if you will. I tell you what, if I was a grad student now, I would try to crank out exactly that dissertation in time for the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, because that's the time that people's attention will turn back to the Civil War and it's memory.
Overall, I have a few issues with this book, but Foster certainly reaches the goal set out in the title. There are some real nuggets of genius in here, as well as some juicy starting points for further analysis. For those reasons alone, definitely an important read.

Book Review: "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History"

This book is actually a collection of nine essays by a host of notable Civil War and Lost Cause historians published in 2000. If you look at the "reading stand" sidebar, you'll notice that I started this work several months ago, and this is why. Each essay is really a stand-alone work that fits under the umbrella of the broad title, thus it can be consumed in a leisurely fashion without having to go back over old ground.
Dr. Gary Gallagher, a professor at the University of Virginia and a noteworthy Civil War historian, has made a nice niche for himself by co-editing this work (with Alan Nolan) and many others like it. Most cover a specific campaign, and as I've read the three volumes on Gettysburg, one on Fredericksburg, and have texts on Antietam and the Peninsula Campaign in the library, I was quite curious to see what this non-campaign based collection would be like.
When I read the previous efforts, I was struck by how they are certainly not meant for beginners on any particular subject. Each essay assumes some level of previous reading/learning about the subject, thus my experience has been mixed. I opened this book knowing that my expertise on the Lost Cause was more in its nascency, so I kept my expectations limited.
I was most pleased to find the first two essays, by Gallagher and Nolan, titled "The Anatomy of the Myth" and "Jubal Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History: A Persistent Legacy." These two essays, each about 25 pages, pack a tremendous amount of background into the Lost Cause both as a theory and its development. The space limitation really isn't much of an issue, especially for Nolan, who packs a huge amount into his space.
After those first two efforts, the rest of the book is quite different in tone, as each essay focuses more on a subset of the Lost Cause mythology and dissects it in some detail. Particularly strong efforts are Brooks Simpson's study of the Lost Cause and its vendetta against U.S. Grant, and Jeffry Wert's discussion of James Longstreet and the Longstreet-lost-it-at-Gettysburg myth.
I closed the book with a vastly increased understanding of the subject, which is clearly the point; yet I was somehow unsatisfied. I had hoped for an essay that would examine the propagation of the Lost Cause mythology into contemporary thought and education; sort of a history of Civil War history if you will.
The essays are chock-full of things that the mythology has made quite real in movies and textbooks throughout the country, and though there is a clear foundation for the mythology and reputations it tried to injure or bolster as the case may be, the long-term ramifications are not explored. Is this a fatal flaw in the book? Of course not, each essay is a separate entity and these disparate parts are brought together under the same cover. If this was a single text on the Lost Cause, this would be much more of a problem.
There is much to be gained by studying the Lost Cause and it is a complex issue. This text not only covers much of the subtlety of the issue, but provides a cogent and quite complete background for someone entirely new to the subject.

Book Review: "The Peculiar Institution"

I recently completed what is roundly regarded as the seminal work on slavery in America, Kenneth Stampp's classic "The Peculiar Institution". I was looking for a single volume treatment of the subject because, despite being steeped in 19th century American history during my time of study at UCLA, I had never thoroughly grasped the scope of the slavery issue itself. The issues that it provoked have been well-covered in multiple texts I've read, but I wanted to get into the first principles of this unique American tragedy.
Mr Stampp is a Professor Emeritus at UC-Berkeley, with over 6 decades on the faculty, and "The Peculiar Institution" was his first major work. Published in 1956, it was groundbreaking in the way it showed slavery not as paternalistic and essentially benign, as most preceding authors would have had it, but as something alternately gruesome and tragic that was frequently actively resisted by its victims. The book also flew in the face of 1950s-era perceptions of race and slavery in the US, which was still struggling with the burden of pre-Civil Rights era racism.
The book moves systematically through its 10 chapters, with specific treatments on the role of slave labor in the Southern economy, the day to day worklife of slaves, punishment of slaves, family life, slave trading, and slave rebellion, among other things. While the style is sometimes dry, it is absolutely breathtaking in its scope of study. Meticulously footnoted with hundreds of primary sources, the presentation is incredibly compelling and lays to rest any number of long-standing and long-propagated myths about slavery.
More than this; however, is the subject itself. The chapters on the nuts and bolts of the slave economy are most enlightening, but it is the chapters that cover punishment of slaves, slave trading, slave rights (or lack thereof)and the effect all of this had on slave families that are truly staggering. Alternately enraging and tear-jerking, this text brings out the horror of slavery in remarkably vivid way.
Whether it be slaves being beaten to death on a whim, sold away from their family for no reason save financial, children and spouses being forced to watch the beating of a loved one, or slaves having absolutely no rights or protections in any court, there is no mistaking that this institution, and the millions who either participated in it or supported it, stripped entirely any vestige of humanity from those enslaved, they were implements, animals, beasts to be used and cast aside as one would an old shovel.
In contrast to the ghoulishness discussed above, the chapter on slave resistance was pretty remarkable. In the face of shoot to kill mandates, dogs, and the threat of being sold to the Deep South, not to mention the Fugitive Slave Law in the North, slaves still tried to either make good their escape or else throw a wrench in the works.
Clearly, this subject brings out tremendous emotion, and that is to be expected. What makes Mr. Stampp's effort so remarkable; however, is his completely dispassionate treatment of the subject and data. There is no judging, no editorializing, he lets the facts speak for themselves, and they speak loudly. This provides another layer of credibility that no amount of footnoting gives; there is no agenda here save for a clear discussion of fact, and in doing this, Stampp allows the institution of slavery to show its dark heart. Any embellishment on the part of the author would have been unnecessary.
When studying any aspect of the Civil War, one must be firmly grounded in the fundamentals. One cannot have a conversation about the 19th century in America without a firm and unbiased view of slavery and what it did to our country. This text provides a clear and strong interpretation of the former. We shall discuss the latter when I get to my next book reviews in the coming weeks.

Book Review: "A Champion's Mind"

In typical understated Pete Sampras fashion, an autobiography about one of the all-time greats hit the shelves on June 10th, and I just finished reading it. I must say, it is a perfect mirror of the man's career; unclear and skeletal at first, then more robust and engaging, then a deep frankness and revealing honesty towards the end.
The way that I even found out about this book was quintessentially Sampras: low profile, minimal publicity, then BOOM, there it was on my Amazon recommended list. Anyway, this was a wonderful find, as I was 14 years old when Sampras became a household name after winning the 1990 US Open, and I actively followed his career from then on. Going back through those tennis events and memories through his eyes was a wonderful and illuminating adventure.
The book actually starts off slowly insofar as the events are laid out along a discrete timeline, but there is little commentary or analysis about them, including his US Open breakthrough in 1990. He admits that early on in his career he was immature about, and lacked insight into what was going on around him, and the paucity of insight in the first few chapters of the book really reflects that. As he matures as a person, along an arc clearly delayed by his devotion to and sacrifices for tennis, his analysis about his career ripens and sharpens.
The first glimmers of this are in his wonderful insight into his relationship with Tim Gullikson, and the way his death affected him. This carries into the famous match against Jim Courier when Sampras began to weep on court. Without spoiling the surprise, I was stunned at Sampras' reaction to Courier's comments on the court during the match.
His commitment to the game, his competitive drive, and what he terms "the Gift" really come forth in the chapter about his famous 1996 match against Alex Corretja at the US Open. His discussion about that gripping 5th set, which I remember watching live, is totally engrossing. I went straight to my computer to find a youtube clip to relive it (for your ease, here is a link. It's in two parts, and the commentary's in French, but who cares?)
Sampras' growing sense of self and his awareness of the size and import of his career really launch the final 1/3 of the book into a special place. He dissects his pursuit of the all-time Grand Slam record as well as his quest to finish number one in the world for a record 6 straight years. Sadly, this last feat is one that fell on deaf ears in the US, for as he describes being doggedly pursued by the world press, no American beat writer followed him on his epic chase around the world (thanks a bunch, Sports Illustrated!). He also devotes a great deal of attention to his biggest rivals, primarily Boris Becker, Goran Ivanisovic, and of course, Andre Agassi. His insights into their matches and relationship are just gripping, and left me wanting so much more. Thankfully Agassi's autobiography isn't far away.
We see more than just his tennis; however, as Sampras takes us into his emotions and values in a way he consciously chose not to do during his career. He voices fear, happiness, frustration, and anger in ways that have humanized him for me in a wonderful way. He candidly discussed Sally Jenkins' writing about him sleeping alone in a dark room, the imprisonment for child molestation of Pete Fischer, one of his first advisors, and the clumsy and ultimately reversed firing of his second coach Paul Annacone. He also gives an upfront analysis of his decision to retire and his final US Open in 2002.
Paired nicely with this insight are lots of wonderful vignettes, moments, and anecdotes that were entirely new to me and very entertaining. I choose not to divulge them here, and you can thank me later once you've enjoyed them for yourself.
Along with his growth as player and man, another theme that is evident throughout the book is Sampras' slavish devotion to his craft. Honestly the man puts the "ace" in ascetic (terrible pun, I know, but just too tasty to pass up!) From minimizing his high school exposures (he was known as "the tennis guy"), to rigorously following a dietary regimen, even when his body was calling out for something else, to moving to Tampa to be away from the "distraction" of family, the man was an absolute monk. He even slept in a separate bed from his new wife at Wimbledon when she was pregnant because it was a queen size, not a king!
(Interesting sidenote about his body craving different foods than what he usually ate: Sampras suffers from a condition called Beta-thalassemia, which is commonly found in people of Mediterranean descent and, because it affects a person's ability to form normal hemoglobin molecules, causes a mild anemia. When people become anemic, most frequently in anemias due to nutritional deficiencies (ie iron deficiency) they can manifest a symptom called "pica" wherein they crave large quantities of non-nutritive substances or food ingredients. When I read about Sampras' cravings for fatty foods at the 1996 French Open, this phenomenon came to mind. Anyway, now that we've finished Hematology Grand Rounds, we'll conclude this sidenote.)
His sacrifices are a perfect illustration of what it takes to get to and stay at the top, and he speaks on film about this same process in the movie "Unstrung". There is a clear acknowledgment that he missed out on a great deal, but he derives that much more satisfaction from his achievements. He also clearly seems to be relishing the more normal life that he leads now.
It is easy to see how such a career path is not for anyone but a chosen few, and then even those few still have to make a choice of their own. An interesting juxtaposition to the road Sampras walked is Mark Philippoussis, who was widely regarded as having the biggest and best all-around tennis game in the world, but focused more on the trappings of tennis fame than tennis itself (who will soon forget his turn on NBC's "Age of Love" reality show).
Pete Sampras had an amazing career, not just for the sheer magnitude of his achievements, but also for the removed and sometimes obfuscating personality he showed us during his time in the limelight. This book closes the gap between Sampras the tennis player and Sampras the person for us, his fans. By doing this with as much candor and frankness as are in these pages, we meet an entirely new person. By pouring in so many magical tennis adventures and anecdotes, we get to relive an unbelievable career all over again.