New and Noteworthy: Army of the Potomac's Intelligence Gathering and Gettsyburg,

Major General George H. Sharpe and The Creation of American Military Intelligence in the Civil War, Peter G. Tsouras, Casemate Publishing, 583 pages, bibliographic notes, illustrations, maps, bibliography, 2018. $34.95

Review written by Stephen E. Towne, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

In this book, prolific military historian Peter Tsouras provides a detailed account of the operations of the Bureau of Military Information (BMI) in the Army of the Potomac from its creation in February 1863 through Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox (9 April 1865). Framed as a biography of its founding leader, then Col. George H. Sharpe of the 120th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment, the book builds on previous studies by Edwin Fishel and William Feis. That said, Tsouras has done yeoman's work in finding new records documenting the work of Sharpe's intelligence unit.

George Sharpe was an affluent, well-connected attorney in upstate New York before the war and then, briefly, a captain in the 20th New York State Militia regiment mobilized in 1861. During the mass recruiting drive in summer 1862, he raised the 120th New York regiment and assumed its command. The regiment participated on the periphery in the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg in December.

Tsouras begins his story soon after Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker assumed command of the Army of the Potomac. His predecessors, generals George B. McClellan and Ambrose E. Burnside, had not left him any military-intelligence resources. McClellan had relied on detectives hired by Allan Pinkerton, the head of a Chicago detective agency whose gross overestimates of the strength of Lee's army paralyzed the Union general. When President Abraham Lincoln dismissed McClellan from command, Pinkerton's detectives went home. Hooker, naturally eager for accurate information on Confederate troop strength and deployments, chose Sharpe to establish an intelligence operation as an adjunct to his headquarters and to collect useful information on Lee's army. Sharpe quickly found scouts who could infiltrate rebel lines and talented aides to oversee interrogations of deserters and compile Lee's order of battle.

Tsouras's accounts of the derring-do of BMI scouts behind rebel lines are most entertaining, but their length and granular detail are oppressive and obscure the larger picture of the value of Sharpe's efforts. Following as he does in Fishel and Feis's footsteps, the author delivers no new historical understanding of Union military intelligence. Other shortcomings include the many typos and repetitions in the narrative, as well as, more problematically, the author's penchant for using present-day military-intelligence terminology and acronyms in a Civil War context. Thus, we read that Sharpe was the creator of "all-source military intelligence." The BMI can and should be approached as a case study of military intelligence work done before it was institutionalized by the US Army in the twentieth century. But historians must resist the "whiggish" temptation to compare the practices of the "bad old days" to what are assumed to be today's better ones.
....
 The author's evaluation of Sharpe as the unique example of top-rate intelligence work in the Civil War follows Fishel's myopic focus on the Army of the Potomac and overlooks significant intelligence operations in other Union armies and commands. For example, no historian has made a comprehensive study of Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans's significant intelligence work while he was commanding the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee starting in fall 1862. The general directed a remarkably effective intelligence operation against Confederate forces in his front together with a far-flung security service throughout several states in his rear. In 1861, he used Ohio police detectives in western Virginia. In 1864, while in command of the Department of the Missouri with headquarters in St. Louis, he refined and expanded an already large intelligence apparatus that ranged from New Orleans to New York. In short, Rosecrans may have been the most consistent and sophisticated user of intelligence during the war. Until historians study these other operations, we must put off crowning Sharpe as the originator of high-quality Civil War intelligence work.
.....
 George Sharpe's BMI was perhaps the best intelligence unit in the Union Army, but it certainly was not the first or, arguably, the most effective. Peter Tsouras's exhaustive research to piece together an account of Sharpe's wartime career should prompt historians to examine other important military-intelligence operations in the Civil War.

Full text of this review is found online at:  Michigan War Studies Reviews

New and Noteworthy—The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: Embattled Regiment for the War’s Most Divided State

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment From the Civil War’s Most Divided State, David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell, University of Kansas Press, 354 pages, epilog, 4 appendices, index, 38 illustrations, 11 maps, bibliographic notes, bibliography, $34.95.

Some regiments were known as ‘Bloody’, ‘Hard Luck’, ‘Cowards’; some brigades were known as ‘Iron’, ‘Irish’ or ‘Excelsior’.  There was one Gibraltar Brigade and the Seventh West Virginia was a four year member of it.  The Seventh West Virginia had a four year enrollment of 1,528 soldiers and 315 total deaths in battles, wounds and disease. Of the 315 deaths, 108 were killed outright or mortally wounded on the battlefields. During the Battle of Antietam  the Seventh sustained a casualty rate higher than 45 percent with 12 percent of those killed or mortally wounded when it took flanking fire from Confederate troops in the Sunken [Bloody Lane] Road. 

Through much of the war, the Gibraltar Brigade was composed of the 4th Ohio Infantry, 8th Ohio Infantry, 14th Indiana Infantry, and the 7th West Virginia Infantry. The brigade was augmented by the 24th and 28th New Jersey before the Battle of Fredericksburg. Before the Overland Campaign in early 1864, its ranks were bolstered by the addition of the 1st Delaware, 12th New Jersey, and the 10th New York Battalion. It was commanded by brigadier generals Nathan Kimball, Samuel S. Carroll, and Thomas A. Smyth.  By the battle of Gettysburg, the Seventh West Virginia’s ten companies were consolidated into five companies and recognized as a battalion.

On April 17, 1861, the Virginia state convention in Richmond declared secession. Nearly all delegates from counties west of the Allegheny Mountains voted against secession. On May 15, western Virginia Unionists convened in Wheeling, Virginia located in the northern panhandle of the state. The convention only denounced secession and called for a formal election of delegates. Elected delegates met in the second session on 11 June 11 and on the 20^th created the Restored Government of Virginia.

Comparatively speaking, Mellot’s and Snell’s is much like the ‘drum and bugle’ histories similar to Pullen’s 20^th Maine, Gibbs’ 11^th Pennsylvania Reserves and Moe’s 1^st Minnesota regimental histories but Mellot and Snell have crafted their Seventh West Virginia story similar to Gordon’s A Broken Regiment: The 16^th Connecticut and Brandt’s 87^th Pennsylvania works. Yet, socioeconomic, military, medical, political and personal perspectives are blended together. 

In four appendices the authors provide the age distribution, the birth places and the prewar occupations of all enrolled soldiers. Additionally hospitalization statistics are offered. Statistics, letters, diaries, journals, newspapers, official correspondence are honed and balance to create a compelling story of a distinctly ‘bloody’ regiment. The authors acknowledge the assets offered by Shepherd University [WV] and the George Tyler Moore Center which have compiled both pertinent West Virginian statistical databases and primary source collections. 

 

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment From the Civil War’s Most Divided State is a splendid contribution to the field of American Civil War regiments. 

From The Publisher: Though calling itself “The Bloody Seventh” after only a few minor skirmishes, the Seventh West Virginia Infantry earned its nickname many times over during the course of the Civil War. Fighting in more battles and suffering more losses than any other West Virginia regiment, the unit was the most embattled Union regiment in the most divided state in the war. Its story, as it unfolds in this book, is a key chapter in the history of West Virginia, the only state created as a direct result of the Civil War. It is also the story of the citizen soldiers, most of them from Appalachia, caught up in the bloodiest conflict in American history.

The Seventh West Virginia fought in the major campaigns in the eastern theater, from Winchester, Antietam, and Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg. Weaving military, social, and political history, The Seventh West Virginia Infantry details strategy, tactics, battles, campaigns, leaders, and the travails of the rank and file. It also examines the circumstances surrounding events, mundane and momentous alike such as the soldiers’ views on the Emancipation Proclamation, West Virginia Statehood, and Lincoln’s re-election. The product of decades of research, the book uses statistical analysis to profile the Seventh’s soldiers from a socio-economic, military, medical, and personal point of view; even as its authors consult dozens of primary sources, including soldiers’ living descendants, to put a human face on these “sons of the mountains.” The result is a multilayered view, unique in its scope and depth, of a singular Union regiment on and off the Civil War battlefield—its beginnings, its role in the war, and its place in history and memory.

About the Authors

David W. Mellott is a lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio. Several of his ancestors fought in the Seventh West Virginia.

Mark A. Snell is the retired professor of history and director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd University, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Snell is the author of many works on Civil War history, including West Virginia and the Civil War: Mountaineers Are Always Free.

Forthcoming and Noteworthy---Jonathan Letterman, Surgeon in Blue and Pioneer of Battlefield Emergency Care

Surgeon In Blue: Jonathan Letterman, The Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care, Scott McGaugh, Arcade Press, 30 black and white photographs,bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, 340 pp., hardcover, $25.95. 2013, Available July 1.

From the publisher: Jonathan Letterman was an outpost medical officer serving in Indian country in the years before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized combat medicine over the course of four major battles—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg—that produced unprecedented numbers of casualties. He made battlefield survival possible by creating the first organized ambulance corps and a more effective field hospital system. He imposed medical professionalism on a chaotic battlefield. Where before 20 percent of the men were unfit to fight because of disease, squalid conditions, and poor nutrition, he improved health and combat readiness by pioneering hygiene and diet standards. Based on original research, and with stirring accounts of battle and the struggle to invent and supply adequate care during impossible conditions, this new biography recounts Letterman’s life from his small-town Pennsylvania beginnings to his trailblazing wartime years and his subsequent life as a wildcatter and the medical examiner of San Francisco. At last, here is the missing portrait of a key figure of Civil War history and military medicine. His principles of battlefield care continue to be taught to military commanders and first responders.

Text Source:  Arcade Press

CWL:  From a review copy---the bibliographic notes run from about 20 to 50 for each chapter and range from the December 1865 Atlantic Monthly essay on the Gettysburg Battlefield, a 2004 PhD dissertation on Letterman's development of a battlefield evacuation system and Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Phil Lechak's  A Blue and Gray Sea of Misery [unpublished]. McGaugh spent a full day with 'brogans on the ground' with Lechak. Also, McGaugh has found a rare photograph of  the home in which Letterman was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania [three miles from CWL's house].

There are four chapters on four battles; Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Other chapters focus on Letterman's July 4 1862 rise to command on  of the Army of the Potomac's medical service and his service of coroner for the city of San Francisco. The book's spine is firm and the text block falls open easily.  CWL is anxious to begin Surgeon In Blue: Jonathan Letterman, The Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care.

New and Noteworthy: Bloodied And Unbowed---Army of the Potomac's Second Corps

Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., Indiana University Press, 2011,388 pp., appendices, bibliography, notes, index, maps, illustrations, $34.95.

In the American Civil War, an integral role was played by the Army of the Potomac. One of the cornerstones of this army was the Second Army Corps. Lawrence Kreiser tells the Second Corps' story with verve and attention to personal as well as bureaucratic details. The author's study grapples with whether the Second Corps "is a sample providing insight into the rest of the Union army or a subject with its won distinct history." To the author's credit both offers both insight into the commonality of Union soldiers and the uncommon story of a corps that fought from the Peninsula to Appomattox.

Kreiser breaks the four parts.: 1. the organization and first experience of combat [the Peninsula and Maryland campaigns], 2. the consolidation of the corps leadership and its immersion into combat [Fredericksburg through Mine Run campaigns], 3. the shredding and rebuilding [Overland, Petersburg, and Appomattox campaigns, 4. the remembering and memorializing of the corps [the Grand Review through the Grand Army of the Republic associations and the publication in 1887 of the Second Corps' history by former staff officer Francis Walker who died in 1897].

Four of ten Second Corps soldiers became casualties during the war, the highest numerical losses of any Federal corps. Kreiser explains how paid the men paid such a high price for their service. Soldiers' motivation changed over time; leadership was developed then lost in battle and then developed again. The author at times takes an analytical approach to understanding the corps' story from its creation to the efforts of its veterans. At other times, he presents the lives of the soldiers in the words of the soldiers and their families.

Kreiser adequately handles the movement within the high command of the army from brigade and division organization in 1861 to division and corps organization in 1862. By early 1863, the corps had earned the reputation of solid endurance, faithful obedience, and for hard marching and fighting. By the Gettysburg Campaign, it along with the First Corps was the backbone of the Army of the Potomac. After the destruction of the First Corps on July 1, the Second and Fifth Corps became the spine of the army.

In Defeating Lee Kreiser places the battles along side national and army politics. The replacement of enlisted men and commissioned officers is a constant dilemma for the corps throughout the war. The impact of both battlefield casualties and the attempt to raise new regiments with little regard for veteran units is both a moral and administrative issue. The enlistments of 1864 create a constant change in brigade and division level cohesion and effectiveness.

Though Winfield Scott Hancock is on the cover, Defeating Lee is not just his story. There are a great deal of admirable leaders at the regimental, brigade and division level that allows Hancock to succeed at corps command. Notably, the book does not end at Appomattox or the Grand Review. Kreiser continues the story of how the commanders angled for opportunities to tell the war from their point of view.All in all, Kreiser pays close attention to Francis Walker's 1887 history and both expands and corrects it. Hopefully, other corps histories will be told with the attention to detail, argument, and context that Kreisler has given to the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac.

In a query to the author, CWL learned that Unfurl Those Colors: McClellan, Sumner, and the Second Army Corps in the Antietam Campaign by Marion V. Armstrong does not appear in the bibliography because Defeating Lee had been accepted by the publisher, edited and scheduled to be printed when Unfurl Those Colors was release in spring 2008.

New and Noteworthy: History of the Second Army Corps, Army of the Potomac

Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., Indiana University Press, endnotes, bibliography, appendices, charts, illustrations. 387 pp. $34.95 [April 5, 2011]

CWL: Just received a review copy. Wow! 55 pages of notes, 31 pages of bibliography, 30 pages of appendices, 3 tables, 20 b/w illustrations, 1 map. Even the acknowledgments look good: Lawrence Kohl, George Rable, Richard Sommers, Donald Pfanz, Chris Calkins, and Ted Alexander. The Second Corps was created about 30 days before McClellan stepped off for the Peninsula Campaign. Kreiser carries the story to the end of the 19th century and the veterans' reunions. From a sample of the narrative the prose is clear and concise. Sources appear to be even between enlisted and commissioned soldiers. CWL will be starting this gem quite soon!

Indiana University Press: Fair Oaks, the Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, Petersburg -- the list of significant battles fought by the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, is a long and distinguished one. This absorbing history of the Second Corps follows the unit's creation and rise to prominence, the battles that earned it a reputation for hard fighting, and the legacy its veterans sought to maintain in the years after the Civil War. More than an account of battles, Defeating Lee gets to the heart of what motivated these men, why they fought so hard, and how they sustained a spirited defense of cause and country long after the guns had fallen silent.

David E. Long, author of The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-election and the End of Slavery "Kreiser breathes new life into this most important of Union Army units.... A remarkably well-written and superbly researched account."

Forthcoming: The Army of the Potomac's 2nd Corps vs. Army of Northern Virginia

Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac,Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr., Indiana University Press, 416 pages, 19 b&w illus., $34.95. Due May 1, 2011.

From the publisher: "Fair Oaks, the Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, Petersburg -- the list of significant battles fought by the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, is a long and distinguished one. This absorbing history of the Second Corps follows the unit's creation and rise to prominence, the battles that earned it a reputation for hard fighting, and the legacy its veterans sought to maintain in the years after the Civil War. More than an account of battles, Defeating Lee gets to the heart of what motivated these men, why they fought so hard, and how they sustained a spirited defense of cause and country long after the guns had fallen silent."

Blurb: "Kreiser breathes new life into this most important of Union Army units.... A remarkably well-written and superbly researched account." -- David E. Long, author of The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-election and the End of Slavery

Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., is Associate Professor of History at Stillman College, a historically black college located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is co-author of Voices of Civil War America: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life.

CWL: CWL knows what he will be reading the first week in May.

New--Federal Second Corps at Antietam

Unfurl Those Colors: McClellan, Sumner, and the Second Army Corps in the Antietam Campaign, Marion V. Armstrong, University of Alabama Press, index, notes, bibliography, maps, illustrations, 424 pages.

Unfurl Those Colors! examines the operational fabric of leadership
and command in the Army of the Potomac during one of the most critical campaigns and battles of the Civil War. The Battle of Antietam remains “the bloodiest single day of combat in American history” with over 5,000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and 3,000 missing. Many eminent Civil War historians consider it the turning point of the war.

As a result of the perceived Federal success at Antietam, Abraham Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation to make the war about ending slavery and terminating any hope of European recognition for the South. This book constitutes an operational study of the Army of the Potomac during this campaign and battle, carefully documenting the command decisions of army commander George B. McClellan and following the execution of those decisions through the corps level of command and down to the ordinary soldier in the Second Army Corps.

It reappraises the leadership and decisions of Edwin V. Sumner during the battle of Antietam as the one federal corps commander who was steadfast in carrying out McClellan’s plan of battle and effectively directed the battle on the Federal right. It details as no previous account has the fighting of the Second Army Corps at Antietam to include Sedgwick’s division in the West Woods and French’s and Richardson’s divisions at Bloody Lane.

"Unfurl Those Colors! is a very important contribution to the field of Civil War and military history. While a number of significant books have been written on the Battle of Antietam and the Maryland Campaign, none have narrowed down a particular phase as this book does.” states Ted Alexander, Chief Historian at Antietam National Battlefield Park and a Smithsonian Associates tour guide specializing in Civil War sites.

Marion V. Armstrong Jr. is a retired U.S. Army reserve officer and teaches history at colleges in middle Tennessee.

Source: text from publisher

CWL: It seems Antietam/Sharpsburg is having a good year when it comes to publishers' attention. The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Ezra A. Carman's Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam by Joseph Pierro arrived on the bookstore shelves in late March and now Unfurl Those Colors is upon us. The summer reading stack is getting tall!

News: Army of the Potomac's Winter Huts Location To Be Preserved

Park Proposed For Civil War's 'Valley Forge', Clint Schemmer, Free-Lance Star, March 26, 2008.

Central Stafford County needs a public park, historians and preservationists say, but not of the usual kind. This one, set atop ridges overlooking Accokeek Creek, would feature the most significant remaining set of unprotected Civil War forts and camps in the northern part of Virginia. That's what they recommended yesterday to area officials meeting at the University of Mary Washington's graduate-studies center in Hartwood.

County Administrator Anthony Romanello convened the ad-hoc group, which included Stafford supervisors, archaeologists, historians, planners, private citizens, and officials from the public utility that runs the regional landfill where the historic sites are located. To protect the sites as the landfill grows, the R-Board--or Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board--intends to preserve 14 to 20 acres of the 760-acre facility.

"The important thing is to convey this land unimpaired for our children--that's the first priority," said John Hennessy, chief historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. "The R-Board has done a great thing by setting this property aside." In January, R-Board members voted unanimously to reshape an 80-acre landfill expansion, giving up 3 to 5 acres, to preserve one of the forts, R-Board Superintendent Andrew J. Mikel said. The other forts and winter camps sit on land nearer the creek, where environmental rules preclude landfill development.

Many participants in yesterday's meeting favored creating a park on the property so the public can see and appreciate the Civil War and 18th-century sites, which include four Union Army forts and two camps where soldiers spent the winter of 1862-63. Supervisor Paul Milde, whose Aquia District includes the tract, strongly supports the park concept.

The idea was first proposed two years ago by Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites, a private group that has worked with builders and county officials to protect and memorialize other Union sites in eastern Stafford. FSCWS made supervisors and planning commissioners aware of the Civil War sites in 2006, presenting a 100-page report on them and urging that they be preserved as a park with a one-lane, one-way road to provide access for visitors. Officials were asked to keep the information confidential to help save the sites, which are little known to the general public but have been dug by relic hunters since the 1950s.

Having waited two years for officials to act, FSCWS is now "impatient" to see the sites made into a park, said Glenn Trimmer, the group's director. Trimmer said the tract is the best surviving piece of the "Valley Forge of the Civil War," the winter camps where the Union Army recovered from its defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and in the humiliating "Mud March," and gained the strength to fight again.

"You've got to remember," he said, "soldiers left these camps and went straight to Gettysburg. If they hadn't kept this army intact, and gotten it well trained and well drilled here, Gettysburg would have been a defeat." Author and University of Richmond instructor John W. Mountcastle and Stafford historian Al Conner urged Stafford, Fredericksburg and the R-Board officials to work quickly so the public can enjoy the sites during the Civil War's 150th anniversary, which begins in 2011. Mountcastle said the park could be a boon to regional tourism, much like two Civil War redoubts that Williamsburg saved and opened as a park last year during Jamestown's 400th anniversary.

Kerry K. Schamel-Gonzalez, research supervisor with Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, described two archaeological studies the Fredericksburg firm has done of the tract for the R-Board. Dovetail surveyed 12 sites, including four Civil War forts, two winter camps, a "corduroy" road built by Union troops, an 18th-century road trace and bridge site, two sandstone quarries, and 18th- and 19th-century home sites.

The forts were built to defend against a feared attack by Confederate cavalry, Schamel-Gonzalez said. A network of such earthworks protected the Union encampments in Stafford, home to at least 120,000 troops, and the army's bustling supply depot at Aquia Landing on the Potomac River. Hennessy and others urged that the sites be put on the National Register of Historic Places, to attest to their importance and help preserve them.

Romanello, county Historical Commission Chairwoman Anita Dodd and others said it's imperative to do more archaeology on the whole tract to make sure officials know what historic sites--including Indian and Colonial ones--might be there. At Romanello's suggestion, the principals agreed to form a small study group to hammer out the details of archaeology, preservation and park development. In the meantime, Mikel warned that the historic area, which is posted, is being patrolled by the county Sheriff's Office. Trespassers will be arrested, he said.
Segments from reports by Dovetail Cultural Resource Group and the Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites:

The proposed park tract in central Stafford features 12 archaeological sites, including: FORT 1: This two-faced, 248-foot-long Union Army battery has two gun platforms that may have held 3-inch ordnance rifles or 12-pound Napoleons. At its center is a square, 9-foot-deep supply pit or blockhouse. The fort area includes a zigzag trench and rifle pits.

FORT 2: This three-faced, 210-foot-long battery would have had four or five cannon.

FORT 3: This three-faced battery, which may have held six guns, included a heavily built blockhouse with below-ground storage for powder and shell.

FORT 4: Originally about 200 feet long, this earthwork has been damaged by logging.


WINTER CAMPS: A picket post and two dug-in winter camps, which had log shelters with fireplaces for the soldiers, neighbor the forts. One camp has what is believed to be an officers' quarters made of sandstone.

CORDUROY ROAD: Part of the area's wartime road network included a corduroy road built of logs so the Army of the Potomac could move wagons and heavy guns through boggy areas. Part of one such road, built of pine logs, is perfectly preserved in one swampy site.

BRIDGE ABUTMENTS: Sandstone abutments survive from a bridge that crossed a creek for a well-preserved 18th-century road that was a major route for the Union Army's 11th Corps.

QUARRIES: Two late 18th-century sandstone quarries, one of which appears to have later become a mill, speak to Stafford's role as a provider of building stone. Cut stone was put on skids and pulled by oxen or horse, or loaded onto shallow scows and taken downstream on Accokeek Creek. (The quarry at Government Island, on Aquia Creek, provided sandstone for the White House and the U.S. Capitol.)

Source: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/032008/03262008/366225
Contact: cschemmer@freelancestar.com

Photo: (Top) A Union blockhouse (left) like one found near Accokeek Creek defends Stafford's Potomac Creek railroad bridge. Library of Congres

Photo: (Bottom) Dale Galleon, artist.

CWL-- On Front and Flank: Henry Hunt's Artillery on July 3rd

"Double Cannister At Ten Yards": The Federal Artillery and the Repulse of Pickett's Charge, David Schultze, Rank and File Publications, 1995, 77 pages, maps, order of battle, notes, and glossary.

David Shultz' slim but well packed volume opens up the sources regarding the issue of the role that the Federal artillery played in the repulse of Longstreet's second assault. General Pickett responded to a query concerning the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg with the statement "The Union army had something to do with it." After reading Shultz's book, I would say that the Union artillery definitely had something to do with it. I would guess that there may have been as many Rebel casualties from artillery shells as there were from infantry musket bullets.

Quickly, but thoroughly for the purpose of the book, Shultz covers the organization of the Cemetery Ridge artillery line: those pieces under the command of McGilvery, those under Hazard, and those under Osborn (with a nod to Wainwright). Stretching from Plum Run, to the Copse of Trees, to Zeigler's Woods and to the cemetery gatehouse, Henry Hunt brought the talent and the tubes together in the right spot at the right time.

Schultz convincingly describes the mortal effect which McGilvery's and Osborn's pieces had on the flanks of the Confederate assault. Also, the devastation of the pieces under Hazard, at the Union center from the Copse of Trees to Ziegler's Grove, is fully described. In detail, Shultz succintly describes the orders of Hunt and the orders of Hancock, their contradictions, and the effect of the contradictions had on the destruction on the Union center. Also, the decision to cease fire on McGilvery's line, withdraw of peices on Osborn's line and the Confederate belief that their artillery had swept the Union pieces off the ridge is presented.

The maps in the book are adequate but having Gettysburg Magazine at hand was helpful. "Double Canister at Ten Yards" also works well with the PCN dvd Gettysburg Battlewalks: Henry Hunt and Cemetery Ridge. As a taker of the Gettysburg LBG exam, I would put this book on the study list.

CWL --- Brave, Dutiful, Good: George Gordon Meade

George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, Ethan S. Rafuse, McWhiney Foundation Press, 2003, 192 pp., illustrations, maps, index, notes, $29.95.

Ethan Rafuse states his purpose frankly. To provide a chronicle of the life and career of George Gordon Meade and to delineate the forces that shaped the Union war effort in the East and the military and political problems that Meade and other generals encountered as they pursed victory are his goals.(p. 15) He splendidly achieves them.

As in A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas (2002) and McClellan's War: The Failure Of Moderation In The Struggle For The Union (2005), Rafuse deftly handles the primary sources to reveal the men and their mindsets on the battlefield. In each of his three works, the major dispute between the West Point trained generals, the political generals, and the administration of Lincoln is the line of operations to be pursued when the army advanced upon Richmond.

The West Pointer officers, even Hooker, believed the appropriate base to be the James River. The Lincoln administration, even Halleck, believed the appropriate base to be the railroads running north to south between Washington, DC and Richmond. The West Pointers in the Army of the Potomac were constantly frustrated by the Overland approach and were unable to convince the administration to adopt the James River approach. In the end, it is Grant who uses the Overland route to reach the appropriate base of operations, the James River.

Within the context of this struggle, Meade the commander of a brigade, a division, a corps and an army manages to excel. Citing Meade's extensive letters to his wife, Rafuse reveals a general who while it "was his job to offer suggestions, the final decision as to what policy he was to implement" rested with the Lincoln administration.(p. 169) Unlike McClellan and Hooker, Meade had a great contempt for history that had yet to be written. The statement of this attitude was in a letter to his wife written on April 10, 1865, the day after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The first draft of that yet to be final draft of history appeared in newspapers. He had a very low opinion of politicians and newspaper editors. He made a effort to shape policy with politicians but made no effort to shape perceptions of newspapermen. He did not attempt to work with politicians by cultivating his own lobby of congressmen and senators.

As a commander of a brigade in the Pennsylvania Reserve division, Meade suffered two wounds at the Battle of Glendale, June 30, 1862. He recovered and rejoined his brigade in time for the Battle of 2nd Manassas in which the Pennsylvania Reserves refused to retreat in the late afternoon of August 30 and, it can be argued, saved the Army of Virginia, from a truly ignominious defeat by capture. Meade ascended to division command before Antietam and to corps command during the battle. He returned to command of the Pennsylvania Reserve division for the Fredericksburg Campaign. He commanded a the Fifth Corps during the January 1863 'Mud March.' He became the last commander of the Army of the Potomac during the early morning hours of June 28, three days before the Battle of Gettysburg.

Meade confided to his wife many personal evaluations. McClellan 'errs on the side of prudence and caution, and that a little more rashness on his part would improve his generalship.' (p.47) Towards Burnside "I never felt so disappointed and sorry for any one in my life as I did" for him; "he really seems to have even the elements against him." (p. 57) "Hooker has disappointed the army and myself in failing to show the nerve. . . . I am sorry for Hooker, because I like him and my relations have been agreeable with him; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that he has on this occasion [Chancellorsville] missed a brilliant opportunity." (p. 66)

As for Meade's own generalship, Rafuse provides quotations from both Rebel and Union generals, particularly E.P. Alexander and U.S. Grant, that express an appreciation of his competence and perception of duty. In the course of less than 200 pages, Ethan Rafuse has provided readable, even suspenseful, biography that will be enjoyed by both the buff and the scholar.