Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant. John Reeves. New York: Pegasus Books, 2023. 352 pp., $29.95

 

Ulysses S. Grant has experienced something of a moment recently. In the past decade, Grant has been the subject of lengthy biographies by Ronald C. White and Ron Chernow.[1] Other historians have reassessed Grant’s presidency.[2] Still other scholars have produced important books about Grant’s generalship, including, but not limited to, Timothy B. Smith’s masterful five-volume study of the Vicksburg Campaign.[3] These books are welcome because they help refute traditional portrayals of Grant’s presidency and add more nuance to scholarly understandings of Grant the military man. 

In Soldier of Destiny, John Reeves begins with Grant’s resignation from the army in 1854, traces his life over the next decade, and ends with Grant’s appointment as lieutenant general in 1864. Reeves is intrigued by how a man who resigned from the army because of his drinking rose to such commanding heights ten years later. Reeves offers a fairly straightforward narrative history of Grant’s life that covers all the events one would expect. He also discusses Grant’s ideas about slavery and Grant’s drinking. When he resigned from the army, Grant told a friend that “whoever hears of me in ten years, will hear of a well-to-do old Missouri farmer” (p. 7). 

After resigning, Grant made his way east from California, back to his wife Julia and his two small children. Grant’s family lived at White Haven, Julia’s parents’ estate. Grant had always wanted to be a farmer and life at White Haven offered a chance to become one. However, at White Haven, he was entangled with slavery. Julia’s father, Colonel Frederick Dent, owned dozens of enslaved people, hated “Yankees and abolitionists,” and “served on the finance committee on the St. Louis Anti-Abolition Society” (p. 11). 

Thus, Grant personally benefited from enslaved labor, and “being a northerner surrounded by slave owners was a price Ulysses was willing to pay” for the chance to become a farmer at White Haven (p. 36). Indeed, Grant was “highly reliant on the institution just four years before the outbreak of the Civil War” (p. 45). Although Julia “convinced herself that White Haven was a happy, desirable place for its enslaved community,” the reality of life was very different than what she remembered (p. 50). 

Grant “actively participated in the slave culture of St. Louis prior to the Civil War,” although evidence suggests that he was not an effective manager of enslaved laborers (p. 55). The lifestyle Grant provided for his family was “dependent on the ownership of human property,” which did not “seem to trouble Ulysses all that much” (p. 82). He was similar to many of his contemporaries, North and South, who made their livelihoods based on slavery and were not particularly bothered by the peculiar institution. The Panic of 1857 dramatically altered the trajectory of Grant’s life. 

At the beginning of that year, his future seemed promising because he was managing White Haven, one of the largest estates in St. Louis County. However, Grant’s stake in White Haven was tenuous and the Panic of 1857 put the estate in jeopardy. To make matters worse, he began suffering from illness in 1858. Grant and his family eventually relocated to Galena, Illinois, to take a position in his father’s leather store. Although Grant moved from a slave state to a free state, his attitudes about slavery did not change. He remained “ambivalent at best on slavery” and disliked abolitionists and the Republican Party (p. 90). 

He was, however, uncompromisingly pro-Union. Only a few days after the firing on Fort Sumter, Grant wrote to his father that “there are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter” (p. 98). Like many of his contemporaries in the North, Grant’s full-throated commitment to the Union did not al‐ ter his ideas about slavery and race. Given his previous military experience, it was hardly a surprise that Grant quickly became involved in the war effort. 

He began as an assistant quartermaster, then became the mustering officer at Camp Yates, then the colonel of the Seventh Congressional District Regiment (later renamed the Twenty-First Illinois), and then brigadier general of volunteers on August 5, 1861. 

Reeves follows Grant from the Battle of Belmont to Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, General Orders No. 11, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and, finally, his promotion to lieutenant general. Reeves avoids over‐ simplifying the relationship between Grant and Henry W. Halleck, examines the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, and discusses how Grant became a hero to many after their capture.

 It is undeniable, Reeves posits, that Grant was overconfident and unprepared before the Battle of Shiloh. Thus, Grant bears the responsibility for the “shocking demoralization of a large part of the Army of the Tennessee on April 6,” although he also “demonstrated an almost preternatural ability to endure an onslaught that would have broken the spirit of an ordinary commander un‐ der such a strain” (p. 164). 

Reeves analyzes Grant’s viciously anti-Semitic General Orders No. 11 that expelled Jews from his department. This order “reflected his growing dissatisfaction with cotton speculation that appeared to violate departmental regulations” but was ultimately “a black mark on his character” (pp. 190, 198). 

Reeves then offers an account of the conquest of Vicksburg and Grant’s triumph at Chattanooga. He concludes with his promotion to lieutenant general. Although Grant’s prospects in 1854 seemed unpromising, on March 10, 1864, he “reached the pinnacle of his profession with his oldest son by his side. It had been a truly astonishing reversal of fortune” (p. 238). 

As he examines Grant throughout the years 1861-64, Reeves returns again and again to his discussion of Grant and slavery. Grant “clearly wasn’t an abolitionist or a Republican during the summer of 1861, though some of his old associates in St. Louis suspected he was” (p. 100). In November 1861, Grant wrote that he did not approve of his father and the press’s tendency toward launching a “war upon slavery” (p. 117). 

He argued that this might be the ultimate outcome but that the       “portion of the press that advocates the beginning of such a war now, are as great enemies of their country as if they were open and avowed secessionists” (p. 118). 

In 1862, Grant’s “moral ambivalence on the issue of slavery was evident,” and he was “indifferent to emancipation” (p. 180). His evolution, when it came, was sudden. The Army of the Tennessee during the Vicksburg Campaign “brought about one of the greatest socioeconomic transformations in United States history” by freeing tens of thousands of enslaved people and enrolling thousands of Black men into the US Army (p. 214). 

Grant also wrote Abraham Lincoln affirming his support for Black soldiers. It is ironic, Reeves comments, “that a man who benefited dir‐ ectly from slavery for the previous nine years” nevertheless “played a leading role in destroying that wicked institution” (p. 215). Interestingly, Reeves never accounts for the evolution of Grant’s attitudes and does not consider Grant as a “practical liberator.”[4]

If anything, the fact that Reeves emphasizes Grant’s ideas about slavery throughout the book, only to pay comparatively little         attention to why Grant ultimately embraced emancipation, leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied. Perhaps Reeves might have replaced the word “redemption” in the book’s subtitle—which is a           problematic word because of the so-called Redeemers who overthrew reconstructed governments in the southern states during the final years of Grant’s presidency—with “evolution” and then spent more time asking why this evolution occurred. 

This issue aside, Soldier of Destiny offers a good overview of an important ten-year period in the life of Grant and the life of the United States. The ground this volume covers will be familiar for scholars, but Reeves is a good writer and has an eye for vivid quotes. Anyone interested in the US Civil War should think about reading this book. 

Notes [1]. Ronald C. White, American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant (Random House, 2016); and Ron Chernow, Grant (Penguin Press, 2017). [2]. See, for example, Charles W. Calhoun, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (University Press of Kansas, 2017); Mary Stockwell, Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018); and Fer‐ gus M. Bordewich, Klan Wars: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023). [3]. See, for example, David Alan Powell, The Impulse of Victory: Ulysses S. Grant at Chat‐ tanooga (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020); Timothy B. Smith, The Union Assaults at Vicks‐ burg: Grant Attacks Pemberton, May 17-22, 1863 (University Press of Kansas, 2020); Timothy B. Smith, The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Cam‐ paign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23-July 4, 1863 (University Press of Kansas, 2021); Timothy B. Smith, Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mis‐ sissippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25-December 31, 1862 (University Press of Kansas, 2022); Timothy B. Smith, Bayou Battles for Vicksburg: The Swamp and River Expeditions, January 1-April 30, 1863 (University Press of Kan‐ sas, 2023); and Timothy B. Smith, The Inland Cam‐ paign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863 (University Press of Kansas, 2024). [4]. Kristofer A. Teters, Practical Liberators: Union Officers in the Western Theater During the Civil War (The University of North Carolina Press, 2018). H-Net Reviews

 

Kidnapped At Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White,

Andrew Sillen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024, 366 pp.,

bibliographic notes, bibliography, index.

With over 500 bibliographic notes, 20 charts, 12 illustrations, maps,

newspaper images and even sheet music, Kidnapped at Sea is an

exhaustively researched story of seafaring, blockade running, piracy,

racism -- and a kidnapping.

 

On one level it is a true crime story of a free Black American who was

kidnapped from a civilian packet ship by a Confederate naval officer. The

surrounding characters range from admirals to deck hands to diplomats.

Together they offer perspectives on the America Civil War that are

seldom explored amid the focus on land battles. Within the context of

slavery, freedom, emancipation and employment opportunities, the

author immerses reader in the spirits of the age.

 

Much of the action takes place on or about the CSS Alabama, a

Confederate raiding ship conceived in Richmond, Virginia, and birthed in

Liverpool, England, which circumnavigated the planet before the ship was

sunk near Cherbourg Harbor, France in 1864. David Henry White, a

young free Black man who had become a hotel worker and then a

contraband of war, was seized as a slave by Raphael Semmes, a

Confederate naval officer and held captive on the CSS Alabama.

The story is stirring, with vividly crafted characters who author Andrew

Sillen has reconstructed from Delaware public records and crew

manifests. He recounts White’s life before Semmes kidnapped him and

what unfolded on the Confederate raider. Schematic drawings of the CSS

Alabama and its final battle add to the dramatic account.

This is great history well told that speaks to the issues of our day.

Hopefully, Andrew Sillen has retained the film rights.   [text by CWL]

 

Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia

Michael Hardy, $27.95, Savas Beatty, March 2025, 176 pages, 37 images, one map, $27.95, hard cover

Carlton McCarthy, a former artilleryman with the Richmond Howitzers, noted after the war that historians would only write about big battles and campaigns, not how the common soldier fried his bacon and baked his biscuits. McCarthy was correct. Save for a few scattered references in a handful of books, no one has documented how an army was fed or has discussed in any detail the daily eating habits of Confederate soldiers until Michael C. Hardy’s Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Although seldom studied, food (or the lack thereof) and the logistics behind it played a critical role during the war, contributed mightily to the success and failure of campaigns, and affected the overall outcome of the conflict. Understanding how soldiers prepared their food, how they ate and, very often, went hungry, is a vital tool to understanding their individual experiences and the larger history of supply and logistics within the Confederate army.

Hardy bases his unique study on more than 300 sets of letters and diaries that closely examine the importance of sustenance in the day-to-day life of the soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia. Various chapters examine food issued by the army, food sent from home to the front, and food carried, collected, and eaten during campaigns. These accounts dispel many misconceptions and assumptions about food during the war and provide a rich and complex picture of the arduous journey various meats, grains, and other foodstuffs underwent to reach hungry soldiers in the field.

In addition to the common soldier, Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia examines what the Confederate high command ate and explores the relationship between hospitals and food, demonstrating the importance of proper nutrition in the recovery and care of the wounded. Hardy also examines the vital role played by camp servants, as well as the critical connection between proper nutrition and morale. The voices of the men themselves provide a multifaceted examination of this central, but often overlooked, field of history.

Battles and campaigns would not have been possible without a proper diet and a functioning logistical system to support the men at the front. Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia offers invaluable insight into this overlooked and understudied topic that made it all possible.

Text from Publisher

The post-war marketplace for Civil War Memories 

Marten, James Alan; Janney, Caroline E., eds.. Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America. UnCivil Wars Series. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021. 274 pp. $114.95 (cloth),   $19.94 (paper)

    James Marten and Caroline E. Janney’s selection of essays superbly navigates the cross-section between two central themes of Gilded Age America: sectional reconciliation and rampant commercialism. The essays demonstrate the complex ways that these two factors influenced each other. 

    While calmer sectional tensions often played into the hands of businessmen who sought to expand their clientele, the profit-seeking motive also caused tension between those who took Civil War memory seriously and those who wanted to make a quick buck. The authors of this volume also investigate the extent to which companies and individuals utilized (or rejected) the Lost Cause memorialization of the Civil War.

    The late John Neff demonstrates the tension between commercialism and Civil War memorialization in his essay on the removal of Libby Prison from its original site in Richmond. At the behest of northern investors who wanted to use the Civil War prison as the structure for a museum in Chicago, laborers disassembled and reconstructed Libby Prison, brick by brick, in the Windy City. For many northern and southern veterans, the move aroused negative feelings. Southerners did not want a war artifact stolen from Virginia’s soil, and northern veterans, especially those who spent time in Libby Prison, objected to the commodification of their suffering. Despite the protests, the investors continued the project, and the museum opened on September 21, 1889. The attraction initially garnered success, but attendance gradually declined until the museum’s closing almost a decade later. Eager to construct new buildings on the prison’s valuable real estate, the investors demolished it in 1900 with few qualms about its history. The building’s owners sold the remains of the prison for scrap, demonstrating the importance of profit over preserving wartime structures.

    Consumerism could also envelop the more sensitive aspects of the Civil War. Jonathan S. Jones’s essay focuses on the popularity of opiate addiction “cures” in the postwar era. Many soldiers acquired morphine addictions to cope with pain during the war and struggled to kick the habit once they returned home. In a world where people treated addiction as a severe lack of self-control, veterans’ physical reliance on opium often caused them psychological distress and a crisis of manhood. 

    As a result, desperate and suffering veterans often sought addiction cures of questionable validity. Advertisements in veteran-targeted newspapers often featured testimonials from former soldiers stating that these remedies helped them break their addiction and renew their manly vigor. Despite the touted benefits, Jones points out that the “cures” contained few, if any, legitimate properties to help addicted veterans. The remedies that helped often contained morphine themselves, causing former soldiers to continue the cycle of addiction.

    While the commodification of Civil War memory produced conflict between veterans and company interests, the profit motive contributed to positive outcomes by promoting sectional reconciliation. However, rectifying the relationship between the two sections required individuals and companies to distort the historical record. Natalie Sweet demonstrates how companies navigated these issues in her essay on a marketing campaign for Duke’s cigarettes that featured prominent figures from the Civil War era. In the 1880s, Duke’s began to include a cardboard insert (similar to a trading card) of a notable Civil War “hero” in each pack of cigarettes. 

    The “Heroes of the Civil War” campaign featured short biographies of each figure that often employed Lost Cause ideas. The blurbs portrayed Federals and Confederates positively, arguing that both had fought valiantly for noble goals. Duke’s romantic distortion of the Civil War paid off—“Heroes of the Civil War” contributed to Duke’s becoming a bestselling American cigarette. In this sense, the Lost Cause represented a positive marketing effort—by portraying both sides as noble Americans, Duke’s could increase their market share in both sections of the country. However, their stories about Civil War generals left the American public with a romantic and distorted picture of the conflict.

    Though Gilded Age Americans often embraced the Lost Cause, two essays in this work show that some northerners rejected the idea of a valiant Confederacy. In her essay, Margaret Milanick analyzes the hand-cranked Myriopticons that progressed the user through a series of scenes of the Civil War. The Massachusetts-based Milton Bradley & Company that created the Myriopticon spurned Lost Cause celebrations of the South. The visuals and accompanying text portrayed Confederates as treasonous aggressors who opposed a virtuous Union fighting for liberty and equality. The Myriopticon even featured a positive portrayal of the USCT Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts entering Charleston in 1865. 

    Caroline E. Janney’s essay also questions the ubiquity of the Lost Cause during the Gilded Age. Her work examines panoramic paintings of Civil War battles (“cycloramas”) displayed in various cities across the United States. While northern audiences enjoyed scenes of the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam, where the North claimed victory, they grew squeamish at battle scenes where Confederates won the day. Though reconciliation rhetoric often dominated the Gilded Age, Milanick and Janney’s study of northern art demonstrates that they could respect the Confederacy while leaving “no doubt about who had been right” (p. 219).

Buying and Selling Civil War Memory represents an important contribution to the literature by showing how Americans filtered Civil War memory through consumer culture. The essays in this volume prompt readers to think more about the mediums through which Americans received stories about the conflict. Does the message resonate differently, for example, if the listener received it in a cigarette advertisement rather than a classroom? Overall, the book’s entertaining and thought-provoking stories make it an excellent choice for undergraduate or graduate classrooms.

Review Source: H Net Book Reviews, December 11, 2024

Link:   https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=59566

 

Sexual Violence and American Slavery:

The Making of a Rape Culture in the Antebellum South

 Shannon Eaves, University  of North Carolina Press,

242 pp., illustrations. index, bibliography, $27.95  April 2024,  paperback, 2024.

Eaves mimes a wealth of primary sources including autobiographies, diaries, court records and more to show that rape and other forms of sexual; exploitation entangled slaves and and slave owners in battles over power to protect oneself and one's community, power to avenge hurt and humiliation, and power t punish and eliminate future threats.

By placing sexual violence at the center of the systems of power and culture, the author shows how the South's rape culture was revealed in enslaved people's and their enslavers' interactions with one another and with members of their respective communities.

More Important Than Good Generals: Majors, Captains, Lieutenant Colonels, and Colonels in the Army of the Tennessee

More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee, Jonathan Engle, Kent State University Press, $35.95, Spring 2025

 Union’s forgotten mid-level officers and their commitment to the cause

More Important Than Good Generals is an in-depth study of the Army of the Tennessee’s junior officers—the company and field grade lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels. While many studies have examined generals and common soldiers, Civil War armies’ “middle management” has been largely ignored. 

Officers had a substantially different array of duties than the soldiers they commanded and the generals above them, resulting in a drastically different wartime experience. Moreover, it is not only Civil War officers who have been overlooked but also the army Grant and Sherman commanded—the Army of the Tennessee—despite the fact that it was one of the most victorious armies of the war. 

Pushing back against the commonly accepted narrative of disillusionment among officers, Jonathan Engel concludes that the Army of the Tennessee’s company and field grade officers endured the war’s trials with their moral and political ideology intact. 

Further, rather than becoming indifferent to the Union cause, Engel argues that the reverse was often true: officers who started off racist or disinterested in the issue of enslavement became advocates of emancipation. 

Engagingly written and meticulously researched, More Important Than Good Generals is a lasting work of scholarship that will appeal to Civil War historians and general readers alike.

No Cover Image Available

Feel The Bonds That Are Drawn By American Civil War Photography

 

Feel The Bonds That Draw: Images of the Civil War at the Western Reserve Historical Society

Christine Dee, editor; Western Reserve Historical Society, Kent State University Press, 128 pages, 2011

For a century and a half, images of the Civil War have allowed millions of Americans to experience, commemorate, and reinterpret the conflict. Photographs, engravings, lithographs, and original artwork have revealed heroic volunteers, mobilized regiments, battle preparations, and the war’s grim aftermath.

“Feel the Bonds That Draw” presents nearly 200 images from the extensive Civil War photographic collections of Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society, complementing author Christine Dee’s reflections on topics such as historical memory, the war as economic engine, and the impact of mobilization and combat on civilians and the environment.

Included in the volume are stirring images by Mathew Brady, preeminent Civil War photographer, and by Henry Moore, who documented military fortifications and soldiers, particularly at Fort Pulaski on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Moore photographed troops in traditional poses and groupings, and he captured the likenesses of formerly enslaved African Americans. These latter pictures played an important role in shaping public opinion in the North in support of emancipation.

“Feel the Bonds That Draw” is a fine addition to the library of anyone interested in the history of America’s cruelest conflict.

 William C. Davis, Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech:

“It is always a pleasure to turn the eye back to those magnificent images left behind by the photographers of the Civil War. Theirs was the first epic human event captured by the camera, and their daring, ingenuity, and scope of interest never fail to impress. The Western Reserve Historical Society has one of the finest collections of wartime images in existence, and Feel the Bonds That Draw gleans some of the very best, including some not before published. As we enter the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, everyone would profit by taking a look at the faces of the men and women who actually lived it.” 

Joan Waugh, author of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth:

Feel the Bonds that Draw show cases the stunning collection of Civil War photographs held by the Western Reserve Historical Society. That is reason enough to buy this book, but fortunately there is much more to be gained. Christine Dee's chapters provide a lively and informative context and commentary to understanding how photographers and the art and business of photography shaped the interpretation of the conflict for the generation who lived through the war, and for the generations that followed. A fascinating and enjoyable read!” 

Earl J. Hess, Lincoln Memorial University, author of Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg:

“This book is a welcome visual journey, an enjoyable ride through many regions, and among the civilians as well as with the soldiers, of the Civil War. I especially like the photographs that are here published for the first time, and the extensive commentary provided by the capable author of this new and important book.” 

“Peter S. Carmichael, Fluhrer Professor and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College

Feel the Bonds that Draw brilliantly explores how Americans discovered the brutal realism of organized warfare through Civil War photography. Although we often claim that seeing is believing, Christine Dee reveals that the act of seeing could be horribly deceptive. The Northern public thought they had had found the ‘real war’ in images of physical destruction, mangled bodies, and wrecked landscapes, but in actuality they were viewing the artistic expressions of photographers who created the illusion of war as a coherent, orderly, and knowable experience.” - 

The 2024 Wyler-Silver Prize Winner ---Gradual Emancipation Politicians and Immediate Emancipation Camps Struggle Together the Transform the Union and Win The War 330 pp, $50.00, 2024.

at the University of Bonn, The New School, and the University of Virginia.

The prize committee praised Dr. Cirillo's book as follows: "In an extraordinarily nuanced and well-written analysis of abolitionists, Frank J. Cirillo’s The Abolitionists Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union assessed how these men and women acted during the war that ended slavery.

Even the abolitionists who had fought so hard to end slavery had to recalibrate their assumptions and expectations on how to achieve their goals amidst the unprecedented transformations wrought by a massive war. In this ambitious study, Cirillo found that these ideologues, specifically those who had advocated for the immediate end of slavery, divided on the verge of achieving their most dearly held ambition. 

On the one hand, some of these men and women continued their allegiance to immediate and radical action to end slavery to ensure America’s moral redemption. Those who stayed true to immediatism rejected political maneuvering because they believed achieving abolition by political means corrupted their movement. 

On the other hand, some immediatists joined the political fray and supported the Republican Party to achieve their purpose. These interventionists were willing to sacrifice the purity of their movement to ensure slavery's end. Cirillo argues that the unrepentant immediatists' predictions came true; interventionists’ political allegiances resulted in their sacrifice of racial justice because they had identified their movement with the Republican Party and its limited vision of emancipation, which rejected both the need for white redemption and black equality.

 Lincoln understood the reason for this realignment when, in the Second Inaugural Address, he asserted, 'Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.'  If the people most likely to support African American social, civil, and political rights embraced black freedom as defined by white racist partisans during this cataclysm, then the formerly enslaved had little chance of fully realizing the benefits of emancipation. 

This book contributes significantly to understanding the United States’ failure to make emancipation more meaningful despite the realization of immediatists' decades-long dedication to the slave's cause."

Text Dource: https://lsupress.org/9780807179154/the-abolitionist-civil-war/

GRANT'S OWN WORDS, ANNOTATED

 

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2017, 816 pp., $39.95

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant have been in publication since their original re‐ lease in 1885, just months after Grant’s death from a long bout with throat cancer. In this most recent edition, the editorial staff of John Marszalek, David Nolen, and Louie Gallo has assembled a completely annotated version of this autobiography, a Herculean effort for which we should be grateful.

Grant’s narrative remains a masterpiece: “not only a major piece of war literature, but also a classic of all American literature … the pinnacle of American nonfiction” (p. xxvi). The editorial team maintains as much of Grant’s original prose as possible, only cleaning up typographical errors and errata in the main narrative while acknow‐ ledging when such steps are taken. Grant’s pith, humor, and erudition seep through every page. Much of his humor comes from self-deprecation, which makes the book feel like it was written by an everyman who recognizes his flaws rather than the man often credited with winning the war that divided the United States. He recalls moments from his life, specifically from his time in combat, down to the day that they occurred with precision as to what was said to whom and where. His battle against cancer as he wrote these memoirs makes his recall and his prose even more incredible, and his dedication to completing this task kept him alive as long as possible, succumbing to his dis‐ ease but days after he last put pen to paper on this project. Grant wrote a book in which all readers can find value.

The editorial staff mention in their acknowledgements that they have tried to do as Grant wrote in his memoirs: “Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine is that in positions of great responsibility everyone should do his duty to the best of his ability” (p. 767). With the publication of this work, they have fulfilled the tall order given H-Net Reviews by the man at the heart of this project many years ago.

H-Net Reviews   [online link to complete text of review]

It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleedin' [lyric, Bob Dylan]: Tell Ma Not To Worry I'm Buried In Gettysburg on a Farm

 

“Too Much for Human Endurance”: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg and "Tell Mother Not to Worry": Soldier Stories From Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm, Ronald C. Kirkwood, 320 pp. & 408 pp. 

Savas Beatie Publishing, available in hard cover and paperback

Too Much For Human Endurance and "Tell Mother Not to Worry" together are over 700 pages and describe one farm hospital  behind the Army of the Potomac's battle lines at Gettysburg. 

The bloodstains are gone, but the worn floorboards remain. The doctors, nurses, and patients who toiled and suffered and ached for home at the Army of the Potomac’s XI Corps hospital at the George Spangler farm in Gettysburg have long since departed. Fortunately, what they experienced there, and the critical importance of the property to the battle, has not been lost to history. Noted journalist and George Spangler farm expert Ronald D. Kirkwood brings these people and their experiences to life in “Too Much for Human Endurance”: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg.

Using a large array of firsthand accounts, Kirkwood re-creates the sprawling XI Corps hospital complex and the people who labored and suffered there—especially George and Elizabeth Spangler and their four children, who built a thriving 166-acre farm only to witness it nearly destroyed when war paid a bloody visit in the summer of 1863. Stories rarely if ever told about the wounded, dying, nurses, surgeons, ambulance workers, musicians, and others are weaved seamlessly through gripping and smooth-flowing prose.

A host of notables spent time at the Spangler farm, including Union officers George G. Meade, Henry J. Hunt, Edward E. Cross, Francis Barlow, Francis Mahler, Freeman McGilvery, and Samuel K. Zook. Pvt. George Nixon III, great-grandfather of President Richard M. Nixon, would die there, as would Confederate Gen. Lewis A. Armistead, who fell mortally wounded at the height of Pickett’s Charge. In addition to including the most complete lists ever published of the dead, wounded, and surgeons at the Spanglers’ XI Corps hospital, this study breaks new ground with stories of the First Division, II Corps hospital at the Spanglers’ Granite Schoolhouse.

Kirkwood also establishes the often-overlooked strategic importance of the property and its key role in the Union victory. Army of the Potomac generals took advantage of the farm’s size, access to roads, and central location to use it as a staging area to get artillery and infantry to the embattled front line from Little Round to Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill, often just in time to prevent a collapse and Confederate breakthrough.

“Too Much for Human Endurance" introduces readers to heretofore untold stories of the Spanglers, their farm, those who labored to save lives, and those who suffered and died there. They have finally received the recognition that their place in history deserves.

CWL: Kirkwood's efforts are very much in the tradition of Gregory Coco's pioneering literary works which focus on the first person accounts of the wounded and dying as well as those who are attending and burying them. Kirkwood's writing style is straightforward and reportorial; he relies upon accounts made by the wounded and their caretakers. Confederate General Armistead's wounding and death is covered in a satisfactory manner with very little speculation. Ambulance wagon drivers' Doctors' and nurses' accounts are on every page. The Spangler family's living conditions are featured as well. Kirkwood's work is likely to have a spot on lists of essential Gettsyburg books.

The Child Is a The Father of the Man: Lincoln and Grant Biographer Tackles Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain:

 

On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Ronald C. White

512 pages, $22.00, Random House Publishing. 

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg—and told by two surgeons he would die—Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College.

How did a stuttering young boy come to be fluent in nine languages and even teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? Award-winning historian Ronald C. White delves into these contradictions in this cradle-to-grave biography of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, from his upbringing in rural Maine to his tenacious, empathetic military leadership and his influential postwar public service, exploring a question that still plagues so many veterans: How do you make a civilian life of meaning after having experienced the extreme highs and lows of war?

Chamberlain is familiar to millions from Michael Shaara’s now-classic novel of the Civil War, The Killer Angels, and Ken Burns’s timeless miniseries The Civil War, but in this book, White captures the complex and inspiring man behind the hero. Heavily illustrated and featuring nine detailed maps, this gripping, impeccably researched portrait illuminates one of the most admired but least known figures in our nation’s bloodiest conflict.

CWL: Splendid. Clear, crisp narrative style. Pays attention to Chamberlain's faith and character. Enjoyable to read and even suspenseful at times. 

American Civil War Archives: Their Lives and Afterlives

 

War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War, Yael A. Sternhell, 320 pages, Yale University Press, $37.50, 2024.

Winner of the 2024 Tom Watson Brown Book Award  

Shortlisted for 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
 
The Civil War generated a vast archive of official records—documents that would shape the postwar era and determine what future generations would know about the war. 

Yael Sternhell traces these records from their creation during wartime through their deployment in a host of postwar battles, including those between the federal government and Southerners seeking reparations and between veterans blaming each other for defeat.
 
These documents were eventually published in the most important historical collection ever to have been assembled in the United States: The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and the Confederate Armies. Known as the OR, it is the ultimate source for generations of scholars and writers and ordinary citizens researching the war. 

By delving into the archive, Sternhell reveals its power to shape myths, hide truths, perpetuate rancor, and foster reconciliation. Far more than a storehouse of papers, the Civil War archive is a major historical actor in its own right.

Investing In Slaves During Wartime and a Time of Currency Inflation

 

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South        Robert K.D. Colby, Oxford University Press, 360 pages, $35.00, 2024

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The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died as emancipation dawned. Between Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands African American men, women, and children. 

These transactions in humanity made the internal slave trade a cornerstone of Confederate society, a bulwark of the Rebel economy, and a central part of the experience of the Civil War for all inhabiting the American South.

As An Unholy Traffic shows, slave trading helped Southerners survive and fight the Civil War, as well as to build the future for which they fought. They mitigated the crises the war spawned by buying and selling enslaved people, using this commerce to navigate food shortages, unsettled gender roles, the demands of military service, and other hardships on the home front. 

Some Rebels speculated wildly in human property, investing in slaves to ward off inflation and to buy shares in the slaveholding nation they hoped to create. Others traded people to counter the advance of emancipation. Given its centrality to their nationhood, Confederates went to great lengths to prolong the slave trade, which, in turn, supported the Confederacy. 

For those held in slavery, the surviving slave trade dramatically shaped their pursuit of freedom, inserting a retrograde movement into some people's journeys toward liberty while inspiring others to make the risky decision to escape.

Offering an original perspective on the intersections of slavery, capitalism, the Civil War, and emancipation, Robert K.D. Colby illuminates the place of the peculiar institution within the Confederate mind, the ways in which it underpinned the CSA's war effort, and its impact on those attempting to seize their freedom.

Introduction
Chapter 1: "No Money, and No Confidence": Slave Commerce, Secession, and the Panic of 1860
Chapter 2: The "Uncongenial Air of Freedom": Union Occupation and the Slave Trade
Chapter 3: "Old Abe Is Not Feared in this Region": The Revival of Confederate Slave Commerce
Chapter 4: "Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices": Inflation, Speculation, and the Confederate Future
Chapter 5: "Liable to Be Sold at Any Moment": State-Making, Continuity, and the Slave Trade
Chapter 6: Sold "Far Out of the Way of Lincoln": Emancipation and Counterrevolutionary Slave Commerce
Chapter 7: "Broke...All Up": The Ends and Afterlives of the Wartime Slave Trade
Epilogue, Notes, Select Bibliography, Index

Author  Interview   

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-unholy-traffic-slave-trading-in-the-civil-war/id1729723969?i=1000655641457